Potty time...almost

Hello all...

Recently, Lily has started showing a few signs that she is getting ready to start the potty training process and although we are not quite there yet, we are starting to introduce her to the potty. 

Hello potty, I'm Lily and I think I like you!  

We are just trying to do a before and after bath type thing.  I would normally just do it before bath, but she seems to like to pee right AFTER she gets out of the tub.  I mean, seriously, if a child walks to another room or area every time to poop, she is getting ready to be potty trained.  Not there yet, but getting there. 

A few more things going on...
ECI came last week to do her DAY-C test and see if she still qualified for services and come to find out, our pediatrician hasn't taken the seizure disorder diagnosis off of her yet so she still qualifies for services only because of the diagnosis though.  He has just changed it to a seizure disorder with nonrecurring seizures....  We go next week for Lily's (late) 12 mth well baby visit and I'm going to talk to him about this and find out his reasoning behind this.  I really don't want the diagnosis to follow her around, but if there is a reason for it, I want to be as informed as possible.  As far as her Day-C test goes, she scored very well. 

Here are her scores:

Cognitive- 17 mths

Communication- 18 mths

Social-Emotional- 18 mths

Physical- 18 mths

Adaptive- 17 mths

Lily has cut 4 molars this past month and is driving me crazy.  I am so tired of being bitten, it is ridiculous.  I know the poor thing is in pain, but good-NESS.  She has still yet to get her two bottom lateral incisors...

You can see some of the little buggers in this picture...

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Little Miss Lily

Hello all! 
Just thought I would give a little Lily update.  Lily is growing like a weed and running this house. 

Literally...her favorite thing to do these days is run around the house acting like a goofball and to chase the cats. The past month and a half she has started talking so much and become quite the little person.  I guess she knows ECI comes next week and they are particularly looking at her speech to see about qualifying her for this next year since we no longer have a seizure disorder as a diagnosis.  :)

A few new things she is saying:
Weeeeeee!
Ho ho ho
Key
Kitty cat (key cat)
Also when you start singing the ABC's, you say "A,B" and she says "C, D".


Here is a cute video of her talking:

She knows her belly button ( of course), her mouth, teeth, hair, feet, and hands.
She LOVES to be read to and to look though books.  She will bring you books all day long and sit on your lap while you read to her.   Today, between Brandon and I, we read "My first Mother Goose" about 10 times.

It's a...

BOY!   

We went for our 20 week appt on Dec 30th and originally, we were not supposed to be scheduled for an ultrasound but they messed up and scheduled us one.  At our dec 2nd ultrasound, the doctor hinted that it was a boy and laughed when I asked if there was a chance it could still be a girl.  Well, he told us he was 90% sure, but we were not ready to tell anyone till we knew 100%.  Frankly, I was still holding out for another girl!  Well, as you can see from the scan on the 30th, it was quite obvious compared to the one on the 2nd that our itty bittiest baby is indeed a boy!

December 2nd "boy" scan

 

December 30th "boy" scan

 

The baby started moving on Christmas Day.  I felt him that night as I was laying down in bed.  It was a beautiful little Christmas blessing.  We left LA on December 27th so we could spend sometime getting things done around the house before Brandon went back to work on the 3rd.

On New Years Day, I started running a fever which lasted for 13 hours.  Longest most intense fever ever and I don't know if it is because of the pregnancy, but it was rough.  All the Tylenol did was bring my fever down from 102 to 100.  We started getting really worried about the baby and said that if it didn't go away by the morning, we would go to the ER.  Apparently, God heard our prayers and the fever finally went away and I felt fine.  So strange....

Anywho, we are super excited about the little man.  Candice is already planning a baby shower at prenatal pics in March with a "One Fish Two Fish" theme.  Bring on the blue!!!!

The itty bitty baby at 13/14 weeks

Hello all. 
Lily is sleeping under the Christmas tree right now and I am finally getting around to putting up an update from my last doctor appointment on December 2nd.  The baby looked great and was right on track.  We did another ultrasound because last time, our dates and the size of the baby wasn't adding up.  I wasn't originally scheduled for one, but since the meds I am on can cause a heart defect so we wanted to make sure the baby was growing right on target and sure enough, it was.  The baby was measuring perfectly at a June 1st/2nd due date and the baby was moving all around being so sweet.  The heart rate was 156 bpm (Lily was ALWAYS 160+).  That is one of the things that makes me think this one is going to be a boy.  The second inclination is that I have been craving red meat.  With Lily, I wanted any and all meat far FAR away from me.  This one has me craving a hamburger a day.  My third inclination that this one is going to be a boy is that I keep referring to it as a "he".  With Lily, I always said, "she".  Who knows.  We shall see soon enough. 
Another really great thing is that we saw during the ultrasound is that the baby was taking "breaths".  It is kinda early to see that, but either way the doctor says that is a sign of good brain development.  Here are some pics from the scan...

 Profile shot

Face shot

 A little bitty foot.  So sweet!

Another profile shot

I hope everyone has a very Merry Christmas and a blessed new year.  We leave on Friday or Saturday to go back to LA, but we will only be there till the 26th or 27th.  We are coming home early this year because I have another doctor appointment on the 30th and it will give us a week to get things done around the house before Brandon goes back to work. 

BTW, I know I may get fussed at for saying too early, but Brandon has gotten a job offer at Chevron!  We will know more after the first of the year, but we are very excited and very VERY proud of him.  He works so hard and does some pretty cool stuff.  :)  Great job, love! 

Lily is ONE YEAR OLD!!!

Hello everyone!  Well, on December 1st, the big day was finally here.  Lily turned 1 year old!  What a crazy road it has been, but it has been an absolute joy watching her grow.  I just can't believe she is already a year old.  We celebrated her big day on Saturday, December 4th and had tons of family and friends around to celebrate the occasion.  The theme for her party was Winter One-derland.  I thought it would be fitting because last year, we begged to leave the hospital on December 3rd so we wouldn't get discharged in the snow on December 4th.  We had crazy amounts of snow here that day.  That being said, on December 4th last year, we also took a few ambulance rides through the snow to get to Texas Children's. Today, Dec 7th, we are officially 1 year without any seizures!  Yeayy! :)

When the snow first started falling last year.  It got to the point where the grown was completely coated for hours.

My little one on December 4th last year.  Sleeping through the snow.

My little Lily one year later playing outside at her first Winter One-derful birthday party (in 72 degree weather, mind you).  :)

Here are some things Lily is doing at 1 year old:
Going up stairs
Going down the slide in her treehouse without any assistance
Does "Twinkle Twinkle" motions when we sing "Twinkle twinkle, little star"
Knows her belly button, hair, nose and feet.

Some firsts we have had this past month:
First stomach virus with vomiting :(
First fever (the day before her birthday)
Turned around in her carseat (Nov 18th)
Walks all the way down the street to the mailbox with me
Trip to Maryland (2nd plane ride)
First Thanksgiving
Will bring us books for us to read to her and will let us know if she wants a different book.

Things she has said:
Night Night (more frequently)
Bye bye
Nana
Mom
Daddy (da-yee)
Cat
Hungry (huh-eee)--did it once in Maryland, but she did it! 
She is also using her head shakes (yes and no) more frequently when you ask her a question

What a joy this past year has been.  I love this little girl so much.  She is such a funny, sweet, happy girl .  She has learned to make these silly little faces where she will lift her eyebrows and look at you out of the corner of her eye and if you smile at her, she can't help but to smile back.  Sometimes, she will just laugh to get you to laugh and we laugh back and forth over nothing all the time.  Her smile is contagious and her laugh makes my heart melt.  She always wants her mom around, but would pick her daddy to play with any day over mom.    Mom is not nearly as much fun as daddy is. :)  She's so great.  I am so lucky to be her mother! 

Happy First Birthday, Lily!  We love you sooo much!  :)

Thanksgiving in Maryland!

I just realized that I forgot to post about our fabulous trip to Maryland for Thanksgiving!  Everything was wonderful.  Candice was a great hostess as always and Maryland was just absolutely beautiful.  Lily THOROUGHLY enjoyed Thanksgiving dinner to say the least.  She is an amazing eater and will eat anything and everything you put in front of her, just like her daddy.  She loved it! 

As you all know, Lil was supposed to be here on Thanksgiving Day last year, but decided she was waiting till all the leftovers ran out, so this was her first Thanksgiving.

Also, Hallelujah, Dave was back in the states this year to fry up a turkey right!  Last year, Dave was on deployment and we had a few issues with the turkey frying.  Nothing big, Brandon just dropped the turkey a foot above the hot grease because he couldn't find one of the pieces to the turkey fryer and then Mrs. Jerry almost fell in the fryer...seriously, like fell a foot away from the fryer.  Thankfully, Dave was back for it this year to take over and the peanut gallery stayed inside far FAR away from the fryer!  :)

The day after Thanksgiving, we decided to take a ride up to Hershey, PA (3 hrs away) to go to the Christmas in CandyLand up there.

That probably will never happen again.  First of all, omg, it was absolutely freezing.  I think it was 30 degrees or something like that.  Second of all, it wasn't NEARLY as amazing as it sounded on their website.  Now granted, I would love to visit Hershey again to go to the museum and to go to the Chocolate World (factory tour), but the park was not worth it at all.   The Santa was ok, but they have a better Santa set up at the Galleria.  Santa and "his reindeer" are almost a mile away from each other and this did not make for a happy southern girl when you have to walk from one side of the park to the other with a freezing cold baby.  No me gusta.

Anywho, Hershey wouldn't be THAT bad if you did it in the spring and had time to visit the other things around town, but forget the park.  It was pretty bad.
It was a wonderful visit though.  I LOVE IT when the kids are able to play together.  Lily just lights up when she is around other kids her age and she absolutely adores her cousins.  I love getting videos and pictures of them together.  These are just moments you can't get back. 
 Here is a video I love from the week there.  :)

Exciting day!

Well, the cat's out of the bag.  Our families finally know so I can now make it public.  We are expecting another little bundle of joy in June!  We went for our first sonogram on November 4th and everything looked great.  The heartbeat was a super strong 180 bpm and it was moving all over the place.  Well, it wasn't moving all over the place till it's sister started screaming to high heaven.  Then, it was everywhere...  I don't know if it was because it heard her or because my blood pressure must have sky rocketed when she started acting like a hot mess.  Either way, it was cute. 
Here is a picture of the scan.

I was kinda worried because based on my LMP, my due date would be June 1st and I would have been 10w 1d.  The baby was only showing to be between 9w 3days and 9 w 5days.  With Lily, she always measured a week over, but the doctor said that as long as the heartbeat was strong, he wasn't worried about it.  I guess this is just the beginning of the process of not comparing pregnancies/children.   Instead of a June 1st due date, we are now June 5th. 
I may have not been complaining about it to the public, but the morning sickness has been just as bad with this one.  The only difference is that I throw up almost every night and not in the morning.   Odd, but I now take my prenatals at night so I'm not a mess all day.  A 2nd pregnancy with a 11 month old is no joke.  It's freaking hard.  I completely forgot the EXHAUSTION level.  Boy...not fun, but thankfully the first trimester is almost over and THANKFULLY, my sweet Lily is now putting herself to sleep at night so I can finally relax in the evenings.
We waited 3 months to tell our families this time.  Brandon wanted to wait till CHRISTMAS so we could tell everyone face to face, but I told him that wasn't going to happen.   We called my mom the night before we left for Maryland and she made the big announcement to the whole family on Thanksgiving Day.  Then, when we arrived at the airport in Baltimore, Lily was wearing a shirt that said, "A little birdie told me a secret..." (on the front) and on the back it said, "I'm going to be a big sister!".  We just figured we would wait to see how long it took Grammy to figure out to look on the back of the shirt!!!  It took till we had just about collected all our bags at baggage claim.  I think it would have taken longer if Candice hadn't figured it out first! 

Anywho, we are very excited about our upcoming arrival.  This will make an age difference of  almost exactly 18 months between Lily and the new baby.  It will be tough at first, but when is it ever "easy"?   Take care everyone!  :)