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In case you haven’t heard through the grapevine, we found out this morning we are having a girl! She looks healthy and is on target to arrive at the end of May. Allie has been saying it’s a girl all along so I’m glad I didn’t have to disappoint her with other news.

Now I’m going to have to sort through all of Allie’s old baby clothes and see what’s still usable. We also need to come up with a name for her. Deciding on a name has always been hard for us. Luckily, we still have 5 more months to decide. (BTW, when we told Allie the baby is a girl, she leaned over and whispered to me, “I want to name her Tinkerbell.” Hmm, not so sure about that one hon).

Here’s a scanned picture. That is her foot above her forehead and her knee above her chin. She’s a flexible one.

I can’t believe we have let a whole month go by with out blogging. It’s not for a lack of things to blog about, I’ve just become lackadaisical about doing it. It’s always on the list of things to do but it’s the last item on the list so it rarely get’s crossed off. Anyway, I have a lot I could report but I’m just going to give an update on Luke for now. Jake will be blogging soon.

Luke turned 9 months last week. He started crawling about 3 weeks ago and he is unstoppable now. He’s exploring all over the place and I’ve just realized that my home is not very proofed for baby. With this new milestone has come lots of bruises. He is climbing on everything and will lose his balance and hit his head. Poor guy has bruises all over his noggin. But he’s tough and it hasn’t stopped him from trying again.

We are still waiting on some teeth. By this age, Allie had at least 4 teeth so it’s a little surprising that he doesn’t have any yet. It looks like the bottom two will come up any day. However, he still enjoys gumming down some cheerios, beans or noodles.

Luke just learned how to wave and clap his hands. I love this age…they’re so sweet and innocent. He’s growing up so quickly on us; it’s hard to believe he will be a year old in a few months.

Here are his stats from his nine month check up:
Weight: 19lbs 12 oz (50%)
Height: 28 1/4 in (50%)

Everyone thinks he is huge but according to the numbers, he’s just an average sized baby. I think he is slimming out now that he is crawling (he weighs the same as he did at 8 months and yet eating more).

We won’t let a full month go by again so keep checking back. I know how much I love reading others blogs so I’ll try to keep up to date with ours.

This picture doesn’t show it well, but he has a rash all over his body.

This winter is beginning to seem extremely long. Now that I have two kids, I have double the illnesses to deal with. Both kids seem to catch every bug that crosses their path and then they pass it to the rest of the family. This past week has been especially hard on Luke. He had an infection that he has been taking antibiotics for, had a fever for three days, now a rash (Roseola), a slightly pink eye, diarrhea, eczema and of course a runny nose that he seems to have had all winter long. I don’t remember Allie being this sick when she was his age (however, with preschool and primary she is probably passing the germs to Luke).

Although its been a rough week for us, I did have an extremely sweet moment with Luke. One night Luke woke up and was inconsolable. After an hour of trying all the usual tactics to get him back to sleep, nothing was working and I was desperate. So, I laid down with him and we snuggled in bed. He immediately stopped crying and he started to gently caress my arm with his fingertips; up and down, ever-so lightly, for a good 20 minutes. (This is very unusual for him as he normally swats, pinches or claws). He went right back to sleep after that. It was precious and a moment I will probably never forget.

I’m hoping for a healthy and well rested week ahead. Especially since Jake is going out of town for the weekend.

Luke is six months old. Can you believe it? I hardly can. These past six months have flown by. Luke had his check up today and here are his stats:

18 lbs 5oz (just below 75%)
26 3/4 inches (75%)

I am shocked that he’s not in the 90th percentile. He seems huge to me and apparently to everyone else as well. Everyone assumes he’s a 9 month old because of his size.

He’s healthy and hitting his milestones on target. He is rolling everywhere, sitting up, saying mama (although I doubt he knows what that means), he laughs hard at Allie and he ate rice cereal for the first time today. He loved it!

When Luke was born we wondered who he looked like. We assumed he would look exactly like Allie but he surprised us with his own unique look. He had a more pointy, upturned nose and heart shaped face, less round than Allie’s. Well, last night I was looking through Allie’s newborn pictures and found one of her smiling at 8 weeks. I pulled up Luke’s 6 week old picture and I was surprised at how similar they look. They aren’t identical but they are definitely siblings. Wouldn’t you agree?

(I blogged last night as well so check the previous post.)

Jake blessed Luke at church today. It was a very sweet blessing.

The family photo

Luke was excited for his big day.

The proud big sister.

A big thank you to Sarah Rogers for making such an adorable tuxedo. He looked so handsome and we got many compliments on it.

This year we decided to forgo an actual birthday party for Allie and planned a family trip to the NC Zoo. Unfortunately, it rained on Allie’s birthday so we went to the museum (her favorite place) instead. We played at the museum for a few hours then went to a mall that had a carousel, train and bounce house. She loved the carousel and bounce house. We ate out for lunch and then we went home and opened presents. She played with her new toys and after dinner we had a few close friends who live in our building join us for cake and ice cream.

I can’t believe our little girl is a big three year old now. As much as I love seeing her grow and learn new things, I hate that she is growing up so fast. Sometimes I wish time would just stand still until I’m ready to move on. She is such a joy and brings so much love and laughter into our home. We are so blessed to be her parents. She is going to be a great big sister and helper for mommy.

P.S. Happy Mother’s Day to all of you wonderful women!!!

My awesome friends threw a baby shower for me yesterday morning.

(Sarah, Katie, and Tammy)
It was a brunch with delicious waffles, muffins, cinnamon rolls, and fruit. As mentioned in my tag post, whipped cream is a favorite so I caked it on my waffles along with strawberries. It was divine!

Overall, I had about 17 friends show up. We had a lot of fun! We played guess the brand name of baby items. It was actually harder than I thought it would be. My mind went blank on some of them even though I have seen the product many times.

The other game was a “Guess the birth weight of the baby.” I saw all the guesses and many are guessing he’ll be above 9 lbs. I’m feeling a little smaller this time around so I’m guessing he’ll be around 8lbs. We’ll see in a little less than 4 weeks.

They also had each person tie a knot in this darling monkey fleece blanket.

I had a lot of fun and I’m so thankful for such great friends! We have been spoiled with all the amazing gifts! Here are some more pictures from the shower.

Elizabeth, Iliana, Me and Tammy

Me opening presents…I got so much fun boy stuff!

We have a ton of crafty people in our area. These are the homemade gifts I received. Two knotted fleece blankets, 4 burp cloths (they are so cute…I don’t want to get spit up on them;) and a sling (bottom right) and a hooded towel. I should have captured a picture of all the gifts but forgot to do so.

Last but certainly not least, I received a package in the mail from my dad and Vickie. Vickie (Grandma Price) made an adorable blanket. Thank you so much Vickie! We love it and can’t wait to swaddle our boy in it.

Since we lost our nice camera over Christmas, we dug out our old digital camera. Taking pictures is not as fun with this piece of junk as it was with my Nikon but at least it works (most of the time). However, not to worry, Jake has found an amazing deal on another Nikon SLR…it should be here in time for Valentines! (He can’t ever keep his gifts to me a secret A new camera means that I will be back to blogging and posting pics more often.

In other news, Allie got her first haircut! Here are some pictures (they aren’t that great due to the old camera):

Allie’s hair has grown a lot these past few months. Her hair was so fluffy, it was like a lion’s mane unless we tamed it with pig tails. So yesterday, we decided it was time for her first haircut. I was expecting her to be scared, to scream uncontrollably or to not cooperate whatsoever. But she was an angel!!! We went to a local place that specializes in cutting children’s hair. Allie got to choose her seat and chose to sit in an airplane. They put a Dora video on for her and she sat there for a full ten minutes just letting some random stranger chop away at her hair. She got a sucker as a reward. She actually did not want to leave and kept asking to go back to “Peek-A-Do” all day. I am very pleased with her haircut. It actually brought out her curls a little more.

As for me, I’m continually growing, as expected. I’m now 24 weeks pregnant. Our doctor is planning to schedule the c-section on May 23rd–it’s weird actually knowing the date this far in advance, and yet it’s very comforting too. We watched a DVD of Allie’s birth today and saw how bruised and swollen she was from trying to descend into the birth canal. I had considered a VBAC (vaginal birth after c-section), but after being reminded of all that we went through with Allie, I am now set on a going through with another c-section. I will never go through 56 hours of labor again–yippee! Here’s some more proof that I’m prego:

Allie received a Leap Frog Word Whammer for Christmas (thanks Grandma and Grandpa Price!). We’ve been working on a lot of three letter words with Allie and so far she can “read” six words. I put read in quotations because she has them memorized, she doesn’t know how to sound out the words yet. But it’s a first step anyway.