four of a kind

yup, it's true -- we are expecting another king sometime around the end of august!  while we weren't exactly "planning" on getting pregnant so quickly, we did want our kiddos to be close, so i guess 18 months apart will work!  so far, everything has checked out great with baby number two, and despite some occasional nausea early on and some severe sleepiness this pregnancy has been wonderful.
answers to your other questions:
i found out in mid-december, but waited nearly a week to tell matt for two reasons 1) we had had a false positive around halloween, so i wanted to make sure this wasn't the same thing, and 2) i wanted to tell him in a more special way than just saying "i'm pregnant."
i ended up telling him on wednesday, december 21st.  i had made a special trip to the store the night before to buy him a new monthly planner (yes, we still write things down in a planner and don't use our phones...so what?).  he had been saying he needed one anyway, so i wrote on december 21st "the day you find out you're going to be a daddy again!" and on the week we are due i wrote "baby king two is due!"  of course, when i got home from work the next morning and gave him the planner, he initially just glanced at it, said "thanks" and set it on the counter.  i had to encourage him to look at it to "make sure it was the one he wanted" so he would see my notes.  once he did that, he realized what was going on and was very excited (whew!).  he surprised me a few nights later by bringing home some sparkling cider for us to toast.  we broke out the champagne flutes from our wedding and enjoyed our mini celebration after noah went to bed that night.

after matt knew, we debated about when to tell other people including our families, friends and coworkers.  i'm not a fan of telling people very early on, but matt hates keeping secrets.  we eventually decided that we would tell our immediate families on christmas and everyone else once we reached the second trimester.  so during our christmas celebrations we informed our families that we would be adding another king to the mix and got many surprised and excited reactions.
i had my first OB appointment at the birthing center in january where everything checked out well and they confirmed that i was probably around 10 weeks at that point.  i wasn't 100% sure of my dates this time around, so we went ahead and scheduled a sono to confirm.  normally i wouldn't have been so worried, but since noah was born a week before term (at 36 weeks), i wanted to make sure i knew what our dates were so we would (eventually) know if this second little king was arriving early, late, or right on time.  my subsequent visits went well, also, and our little one always has a strong heartbeat and good measurements.
we had another sono at the end of march to check for other indictions of health: brain, kidneys, bladder, stomach, spine, limbs, placenta, etc -- which all looked perfect.  and, as my husband would say, "because we are planners" we also opted to find out the gender of the baby this time again.  with 85% certainty, the sono tech said we are having...

...a little girl!  

because of the position the baby was in she said she couldn't be much more certain than that, but that we were free to call her up and schedule a "gender check" appointment in another few weeks to confirm.  a couple weeks later (around week 23), i had the sono tech at my work check and she also confirmed that she thought she saw a girl in there!
so now we are debating about girls' names and trying to figure out what actually works with our last name, which is always a challenge, and trying to figure out when to do things like transition noah from his crib, etc.  it's still all very exciting the second time around :)

a pic of my belly at 21 weeks:

and at 24 weeks:

fortunately this pregnancy has been relatively easy, like my first, but i do feel much more tired this time.  i'm not sure if that's because i'm older (although i can't imagine a year would make that much difference!), because of my continued crazy night work schedule, or because i'm chasing a toddler around these days and have less time to rest.  i'm thinking it's probably mostly the last one, but i'm sure all of those things are contributing factors.  check back with us soon for more updates on our little girl!

no slowing him down

here's some recent footage of our big boy walking in the backyard.  this was also the first time he practiced walking with shoes on.  yes, they are orange crocs. yes, i got them from once upon a child ;)
enjoy!

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april fun

we've had a busy april around here, especially our sweet 14 month old!  in addition to our continued search for a new house, keeping up with crazy work schedules, celebrating two family birthdays and easter, and generally maintaining some sort of routine, noah kept us entertained and hit many new milestones this month. the biggest one was....walking!

shortly after my last post noah decided he was willing to try walking more and more frequently, and by Easter noah was walking short distances across the living rooms and down hallways.  then, of course, one day he just decided that walking was faster and better than crawling and that was it, and he hasn't looked back since!  it's been so much fun to watch him toddle all around the house and explore his new-found freedom.  and, despite everyone's warnings, i don't feel like walking has really helped him be "into everything" anymore than he already was.  however, one of the other new things that noah learned this month was how to open drawers.  he was already proficient at opening cabinets and could do a fair job of rearranging the contents in our kitchen and bathrooms, which never made too much of a mess.  drawers are a whole other thing, though!  i realized this when noah opened an office drawer the other day and promptly began rearranging our highlighters, markers, pens and pencils -- eek! he now gets frustrated when we prevent him from opening a drawer, because he knows what fun lies inside.  fortunately, he hasn't yet figured out how to open highlighters or markers, so the messes that he makes are limited to things being strewn about the ground or "reorganized" in the drawer.

other noah favorites this month include trips to half-price books and/or barnes and noble.  noah has become increasingly more interested with books and will now spend time pulling his books off the shelves and flipping through the pages.  it's no wonder he enjoys book stores so much!  because of (or maybe the reason he has) his love of books, we read to him before nap time and bed time, and now try to keep a few books in his crib for him to look through before he falls asleep and when he wakes up.  it's adorable to hear him talking through the pages after naptimes or for a few minutes before he ultimately cuddles up with lovey and passes out :)
noah is also communicating more and more, which is wonderful to see and hear.  he understands so much now that we have to be careful when mentioning certain things: outside, yogurt, bread, cars...to name a few.  he also continues to love lexi, but has now expanded his interest to include all dogs and will happily point them out when we see them on walks, in other peoples' cars, or in books.  this is usually accompanied by a "wff, wff" sound that he makes to indicate their barking.  so sweet! with his expanding vocabulary i don't know that i can even remember now all the words he says (i'll have to start making a list between posts), but the most common are "car," "cup," "outside," "daddy," "mommy," "bird," "yogurt," "bread," "that," and "see."  i know there are more, so maybe i will update this list a little later.  there are several words he understands, too, including things like: stroller, water, milk, books, crib, phone, rock, stick, eat, belt (he enjoys dragging his dad's belt around the house like he has a tail), and "lexi's bed" (which he *loves* to crawl all over, flop on, and then consequently, be covered in dog hair).

he continues to love all things with wheels, especially cars that he can push around the house, and anything outside.  in fact, i can usually use playing outside as a barometer for his attitude. if noah is acting cranky and distractions aren't working inside: head outside.  if this fixes the problem, we just needed a change of scenery.  if he continues to be fussy outside, he's either a) hungry or b) sleepy.  ah, if only life continued to be so simple ;)
in other news, we did celebrate ray and sarah's birthdays this month with a party at my parents' house and got to enjoy the company of family and eat some tasty food.  the rest of the month was mostly spent juggling time at home and at work, searching for houses (a seemingly never-ending process), and doing some much-needed yard work.  we planted some new shrubs in the back yard and spruced up with some hanging flower baskets for color.  we would have done this much sooner, but by this time last year i had a 2 month old, matt was settling into a new full-time job, and i had returned to working two jobs myself!  no wonder we didn't have time!

april 2012

check back for more updates on our growing family!

movie time

in case there was any doubt that noah liked cars (in general), we watched part of the disney movie the other day and noah's reaction was priceless.  by the time i got the camera out he was still pretty excited to see so many cars on the screen, but he wasn't nearly as animated as he was at the very start of the movie.
either way, it's still pretty cute.

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walking!

officially a toddler!

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and happy birthday to aunt sarah today! :)

toddler skills

here's a video of noah showing off some of his talents:

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