Happy Halloween from a Silly Spider!

We went to visit the grandparents in costume tonight, and then did a VERY small bit of trick-or-treating to a couple friends' houses in the neighborhood across the street. Will's still too young to understand so it's really more fun for us than him. He actually wore the same constume as last year. I ordered it in a size 6-24 months so it was a little big last year and PERFECT this year. The hat, on the other hand, was perfect last year and a mere joke this year. His dome is just too large. We gave the original hat one quick try and then laughed it right back into storage. Instead, I found him the antenna headband for $1.99 at a Halloween store.

First, here's a quick step back in time for a photo comparison of how much he's grown in one year.

Will at 4 months:


And Will at 16 months:


And here's some more pictures.


Getting tickle-kisses on his neck from daddy.

I love this expression.






Ooh! All the pretty colorful wrappers in Grandma Riedeman's treat basket! He seemed to be more interested in the plastic and crinkly noise than what was inside.

Grandma Skees gave Will a banana, some graham crackers, and a few quarters for his piggy bank. She bought him that personalized trick-or-treat bag last year to stick his goodies in this year. (Will really enjoys toys that he has to drop something into a hole or slot, like his shape-sorting toy or coins in his piggy bank.)

And right before heading for home, Uncle Zach was the highlight of the evening when he read Will a book. Better than any treat...





Hope YOU all had a Happy Halloween!

And finally, in closing, I wanted to add one more picture to better explain a previous post I made about whether or not to give Will his first haircut. Take a look at this photo:



Do you see those little whispy curls above each ear? That kid could get away with murder because of those curls. They make me melt. What kind of mother would I be to snip away such sweet little curls? Now you see why it's such a dilemma...

Good Morning.

I heard the most beautiful sound this morning. It was like a "woosha, woosha, woosha" and it made me smile. It was our baby's heartbeat and it was loud and clear.

I once listened to a motivational speaker at a work conference talk about how he recorded his unborn child's heartbeat and turned that beautiful sound (on a very loud scale) into his morning alarm. His speech was on choosing your attitude and what better way to start your day then with a noise that makes you happy. It definitely brightened MY day - I'm in a fabulous mood!

This morning was a routine prenatal check-up at my OB office. It was short and sweet - we're right on target. I'm feeling good and now we go back in 5 weeks. Usually they want to see you every 4 weeks, but in FIVE weeks I will be nearly 20 weeks gestation and we decided to combine appointments with the BIG ultrasound. Hooray! So on December 4th, Craig & I will get to see our baby via ultrasound again and how much he or she has grown since the first glimpse we got at almost 9 weeks. Also, we will hopefully be able to find out the baby's gender! We can't wait! I would say it's going to be a long 5-week wait, but considering how the time has flown so far, it will be here before we know it. It is so surreal that December 5th will mark the halfway point of this pregnancy!

Preg-tarded?

Call it Baby Brain, Mommy Brain, or my personal favorite... Preg-tarded. Whatever you call it, it is a fact that, during pregnancy, you lose MANY brain cells. I have entered the lovely stage of being a forgetful, babbling idiot. How is that different from my pre-pregnancy self, Craig wants to know? Well it's like walking into a room and forgetting why you went in there... x5! I am forgetting favors people ask of me, forgetting errands I meant to run, and doing stupid things. Last night I was baking some pumpkin and butterscotch chip mini muffins and I unrolled a stick of butter... right into the garbage. I realized it just as I was about to drop the wrapper into the bowl of my stand mixer. What a waste.

When I was pregnant with Will, it was worse. Once, when I got home from work with swollen ankles, I removed my nylons (I was wearing a skirt that particular day) and got busy getting dinner ready in the kitchen. Later that evening, I couldn't find where I'd set down my nylons. The next day I found them in the saran wrap drawer.

Another evening when I walked into the bathroom to take a shower, I was mostly undressed and had to pee before getting into the shower. So my 2 tasks before showering should have been:
1) remove underwear and toss into the hamper
2) sit down on toilet to pee
Instead, I removed my underwear, lifted the toilet lid, and dropped said underwear into the toilet. And it's always like you realize your stupidity one second too late... I just started laughing and told Craig what I'd done. He said "Good thing you realized it before you peed in the hamper!"

So I know I'm probably in for more ridiculous, preg-tarded behavior. I just hope I don't try to feed my poor child the dog's food or forget to pay the electrical bill or something tragic like that.

In other news, Will has taken a fancy to cavorting around in the nude whenever I let him. Heck, I wouldn't want to be stuck in a diaper 24/7 either! And I used to love running around naked when I was a kid. So before bath time or between diaper changes, I've been letting him run around in his birthday suit to... air out. As long as said cavorting is done over an easy to clean floor, we're all good. I am proud to tell you that my son has never had a diaper rash. Well, except once in response to an antibiotic, but it was minor and gone in a day.

In the last month or so, Will has stumbled upon his private parts during bath time. He's quite intrigued with them for a few brief moments and then the plastic fish and rubber ducky win over his attention for the remainder of bath time. Daddy is so proud.

A 2nd Trip to the Pumpkin Farm

... this time we brought dad.





How stinkin' adorable are my two boys?

Will loves to look out the window at cars going by or people entering or leaving our driveway, but he has to stand on tiptoes. So this weekend, I put our old nursing foot stool out for him to get a better view, and he LOVES it!



Also, I want to run this by you, but I think our kid's a genius. So he's on the changing table yesterday playing peek-a-boo with me and I start reciting this book he got from the doctor's office with a bunch of baby faces in it... "Peek-a-boo, I see you, Thinking, Laughing, Crying too..." (I have like 75% of Will's books memorized.) Anyway, he gives me a look like "Hmm... I know that one." And as soon as I get him down from the changing table, he heads straight for the diaper bag. He NEVER gets into his diaper bag. It sits beside his hamper and diaper pail, sort of out of sight. So he's trying to get into it, and I'm thinking No Way... But sure enough, he gets the flap open and pulls out that book!!! How the heck did he remember that that book is in the diaper bag?! We honestly don't travel with the diaper bag all that much anymore and he didn't even go searching over in his bookshelf where he ALWAYS sits and looks through his books. Genius!

He just LOVES books. And he always holds them right side up and turns pages the right direction, which I've heard are good early-reader skills. This weekend while I was cooking in the kitchen, Will was laying on his back in the dining room doorway holding a book up over his head and flipping through pages. Every so often, he'd roll to his belly and look through some more... then back to his back. It was so cute - he looked much older than he is. And if you sit in his glider chair or on the floor, he'll bring you a book and climb into your lap for you to read it to him.

Also this weekend, Will can climb onto his rocking horse and rock. It's the first time he's coordinated that motion. And he said "neigh" for a horse sound today.

Craig & I have been debating whether or not to give Will his first haircut pretty soon. He sort of has a mullet going, but sometimes it curls up around his ears and I love that. We'll probably just trim the bottom and let the rest go. We'll see. Why is this such a big decision for me? I feel like it's too soon, like he's just a baby. Craig's torn too, but not for sentimental reasons. We both just like Will's hair kind of shaggy.

Oh My God! It's TWINS!

Ha! Not for Craig & I, if that's what you were thinking. My sister Casey and her husband Wes had their first ultrasound yesterday afternoon to see their baby's heartbeat and figure out the due date. And wouldn't you know? There they were... TWO strong, little hearts beating away. The doctor said everything looked as good as you could ask for at this stage. And although they determined her due date to be June 18th, the doctor anticipates she will likely deliver in May. So our children may be just a month apart. Our whole family is overwhelmed with excitement! Casey & Wes are being blessed twice for all the wait and heartache it took to get to this point. Wow. Just wow. I can't even wrap my mind around the idea of twins! What an adventure they are in for!

You can view Casey's new blog at: www.clrethman.blogspot.com.

2nd Trimester & Belly Pictures

On Friday last week, I reached the 13-week milestone in pregnancy, which ends the first trimester and also mostly diminishes the risk of miscarriage. Hooray! For many women, this is usually when the unpleasant symptoms of morning sickness, nausea, fatigue, etc. fade away to make room for a renewed sense of energy and comfort. The second trimester is often the most fun because your belly becomes obvious, you start to feel movement from your mysterious little one, you reach the halfway point (20 weeks) which also marks the milestone of the BIG ultrasound - the last chance most women have to SEE their baby before birth day and the exciting opportunity to find out the sex of the baby, and finally just an overall sense of energy and excitement allowing for increased exercise and activity that you might have been too tired for in the first trimester.

For me, nausea and fatigue are mostly gone. I still have particularly exhausting days and some days when all food sounds repulsive. I don't really crave anything in particular, though garbage food is surprisingly appealing to me, which I'm not used to. I'm doing my best to eat healthy and drink plenty of water (my goal is 64oz every day) and luckily it's my favorite cooking season, so I'm motivated to eat well.

We took an updated belly picture last night and I was shocked at how much I'd changed in the 2 weeks since our last picture. As I mentioned before, I'm "showing" much quicker this time around. I noticed a change as early as 6 1/2 weeks! From what the doctor says, your stomach muscles aren't as tight the 2nd time around after being stretched once (and boy were mine stretched!) so your body sort of "remembers the drill"... and it shows. My clothes still mostly fit. No problem with pants, just some of my shirts are a getting a little short to cover my belly. So I'm wearing longer, looser tops.

So here are the belly shots we've taken so far.

6 weeks, 2 days (already a tiny bump):



9 weeks exactly (another noticeable change):



11 weeks, 3 days (not a whole lot of change, thank goodness!, because this was shortly after Kelly's wedding):



13 weeks, 3 days (whoa! big change!):



So that last one was last night.
Total weight gain as of 13 weeks: 2# 10oz.
But I also started out this time 8# less than I did with Will.

Looking forward to the 2nd trimester so things can hopefully start to seem more real. I still sometimes forget I'm pregnant. Just busier this time with a toddler and less time to focus on myself. We also waited longer to announce the news this time, so I hadn't really been talking about it to anyone, and that made us almost forget some days. But I'm excited to get to know this new person and, for me, that starts long before birth.

Happy 30th Birthday Craig!

My handsome hubby turned 30 on Saturday! We had a very busy weekend celebrating: dinner & a movie with friends on Friday, friends over on Saturday (I cooked a big pot of chili and ordered a special cake), and then lunch & dinner with each of our families on Sunday. I am exhausted!

Here's a few photos from his cake on Saturday:









No matter what he tells you, Craig is still a little boy at heart, and loves his special birthday treatment and any surprises that go along with it. (He also LOVES Christmas morning.) I got him a Tagheuer watch for his 30th birthday present and he's super excited about it.

Also, this weekend, we finished up Phase 2 of our Destruction Project at the newlyweds' home. (Phase 1 took place on the 10th.) This is a ritual amongst our friends/family. No actual damage is done... just tedious mess-making and "redecorating" with a little creativity. We put rice on ceiling fans, removed labels from cans, saran wrapped just about everything, created a giant spiderweb consisting of 2000 yards of ribbon throughout the house around every possible object, filled cups of water to cover the entire kitchen floor, filled a stairway with balloons and created another spiderweb of ribbon at the bottom to hold them in place and block the entrance to the second floor, etc. etc... It really was a masterpiece - our best work to date, I think.

I know, I know. You're probably thinking "how awfully rude of them - it would be so terrible to come home from vacation to such a mess!" And you're right. But it's tradition. It happened to all the rest of our homes. And Kelly is notoriously the worst offender... so she had this coming to her. Poor Steve just married into it. Anyway, they returned home on Sunday and were very good sports about it - got right to work cleaning.

Here are some photos for your viewing pleasure: