The Zoo

Last week Lisa, Samantha and I took a trip to the Niabi Zoo in Illinois. I've been wanting to go there for a couple years now and decided pretty much last minute that I'm just going to gather the girls up and go. I also felt like we haven't really done anything fun this whole summer, and it was the best time as any to start having some fun. 

Even though there were quite a few tantrums(no nap=lots of tantrums for Samantha) and it was pretty hot, we had a great time. Samantha LOVED seeing all of the animals up close and personal instead of in a book or on tv. I'd say her favorite was the Monkeys and the Elephants. I would love to go back sometime this summer and have Seth come along. I know Samantha would love that. 

Whoops...

I think there has been some neglecting going on with my blog. I've been so busy and so lazy to even pick up my computer and type out anything interesting. But I suppose I can do some updates right now.

We're all doing great!

Samantha is her fabulous self. She has a huge vocabulary now. Which is so nice. I still can't understand some of the things that she says, which stinks. She'll say something over and over again and I just have no idea what she's saying. But usually she can tell me what she needs/wants. She has started saying sorry, which is ADORABLE! If she bumps into you or something she'll say "sawrry Mommy". She's a pretty polite little girl. She'll say thank you and please.  She knows a lot of the letters of the alphabet and animals. She still loves puppies and kitties. Potty training went down the crapper a couple weeks ago. She just had no desire anymore. I'm not sure what happened. She wouldn't tell us when she had to go, had tons of accidents and always threw a fit when it was time to go potty. So she's back into diapers, for now. We'll try it again soon though. She loves her books. Every night she'll bring me books to read to her(Usually it's the same ones over and over again. I don't know why, but she loves these Easter books that I bought around Easter time), and sometimes she'll read me a book or 2. She still loves to watch Caillou, Sesame Street, Super Why, Up and a couple new ones, Tangled and Clifford. She LOVES her Aunt Lisa, Noah and Papa. Those 3 have become her favorite people in her life right now. She talks about them all the time. She has been all about Mommy lately too. Could be because she knows there's a baby in Mommy's belly. But she's VERY sweet. I'd ask her to kiss the baby and hug the baby, she'll lift up my shirt and give her a kiss and a big ole hug. Sweetest thing ever!! Melts my heart! :)

I am 32 weeks along today. 8 more weeks to go. Ella is about 4 1/2 lbs right now. I have been pretty uncomfortable, which sucks since I still have a little bit to go yet. I have been having some contractions every now and then, mainly when I am being active. I've been having outrageous heartburn.  All I can say is, thank God for Zantac. I'd probably die without that fabulous drug. My back, neck, feet, hands and legs hurt. Ya know what??....I just hurt all over! lol. Ella is constantly on the move. She loves my ribs and my right side. She has hiccups all the time. I'm getting pretty anxious to meet this little girl. I've been having this strange feeling that she may come early. But who knows, she'll just come when she's ready to. With my luck she'll be one of those babies that won't come until 42 weeks. 

We went June 16th for a 3D ultrasound. To confirm she's a girl for Seth, and I just wanted to see if she looked like her big sister. It was an incredible session. This little girl was all smiles, and she's cute as a button! I think she is a clone of her sister. I know that we'll have the 2 most beautiful little girls in the world! :)

Ella and her beautiful smile

 Lots of hair

 Defiantly a girl

 Her adorable foot

 Samantha look-a-like

32 Week Belly

Potty Training

On Tuesday, April 26th, I decided I would attempt to potty train Samantha. Don't ask me why, I just felt like giving it a shot, and if we had to wait and try again some other time, then we would wait. 

I am shocked to say that she's doing FABULOUS!!!!!!! She's doing better then I could of ever imagined! This girl just loves to prove me wrong in everything she does. 

The first few days were pretty rough, and that's when we almost stopped it all. A lot of frustration and exhaustion for the both of us. She kinda got the idea of it, But she would say potty AS she was going pee or poop. We kept working on it though and after the first week she started to tell me when she needed to potty BEFORE she had to potty. 

The first week we tried the training underwear during the day. But she kept having accidents. So we tried nothing at all, yep, nakie baby all day and night(except for nap time and bed time, which she's in diapers then). It seemed to do the trick. But I think it helped that she was in the training underwear the first week that way she knew what the feeling of wet felt like, and she does not like the feeling of being wet and dirty. My goal is to stay far, far away from pull ups.

She has had no peeing accidents in 4 days. She has had a couple of poopy accidents, but that seems to be getting better also. The day before yesterday she didn't poop at all, so I knew she would poop yesterday, so I was paranoid all day. lol. We got back to Grandma and Grandpa's house and she told me "pawee", so I put her on the potty and she went poop. So like I said, she's getting better on the pooping part. I hope. I give her a couple of M&Ms each time she pees and poops in the potty, and I let her know that's why she's getting candy. Candy helps as always! ;o)

We've had 2 outings accident free. On Mother's Day, we were out all day long. Not 1 accident. Everywhere we stopped I took her to use the potty and she peed every time.  We stopped at a gas station cause Seth needed to get gas and we wanted to get some drinks. So I took her to the bathroom and she peed. I took her back to the truck and Aunt Lisa strapped her in the car seat,  I went back inside for something, I don't remember what, then I came back out and Lisa told me that Samantha was saying potty. So I took her back to the bathroom and she peed again. She did great! We finally got out to the place where we went fishing and their bathrooms were totally nasty and Samantha was not having it(I do not blame her one bit). So we just let her run around with no underwear on(she was wearing a dress, so no one noticed she was nakie). We were out there for about 4 hours and she maybe peed twice, in the water. lol.  This is what we use when we're out and about http://www.walmart.com/ip/Disney-Winnie-the-Pooh-Folding-Potty-Seat/15846724. 

If she does have accidents, it's usually not her fault. She'll either say potty too quiet that we can't hear her or we just can't understand her(sometimes puppy and potty sound the same lol). Or we'll be doing something around the house and not paying attention to her. 

So its only been about 2 weeks and she's doing awesome!! I'm seriously in shock on how great she's doing. I really thought that it wouldn't work at all right now. I thought, well maybe it's still a little early yet. But like I said before, this girl LOVES to prove me and everyone else wrong. 

22 Weeks!

Here's my 22 week belly shot.

Samantha HAD to be in this picture with me. Whenever she sees a camera she starts saying "cheese, cheese". She wouldn't let me take another picture without her in it. lol. She was in the middle of saying "cheese" in this picture.

I'm feeling GREAT! Except for the stupid heartburn at times. I'm feeling pretty energetic. I can actually stay off the couch and play with Samantha and do stuff around the house. The past few months the poor house has been a disaster. I just didn't have the energy to do a thing, but take care of Samantha. This is the part of the pregnancy that I can handle! lol

Baby sister is doing great! She moves around A LOT. And I believe she has had a couple episodes of the hiccups. Seth loves to put his hand on my belly and feel the baby move. Once he was just poking her and she would kick right back at her Daddy, that'll show ya, Daddy. lol

Naming this baby....It has been a chore to try and find a name. Seth is obsessed with the name Charlotte. I don't know why. He loves that name. But, I don't!! I recently found out that my Grandma's middle name was Luella. I was really considering on naming her Luella. But then Cruella De Vil popped into my head. Ya know, the evil lady from 101 Dalmatians. Although I absolutely HATE to associate that evil, dog killing lady with my amazing Grandmother's middle name, it just wouldn't go away. So I thought, what about just Ella.  Seth seems to be on board with it. So I think our baby girl's first name will be Ella! :o) We're still debating on the middle name. Seth wants Charlotte and will not back down *sigh* I really like Abigail, Ann, Claire and Rose. And I don't think he likes any of those. So we're stuck, yet again. I'm just glad we still have a little time to figure it out. I just hope we really do FIGURE IT OUT! lol 

Easter 2011

Easter was amazing this year!! I knew it would be a blast with Samantha being older. I (or I should say) the Easter Bunny got her a bunch of goodies for her Easter basket. She woke up on Easter morning and saw the basket full of awesome stuff  and went to town. We had candy for breakfast and played with neat stuff the Easter bunny brought for her.

Here's the neat stuff

After a much needed bath after playing with the bubble machine and eating most of the candy. We got ready to head to Seth's parent's house for Easter dinner and an egg hunt.

It was so much fun to watch the kids snag up those eggs. They had a blast!

Here's our beautiful little girl in her Easter dress

And this was our beautiful little girl after we got home

18 Months

Can you believe it? Our little girl is a year and a half! I could be in a little bit of denial. After all, she's suppose to be my baby, and stay my little baby forever. But she's by no means a little baby anymore, but a full grown toddler!! 

I'm so in love with this age!! She has always been a talker. Sometimes we can't get this girl to shut up. haha! She has started putting 2-4 words together.  Which I LOVE! We can actually have a decent sized conversation together. Sometimes I don't know what she's saying so I ask her to repeat it and she does, but I'm still not sure what she's trying to say, which I feel so bad about cause you know it's VERY important lol ;o) 

Some new words: Pretty, cool, cold, cheese, Papa, potty, poop, caillou(her favorite show), Up(her favorite movie), turtle, bird, flower, fish, go, bubbles, apple, crying and many, many more.

She knows some letters of the alphabet. Thanks to reading books to her, Sesame Street, playing with letters in the bath tub and the leap frog fridge phonics. 

She had her 18 month check up on the 11th, on her 18 month birthday. She's as perfect as perfect can be. She was 32 1/4 inches tall and 24.6 pounds. She had to get some shots, but now she won't have to get any until she's 4, if I remember right. Soon after her appointment she started to get sick. I figured it was because of the shots, but the days went by and she was still feeling yucky. We went back to the doctor and she had a pretty crappy ear infection, runny nose/congested and this horrible cough that would make her throw up just about everyday. We gave her some antibiotics and it all finally went away about week and a half to 2 weeks later. I was VERY happy to have my baby girl back to her normal ole self. The poor girl was miserable! :o(

She has been much more addicted to the TV. But since it's getting nicer outside we have started to cut it back and play outside more. She loves Sesame Street("Moe, Moe" Elmo), Caillou(obsessed!), Sid the Science Kid, Word World, Super Why! and her favorite movie is Up(obsessed!). 

I'm so incredibly excited to see her with her little sister! She's going to be such a great big sister and a great helper for Mommy and Daddy.  

She's my perfect little girl!! I'm so in love with her. Yes, she may frustrate me on occasion, But when I look into those beautiful blues, it melts all that frustration away! She's truly my guardian angel sent to me from God! She has made my life a beautiful place!  

20 Weeks/ It's A....

We've made it to the half way point in this pregnancy! And you all know what that means....The BIG ultrasound!  We had our ultrasound yesterday. We got to see our very active and adorable baby.

As you may know, Seth was being a big meany and was telling everyone that he will be the only one to know the gender of this baby. He says he didn't want to find out with Samantha and since he was "forced" into knowing, he was going to be the only to know the gender this time around and no one else will know(make sense, no, not really!).  It was really pissing me off, as you can imagine. I HAD to know. First off, if it was a boy we had to buy a whole new wardrobe and start working on the other bedroom. And if it was a girl, we really didn't have to do much of anything. Since we have everything from Samantha.

So Seth met us(Samantha, me and Grandma) at the ultrasound place.  We still weren't sure on what was going to happen in that room. If Seth was going to let us find out, if we were going to have this big argument in front of the poor tech. He was still going strong on the fact that we were not going to find out.  But I had a feeling that once we got into that room, he would change his mind.

We got to see our little baby going crazy, very hyper little baby. The baby was chewing on its arm, playing peek a boo, we got to see its adorable face, fingers, toes and..................... The tech asked the million dollar question, would you like to find out the gender? Right away, I said yes. Seth didn't say a word, although, I know he was pissed! But oh well! :oD

Samantha will be a big sister to a little......

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.

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SISTER!

Yep, it's another girl folks. A lot of people were in complete shock. Like Seth and his Mom. but I KNEW it was going to be another girl. I KNEW it! I wanted it to be a little boy for Seth, cause he wants a boy so so so so BAD! But poor guy is stuck with 3 girls in his life ;o) He's already talking about #3. I just laugh at him and say NO WAY! lol

I think it's great Samantha will have a little sister to play dolls with and tell her little secrets to. I just really hope that they will be very close.

The tech took her sweet time. Which was great! We had about an hour and a half worth of viewing our newest little girl. We got TONS of pictures and videos of her! Although I can't get the photos right now, but here are a couple of videos of her. :o)