a new year!

this month has been busy as always, but also incredibly cold! january is usually chilly, but living in texas we don't ever expect to see a lot of snow and ice. this year we've already had several local school closures and i've done a lot more driving than i care to on slippery roads. despite all this, things at home are going well and the kids have enjoyed seeing the snow fall. noah continues to keep us laughing, saying the most wonderful and, sometimes unexpected, things. he has also continued to keep us entertained with his singing, learning more songs and song lyrics. he's also started to ask me, "mommy, what's the name of this song?" when we are listening to the radio or the ipod, and tries to request songs by name. a recent favorite is "johnny b. goode" by chuck barry. noah was introduced to the song by matt, and the two of them will listen, sing, and dance to this song repeatedly throughout the day. He also tells me he wants to listen to "the buzz song," which i finally realized was "applause" by lady gaga. i guess he misheard the name or misunderstood the lyrics? he is also quick to tell us which songs he does and does not enjoy, and whether or not we have mentioned our preferences in the past. we will be driving and and suddenly i will hear, "MOMMY!! turn this song up! i like this song." or even, "mommy! daddy likes this song. do you like this song?"
in addition to his love of lyrics, our not-so-little boy continues to amaze me with his memory for ...anything. he recently has taken an interest in some books he got for Christmas from his aunt heather, one that is about the human body and one about reptiles (they are both "the cat in the hat knows a lot about that" books). he now tells us all sorts of interesting facts about what reptiles eat, where your jaw is, and things about muscles and bones. i can't deny that it makes this RN momma proud ;) we've also recently started talking about his upcoming birthday and it's fun to see him be so excited about it. because of his love of all things with wheels, and especially the movie "Cars" i was going to host a Cars-themed birthday party. my plans were altered, though, when i spoke to noah and he told me, quite seriously, that he wanted a "blue cake with a firetruck, and ambulance, and a police car on it." he was not dissuaded when i spoke of having a "stickers" or "mater" cake. at first i figured this was just a temporary request, but every time it's come up since then he has given the same answer. so i guess it's good i hadn't purchased decorations yet!
potty training continues to go well, although i've honestly been too lazy to even attempt to go diaper-less during naps and bedtime.  during the day, however, noah will stay completely dry without problems.  in fact, the only issue we have is actually getting him to go to the bathroom.  he will just not go for hours and hours, which doesn't seem normal to me (but what do i know, i've never potty trained anyone before!) so we will often look at the clock and drag him to the bathroom kicking and screaming, set him down on the toilet and see that he did in fact have to go to the bathroom, but didn't want to stop whatever he was doing.  my most recent strategy has been to back off a bit and wait for him to tell me when he actually feels like he needs to go.  i figure he will either tell me or i'll go back to doing extra laundry, but i won't be dragging him to the bathroom anymore...we'll see what happens.

sweet samantha grace is growing and changing all the time.  she continues to add new words to her vocabulary all the time, but i think she would speak more if she didn't have a brother that was quite so loquacious ;)  noah tends to do a lot of speaking for sammy, and i think she's perfectly content with that.  we have added more animal sounds to her vocabulary: she will now gladly make monkey, cow, dog, and lion/tiger/dinosaur sounds when quizzed and we're continuing to work on more -- stay tuned!  the little girl also loves to sing and dance.  it's hard to tell who loves music more, her or her brother, as they often ask for music to be turned on and then proceed to bop around the kitchen with each other.  sam's current favorite songs to hear are two from the newest Lorax movie: "how bad can i be?" and "this is the place."  but she also enjoys listening to "the roar song" by katy perry, as noah calls it, and also enjoys dancing with her father to the above-listed "johnny b. goode."
sam has also mastered the skill of running, which is good when trying to keep up with noah, and recently learned how to navigate walking down the stairs.  prior to this month, she would just slide down, feet-first on her stomach or just slide down while sitting.  no more!  she's learned to hold onto the balusters and stretch her sweet baby toes down onto each step.  and yes, it's always her toes because we can't keep the girl in socks, despite it being around freezing all winter this year!
sam adores her older brother and has picked up the habit of mimicking his behavior.  while sometimes this is good -- she now tries to put away her dishes and such after dinner, and if we can convince noah to do something sammy will typically follow suit -- it also means that she copies all of the not-so-good behaviors, like throwing tantrums at the same time as her brother when he doesn't like what's being served for dinner, or playing with doors in the house, or throwing toys...you get the idea.  for the most part, though, it's pretty sweet and cute.  and i love seeing her interact with him so much.  they will often play together for long stretches of time, chasing each other around the house (sam will push the dump truck and noah will push the "cart"), and playing their own made-up games of throwing and snuggling on their loveys while rolling around on the floor.  i'm curious to see what will happen when we add a new baby to the mix.
sam has become very helpful around the house and has gotten exceptionally good at following directions (most times).  as i mentioned before, she's not speaking a ton, so i think at times it's easy for me to take for granted how much she understands.  she will now go retrieve her booster seat from the pantry and attempt to drag it all the way across the kitchen in the mornings when she is ready to eat while we are making breakfast.  she also does a great job of cleaning up toys and knows where everything goes without being instructed.  and we've recently started working with her on carrying her cup to the counter after she's done eating.  eventually, we will have her carry all her dishes, but i'm not willing to clean up all the leftovers right now as she toddles along with a tipped plate.  and lexi is more than willing to help with that, but i don't think that's the message we want to send (dump your leftovers on the floor and the dog will eat them).
the last big piece of news for sam is that we put together her toddler bed this month, but we haven't set it up in her room yet.  i think we will wait until after noah's birthday party to get the room all changed around.  i'm not quite ready to have her out of her crib, and i honestly have no idea how she will adjust to it.  i am also concerned about making such a big change for her just before we have out-of-state company come to stay with us and host a big party for noah.  i think we'll wait until things "settle down" a little bit -- for my sake and hers! also, this baby isn't due until the first week of june, and even then he won't go straight to the crib, so we have plenty of time.  i just don't want to wait until the very last minute.
i can't believe that my sweet baby girl isn't going to be the baby anymore!  how on earth is this all happening so quickly?  i keep praying that the older kiddos adjust well, since they still seem mostly happily oblivious to the big change that will be taking place at the beginning of the summer.  time will tell!

snuggle time with my sweet monkey girl

"take a picture of me, mommy!"

"okay"

the result:

sam looking outside longingly.

it's too cold, baby girl! 

(note the lack of socks)

snuggle time with monkeys x 2

dinosaur time

puzzles, cars, dog

making a new train track with the extra pieces we got for christmas...

...after some help from daddy.

finally figured out how to display some of the kiddos art work :)

more with the train tracks (while sam enjoys a phone conversation)

daddy and noah snuggle time, with lexi

"she's giving me kisses, mommy!!!"

my soon-to-be (or already?) middle child 

january illness -- vomiting all night.

you can see the piles of laundry in the background!

when you're sick, there's nothing better than snuggles with daddy and a good movie :)

we figured out how to walk down the steps...

helping in the morning -- she got out her booster seat.

noah "helps" cook the sausage for breakfast

this is what happens when matt dresses the kids.  he claims he didn't do it on purpose, i'm not sure if i believe him ;)

reading time

noah helps assemble the toddle bed for sam

picture with daddy before work

snuggles with my oldest son

"who is that pretty girl?" :)

baby king #3!

so, the secret is out: we are preparing for our third little king set to arrive this year!  

we are technically due in june, but i keep warning everyone that it will likely be in may since my other two kiddos were ready before the allotted 40 weeks was up (noah was 36 weeks, sam was 38).  so we'll see what kind of time frame this sweet little one has in mind :)

those are the key points, so you can skip to the pictures if you want.  otherwise, read on for more details...

i actually found out allllll the way back in september and informed matt the night after i found out.  with our crazy schedules it's hard for us to get a few minutes where we are not chasing kids, running errands, working on something around the house, or just being completely exhausted and/or sleeping.  september 25th, i had a positive pregnancy test (after a week of *knowing* i was pregnant, but seeing tests come up negative).  i told the second pink line, "THERE you are!"  

i tried to figure out some creative way to inform my husband, who would be coming home from a long day at work.  i ended up telling him the next night (september 26), after i had cleaned the house and put this little hint in place.  he came home to find me reading in the living room and it only took him about 3 seconds to get the message.

(this is sparkling, cider, by the way!)

matt was very excited about the news and we spent the rest of the evening talking about the future of our family, this sweet little baby now starting it's life in my womb, and potential baby names, which is always a very long discussion.  we also tried to plan out when we would tell family, friends, work, etc.  we decided to tell our families first (as we always do) and that the upcoming trip to the arboretum (october 18th) would be a great time to spring the news on our parents.  we were lucky enough to be able to tell my parents in person, but had to settle for an email message to matt's family.  we notified siblings soon after, informing my brother and sisters at the end of jonah's birthday party on october 20th. at that point we were about 8 weeks along.

we were taking pictures of the kids and my parents when we sprung the news on them -- here was their reaction caught on camera.  sam was not so pleased, noah was not very interested ;)

the email message to matt's parents included a message along the lines of "trick question: how many people are in this picture? call for more info on baby #3 due in june!"  

the phone calls were wonderful, and i'm just sad we don't get to tell everyone in person each time.

after that we kept the secret for a while, waiting until the end of the first trimester to inform the rest of the family (cousins, great grandparents, aunts, uncles).  we notified extended family on thanksgiving day and got a wonderful reaction all around.

i finally told my work when i hit 18 weeks, they are always the last to know, but i was starting to model a small baby bump and knew some people might be wondering by now why i never drank caffeine, was very tired a lot of the time, and had problems with certain foods.  to be fair, i didn't tell anyone at work directly, instead i posted a fb message (to make it "official," right?) on new year's day modeling my new year's resolution: to have a healthy baby!

here's a pic of the 18 week bump

and 19 weeks

 and 20 weeks! (already "half" way there!)

and a 21 week pic, no denying that sweet little bump!

our first OB appointment was at the wonderful allen birthing center on matt's birthday (november 21).  unfortunately, he wasn't able to join us because of his work schedule but i was able to relay to him that everything looked great, baby has a strong heartbeat, and i even got to bring home a little video on my phone of an unofficial sono!  the midwife was having a hard time capturing the heart rate with the doppler, so she pulled out a tiny little sono machine -- a handheld!  it was smaller than most tablets and showed a great pic of our newest little king.  it also made the pregnancy seem so "real" all of the sudden, as seeing a little person kicking around inside you can (especially when you can't even fell them move, yet).  

our next two appointments also went well, with everything checking out healthy for both me and baby.

we had our 20 week sono on january 17th.  our family loaded up into the car on a very blustery day and headed to the imaging place to make sure baby king #3 is healthy, active, and will be ready to chase after two older siblings.  of course, my concerns are always medical: are the kidneys, heart, bladder, stomach, limbs, brain, spinal cord, etc. okay? is the baby's heart rate still strong? is the baby moving well? where's the placenta? (oh, the joys of having *too* much knowledge of this miracle growing!)

while matt is concerned about all of those things, he also has one burning question: what's the gender?!  he likes to hold off on really deciding on names until we know a gender.  what can i say? we are both planners :)

fortunately everything looked great on the sono.  baby was active and healthy and even gave us what looked like a little smile during the photo session:

(for those who don't read sonos all the time, baby's head is to the left, looking towards the top of the picture.  you can see the chest/abdomen to the right and the spinal cord running along the bottom right of the picture)

after everything checked out okay medically, the sono tech showed us the not-so-discrete evidence that we needed to inform us of gender:

(there's an arrow just to the left of the...parts)

that's right, baby # 3 will be a boy!

and unlike with sam, who was always so modest during her sono pics and kept us guessing all the way until the end, this kiddo has no problems displaying his...stuff.  there was even a glimpse i caught during an earlier part of the sono, but i kept my mouth shut because i wasn't completely sure.  my suspicions were confirmed when the sono tech mentioned she had seen the same thing and realized that our newest son had already given us a sneak peek at the gender reveal.  

so that's where we are at, this pregnancy has been healthy and i can't complain too much.  i will say i am much more tired this time around, but everyone tells me that's not surprising considering our wacky schedules (still working full-time nights in the ER, and matt is still working off-hours at his full-time job, too), and the fact that we have two kids currently under the age of 3.  my prayers are that this newest king baby is resilient to the fact that i have probably been the least healthy during this pregnancy so far -- exhaustion makes it hard to cook and prepare healthy meals, and chasing two other kids means that i'm limited in my ability to actually "work out" or do dedicated physical activity.  my hope is that as the weather gets better -- it's been *extremely* cold this winter -- we can start making use of the new 2-passenger jogging stroller we got from my father-in-law for christmas.  just being able to enjoy some time outside would be wonderful!  i'd also like to apologize for the lack of effort put into the blog.  when the exhaustion from this pregnancy hit back in october (about the time the kids both ended up with croup!) the blog ended up getting shuffled to the back of the priority list.  now that we are "caught up" i hope to be able to do a better job maintaining it to keep up with our three little kings :)