Rain, rain go away come again another day

What do you do when it's raining outside and you have an 18 month old? You play with PUDDING!! (Thomas was not around when we did this. I know better. He would have never let this fly and when I showed him the pictures he said he was glad that he wasn't around... but Garrison had fun!)

dr appointments

I didn't do any better this month with my posts than I did last month. I'm thinking that this is becoming a pattern. With my due date getting closer and closer I find myself having more and more to do, but not having any energy to do any of it. Can't I just blink and everything be done?

I had a doctors appointment on Monday. I've been experiencing a lot of Braxton hicks contractions again. (I had a ton with Garrison). So I need to take it easier and not try and do so much and be drinking more water. Oops! Everything is going good with Baby Boy Bush (which, on a side note, we are having a really hard time coming up with a name. I thought that it would be easier with baby #2, but I was completely wrong.) His heart beat is 150, he's measuring at 30 weeks even though I'm 31 weeks, but that's no big deal. He's head down and kicking up a storm. This little guy is very active, especially when I'm hungry and as I'm trying to fall asleep. I cannot believe that in less than 10 weeks I'll be taking care of two little boys. I think I'm tired now.

Garrison also had a doctors appointment this week. He's a growing, healthy little boy. He weighs 21 lbs 3 oz and is 30 1/2 inches long. One of the questions I had was about peanut butter. The other day Garrison had some bites of a peanut butter and chocolate malt. About 30 minutes later he had red spots around his mouth and he had bumps all over his face, especially by his mouth and eyes. Could he have a peanut allergy? Our doctor told us give him some peanut butter and find out. That seemed obvious to me, but at the same time I didn't want to do that in case he had a really bad reaction. But if it's doctor recommended... I'll keep you posted.

June

Thomas is out on a coast guard boat tonight with a friend which gave me the perfect opportunity to jump on my blog. I only blogged once in June!? Wow! Where does the time go?

Highlights of June...

Joanna and Shane got MARRIED!! Yep, they tied the knot on June 12th in the fastest ceremony ever, only 5 minutes and 43 seconds. We didn't time it or anything. It was an absolutely perfect day for them. We're so excited to have Shane in our family.

Thomas' brother, Nate, his wife, Kathy, and their two boys, Brody and Andrew came for a visit. It's always fun to have family around. They arrived Friday night and we grilled out. Then sent all the kids to bed while the four of us played Wii and talked. The next day ended up being incredibly hot so we went to a near by park and let the boys play. We have a park that's only a few blocks from our house (not the same one we went to with Nate, Kathy and the boys) that we take Garrison to and he never plays on any of the equipment. I bring a bucket and shovel with so that he can play in the dirt when we get there. However, when we went with Brody and Andrew he played with the bucket and shovel for a few minutes and then wanted to try out some of the equipment. He ended up having so much fun, especially playing peek-a-boo with Thomas in the slides. Nate with Brody (left) and Andrew (right)Last week Superior was actually warm. We had a whole week straight of being in the 80's with NO lake wind. It was glorious!! We pulled out Garrison's pool on a couple of the days and let him play away. I thought he might not like it at first, but I was completely wrong. He jumped right in! I almost wished it was big enough so that I could have joined him.

There are the highlights of June. Hopefully, I can do a better job of keeping up in July.

updates

Thomas-

Tom is officially the varsity head soccer coach at the high school here in town. His season will be starting August 10. The last two years he was the junior varsity coach so he's pretty familiar with the program, kids, schedule, etc. Thomas already has someone lined up to coach when the baby comes, which was a huge concern of mine, of course. AND, a little side note, he wants to start a blog for the team and doesn't really know what he's doing so I get to show him how to go about blogging. Which I'm excited about because, between the two of us, Thomas knows way more about computers than I do.

Me-

Today I had my 6 month check-up and everything is going well. He's becoming very active lately and while the doctor was trying to hear his heartbeat he kept kicking at the machine. The doctor was finally able to come up with 148 beats per minute.


My next appointment will be a long one. I will be heading in to find out if I have gestation diabetes. I have to go drink a sugary drink and sit for an hour before they prick my finger and find out if I have diabetes. Luckily I bought a bunch of books at goodwill the other day and have been dying to read them.

Garrison-

Garrison loves music and he likes it loud. He's only 16 months old and we're already having volume wars. He loves to turn it up and dance away. Here's a video of him doing just that the other day...

videos

Here are the videos that I promised...

Garrison discovers elephants



This video is of a polar bear "attacking" a little girl that was hanging out by the polar bear exhibit. Garrison and Thomas are sitting to the right of where I'm video taping. I really wanted Garrison to go down by the window, but after a few minutes of the polar bear doing this I was glad that he wasn't because it was getting really spooky.


Garrison did great while at the zoo. He didn't get crabby until the very, very end. Who could blame him since we'd been there for 3 hours and during his afternoon nap? When we got in the car I gave him a rice crispy treat, but he was too tired to enjoy it.

...and we we're walking in Memphis....

We took a VACATION and it wasn't to see family. (not that seeing family is a bad thing) We went down to Hernando, MS to visit with our friends James Alan and Whitney and their beautiful daughter Isabel (who is only 4 months younger than Garrison).

Here are pictures from our trip.... (warning: this is a long post with lots of pictures)

Garrison is all ready to start the trip in our rental car (Thursday, May 7)

We drove the first day for 9 hours and stopped at a hotel in Bloomington, IL to spend the night. Garrison ran around the room trying to release all the energy from being couped up all day before crashing for the night.

Day 2 we drove for 7 hours through horrible storms, but finally arrived at our friends house at around 5 pm. We hung out and let Garrison and Isabel play for awhile (Thomas and James Alan have an arranged marriage all set up between these two.) Then they took us out to a nice Mexican restaurant. We wanted to go out to eat at places that we don't have here. It was really good food. Then we went back to their house, put the kids to bed and watched a movie.

Day 3 we headed off to Memphis...

Us at Mud Island

James Alan, Whitney and Isabel at Mud Island

These are two of my favorite pictures from Mud Island

After we hung out at Mud Island for awhile we went and took the monorail back over to Memphis and hopped on a trolley to go tour the Peabody Hotel. Our first trolley ride...

The Peabody Hotel is an incredible hotel, one you would see in a movie. For one night your room can cost anywhere from $209 to $345. In their lobby, however, there is a big marble fountain with live ducks. Everyday at two specific times they pull out a red carpet and the ducks "march". We didn't stay long enough to see the ducks "march", but Garrison was able to go stand by the fountain and watch the ducks swim around. He had a great time pointing and "uh-uhing" at them. (uh-uh is Garrisons language for anything that he can't express with words. Since he doesn't use his words yet, that's pretty much what he does for everything.)

Day 4 was Sunday, May 10... MOTHER'S DAY!! We went to James Alan and Whitney's church. After the service, Whitney and I were pampered with massages (back and hand), neck wraps and food as a special thanks to women from their church. It was awesome!

Monday was our last day in Memphis and we all planned to go to the zoo, but Isabel ended up getting really sick on Sunday and into Monday so it ended up being just us three. This was Garrison's second time at a zoo. The first time we just took him to the Duluth zoo for his first birthday. He wasn't that thrilled, but this time around he seemed to love it.

Sorry to stop my post suddenly, but my YouTube account isn't working. Therefore, I won't be able to post any videos right now. I'll try again tomorrow and hopefully I can add some videos. Stay tuned...

It's a boy!

I had my 5 month ultrasound today and we were able to determine that we are having another boy. Yep, that's right a boy! (we have very distinct pictures of this, but will not be embarrassing the poor guy before he's even born)

This baby was a little more stubborn than Garrison was during the ultrasound. (I'm trying not to compare the two kids so I'll stop with that comment.) I drank a Coke before I went into the ultrasound so that the baby would be a little more jittery and move around more. (That sounds bad). Didn't work. He just curled up into the lower right side of my uterus and hung out there the entire time. We were only able to see his face once. Other than that he was curled up and had his head turned away from us. (see second picture) The ultrasound lady tried everything to get him to move into a better position so that we could get some good pictures, but he never cooperated. Luckily, she was able to still get all the measurements that were needed. We just don't have that many great pictures. Which I'm ok with because my biggest thing was wanting to know what we were having and he definitely let us see that part.

His measurements all came out good. He's healthy and growing like he should be. He weighs 11 oz which puts him one day off from the due date, but the doctors don't really care about that. If he was off by a week then they would go ahead and change the date, but a day or two isn't going to matter.

I, on the other hand, am not growing as much. Hallelujah! Here are my measurements...

month one (8 wks prego): Garrison :109 (I had already gained 5 lbs) baby #2: 108

month two (12 wks prego): Garrison: 113 baby #2: 110

month three (16 wks prego): Garrison: 121 baby #2: 112

month four (20 wks prego): Garrison: 130 baby #2: 118

month nine (ready to explode): Garrison: 167 baby #2: Hopefully not that big, but even if I do I'll have my handsome second son and that's all I care about.