She's a KICKER!!

Pic of baby #2 from our first ultrasound.

Yup, it's still a girl! And she's quite the active one too. We had another ultrasound this morning (just cause the doctor wanted to get a better look at her fingers and toes. No worries, they're all there)! I'm not sure if it's just because it's my second pregnancy or what, but I've felt baby #2 move TONS more than I ever felt Madi. At our first ultrasound the nurse was commenting on how the baby kept doings flips! Awesome, does this mean we've got a super ACTIVE child in store for us!?  Ultrasounds are the best- I just LOVE seeing her wiggle, squirm, and move around. Even more, I love FEELING her move WHILE I'm seeing it on the screen! SO cool!

Pic from todays ultrasound. Not as great of a profile shot, so I had to post both (now that our scanner's up and working)!

Now that I'm in my 24th week, I thought I'd do a quick update! I've been feeling quite BIG lately!  And it must be true because my young women have nick named me "fattie!" Nice huh! I've already put on a whooping 15 pounds and I'm definitely feeling every pound of it! However, I'm just so dang excited for another baby that it's hard to care. As I was working on her first year calendar this past month (which I finished last week- yeah!), I kept looking back at Madi's calendar with all her pictures. I'm just so excited to have another baby in the house. Never thought I'd feel that way either. Before Madi, I never got excited about babies. They're just so boring and don't do much- so I thought. Once it was my own, all those thoughts and feelings changed! Madi grew up way to fast and I'm definitely ready for another (ya, we'll see what I'm saying when she's a few weeks old and I'm totally exhausted)!

Just happened to be with Melissa this afternoon and she snapped a belly picture for me. Ya, I felt like a dork doing it, but it sure beats the quality of pics that I can get with my camera! 

As for now, I'm feeling GREAT! I don't take daily naps anymore. I'd like to, but found myself not needing them as much. When I do nap I'm not as tired at night and then find my schedule all messed up the next day. I wake up an average of 2 or 3 times every night to go the bathroom. It's not bad though cause I have no problem getting right bak to sleep. My pregnancy breakouts aren't as bad anymore (knock on wood)! My only complaint is still my legs. It's such a pain to put the compression stockings on every morning and I'm not able to wear flip flops with them (that's my staple summer shoe, so I don't know what I'm going to do once it really warms up)! Good news for the week is that I went to my PCP and got a referral to see a vascular surgeon!  I've got an appointment scheduled for the 22nd of next month! I'm not sure what he'll be able to do for me while being pregnant, but hopefully we can get things fixed up after this baby so that I'm not as miserable with my next pregnancy! 

On the First Day of Spring. . .

Today we welcomed the first day of spring which unfortunately was accompanied by a whopping 45 degrees (and that was the HIGH)!! Despite the chilly temperatures, Spencer, Madi and I made the most of our day. 

We spent the morning at IKEA, where I wish I had a couple extra hundred dollars to spend on fun things for the girls bedroom. Instead we were frugal and only got Madi 3 necessities:

1) A Chair for her desk.

2) A lamp to give her some light while she works.

3) A tent- just because it looked FUN!! Every kid needs a secret place to play right?!

 

Upon leaving IKEA we saw a fire truck and an ambulance pull up. We where lucky enough to receive an invitation to hop inside the fire truck- probably because Madi was frantically waving at it. Wow- what a treat (sorry, no pics- didn't think to bring my camera to IKEA)!

With a drive by the temple (which is one of the most exciting things EVER for Madi) our morning was complete!

After nap time we busted out Madi's new toys. They were quite the hit! 

After some serious play time, we topped our day off with FREE Italian Ice from Rita's- just because it was the first day of spring (thanks Candis for the heads up on this)! I think the only thing that could have made this day better would have been a little warmer weather!

Who is Saint Patrick Anyway?

Spencer and I's conversation at lunch today:

Me: "You're not wearing any green."
Spencer: "Ya, that's dumb."
Me: "Were people wearing green at your school today?"
Spencer: "You're kidding right?"

Spencer then tells me that St. Patrick's Day is the dumbest holiday ever. So not to offend any of you, his obvious bad attitude stems back to elementary school when some kid pinched him for not wearing green. Spencer then proceeded to punch him in the face (yes, followed by a "white slip" to be sent home to mom). Hence the bad attitude! 

While Spencer's not the biggest fan of St. Patrick's Day, Madi and I sure had a fun day wearing our green and joining some friends for a St. Patrick's Day celebration. We ate green rice krispie treats, green pudding, bread with green butter, green candy popcorn, and drank green punch!

Madi with her friends (L-R) Logan, Kate, Tess and Tyler (missing from the picture: Lexi, Brooklyn, Bella, and Jake).

After nap time, Madi and I ventured over to Melissa and Lexi's with plans to do the fun craft Candis had organized for our morning play date (that unfortunately we had run out of time for). However, once Madi saw Lexi playing out at the tot lot, plans temporarily changed and we found ourselves outside for the next hour!  Aren't they just the cutest little friends?!

Hope you all had a HAPPY Saint Patrick's Day!

Same number- New phone

After over seven years of being faithful T-mobile customers, Spencer and I have now made the jump to Sprint. After moving to MD we struggled with T-mobile because we were only able to get a weak signal in our house. Unfortunately this meant that we had to have a home phone as well, bringing up the cost each month to over $100. Now with switching to Sprint, we FINALLY have cell phones that get a GREAT signal in our house, plus we were able to get rid of our home phone, bringing our bill down to $60 a month! SWEET!

SO, to make a long story short, for those of you that we talk to on a regular basis, don't bother with calling our house phone anymore. Now that we have awesome cell coverage in our house, we've gotten rid of our land line and will only be using cell phones. We've kept our numbers the same to make it easy on everybody!

Spring Break 2009!!

This past week was Spencer's spring break and instead of going on some exotic cruise, traveling to visit family, or even going on a family trip, Spencer choose to do something completely different this year. With Spencer's mind on fly fishing the past couple of months, he and another friend from law school decided to drive 2 1/2 hours to north-western Maryland and spend a few days doing just that- FISHING! Spencer had been looking forward to this for quite some time. When I objected about him leaving me for TWO days he was quick to remind me that just last month I took off to California, leaving him for TWO WEEKS!! Ya, I realized that I was being a bit unreasonable and gave him my blessing!

Luckily Spencer didn't leave until early Wednesday morning, so it actually gave us 2 days for some quality family time. Monday was a gorgeous day so we decided to go to the zoo! We spent a fabulous day checking out the sloth bears, elephants, hippos, oragatangs, birds, zebras, lions, cheetahs, and pandas (just to name a few that we saw)! We did lots of walking, enjoyed the warm sunshine, and had a great time. Unfortunately, we were having so much fun that neither of us were in the mood to take many pictures. We documented the day with video instead. The couple pictures that were taken are all of the backs of our heads like these ones:

After an action packed family day on Monday, Spencer spent Tuesday getting ready for his trip. Then from Wednesday morning until Friday night, Spencer and his friend Wayne went fishing. They made their base camp at an old inn in this little Amish town called Grantsville-which is right on the Pennsylvania-Maryland border. On Wednesday, they fished the Casselman River. The fishing conditions weren't the best-there was tons of wind and it was cold. No one caught a fish but Spencer didn't care-he was just happy to be on the water,  actually learning how to fly fish. On Thursday, they decided to head a bit more west and fish the North Branch of the Potomac. In the morning, it was so cold that the guides on their rods were icing up. Fortunately, once the sun came up over the mountains, it warmed up enough to unfreeze everything and they found some good pools to fish in. Wayne caught a couple nice rainbows, but Spencer was skunked once again. On Friday, they decided to try out the Savage River. This was Spencer's lucky day!! Around noon, Spencer caught a nice 14 inch rainbow!! Needless to say, Spencer is totally into this fly fishing thing!  

With Spencer off catching some trout, Madi and I stuck around home and had our own kind of fun! We went to the park, hung out with friends, cleaned the house, did some organizing/ dejunking, and had LOTS of Mommy/ Madi bonding time!

My little Artist!

For the past 3 months, one of Madi's absolute favorite things to do is draw. She's created more pictures than I can count and we're running out of wall space to display them. While drawing pictures is her favorite thing to do, she also loves coloring. Sometimes I'll find her laying on her stomach, in the middle of the room, with a coloring book open and crayons/colored pencils strewn around her. We've ventured out to doing sticker art and even water painting. I have to admit, I like activities that are clean, easy, and don't make a big mess! The only time I've done actual paints with Madi was for Father's Day when she made her daddy a card with her picture and hand print. I guess I'd decided she was still too young and painting is far too messy!

Well, Spencer's always encouraging me to do new activities with Madi, so when Melissa suggested painting, I decided to give it a try! Melissa is the brave, crafty one who has NO fear of having open bottles of paint with 2 toddlers running around. So, this morning Madi and I headed over to HER place for painting!

We stripped the girls down to their diapers, layed newspaper out on the kitchen floor, hung up two sheets of paper (onto a board that Melissa uses for painting), and let the girls get to work! They both LOVED it! Madi delicately dipped her paintbrush into the paint, making careful strokes on her paper.



While Madi is the type who does NOT like getting dirty (yes, totally takes after her mom), Lexi sure had a great time experimenting with the colors, splattering paint with her brush, and creating a beautiful masterpiece (regardless of how much paint got on her body)!

What talented little artists! 

*For more pictures, and a video of the girls at work, check out Melissa's blog.

Our Week in a Nut Shell

Monday: Snow Storm. Don't think I left the house all day! Ya, I'm a BIG baby when it comes to the COLD! Oh wait, we did leave the house ONCE- to go get the mail. Madilyn was glad to get out. Look at all our snow! This is definitely the most we've ever gotten! I really should have taken pictures in the morning during the whiteout! 

Tuesday: The sun came out. We ventured out to go sledding with friends. Madi enjoyed it for maybe 10 minutes.

Madi (in the middle) with all of her little buddies!

Wednesday:  Went out and ran errands. Realized that I was actually WARM all bundled up in my coat and scarf. Got home and checked the weekend forecast- GORGEOUS!!! Started to see the light at the end of the tunnel!

Thursday: A little bit warmer (high of 52)! Got out for a nice long walk. Snow still on the ground but definitely melting.

Friday: Spencer's first official day of Spring Break! While I went to the doctor to hear baby's heartbeat (which was 138- seems pretty slow for a girl. Madi's was always up in the 160's), Spencer took Madi to the park.  It was only 55 degrees at that point (still a little chilly if you ask me). After naps we headed off to the Rio. Madi was in heaven as we stopped by Barnes and Noble to read books and play at the train table. Then we spent the next hour with the ducks/ geese and playing at the park.

After a Costco stop we topped the day off with a car wash (nothin beats a clean car)! The high this afternoon reached 69 degrees!! WOOT WOOT!

Saturday: The last of the snow has finally melted! The high for the day broke 70 degrees!! So we spent the morning at the park in t-shirts and flip flops! Gotta LOVE it!!! 

Here's Madi showing how she conquered her fear of heights. She climbed to the top of the play structure all by herself and went down this slide (and the twisty one) over and over again!

After a LONG afternoon nap, we met up with the Christenots at the temple and then out to dinner afterwards. What a fabulous day to end a great week! 

I know, I'm pretty obsessed when it comes to the weather. I swear my mood is weather based. The nicer it is, the more I get done and the happier I am! Maybe Spencer should be applying for jobs in places where the weather is warmer. Unfortunately, I think we'll be living with the seasons for several more years! I guess having a winter helps me appreciate the spring that much more!

Welcome March

With February now behind us, I was really hoping for some warmer weather. While my fingers are still crossed, I'm not holding my breath since a BIG snow storm is being predicted for tonight.  I'm ok with that if it means enough snow for sledding! But I am looking forward to warmer days that lie ahead (hopefully in the near future)! 

Here's just a few pictures from our ONE warm day this past week. My friend Melissa found the coolest park and so after getting home from California, we loaded up our girls and went to check it out! I had to share a few of these pictures. I just love how Melissa captured Madi's complete excitement of such simple things!

Like the slide.....

And the swings.....

And check out these mac daddy swings......

Who wouldn't love it!?