21 months

I can hardly believe that Lily is nearing 2 so quickly. It seems like she's growing up so fast now. Every day we see more and more of her personality. She has so many opinions now about everything. Fortunately she can still be 'tricked' into diaper changes or getting dressed even though she doesn't really want to do it. It just takes a little bit of distraction.

She is talking up a storm. When we're driving in the car, she constantly talking. She likes to point things out to me that she sees out the window (especially buses, but also trucks, and birds and the clouds). She's always watching for things. In fact, if she's getting upset about being in the car, I can distract her by asking her to look for buses and tell me when she sees them. She's also very good with her spacial memory while we're driving, when we're getting close to the library (even before we can see it), she tells me "library" and "library books". The library is one of her favorite places to go, so she's always excited when we get close. And every time we turn onto our street she says, "bunny, hi" and "house" (because she wants to say "hi" to the bunny. I can't even keep track of how many words she knows. It must be in the hundreds. She's always surprising me with a word she knows that she'll just spout off out of no where. And there are a lot of words I don't understand. Sometimes this is very frustrating to her because she's trying so hard to tell me something and I can't figure out what it is. A lot of what she says is still much easier to understand in context (and especially if she points to it when she says it).

She can count to 10. She loves to count things like each stair as we walk up them (although she hasn't really gotten down saying one number per stair or how to point to each item and count them). And right now she's going through a stage of skipping 7 and 8 after being able to count correctly a couple weeks ago. She's learning the alphabet too. Right now she can only say "A, B, C, D" and then a few random letters here and there that she repeats with us. But she is very interested in the alphabet and seeing letters and numbers in print. She got extremely excited when we were in the store a few days ago and she noticed all the prices along the shelves. She loved seeing all those numbers. As typical parents, we think everything she does is so advanced and spectacular.

She is starting to memorize her favorite books. She has a book about ocean animals that lists three facts about an animals and it has flaps that you lift up to finish the fact. She has memorized what's under all of the flaps in the book (12 in all). If I read the beginning of the phrase, she can finish all of them ("I have a long NOSE. I swim in the WAVES. I eat small FISH."). She goes through the whole book. She is completely obsessed with books. She loves to read. We read constantly throughout the day. She get's upset and demands "read it! read it!" several times during the day if I take too long and she picks up my hand and puts it on the book if I ignore her for too long. We go to at least one story time at the library each week. She has a harder time paying attention when there are so many other kids around but she loves kids and loves wandering the library picking out books. She keeps books in her bed now too. She goes to sleep at night reading books to herself after Daddy or I read her a few books and she'll stay in her bed in the morning before calling for us for a while reading books and entertaining herself. Which is quite nice. She also sits in front of Charlie's cage and reads him books, which is very sweet. She get's mad if he goes to the back of his cage and isn't paying close enough attention.

She adores her rabbit. She's quite obsessed with taking his water bottle off his cage. She tries to give him a drink out of it but she doesn't know how it works and that by taking it off his cage he can no longer drink. She also loves to give him snacks and treats. When I'm making dinner she loves taking him vegetable scraps and if she finds a stray Cheerio on the ground she always wants to give it to him. She's so loving and she's going to make a great big sister.

Her 1st haircut. Now with bangs!

Like mother, like daughter.

Lily touched a big, black snake at the Ranger Station. She wasn't afraid of it at all.

At the Peabody Museum looking at the dinosaur fossils.

Climbing on a bench at the Peabody with some of her new buddies. Avery is on her hands and knees. If you talk to Lily, she'll probably bring up Avery. She's 2 months younger than Lily and Lily is quite infatuated with her right now and talks about her a lot.

Lily "reading" one of her favorite books (Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see?)

The 2nd trimester

So this baby is already getting a lot less personalized attention, or at least as quantified by the individual number of blog posts per child. Hopefully she will forgive me. At least posts by Dad will be equal (Lily=0, baby #2=0).

I mentioned some time several months ago that we had a few complication early in this pregnancy that could have meant the beginning of a miscarriage or could have meant nothing. Luckily for us, they turned out to be nothing. Bleeding is fairly normal when that embryo is burying itself nice and snugly but it sure doesn't feel normal when it happens to you. The only positive is that we got to see our little bean when it was no bigger than a bean. We never saw Lily this early so it was new and it was so reassuring to see that little heart beating away in there. (I had sort of convinced myself that the doctor might tell me that I wasn't pregnant and that I never was--defense mechanisms. It's amazing how quickly that bond forms.) But here's what baby #2 looked like at almost 7 weeks gestation (which is only 5 weeks post-conception, figure that math out!).


Then at about 20 weeks we were able to see the baby again and found out that #2 is a GIRL. Of course this is exciting. My sister and I weren't the best of friends through our junior high and high school years, but it's pretty nice to have her around now. It's too bad we lived so close to each other then and now we're 3,000 miles apart!

Lily joined us at this visit. There were some toys in the room so she went back and forth between playing, vying for her Daddy's attention, freaking out a little bit about what this strange woman was doing to Mommy on the exam table, and watch the baby on the flat screen TV on the wall. She was definitely interested in the baby and even she could recognize that it was a baby on the screen. Once again I was wrong and this baby turned out to be a girl too. I was basically only going on the idea that I thought this pregnancy was different than Lily's so maybe that meant it was a boy this time. Daddy was right, he thought it was a girl. I still hope we might have a boy some day if we decide to have another baby but I'm really glad Lily will have a sister. She already acts like a big sister to her rabbit and all her stuffed animals. I think she'll be great at it.

Here's a picture of our little angel.

Although I can say that, in utero, she's pretty feisty so far. So much so that the ultrasound technician asked if I could feel her jumping around and had to chase her with the ultrasound wand. She's quite active. He favorite times to jump around are when I just in get bed for the night and as soon as I sit down to relax after doing any activity. A typical fetus, she get's put to sleep by my movement and when I sit still, she wakes up. She gave me heart burn a lot earlier than Lily though.

I can feel the 2nd trimester coming to a close. The "honeymoon" is officially over. Aches and pains are starting to set in and pregnancy is losing it's fun factor. Allegedly my uterus is about the size of a soccer ball right now and it's starting to feel like it. But we still have a long way to go, so there's no sense in complaining yet. I will be very excited when June rolls around though. I'm quite convinced this baby won't be here until early June (despite the May 28th due date).