It's a Girl!

Emelyn Claire was born October 14th. She weighed 7 pounds, 15 ounces, and measured 20.5 inches long.

Andrea is proud of her little sister. She will walk by while I am rocking Eme and kisses the top of her head.

One day not long after we came home from the hospital, Emelyn was awake and looking around. I placed her in her bouncy seat on the floor. I told Andie to come sit down so Emelyn could see her face. Andie leaned in and said, "Hi there." Eme looking up at Andie, reached up her arm and hit Andie on her cheek. Andie told me, "She did it." Then Andie again leaned down and said, "Hi." Eme once again reached up and hit Andie on the check. This was repeated four times. I told Andrea, "See, Emelyn already loves her big sister." This brought the sweetest, shy smile to Andie's face.

Our Sweet Andie Turns 3!

Who needs presents when you have balloons? When asked what she wanted for her birthday, Andie would tell you she wanted cake, ice cream, candles, and balloons. Apparently, she really meant it. She wasn't interested in opening presents. It was like pulling teeth to get her to open her gifts.
Here she is with her two favorite gifts, Lincoln Logs and a piece of plastic celery. After she opened these, forget the rest. We ended up taking a nap, and finished opening presents after dinner.

Andrea weighs in at 36 pounds & measures 3 feet, 5 inches tall.

Almost Time

On Saturday, Andrea was talking to the baby & feeding it some "food" through my belly button. Next thing I know she is digging her finger into my belly button. When I asked what she was doing, she replied, "Trying to see the baby."

Earlier that day, I was getting ready to run some errands. As I am fixing my hair, I mention that I have quite a few more gray hair in my bangs than last year. Andrea says, "You have granny hair." I turn & look at her and she starts laughing. Brian & I joined in.

I have my c-section scheduled for Wednesday, October 14th.

What in the world has been happening?

So I am finally getting around to doing some blogging. Being pregnant & keeping up with a toddler is an exhausting job!

As for the pregnancy, things are going well. I passed the glucose tolerance test for the second time in this pregnancy, so that means I am not gestational diabetic with this baby. Thank you, God! I am currently in my 32nd week. This Friday, I have a sonogram to see how big the baby is. I am a lot bigger than I was with Andie, so I am interested to see how much this one comes in at. Since it is already so late in the pregnancy, we are going to fore go finding out the gender and wait for the surprise. At my appointment on Friday, we will be scheduling the c-section. I am going to have baby #2 at a different hospital, so that makes me a bit more anxious. And, no we haven't decided on name options yet.

We don't believe Andrea understands what is happening when we talk about having another baby. When we ask her, "Do you want a brother or sister?" She smiles & cutely replies, "No, thank you." However, when we sat by a small baby at story time last week, I asked her if she wanted a small baby like that one & she said, "Yes." I think she will be a great help once the baby is born, but will have some adjustment with not being the center of my attention all the time.

Aunt Brandi visits!

She brought Andrea a new chalk tool kit so they had fun playing with that. In this picture Andrea insisted she draw an outline of her body.

Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus

On Saturday we went to the Circus. Andrea had been excited about this for weeks.

In the car eager to get there!

Aunt Brandi let Andrea pick out whatever souvenir she wanted. Andie picked a baby Bengal Tiger, named Bengal.

Andrea was a bit overwhelmed at first by all of the loud noises. The family seated behind us was extremely loud. The boy kept screaming which terrified her. Finally, I asked one of the ushers if we could move back to some empty handicap seats. Then she was able to relax and enjoy the show.


Here she is enthusiastically roaring like a tiger.

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This picture was taken back in July, she is crawling through her "cave" she built with her Daddy!

In this one, she is drawing the letter "D." She is also pretty good at her "C's."

Happy Birthday Daddy

We waited to celebrate Brian's birthday until his parents came in this weekend. Here he is showing of his new watch.

So Brian started a new training program so we didn't eat the traditional cake & ice cream, but had fruit salad instead. It just so happened that Nana brought small oranges for Andrea to practice peeling, which she loved. Here she is peeling some for Brian's fruit salad. We have peeled oranges multiple times every day since. We finished the last one today.

How cute are they all wearing Andie's dress up hats? Super cute if you ask me.

Brian & I had a lot of fun just listening & watching Andrea interact with Nana & Papa. They had us laughing a number of times.

We also took advantage of their visit and went out on a date night. We went to eat at Buffalo Wild Wings. We picked that place because it was right next door to the movie theater, and we had never been there before. However, it wasn't an enjoyable meal. We arrived 30 minutes before they started a cover for a pay-per-view fight. So we scarfed down our food so we could make it out in time. Brian picked the movie, "The Hangover," which was hilarious! It was tons funnier than I expected.

What has happened in June

Happy Father's Day!

Here Andrea is wearing the shirt that Brian wore on the day she was born. This is a tradition we started last year for Father's Day. Our other tradition is to let Brian choose a new restaurant to eat at for his special day. This year he went with a Chicago style pizza place called "Mangia."

Big Girl Bed in her New Bedroom!

On Friday, June 19th, we moved Andrea into her new bedroom, which meant a big girl bed too. She loves, loves her new room. She was more than happy to help us move all of her books and toys into her new room. She transitioned without any issues.

Farewell Tommy Lynn

We said farewell to our Tommy dog, 16.5 year old Sheltie mix, on Monday, June 15th. We will miss you terribly, but know that you are once again having fun chasing birds.

Pool Party
On Saturday, June 13th, Brian's tennis team celebrated their season by having a pool party. Once, we managed to get Andrea in, she had tons of fun swimming. I barely convinced her to get out to eat. His team qualified for a special tournament at the end of July.

And the baby is . . . .

I had my sonogram on Wednesday June 3rd. However, the baby didn't participate. So we were unable to learn the gender. They measured the baby weighing 11 0unces, and all the other measurements looked good. My doctor said that I will probably have another sonogram later in the pregnancy.

Brian now thinks we should let it be a surprise. My only reservation about that is I would like to be able to narrow our name options down to one gender.

Andrea cracked me up this morning. She had been working on an animal ABC puzzle. We were telling Brian good-bye as he headed off to work, which has peacocks in the neighborhood. So Brian says he will say hi to the peacocks. Andrea responds, "They are a type of cock." I know she meant they were a type of bird, since we had been discussing this with the ostrich and quail in her puzzle, but she repeated it over and over. I of course, am trying to hide my laughter.

Last week, Andrea & I were working on counting. She went higher than I expected, and I asked her, "How did you get so smart? Daddy?"
"No," she responds.
"Mama?"
"No, Papa," she says.