3D Ultrasound

Part of my Christmas present this year was a 3D ultrasound. I've always wanted to try one but I didn't really want to spend all that money haha. This year I decided to get one because I had a little bit of money saved up and really didn't want anything for Christmas except for a keyboard (which we couldn't afford). The experience was pretty cool. I went at the end of November for my first session and got to see little Lexi and find out she was a girl. The lady showed me her face, legs, feet, hands, bum etc. all well being super friendly and interactive. It was a 20 minute session and none of it is diagnostic so I was just able to enjoy seeing my baby and asking questions about her (where her head was, where her feet were etc.) it was really quite nice to relax during an ultra sound, plus you don't have to drink any water!! Here is a couple of pictures of Lexi at 20 weeks.

She is super skinny and alien looking lol but I still think she is kinda cute...

Yesterday, Feb 11th, I was able to go for my second session where I got to see how much Lexi has grown and developed. She is quite a bit chunkier and I still have over 8 weeks to go. She was quite intent on keeping her arms up by her face...she obviously doesn't like being photographed. Her head isn't quite in my pelvis but is down and to the left which means her feet are all snuggled up and pushing on my right rib cage, explaining why the right side of my back is in constant pain!! The US tech couldn't even get a shot of her feet because they are so far up into my rib cage...awesome. It does make me feel better that I'm not just being a whiner....I can actually say that my baby has her feet up in my rib cage and is exerting pressure...good thing I haven't had any boys yet....yikes! I can't quite tell if Lexi looks like Scarlette yet....my first impression was that she has my brother Austin's nose...his baby pictures came flooding into my mind when I first saw her. The US tech says that she has good sized cheeks for how far along I am so I assume the girls will share that trait. I also thought that Lexi's lips look a lot more full then Scarlette's.....I'm thinking she got full on Andrew lips haha...they look juicy!! I can't really tell how cute she is going to be lol...I know it is hard with a 3D ultrasound and 8 more weeks to go...I just want her to be somewhat in the same league as Scarlette. I always have these nightmares that I'm going to have a bunch of cute kids and then one that is not so cute....I'm sure every mother has worried about that right??? aha or am I incredibly vain? Anyways, here are some pictures of Lexi at 32 isn weeks.

 (Sleepy Face)

 (Smile)

 (grumpy face)

(Leave me alone face haha) 

(Look at those lips!!)

(One more smile!)

Overall I had a really great experience having a 3D ultrasound. It was fun to be able to see this baby for longer than 5 minutes and to be able to relax and ask questions without feeling like I was bothering the US tech. I probably won't be able to afford to do it again but I'm definitely glad I did it once!!! At the end of the session I was given a disc with about 80 still photos on it and then a DVD that captured the whole last session so Andrew was able to watch a bit of it last night. I think he is getting really excited to meet her! I'm still feeling a bit anxious/nervous about how our family dynamic will change and how I will be able to love this baby as much as I love Scarlette but I'm sure that will all come with time. 

So who do you think she looks like?!?!

-Nicole 

Date Night

Since I have basically been pregnant 16 months of the past 3 years, Andrew and I have sometimes struggled with finding time to go out. I have an incredibly sensitive tailbone when I'm pregnant and I can hardly sit for longer then 15 minutes without it aching. I literally have my nursing pillow around my back all the time for support. We made a goal to get out more this year because I do believe it is helpful both for my relationship with Andrew and my controlling nature hahah! I haven't ever left Scarlette with a "real" babysitter lol...she is usually with my Mom or little sister but we are going to try to be more open to the idea of having someone else come over if there is something we really want to do and our families can't babysit for us. Anyways, this Saturday Andrew and I decided to have my sister over to babysit for us in lou of our anniversary (on the 19th). My family is heading off to California for reading week so we decided to celebrate early this year. We went out to dinner at Earls and then headed over to Movie Mill to see Hunger Games. I have been wanting to see this movie since it came out but we waited so long that I figured we might as well wait a couple more weeks till it came to the Mill. It was SO good. I thought they did an awesome job at staying true to the books and the acting was making me so emotional!!! Andrew said he teared up a few times but I was just getting super angry at the fricken capital! I also couldn't decided which kind of slushy I wanted which led to me getting both and making Andrew pretend that one of them was his...hahah. I even brought my nursing pillow to the movie with me which got me a lot of funny looks but hey...whatever makes me comfortable! It was still pretty hard to sit for that long and my tailbone was on fire by the end so that will probably be the last movie I see till the baby comes but it was worth it!!! Anyways, it was a great night out with the hubby and everything ran smoothly at home which makes me happy!
-Nicole

Oh Baby Baby

Is it just me, or is my reading list a little dry lately ;) lol come on people! I don't want to just read about myself! This past week has been uneventful yet busy at the same time. I had quite a few visitors over from friends to family to fellow ward members. I managed to get most of the house work done but I usually had people over till 5pm so dinner was super fast stuff..which isn't anyone's favourite. Andrew had something going on every night so we didn't see him much and Wednesday night I got my hair done. It looks a million times better! The roads were super bad that night so Andrew drove me across town and he was slipping everywhere in the car! This weekend was manrichment so Andrew was gone Friday night/Saturday day and Scarlette and I spent a lot of alone time together. This week also marked my pregnancy heading into the end stretch (30 weeks!!). Little Lexi is still moving like crazy!!! She actually keeps me up at night because I can feel EVERYTHING...I seriously think I can feel her little fingers tickling me from the inside...it's weird. I went to the doctor today and I'm measuring just right for 30 weeks, baby is head down and heartbeat was 148 bpm. Other then my crazy bad back pain and having acid reflux every once in a while I am feeling pretty good. This pregnancy has flown by and I'm actually more nervous to have her then I was to have Scarlette. I am a little unsure about how everything is going to go and how my life is going to change. I'm not going to lie...Scarlette and I pretty much live the life. So I've decided to dedicate this post to some of the things I want to remember about Scarlette. She hasn't got an update post in a while and I'm afraid I might forget some of this stuff!! 

Scarlette ages 0-3 months--- Scarlette was a pretty fussy baby, she liked to eat every hour during the day for a long time but had always been a baby who could sleep a good stretch of time at night so that made it doable. The only problem was getting her to bed in the first place. She is very particular lol. She hated tummy time and if I remember correctly she rolled from her back to her stomach nearing the 3 month mark...she NEVER rolled from her stomach to her back. She never took a soother, she never would take a bottle (even if I was out of the house) and she definitely never accepted formula haha. I think that was one of the hardest things about becoming a mom, I couldn't go anywhere for a very long time without bringing her along. She enjoyed her swing and always babbled to the little animals above her. She LOVED her bouncy chair and that is usually where you would find her. She didn't like her tummy time toys and didn't like to be left alone. We co-slept with Scarlette ( we have a King size bed) and even though I will definitely not be doing that with this baby, it is time that I cherish with Scarlette. We squeezed Scarlette into a newborn outfit to come home from the hospital in but other then that she went straight to 0-3 months but was wearing 3-6 months nearing the end of 2 months old.

Ages 3-6 months-- Scarlette continued to be fussy, she would go longer between feeds but still was eating more frequently then what the average was. She started enjoying tummy much better thanks to her V-tech walker sit'n'stand. She figured out how to do a bunch of stuff on there at 4 months old ( we have a video) and it is kind of crazy the things she was doing at that age. She started sitting in her Bumbo at 4 months old and really liked it. She also lost her hair at 3 months old...right before her baby blessing. She started sitting up at 5 months old and we also started feeding her rice cereal at that time. She could turn the pages of books, loved hearing music and plunking on the piano at Grandma's house. I think we got her jolly jumper around this time too which took a few times for her to warm up to. She was wearing 6 month clothing due to pure chubbiness lol! She isn't that tall!! 

Ages 6-9 months-- Scarlette had her ears pierced at 7 months old and to calm her down Andrew shared his orange julius with her...which also marked her learning how to drink from a straw! So out I went to get Sippy Cups and my baby finally drank from something other then me LOL!! Around 8 months old Scarlette started to crawl and that was pretty fun in the beginning...then I realized it wasn't so fun without a baby gate haha. I feel like after 6 months I had a completely different baby. Scarlette LOVED being able to eat baby food, drink water out of a cup and crawl around. This girl was definitely made to be independent. I saw a complete change in her as she was able to do more things. I really can't remember sounds she started to make etc. but I do remember that we had so much more fun during this period of time. We took the mom and tot swim class and she absolutely LOVES the water. She was wearing 6-12 month clothes and still sleeping with us at night but would sleep in her crib for naps during the day. 

Ages 9-12 months-- Scarlette started pulling herself up onto the furniture around 9 months old and would walk from object to object as long as she had something to hold onto. I thought she would be an early walker because she just did so well at balancing and would stand by herself around 10 months old but she is a scaredy cat lol. We continued to eat baby food but introduced our own food into her diet. She loved pasta, rice, bread etc. She was a super slow teether and she didn't pop the bottom two teeth out till around 12 months old! She started sleeping in her crib at night and during the day but every once in a while she would still sneak into bed with us haha. I don't really remember much else about this stage because it was summer and we were out at the pool lots haha. She was wearing 12 month clothes. 

Ages 12-15 months-- I went back to work so Scarlette was at my moms during the day for this time period. She started walking on September 24th, the day before my brother left on his mission. Probably the only exact date I will remember haha. She was 13 months + 1 week old. It was super cute. We went back to my parents house after Austin got set apart to say good-bye and all of a sudden she just stood up and started walking. I think she could have been walking much sooner because we never had the wobbly unsure phase....she literally just stood up and started walking as if she had been doing it for months. She was much more adventurous in this stage and started getting into all the cupboards, stacking blocks, saying actual words and noticing the TV. My dad bought us "Finding Nemo" and she honestly would sit there the whole movie in a trance ( talk about long attention span). We watched Nemo A LOT in the first few months of my pregnancy lol...I would usually turn it on in the morning while I was laying on the couch. She got her two front teeth (which are large like mine) and two more bottom teeth during the stage and her hair started growing yay! She was wearing 12-18 month clothes. 

Ages 15-18 months-- This has BY FAR been the funnest stage for me. Scarlette is a GREAT communicator. Her vocabulary has gone crazy in the last few months...these are the words she can say off the top of my head-- Shoes, Car, Outside, Daddy, Mommy, No, Yes, Please, Help, Duck, Juice, Go, Free, Balloon, Night, Bye, Hi as well as matching the sounds of all the animals to the right animal (I can thank you-tube for that). She is so good at understanding what I am saying to her and follows directions like a champ. It seems so weird to me that I can say something to her now and she knows exactly what I want her to do. I recently started putting her hair in a little pony tail and she doesn't look like a baby at all anymore. You put her in her little jeans and boots with her hair all done and I have got myself a toddler!! Scarlette LOVES music and is starting to sing in her own way. She loves the Frozen soundtrack and we listen to it a lot. I put "Let it Go" on and she is dancing and singing "go" "free" "good girl" ....I really am going to have to put the video I took up....it is SO cute. Her movie preferences have expanded and now we are able to watch Monsters Inc, Monsters University, Little Mermaid and Tangled. She didn't care for Incredibles or Brave and any movie that doesn't have the Disney Castle with the fireworks at the beginning she won't watch HAHA....so Despicable Me 2 was a complete waste of money. She still loves the water but I am too lazy to bundle her up and take her swimming during the winter so she has a lot of baths lol. She is a super picky eater and pretty much sticks to a liquid diet with a little bit of bread and yogurt. The only thing that I can count on her to eat is Kraft Dinner and cookies....REALLY....I wanted to be a healthy mom. We got lent my friends juicer the other day and she has drank every single juice I have given her. She loves them! I feel an investment coming on. She loves smoothies too but you can't just throw a carrot in a smoothie lol. She has been getting her 4 molars all at once so for the past two weeks she has been sneaking into bed with us around 6am after she gets some warm milk ( oh yeah...she still has to drink her milk warm....really? princess much!). Ever since I quit work her schedule has been pretty unorthodox compared to other kids her age. She is a very light sleeper and won't go to bed unless Andrew and I are going to bed...my theory is that she learnt this from co-sleeping with us that it isn't bedtime till we go to bed. We have tried lots of different things to change this but ultimately we didn't care enough to go through the headache of changing her schedule. She goes to bed in her crib at 10:30 after PJs, milk and we have read her some books. Aside from her teething she wakes up at 10:30 sometimes past 11 in the morning. I REALLY like sleeping in and she is so independent when she plays that I totally don't mind her staying up with us playing with her toys while we watch TV. We would be doing the exact same thing if she was in bed...except I would have to be up at 7 or 8 with her the next day. We also went to Nursery for the first time on Sunday. She is definitely a baby when I stuck her with all those other kids. She ran in and didn't have a problem playing with the toys...but the other kids had a problem with her playing with their toys. This one little boy was so sweet though and would bring her toys to play with. She was fine during singing time but didn't really sit on her chair and all the other kids scavenged her snack during snack time. She did enjoy using a little dixie cup though. She had no idea what was going on during the lesson and the kids weren't sharing their crayons afterwards which made her mad.....so we left a little early. Needless to say I'm super nervous about next week. I am way too much of a control freak to leave her there alone lol....I think I might be going with her for a few more weeks...or they could just call me to Nursery....that would be good too. 


Anyways!! Phew...this was one thing that I definitely wanted to sit down and do before the new baby came. I haven't touched Scarlette's baby book and I just couldn't trust myself to get it done before the baby comes. She really has been the greatest thing to ever happen to me. She is my little BFF and we have so much fun together. I love playing princesses with her, reading to her and teaching her new things. She brings me so much happiness and I couldn't have asked for a better little girl!! I love her SO much and I really hope to be able to love this next one as much as I love her...though it is hard for me to wrap my head around right now.