Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Easter 2010

Thursday morning we packed up and headed out on an 8 hour car ride to Phil's parents' house in Murrells Inlet, SC to surprise Phil's dad for his 60th birthday. Easter was the following Sunday so we planned to stay and spend the holiday at the beach. It was so nice to get away, even if it was only for a long weekend!


Thursday morning we went to breakfast at our favorite breakfast place, Nibil's at Surfside Pier. We got the best seat in the house, an ocean view on each side!


Checking out the ocean with Daddy. The water was freezing!




Saturday afternoon we dressed Philip in his Easter outfit for a second attempt at a picture with the Easter Bunny, this time at Coastal Mall.

"Philip, where are the bunnies"
"Dare!"


Waiting to see the Easter Bunny. So excited! He kept pointing and smiling. But we all knew what was coming...

I think the face says it all here. Such a contrast to last year!

Oh well! I'm glad we went back for a take two, even if Philip wasn't. He'll laugh when he's older!

And anyway, ice cream makes everything better.

Getting a pony ride from Daddy.

Dying Easter Eggs. He loved dunking the eggs in the cups!



Gotta love that face.

Admiring his handy work with Grammie and Grandpa.

He cracks himself up.


Checking out the surprise the Easter Bunny left for him!

Hugging his bunny from Great Grandma G.



A kite!


Later we had an Easter Egg hunt in the back yard. He loved it!


He was so excited to find all of the eggs and put them in the basket.





Cutie Pie


Found all of the eggs. Now what?

Kite flying with Daddy

All in all it was a great weekend! Philip had so much fun running around, playing at his grandparents' house and visiting with family, and he was a great traveler considering how long the ride was! Hope everyone had a Happy Easter, too!

Saturday, March 27, 2010

Boy Oh Boy!

Another sweet little prince is on his way!


Andrew Douglas
To be welcomed into our family around August 13, 2010.

Thursday, March 4, 2010

18 Months Old!



Little P is 18 months old today! Can you believe it? I know I can't. He is at such a fun age now, developing his own little personality and soaking in everything!



He's (finally!) starting to talk! He's always said (or babbled) mama and dada, and for a while he was saying baba, but now he's actually saying honest-to-goodness words! And wouldn't you know it, the first thing to make it out of his mouth was the word no? Of course he uses it when I think he means yes sometimes, but most of the time he really knows what he wants (or doesn't want!). For instance, if you ask him if he wants to go upstairs and go night-night, 9 times out of 10 he'll shake his head and say "No" in his sweet little toddler voice. He's also trying to say yes, but it comes out more like "yeh" right now. It's coming along thought! His other word which he just started saying the other day is "three!" Phil likes to throw him up in the air on the count of three and I guess he's recently made the connection between three and lift off! It's adorable!



He absolutely loves to be read to. He spends infinite amounts of time looking through books and he's endlessly entertained by being read to. He especially likes to point out pictures on the page in order to get the vocabulary for what he sees. He's a big fan of Sesame Street and has quite a few books about the characters. If you ask him where Cookie Monster or Elmo are he'll point them out for you, without fail. He also easily recognizes dogs, cats, and babies, in addition to pictures of himself and of his family members. I'm loving that he enjoys books so much and I hope it's a characteristic that stays with him!


He's also just recently made the connection between someone leaving and waving bye-bye, often unprompted! He'll give hugs and kisses on demand and sometimes just out of the blue which is the sweetest thing and one of the biggest rewards of being a parents. Just yesterday he put his arms up in the air for me to pick him up just so he could lean in for a kiss from Momma. He's definitely Mommy's Little Boy!



Some of Philip's favorite things:

Bath Time

Mommy and Daddy's cell phones

Play dates with his buddy Elijah


Pulling all of his toys and and making the living room look like a toy store blew up

Big silly grins!

Monday, February 8, 2010

Blizzard of 2010

Over the weekend we had more than 30 inches of snow dumped on us. Thankfully, unlike the snowstorms of previous months, Phil was off this past weekend and the three of us were happily snowed-in together. Well, Phil had to do all of the shoveling so maybe he was less happy, but it still beats the pants off of having to deal with dozens of snow-related traffic accidents at work!

Some pictures from our latest blizzard. None of Philip, once again, as I can hardly take my 31 inch tall toddler out in 31 inches of snow. Maybe before spring finally comes we'll get just enough snow that Philip can play in. So far this winter, no dice!


The walkway would be buried under several more inches of snow in a matter of hours!


Not even sure where to start!


The view to the left of our house. There's a road in there somewhere.


The snow is covering Phil's freshly shoveled walkway faster than he can shovel!


Mother Nature 2, Phil 0.


A local Snow Beast tearing through the path Phil dug in the yard.


Begging to go back inside. She's just not an outdoor dog!


Supposedly we have more significant snow fall on the way for tomorrow and Wednesday. It's times like these I wish I had gone into teaching!

Friday, February 5, 2010

2nd Trimester and other happenings

Friday marked the official start of my second trimester! The second trimester, the milestone most pregnant women welcome with open arms in the hopes that their days of exhaustion and morning sickness are long behind them. This wasn't the case for me with my first pregnancy, so I'm not as ready to break out the party hats as most pregnant women. I am, however, excited to have reached this point of "safety" in my pregnancy in the hopes that I can now really sit back, relax, and look forward to the next 6 months passing by quickly and painlessly (although painlessly is probably wishful thinking!).

I'm still dealing with a bit of all-day nausea. I've been taking Zofran and it's helped, but not without unpleasant side effects of its own. While this pregnancy feels very similar to my first, there are some small differences. The fatigue is wearing off a bit (I swear I wasn't this tired with Philip!) and the sudden onslaught of pregnancy-related acne is finally subsiding (another side effect I don't recall having with Philip). I'm also definitely starting to "show," at least to me, earlier in this pregnancy than with my first, which I had heard is pretty common. I'm excited to have a full-on baby bump, but not so excited for what that will mean as it gets bigger! Philip is getting bigger by the day and it will be interesting, to say the least, to see how juggling a 20 something pound toddler and a baby belly works out!

In other noteworthy news, Philip is changing so much every day. He's so much fun and is such a joy to be around. His physically capabilities continue to increase. He can now climb up and off of the sofa by himself. He can easily reach items on the kitchen table, and he's taken to some other not so charming activities, such as climbing up onto the end tables in the living room.

He's also becoming quite the little independent person. He loves trying to do things by himself, like feed himself with a fork and spoon, help with putting on his clothes, brush his own teeth, and even trying to put on his own shoes. On the flip side of this, discovering you are your own separate being, independent from your parents, also means learning that you don't always have to do what mommy or daddy say to do (or not do). For example, the once very effective "No touch" command is now obsolete in Philip's mind as he's figured out he in fact still can touch the super fascinating and awesome item in question despite the fact that mommy and daddy said not to! Fun stuff for sure.

He's not really saying much yet but he can babble for hours in his own toddler language and he really does understand a lot of what we tell him. It amazes me how fast he picks up on things!
For example, he loves Mickey Mouse and Sesame Street. If you ask him where Mickey is, he'll scan the room for his Mickey book, turn to the right page and point him out and say "Dare!" Anytime he finds something you asked him about, that's always the proclamation he makes.

He also knows what he wants (and doesn't want) in terms of food, which has made meal time tricky, to say the least. He only has one molar and still has a difficult time with chewing up food that isn't readily mushable between his gums. He loves scrambled eggs, grilled cheese, toast, yogurt, oatmeal, crackers, cheese, apple sauce, and any variety of toddler-marketed snacks. He currently has an aversion to vegetables which doesn't make his mommy very happy, but we'll get there. Eventually. At his last doctor's appointment he was 31 inches and 22.5 pounds. He dropped off the weight curve in between 12 and 16 months and we've been given orders to fatten him up. Not that he's malnourished or wasting away by any means, he's just all bone and muscle with a metabolism that just won't quit. Oh to be so lucky!

And in other news, we are presently snowbound, and staring, once again, at a whopping 2 feet of snow (at least!) on the ground. Not counting the two snowstorms we've had since the blizzard in December! I'm not quite sure who uprooted our house and placed it down in Wisconsin, but I'd love it if they'd kindly return us to Virginia, where one inch of snow calls for schools to be canceled for two days. Springtime can't come soon enough!

Thursday, January 21, 2010

Two Under Two!


We found out in December that we are expecting baby #2 in August of this year! Last week I had my first doctor's appointment, and today I had my first ultrasound. Based on my last period, I am 9 and a half weeks along, but according to the ultrasound today I am 10 weeks, 6 days. Whoohoo! Baby #2's adjusted due date is 8/13/2010. I am having a scheduled repeat c-section though, so baby will most likely be due around 8/6/2010. Just shy of a month of Philip's 2nd birthday! Holy moly!

It's taken some time to get used to the idea but Phil and I are getting more and more excited. It'll be pretty crazy in our household for a while but I think having a sibling so close in age is going to be wonderful for Philip. A built-in buddy! I'm sure they'll have so much fun together!

You'll have to forgive my lack of updates. "Morning" sickness kicked in with a vengeance a few weeks ago, but I just got a prescription for Zofran, the most awesome anti-nausea drug in the world, and life is good again! :-)