Here are the first pregnant belly pics with kiddo #2! The belly definitely “popped” 3-4 weeks earlier than it did the first time around (compare to last time here)- guess my ab muscles never fully recovered from kiddo #1. But I’m still feeling good and am trying to stay active.
I wanted to write an update about Alaina for her half birthday…I’m only about 7 weeks late.
-The things we hear most frequently from Alaina these days are “I do it!” and “Me do it!”. She is all about doing things herself. She also wants to help out with a lot of tasks, especially making dinner. While I appreciate her enthusiasm, it’s a struggle to find kid-friendly kitchen tasks.
-Her love of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse has been replaced by Dora and sometimes Clifford or Little Einsteins.
-She continues to be a chatterbox and a singer. Recently, we’ve caught her singing along to music on the radio that we had no idea she was paying attention to! Guess we have to make sure what we’re listening to is kid-friendly.
-We often attend storytime at a local bookstore on Saturdays. They sing songs and listen to two books. Here’s a pic from their St. Patrick’s Day celebration. She used to always sit by me, but now she’s become more comfortable there and likes to go down in the front by the “teacher”.
-Her current favorite foods are bell pepper with ranch, scrambled eggs, yogurt and string cheese.
-She’s been potty-trained since February! In late January, I decided to try the “potty train in a weekend” method while Frank was at a conference. It was a very challenging two days of being trapped in our house and cleaning up A LOT of accidents! When I didn’t see any improvement from Saturday to Sunday, I thought it hadn’t worked. But a funny thing happened- the next two weeks at daycare, she did great with going on the potty and staying dry. So, we switched her to big girl undies during the day, stocked up on stickers for rewards, and haven’t looked back. She’s had a few accidents and only recently has become better about telling us when she needs to go (instead of us just asking her or making sure she goes before we leave the house). She still wears pull-ups at night, but 90% of the time they’re dry in the morning. It’s nice to have a break in buying diapers and now I know where the restroom is in nearly every store in the tri-state area. :)
-Alaina will say the most hilarious things sometimes. I don’t know if she picks them up from others at daycare, TV, or what. Some recent one-liners: “That’s amaaazing!” “There you go, little fella.” “I’m beautiful.” “I’m so proud of you.”
-Alaina has hopefully outgrown her chronic ear infections- she only had one or two this past winter. Unfortunately, it was just replaced with getting croup 3-4 times and bronchitis once (which led to this nap on the couch).
-At least once a day, she declares “I’m a big sister!” She seems to think the baby lives in my belly button since if she wants to give the baby a kiss, she will only kiss directly on it. We gave her a cute book about being a big sister and we read it often.
-About a month ago, I suggested she take her nap in her new big girl bed in the craft room (which is being re-purposed as her big girl room so the baby can have the other room). I just wanted her to start to get used to that room. Well, she loved it so much she refused to sleep anywhere else so she is sleeping in the bunk beds (from my nana’s house) while we gradually get the room ready for her to permanently move in. We’ll post pictures when it’s finally complete.
My favorite part of the Easter weekend was finally getting to tell our relatives that our family is expanding! In mid-October, Alaina will have a new brother or sister.
I broke the news to the Caseys while posing for Easter pictures. For one picture, I said “Say cheese.” On the next one, I said “say Emily’s pregnant”. I was hoping to get some funny facial expressions but these people are too good at posing for pictures. This is all I got:
My dad was visiting the Woelks in Florida that week so when we skyped with them that afternoon, I just had Alaina show off her new shirt.
I hadn’t even told Alaina about her promotion from only child to big sister until that day because I was afraid she’d spill the beans. Now if you ask her where mommy’s baby is, she’ll say “in mommy’s belly” so she gets that concept but that’s about it. She LOVES babies and always points them out when we see them. Let’s just hope she still loves it when one permanently moves in to our house!
Here are some pics of us in our Easter morning finery. As Alaina said, “I’m fancy”. :)
Frank had to travel out of town with baseball over the Easter weekend, so Alaina and I (and Mya) headed to Michigan to visit the Caseys for the long weekend. We started the weekend by attending a local easter egg hunt and then dyed some eggs at home.
On Easter morning, it started to rain so we had to scramble to find all the eggs the Easter bunny had hidden outside before it started pouring. Alaina hadn’t changed out of her pjs yet, but she still had fun with Elizabeth and Connor.
More pics to come…
This year, we used some of our Christmas money towards a family membership to our local museum center. We spent Frank’s last free weekend (about two months ago) enjoying the children’s museum together and Alaina tried to stock up on some quality daddy time.
I didn’t plan on taking a break from posting updates on the blog-it just happened. So, I’ll try to catch up this week.
Way back in January, the Caseys came to visit over the MLK holiday weekend. We met them in Dayton to check out the National Museum of the US Air Force that’s located near the base there.
It has four huge airplane hangers full of planes, memorabilia, etc spanning from the early days of flight and the Wright Brothers to space travel; a lot of it was dedicated to the various wars that the Air Force has been involved in. We could have spent days in there if we wanted to read every sign and we didn’t even make it to the hanger that has a former Air Force One in it. It was a fascinating place and best of all, it’s free!
Some other highlights from the weekend included having a dance-off with the XBox, enjoying the sunny weather with a hike, and watching Alaina convince her cousins to get into their dog’s crate (for some reason they listen to her!). :)
