23 weeks

Today I enter my 6th month of pregnancy. It feels nice to be a month closer. The activity of this little girl has picked up BIG TIME and the other day I'm pretty sure she was up moving for a straight 48 hours. Haha! It was crazy.

I can already feel her kicking up pretty high. I was confused about it but I'm assuming it's about right. My OB has yet to check the size of my uterus. It seems that every time I go I'm getting other procedures done and it counteracts him needing to check. Like my last visit, which I think is when he was supposed to start really keeping up with it, I had an ultrasound. Sooo, I think this next one he'll check and I wouldn't be surprised one bit if he said it's measuring a bit bigger than normal. It's supposed to be measuring around 1.5 inches above my belly button but I'm pretty sure it's around 2 or more. We'll see what he says. Maybe I'm wrong and everything is right on track.

I finally scheduled my appointment for the fetal echo. I go on Tuesday at 2:15. It's supposed to take an hour and I'm excited to see my little girl in action for that long. YAY. Sean will stay home with Anna-Kate since it would most likely be disastrous to take her considering her nap is at 2.

Here's my belly shot today. I couldn't find the black shirt I've normally been wearing and I was heading to the store so I figured this shirt would do. I really prefer to do them every 2 weeks at this stage since every week is probably a little overboard BUT I know some people like this kind of stuff so I did it for YOU!
As you can see, Anna-Kate was excited to have direct access to the camera so this was the best I could pull off this morning.

Hope you all had a great weekend!

our weekend

We went to Waco on Friday afternoon after allll the rain stopped. We were opening up for a garage sale on Saturday morning and needed to get all of our stuff ready. I didn't think we'd actually have that much stuff to take but after cleaning out the storage shed we quickly realized we had more junk than we originally thought. We filled up the WHOLE back of our truck with stuff to get rid of. It was nuts. Anyways, here's Anna-Kate posing in her cute outfit before we were about to leave.

In this picture I told her to give me cheese and that's the face I got. It was hilarious.

Then she climbed under the coffee table to get away from the camera, I guess.

I love being able to put her in fall clothes for the time being. Right before it rained and stayed in the mid 50's it was 90 degrees outside. It's supposed to go back up sometime this week but right now I'm enjoying a nice 57 degrees.

So, about the garage sale. My mom and I got out there around 6:30 AM to get everything completely set up. We had it pretty organized but needed to pull the GREAT stuff out into the drive way :-). People started showing up immediately and my mom and I came to the quick realization that the two of us together totally suck at telling people no. She totally sold some awesome stuff for hardly nothing because she doesn't have it in her to say heck no. Once my Granny got out there we finally started making some money. HAHAHA! In the end, we left with $76. My mom made $173 and my Aunt made like $30-something. I thought it was a good first garage sale for us. Definitely helpful financially AND in space. We really needed to clear out things. Oh, I forgot to mention, I did all this money making on a measly two hours of sleep. I was soooooooooooooo tired.

We left for home later that afternoon. I could barely keep my eyes open and did some catnapping on the way home. I figured out how to make myself comfortable by propping up the uneven side of me with a rolled up blanket (the side AK's carseat takes up). Between her kicking me in the arm and whining about her video I probably slept about an hour of the way home. Not bad. We stopped off at Jack-in-the-Box about 15 minutes from our house and got some burgers. Anna-Kate saw Daddy eating his like a "big boy" and decided she needed to eat hers like a big girl. She wasn't having that whole "pinch me off a bite" thing.

It was sooo cute to see her mocking him.

We all went to bed early that night (lastnight). AK was in bed at 8. I was asleep by 10. Sean by 10:30. I woke up at 3 something to relieve my bladder and then went RIGHT back to bed (I usually have a really hard time going back to sleep) until 10 AM this morning. I woke up sooo refreshed and happy. Ahhh, gotta love you some good sleep.

This morning I walked into AK's room to find this.

My kid is HILARIOUS! Gotta love her, that's for sure.

Today is like any other Sunday. Relaxing, napping, eating, football, laundry.

wordless wednesday

AK's cardiologist appt.

Today was AK's visit to the cardiologist. The trek down there (downtown Austin) is always an interesting and usually frustrating one. So here's the story.

I met my MIL at her workplace and we road together to the appointment. We had to pay close attention to highway splits and exits and such because it's beyond easy to get lost. We made it to the parking garage, parked in the PERFECT spot (except it was a super tight squeeze), got all of our luggage out (stroller, purses, diaper bag, snack, sippy) and headed over the little bridge to the doctor. We got to the elevator, took it up one floor and started the journey down the hall to the appropriate door. We arrived right on time ONLY to find that the door was locked. INTERESTING I thought. As we noticed the door was locked this lady with a badge came walking down the hall so my MIL asked her if she knew anything about why they would be closed when we have an appointment. As she was talking to the lady I was calling the office. While on the phone I find out that they've totally RELOCATED to a place across the highway! ARE YOU KIDDING ME!!! So, the lady who works in administration gets on the phone to find out where we need to go and we start our journey BACK to the car very flustered and aggravated. The sign stating the office and doctors was still posted by the door and everything. I'd say this wasn't the most very organized move.

We finally make it over there about 25 minutes passed our scheduled appointment...it might've even been closer to 35 minutes...and I'm beyond annoyed at this point. For one, we haven't had an appropriate meal yet and it's approaching 10:45 AM. Two, they hand me this stupid clip board with paperwork to "update" their records when everything I had to fill out they already knew! UGHHHH! While I'm trying to fill out the stupid paperwork my toddler is coming close to escaping out the front door. Yes, it was toddler accessible (my MIL was parking the car).

My MIL comes in and asks how long they've been in their new location and they said since July. She says that it would've been nice to receive a letter or phone call regarding the move before our appointment. She says they like to call and talk personally with the person or leave a message before the appointment. She says someone called yesterday and never mentioned it. Then I started thinking, not only did they call and confirm the appointment they called me BACK to clarify an insurance mix up. Yes, I spoke with someone twice and neither time did that lady mention a new location. BIG UGH! Not only that, but they mailed me a letter close to the end of September reminding me to set up the appointment! BALSDJSADLKJDfIOASJD

So, we get all that squared away and head back for the testing. Anna-Kate was no where near as...um...flexible and happy about it as she was just a year ago. She weighed in at 27.9 lbs and like 32.5 inches tall. HAHA. My little shorty. A year ago she was just 20 lbs. Aawwww. She cried for a second when I laid her back on the table to start the echo but I laid down beside her and that seemed to be okay. The woman clicked on The Wiggles and I bribed her with some CARS fruit snacks. Worked like a charm.

After THAT test we went over into another room and had an EKG done. That was easy cheesy. She sat back on my lap, squishing my plump belly, and enjoyed a granola bar. She pulled a couple of leads off at one point and that was funny but overall did really well. The doctor came in to see us shortly after that, aaaand

he says that everything looks great! Her pulmonary valve that was once narrow is no longer that way. As she's gotten bigger so has the valve. She basically grew out of it. He says that when he listens to her heartbeat he still hears a murmur but that is a sign of good heart health considering they just ran a ton of tests on her heart and everything checked out just fine. A narrow pulmonary valve can never regress and become narrow again. So, we've been cleared from seeing the cardiologist ever again...unless for some odd reason she develops some other symptom or problem. It was such a relief to get this final testing over with.

Now for some pics:

Here is Anna-Kate last October at 14 months old getting her echo and enjoying her FIRST sucker. The things we do to keep them content. (Also, in my defense, she totally had a bow in her hair but kept pulling it out :))


Here she is with Daddy last year. He was showing how flexible she is.


This was her last year after the appointment. Being a baby can be sooo tiring.



Now, in all the mayhem I didn't get ONE photo of her last appointment :-(. Bummer, I know. I was so excited to compare. I did however, snap this smiley photo of her when we were leaving. I guess you can even tell the difference in a year from this one photo. Aww, my baby is growing up.


I forgot to mention that after the appointment my MIL treated us to Chili's. YUM! I haven't been there in a good year because they jacked the prices up around the time Cheddar's came around. You can't beat the good queso, food and prices you get at any and all Cheddar's locations :-). Anyways, for lunch I thoroughly enjoyed a cup of Chicken Enchilada Soup, some over seasoned fries and a couple of chicken crispers. OH my was it delicious! Oh, and you can't forget the Sprite. It's nothing compared to Dr.Pepper but I'm more careful about my fluids when I'm around my MIL. She doesn't think caffeine is good for the baby. She doesn't know my babies. Their amniotic fluid is probably Dr.Pepper! :-)

potty success FINALLY

So, I've been potty training AK for approximately 11 days now, consistently. I've started and stopped a couple of times before now. I told you, I'm not so patient about these types of enduring things. For the first five days or so we had absolutely NO progress. The first two or three days she would hold it until nap or bedtime and then fill her diaper to the rim with pee. It was getting quite frustrating...like THIS face would indicate.

Then for a couple days after that she would pee one-three times a day in the potty and then pee the rest of the time on the floor. The good thing is that when I would ask her where she went potty she would show me the spot so I could clean it.

THEN, it happened, she finally started peeing in the potty MORE than she was peeing on the floor. This happened on the day that I almost gave us a potty training break. I was sooo tired of cleaning up after her that I almost called it quits for a day or two...or maybe a week. BUT, I thought to myself that THIS might be the day that she "gets" it and I should not give up. And of course, it was indeed the day. Since then we've been doing good around here. We've had one bad day of the last six or so. Yesterday was the best day of ALL. She went potty a total of 13 times! and one being #2! WOOHOO! She had two accidents all day. One being in the morning when I think she just didn't think about it and peed on my leg when I was feeding her some cereal. She stopped mid flow though and went the rest in the potty. The other was later that evening when I totally forgot to ask her to go. Whoops. So, I'll always remember October 4, 2009 as a huge day of potty breakthrough in our home :-).