Last Year and Now

My friend posted a picture of her two kids on the slide last January and this January to show how they had grown and I thought it was cute so I decided to do one too.  Paige is whole lot bigger now than she was last year at 4 months.

 

She doesn't really ride on Lucas's lap anymore.  This is how they go down the slide now.

 Paige loves the slide and she will climb the stairs, or more recently the ladder which scares me every time, and go down the slide all by herself.  She's getting so big!

We get blossoms on the tree outside our house around this time every year, although this year I think they might be two or three weeks early.  I decided to play around with the new lens that we got for Christmas and take some pretty pictures of them.

 The tree is swarming with bees which excites and terrifies Lucas all at the same time.

19 Weeks

I'll be 19 weeks on Monday.  Almost halfway!  I've been feeling the baby kick a lot this week which I love.  We find out the gender on February 4th.  Based purely on how this pregnancy compares to both my pregnancies with Paige and Lucas, I think this baby is going to be a boy.  I started gaining weight early on like I did with Lucas.  My belly popped out much sooner like it did with Lucas.  And my nausea has been intermittent since 12 weeks, like it was with Lucas.  With Paige it was done around 14 weeks and never came back.  I felt sick just earlier today.  It's so weird how it comes and goes.  And look at this belly comparison picture.  I mean my belly is pretty much identical to when I was this far along with Lucas.

I was looking back at the old wives tale gender prediction things and how I answered when I was pregnant with Paige, and they are all pretty much the same for all three pregnancies.  My acne has gotten worse every time, I've craved cheese every time, and I sleep on my left side every time.  So I think those are more me than a way to tell the gender.  Oh, and the Chinese gender prediction calendar has said girl every time.  The Mayan calendar however said boy for Lucas and girl for Paige, so that one has been right so far.  It says boy for this one so I guess we shall see.  

An actual scientific study has shown that placenta placement as early as 6 weeks can determine gender with 97% accuracy.  That's pretty dang good!  When the placenta is on the right side of the uterus, it's a boy, and when it's on the left side, it's a girl.  I have ultrasound photos where you can see the placenta, the only problem is when you ultrasound the belly the image you see is reverse the placement in your body so you'd have to reverse it to get which side of your body the placenta is actually on.  BUT, some ultrasound techs will reverse the image that pops up on the screen so that you don't have to reverse it, and some of them don't.  So, there is no way to tell if the image I have is reversed or not, so that leaves us at square one.  But for anyone out there that is pregnant or planning on getting pregnant, just ask your doctor at your first appointment what side the placenta is on.  You're welcome!

Anyway, we're all very excited.  Lucas is always patting and kissing my tummy.  He likes to put his ear up to it and hear the baby swimming.  Paige really has no clue, but I'm sure she'll love poking and sitting on the baby soon enough.

Playing at the Park

Lucas learned how to ride his bike without training wheels last week.  He is so proud of himself.  I'm proud of him for figuring it out so quickly.  It took him about 30 minutes to pretty much master it.  We went to the park to ride his bike every day for about an hour or two.  I think he made himself sore riding so much.

Here he is showing off his skills.  The first part of the video he's showing his riding skills.  In the second part of the video he shows off his starting and stopping skills.

Lucas has also been practicing the monkey bars.  He can make it all the way across, but for some reason he never does it while I have the camera out.  This is the best I've been able to get on video.

We've had some unseasonably warm weather lately so you'll notice we're wearing short sleeves in most of these pictures.  It has been SO nice!  We've been spending as much time outside as we can.

Paige is a climber and she is getting more and more brave every day.  Playing at the park almost gives me a heart attack some days.  She just thinks she's a big girl and can play on the big kid stuff.

And lastly, we had spaghetti for dinner last night.  Both the kids loved it, and both of them insisted on feeding themselves.  Lucas did a slightly better job than Paige.

Happy New Year

For the last two New Years I've done a recap of the previous year and I like looking back at all the fun we've had throughout the year so I'm going to keep up the tradition.  I have to be honest, though, 2013 was not my favorite year.  It was a rough one with lots of ups and downs, but I'm trying to count our blessings and what better way than focusing on all the good that happened to us in 2013.

I started off the year teaching preschool for the first time.  It was really fun but also super stressful because I had never done it before and I was so worried about not doing a good job.  Throughout the year I taught a bunch more times and I have gotten pretty good at it.  Now it's not nearly as stressful or as much work.  Lucas has made some serious advances as well.  I can see a huge difference in his learning from January to December.  He is getting to be so smart and so creative, and is even starting to read!

Paige has obviously made some huge advances over the course of the year too.  She started out the year only being able to roll over. Then in February she started sitting up. In March she was crawling, getting her first tooth, and drinking smoothies through a straw. In April she was crawling and climbing the stairs, and eating baby food.  In May she was trying to walk and eating real foods like grapes and sandwiches.  She also developed her love of shoes around this time, except she was still in the phase where she just ate them all the time, which was not my favorite.  
In June she went on her first airplane flight, learned to clap and wave, and really started getting into mischief.  In July she was walking and crawling down the stairs and was nicknamed the "tower of terror".  In August she got her first haircut from Lucas and started saying her first words. In September she turned a year old.  In October she graduated to a forward facing carseat.  In November she had her first overnight babysitting experience.  And in December she got to play in snow for the first time.  She is such a different baby in some ways, and yet she is still the sweet little angel we started out the year with.

Another big change of 2013 is that we bought a minivan.  We went on a lot of fun trips in the mini van and have discovered that it makes traveling with kids SO much easier!  We went to Disneyland - twice!  We drove to Utah twice as well.  We also did lots of driving around to the zoo, museums, the beach, and a couple trips to the airport to drop people off for flights cause we now have SO much room for extra people and cargo!  That's probably one of my favorite parts about the van is we can pick people up and carpool places rather than having to take lots of vehicles.

Some milestones for Lucas this year: he turned 4, he started his second year of preschool, he rode tower of terror for the first time, he went to the dentist for the first time and was amazing!, he gave his first haircut, he gave his first talk in primary, had his first of probably 30 starbucks vanilla bean frappuccinos this year (he might be addicted), and turned into one of the best and sweetest big brothers I've ever seen.

Ryan and I celebrated our 7th anniversary this year by taking a trip to Mexico.  We started a new tradition as a family of having pizza and movie night on Friday nights and the kids love it!  We also went on a lot of family bike rides with our double bike trailer that we love!

And last but not least, we found out that we will be welcoming a new baby to the family in June of 2014.  Lucas is very excited and he wants to have another girl and name her Paige.  We're going to have to work on that.

Well, when you only focus on the good stuff, 2013 doesn't look too bad.  Here's to hoping that 2014 is a great year for us and for all our friends and family.