Happy Easter!

Happy Easter to my dear blog readers! More about our Easter in a minute, I’ll start with the baby update. I’m now 31 weeks pregnant and our little girl is now about 16 inches long and weighs approximately 3.3 pounds…about the same as four navel oranges. She had the hiccups for the first time (that I noticed, at least) today. It’s so much fun feeling her move around in there. Everything looked good at my prenatal visit last week, I’m measuring right on track and her heart rate was about 140. Here’s the latest belly picture:

Our Easter weekend did not quite go as planned, poor Maxwell came down with a fever Saturday afternoon and didn’t want to do much except cuddle with me the rest of the day and Sunday. We took him to the doctor yesterday as he is coughing quite a bit, but I’m glad to report everything looked good–no ear infection, lungs sound clear, so the verdict is just a bad cold to wait out. Saturday morning was beautiful and sunny here, and Max was still feeling peppy at that point, so we were able to participate in our neighborhood egg hunt.

Waiting for the signal to go:

I don’t have any pictures of Max actually collecting eggs as it was kind of a mad rush of children, but here he is checking out his spoils with Daddy:

Showing me what he got:

There’s chocolate in those eggs! Note the messy mouth.

Sunday we had planned to head up to my grandma’s house for the big family Easter dinner and egg hunt, but we had to bail since Max definitely wasn’t up to it. He did rally to find some eggs Easter morning. He definitely remembered that there were treats in there this time, every time he found one he’d shake it, then turn to us and ask, “Eat it?”

Pausing in egg collection. Note Dory checking out what’s in the Easter basket behind him. Pixel tried that as well and Max quickly said, “No no, Pixel.”

Later that morning came the crash. We knew he was feeling crummy when he fell asleep on me in the chair, that never happens:

I hated to see him not feeling good, but I did treasure all the extra snuggles we had over the weekend. Yesterday and today he does seem to be on the mend, not back 100% yet–still not much appetite and more resting and snuggling than usual, but also more playing, running around, etc, which is very nice to see. He’s been watching more TV than normal the past few days, and the current favorite show is “Blue’s Clues.” He was watching an episode yesterday where the main character (Steve) drew a picture of a soup pot. As Steve was drawing the lid, he mentioned that it was shaped like a circle. Max was quick to correct him by saying “Oval” and it was indeed an oval shape, not a circle.

This last batch of pictures has nothing to do with Easter, but I wanted to share them. The other day Max spotted one of his winter hats in the stroller and wanted to wear it. He was able to get it on and off by himself and would narrate “Hat on” and “Hat off.” He wore it for a good part of the day. Of course we had to get photo evidence of the cuteness:

Two Year Photos

We got Maxwell’s two year photos back from the fabulous Justine Shelton of J. Shelton Photography yesterday, and I’m in love! She did a great job as always of capturing us. We were struck by what a little boy Max looks like in these photos, not much trace left of our baby in there! I’ll share them below.

I’m 30 weeks pregnant as of today, the baby is the size of a cabbage and weighs about 2.75 pounds. I have a prenatal visit this week, hopefully I’ll get another good report there. We’ve been working on her room; yesterday we sent Max to Grandma’s house and spent the day cleaning our office and condensing the office and guest room into one. Now that the bed is out of the baby’s room, it is really starting to come together. After a fruitless search for a crib skirt and valances that (a) I liked and (b) would fit the windows in that room, I gave up and decided to make them myself. This could get dicey, but thankfully my mother-in-law, a master at sewing, will be here next month and I figure she can help me with the tricky parts. Wall art is ordered but not yet arrived, including a wall decal to go near the crib. It will be a great feeling when the room is complete and ready for our daughter!

Here is my 30 week belly pic:

One of our weekend rituals is Max helping Daddy make the morning coffee. Maxwell loves to tell Daddy what to do for each step and is very helpful with putting the filter in, scooping the beans, and pushing the button to grind them. He gets the cutest expression on his face each time, it’s such a proud smile. Yesterday and today I snapped a few pictures of the process:

And as promised, the photos from Justine. It was quite an adventure to get these, we originally planned on an outdoor setting, but the weather didn’t cooperate, so we moved to our backup–a large nursery in a nearby town. Unbeknownst to us, that day happened to be the day of their town Spring festival and parade, aka the busiest day of the year. The street in front of the nursery was completely closed. Finally we parked in a nearby shopping center, but then had to wait for a break in the parade before we could get across the road! Thankfully all turned out well as we got some beautiful images. Enjoy!

29 Weeks

I’m now in the third trimester and 29 weeks pregnant. Baby is about the weight of a butternut squash and her head is growing bigger to make room for her developing brain. I’m very happy to report that I passed my one hour glucose test last week, so I don’t have to undergo that torture, er I mean three hour test, this time around. We’re continuing to work on the nursery. This coming weekend will be a long session of purging, cleaning and organizing so that we can move the bed from the guest room into the office, and then we can really begin to pull the nursery together. It’s a lot of fun to pick out what will go in there and imagine the time we’ll spend with our baby girl!

Here’s the belly pic from last week:

Maxwell had a good week. His sleep has been shifting a bit lately, with naps only happening sometimes. I keep telling him it’s way too early to stop napping! Thankfully even on the days he doesn’t sleep he’ll lay happily in his crib and talk and sing. It’s pretty funny to listen in on the monitor to the things he says. He continues to really enjoy reading books and will fill in the words on favorite ones if we pause. The way he pronounces some words is so cute–like “sawbabies” for “strawberries.” Every so often he’ll say something that reminds us what a good memory he has….yesterday we were out for lunch and I was sharing a couple bites of my burger with him. I said something about “hamburger” and he immediately said, “Grandpa’s house?” Well, when we were in Florida last month we did indeed have hamburgers one night at my dad and Helen’s. It’s amazing what goes on in his brain!

It’s still pretty rainy here, but we had a dry day on Saturday, so we took a walk to the park. I’ll leave you with some pictures:

Look at those gorgeous eyes!

Chinese Cabbage

What Chinese cabbage, you say? Well, that’s the size of our baby girl in utero! She currently measures about 14-15 inches long and weighs about 2.25 pounds. Her brain has developed more tissue and has formed grooves on the surface. I love to feel her moving inside, and Jeff is now able to regularly feel and see the movement also, which never gets old. Tomorrow morning I have quite the prenatal visit….I’ll get my 28 week Rhogam shot (given because I have a negative blood type and Jeff has positive) and I’ll do the one hour glucose test. Some of you may recall that I failed the one hour glucose test when pregnant with Max and had to take the three hour one. That did not go well for me, and I really don’t want to take it again. I’m going to eat nothing but protein tomorrow until I have the test and hope I pass!

Here’s the latest belly pic:

My friend Leanne made this cute dress for the baby. She is a very talented seamstress and whipped it up in a weekend. I can’t wait for our daughter to wear it!

Max continues to be his wonderful, amazing self and we’re soaking up every minute with him. Last week we had one glorious day of sun amidst what’s been a very rainy spring, and we seized our chance to go to the park:

Max can now climb these steps by himself (though we stay close by!):

The swing remains a favorite activity. He’ll still usually do the sign for “swing” whenever he says “park.”

I’ve posted before about how Max likes to do “Tripod” (putting his head on the ground while his buns stay up in the air). The other day I came home from work to find the following scene. Max wanted Grandma to help him put all of the stuffed animals in tripod position:

This week I made a pasta dish for dinner one night that had chopped tomatoes in it. As I was prepping dinner Max asked to eat some tomato. Since getting fruits and veggies into him is trial and error lately, I was all over this request. I put some pieces of tomato in a small dish and he sat on the kitchen floor by me to eat it. He talked about how Chester (his bear) couldn’t have any tomato, and then he laid down on his tummy on the floor, put his face right in the dish and said, “Hi tomato!” He kind of combines “potato” and “tomato” so it came out more like “Hi ponomato!” I was cracking up. Later at dinner he wanted more of the fresh tomato, so I grabbed one and started slicing pieces for him. He indicated that he wanted to eat the whole tomato, not the pieces, and so he did:

Yesterday Jeff and I went to Ikea while Max stayed at Grandma’s house (a place he loves to go!). We were on the hunt for a couple things for the baby’s room, and I’m glad to say we were successful in our search. We got a chair and a bookshelf/storage thing (it has open squares, we’ll use some for books and put bins in the others). Yesterday Max helped Jeff assemble the chair.

Trying out the screwdriver on his rocking chair:

Daddy’s helper:

The whole family got in on the act. Dory tested out the box:

Pixel helped with the directions:

The finished product!

Today our friends Laura and Dave came over for lunch. Laura’s birthday falls just a week after Maxwell’s, so we got a cake to have for dessert. Max was very excited about the possibility of cake, so much so that instead of eating lunch he kept asking to eat the cake. We explained that we would have cake after lunch, so then he asked “Max hold cake?” Yeah, nice try buddy….”I don’t want to eat it yet, just let me hold it.”

We have a running joke with Laura that involves cakes that say “Happy Birthda” instead of the traditional “Happy Birthday,” so that’s what we had today:

The birthday celebrants:

I’ll leave you with a couple images of Max enjoying his cake at last: