21 Weeks and an Announcement!

Here is a picture of me at 21 weeks, and for those of you who don't know or haven't seen on my FB page...

...We are having a girl! Kara doesn't really know what it is going to mean to have a new baby at our house (other than she is convinced she is NOT sharing her toys), but she acts *somewhat* excited to have a new sister. I am excited to have another girl, although, I will admit, I was getting used to the idea (and excited) that it might be a little boy. I was a little depressed after the ultrasound, mostly just because I was disappointed that we found out the gender, and now I'm just ready to be done with this pregnancy--I know what I am having, so I just feel like there's nothing to look forward to! But, we now have our name picked out (we had thrown around about three ideas, and finally settled on this one), and I know how I am going to decorate the baby's room.

We are going to name the baby Jessalyn Rose. My mom had actually made up the name Jessalyn when she was pregnant with my brother, after one of my uncles whose first name is Jesse, and my dad's sister's middle name. I have always loved that name and completely forgot about it until my mom mentioned it to me and I remembered how much I loved the name. Rose is just because I have always loved the name Rose, especially for a middle name. The other name we were seriously throwing around was Ella Rose (after my aunt), but Jessalyn just felt like it fit this baby better.

In the baby's room, I am going to decorate it with a ladybug theme. I don't really love doing nurseries mostly because I think you spend a lot of money on something that the kids grow out of fairly quickly, so with Kara, I did her room in something that I felt she could grow with (and then she fell in love with owls, so I completely re-decorated her room), and I feel the same with this baby. I think ladybugs can grow with a little girl, so I am now on the hunt for ladybug fabrics, lady bug pictures, anything I can do that will look cute in a ladybug room.

Well, those are our big announcements for this week! I still have a couple of posts from last week that I need to write (like going to see Wicked with my brother), I am in the midst of finishing school for the semester, and I start my new job tomorrow, so I hope I have time for everything!

Kara-isms

Kara loves cars and trucks and sports. She is a little tomboy (and yet, she is also a girlie-girl. She loves shoes and clothes and "looking fancy" as much as she loves the other things).

So the other day at my parents' house, Kara told my sister, "Hayna, I want a car." My sister told her, "well, you better tell Grandpa," and my brother said, "You need a job to own a car. Are you going to go get a job?" Kara looked at Bryan and said, "ok," and then told my dad, "Grandpa, want a car."

My dad asked her, "a car? What are you going to do with a car?"

Kara looked at my dad, shrugged her shoulders, and in a very matter-of-fact voice said, "go vroom vroom!" Well of course!

The Easter Bunny

The Easter Bunny visited Kara twice on Sunday--he left her some treats at our house, but he knew that Kara wanted to hunt for eggs at Nana and Grandpa's house, so he was tricky and hid all her Easter Eggs over there.

I think the Easter Bunny did a pretty good job with the candy this year...Kara thought she needed to have a little candy with her breakfast (and I obliged). 

Trying to decide which candy to eat first

The Easter Bunny got pretty tricky with hiding the eggs. Kara needed a little help from Grandpa and her auntie Hayna because the Easter Bunny did things like hide the eggs way up high and hiding eggs inside shoes!

Kara would yell "right there!" every time she found an egg (usually with some hints, of course). Egg hunting was pretty fun. I'm excited for the Easter Bunny to come back next year!

"Look mom!"

She kept moving so fast, I barely got any pictures of her all in frame!

Easter Eve

We went over to my mom and dad's house Saturday night to dye Easter eggs. Kara had a blast! We did 36 eggs, and Kara (with lots of grandpa's help) dyed every single one. When they were all done, she wanted to keep going! We made her feel better by telling her that the Easter Bunny was going to hide all the eggs for her to find on Easter. She was pretty excited about that!

Zoo Love

Saturday morning, we (meaning my mom, my sister and brother, Kara, and I) all went to the zoo. I love the zoo. Love, love, love it. I usually go 10 or so times in the summer. I don't know why I love it so much because the animals rarely ever change, but I just love it! It is probably just the fun of being outside, killing time, and looking a cute furry creatures.

Anyway, Kara is often my little brother's shadow, and this trip was no different. She wandered around and rode on his shoulders almost the entire time. She adores him, and he is a pretty awesome uncle in return.

The best part was this monkey we saw in Tropical Discovery. He was right up on the enclosure fence interacting and watching me and another woman (who looked like she was a professional photographer). He was calm as can be, just watching us. Probably thinking "these people are idiots. I do this all the time. Go ahead, take my picture." But, it might have just been that he liked us, because he got down and left when we walked away. It was really cool.


Kara also loved the exhibits in Tropical Discovery. Here she is talking to an iguana in a sing-song voice saying "Hi. Come here."

I bought us a family pass so we can visit all year long. Well, Jon bought it since he brings home the bacon, I just happened to hand over the money. I am so excited to go back and take Jon because we didn't even get to all the animals!

18 (almost 19) Weeks

Last night I went with my mom to get some maternity clothes because I have a job interview at an elementary school next week, and I literally had NOTHING nice to wear. I pretty much only had 3 pairs of capris and 3 t-shirts that were maternity clothes, and I didn't really want to go to an interview in a t-shirt. Anyway, I wore one of my new shirts today, and decided to take a picture of my belly at 18 weeks. I'll be 19 weeks on Sunday, but whatever. I am so glad I was able to get some clothes. Now I won't feel so ugly and frumpy! I am actually excited to get dressed in the morning!

A Baby! Health Update

I wrote (6?) posts I, so make sure you keep reading if you don't want to miss anything.

On Tuesday, I was finally able to go to the doctor for the first time, thanks to our insurance starting so late. Anyway, it was a very looong appointment, thanks to the blood work they had to do and the history of my health--they had lots of questions about my pregnancy with Kara. Anyway, thanks to the bleeding and clotting issues I had, along with the HELLP syndrome and the seizure, they have classified me as "very high risk," and they are making me go to a high-risk specialist and I won't be able to go to the midwife (which I pretty much knew anyway). I will also have appointments more often to make sure everything is ok. Ironically, they aren't as concerned about the HELLP syndrome as they are the bleeding and clotting issue I had (they called it DIC?) The midwife said that the HELLP syndrome, while bad, is easier to catch and "cure" than the DIC because they just have to deliver the baby and keep my blood levels normal, in theory. The nice thing she told me is that this time, unlike my experience with Kara, if I or the doctors suspect that even the tiniest thing is going wrong, they will get me right in and make sure nothing happens. Their goal is to get me at least past 36 weeks, and then if they can get me to 38 weeks, I will deliver at the hospital near us. Otherwise, she said if they can't get me to 38 weeks, they will make me deliver at their hospital in Denver that is more equipped to deal with risky deliveries.

Anyway, now that the boring stuff is out of the way, we got to see the baby for the first time! My due date according to the midwife is September 1st, but she said I will get a more accurate due date on the 19th when I go in for the long ultrasound appointment. I haven't really felt that attached to my pregnancy up to this point, but when I actually saw the baby on the screen and it looked like a baby, I felt like this was actually real and I felt happy and excited about being pregnant. I've been happy about being pregnant, but hadn't really felt excited up until then. Just a few days ago, I started feeling the baby move and kick, but so far, this baby isn't as active as Kara was. The baby is active right after dinner and just a little bit after I go to bed, plus periodically throughout the day, but for the most part, the baby's pretty relaxed and calm. I'm starting to have terrible heartburn, so I hope that means I have another baby with a ton of hair!

Here's the U/S picture. It looks so much like some U/S pictures we have of Kara! Their profiles look almost identical, plus, it looks like this baby is going to have chubby cheeks too (it looks that way to me, anyway). I'll post more U/S pictures when I go back in two weeks.

Kara calls the baby "Little Cookie" thanks to Nana's influence.

Holly

My brother took me and Kara over to my parents' house one day to hang out. I started working on homework, so he went over to the neighbor's house for a while... Only I got distracted from homework. My sister and brother's dog is very playful and sweet, so Kara and I decided to go out back to play with her for a while. In case you're wondering, though, I DID eventually finish my homework. I'm not that much of a slacker :)

Kara refusing to look at the camera or smile for pictures, as usual.

Out of focus, but she really wanted to play!

The lighting is off, but this is right before she came and tried to wrestle with me.

We love Holly!

At The Ranch

My dad has a ranch, and right now he is raising club lambs to sell to 4H clubs, and then he has 2 sows named Baby and Bella that he is breeding to have show pigs (and probably some for meat). Kara and I have been going out to the ranch to help my dad, and we are training one of the lambs (Kara and I named her Daisy). Kara LOVES going out to grandpa's ranch. She talks about it all the time, and she especially loves the pigs. Kara has had a really bad case of Croup this week (more on that later), so we haven't been able to go out with my dad, and Kara has been really disappointed. I think when she is older, we're going to let her get involved with 4H (if she still wants to).

Here are some pictures!

Kara snickering about something

This is Bella

Baby saying "Hi."

Bella Saying "Hi."

Kara Feeding Daisy

We're BAAA-AAACK!

We've been in Colorado for the last 2 months, and we finally got our internet set up. So I can blog again! I've really really missed it, so I have a ton to write about. I'll start with Kara's 2nd birthday. We went over to my parent's house for a "brown cake" (Kara calls chocolate cake brown cake), and I made homemade mac and cheese (because that's Kara's favorite meal). Actually, I think my mom ended up making it... I can't remember. Anyway, here are some pictures from her birthday: