Celebrating Samuel And McKenna

As you probably know, my friend Ang is due to have her sweet little McKenna exactly 5 weeks after I was due with Samuel. We had been having so much fun being pregnant together, and are so thrilled for our kids to have more friends to grow up with… Jack and Austin are such good friends, and we just know that Sam and McKenna will be, too!

Both Ang and I really wanted to have showers for our little ones- not that we really needed stuff for them, but we just really really wanted to celebrate our kids with our friends… and cake! We wanted to throw each other a shower, as each of us threw the other a shower for our first kids, but with our due dates being 5 weeks apart the timing was a little difficult. So, we decided to just hold our showers on the same day… at the same time… at the same place! We didn’t want to seem greedy that we were throwing ourselves a shower, though, so we recruited our friend, Ang’s sister-in-law Susan, to be our ‘cover’ and pretended that she was throwing the shower for us! I don’t think we ended up fooling anyone, though. Especially since we told everyone the truth any time the shower came up!

We have such a great group of friends, and we had such a fun time celebrating our little ones’ impending arrival with them! Ang and I had a great time preparing for the shower, too. We had so much fun designing the invitations, shopping, and planning the cake and food for it!

The Invitation

I had seen these Cake Balls on a cake blog that I follow, and ever since then I had been dying to make them! They were a lot harder to make than I thought they would be, but they sure were yummy!!!

The Cake! We had a fun time keeping everything even between pink and blue, and inside the cake was no exception… I made one of the layers pink and the other one blue!

The Hostesses/Guests of Honor

The babies! Ang is 32 weeks here and I am 37 weeks

Thanksgiving

This was the first year that Dave had Thanksgiving off in a very long time! We've had a lot going on this year, but overall it is still so easy to see how much we are blessed. Having Dave home was just icing on the cake this year, as we have so much to be thankful for! So much, in fact, that I'm not even going to try to list them here ;)

Dave was working the day before, so on his way home that morning he stopped to pick up his mom on the way home and the four of us (well, including Sam, the five of us!) went out for a yummy Thanksgiving breakfast at The Original Pancake House- one of my favorite places! Not very Thanksgiving-y, but I adore breakfast foods, so I was thankful! Jack Jack was thankful, too... he loves his Grandma Han and was very excited that she was with us. And he got to eat pancakes! When we were on our way home, Jack was a little concerned that going home meant that Thanksgiving was over, but we assured him that we still had a lot of fun planned for the day. He asked if Grandma Han could stay and play with him for a little bit, and was very excited when we told him yes! He had a lot of fun with her, and Dave and I were very pleased to see how happy Jack made her.

I was so pleased to get such a nice picture of the two of them both smiling! It's going up in Jack's room (once we get our act together and start putting his Big Boy room together), and she's getting one as part of her Christmas present. Don't tell her!

After Jack and Grandma Han got to play together, we took her home and then headed over to my aunt's house for a Thanksgiving feast! Jack was also very excited about that. He loves to go to Nana's house(he calls her Nana because that's what her grandkids- his cousins- call her), and he was very excited that we were going to get to "eat Thanksgiving"! He was having so much fun, that he cried when it was time to go home! Poor kid!

Yes, I always look this tired. Yes, I am as tired as I look. Yes, I'm pretty blessed to have such a handsome and sexy husband who tells me I look beautiful even though I know otherwise.


Jack's favorite part of Thanksgiving- playing with grandpa!


Jack's other favorite part of Thanksgiving- holding baby Luke!


And just for fun, here is me at 27 weeks pregnant.

I hope your Thanksgiving was a great as ours was!

Absolutely, Definitely, And Without A Doubt

You may remember, from this post and this post, that I am the only one that has been 110% certain that This One is a boy. I mean, before I was even pregnant I knew that the next one was going to be a boy- so much so that Jack picked up on it and told Dave "I want a baby brother!' And ever since I found out I was pregnant I've been telling Jack that he was going to have a baby brother, so he would have been very confused if This One turned out to be a girl!

At both the 13 week and the 18 week ultrasounds, I definitely saw boy parts and ultrasound technicians both confirmed my suspicions. Dave, however, was still skeptical because he couldn't see it. Since he was the only one in there with me, and he wasn't entirely convinced, no one else believed that This One was a boy, either! Dave wouldn't listen to me when I told him "Trust me, I've seen enough ultrasounds to know exactly what I'm looking at and I know what I saw!" and he insisted that we needed to get another ultrasound to be certain, so I called and made an appointment at First Look Sonogram. We were allowed to bring up to 10 people with us, so on Friday, November 20th, Dave and I brought Jack, my parents, my sister, baby Luke and Grammy to our appointment to get a good look at This One.

Waiting for the appointment


And cooing over Baby Luke


The Big Brother!


One of the Big Cousins!

Then they called my name and we all went back to the room for the ultrasound! I laid on the bed next to the u/s equipment, Dave sat next to me, Jack saw a toy in the middle of the room and immediately ran to play with that, and everyone else sat on the big comfy couches which were aimed at the screen so that they could watch the ultrasound.

And then, I smiled ear-to-ear when the first thing out of the technician's mouth was that This One most DEFINITELY is a boy!!! As soon as she put the wand to my belly the evidence was right there for us all to see! (And yes, I do have photographic evidence, but I feel weird posting a photo of the baby's "goods", even if it is just an ultrasound. If you really want to see it, email me and I'll send you the proof!) This One is absolutely, definitely, and without a doubt, a BOY!!!!

3D ultrasounds are amazing. Seriously, it was so awesome to experience that ultrasound! I think it kind of helped a little with my slight guilt over not obsessing over This One like I did with Jack... I loved getting to concentrate on him and it kind of felt like it was something I was doing for him, rather than just normal pregnancy things. Plus, up until then I hadn't even bought him anything except for something off the dollar rack at Target, and even then I only did it because I was feeling guilty that I hadn't bought him anything! Apparently he still loves to sleep with his hands up in front of his face, so I jiggled him and poked him and he finally moved his hands and then we could see his beautiful face! He has my nose, and I think he has Jack's amazing lips! It was so cute, he kind of started waking up at one point (probably because I was poking his butt!) and we could see him yawn and swallow and stick out his tongue, and he wiggled his eyebrows and he frowned and his forehead wrinkled! It was adorable :)

Jack Jack thought it was pretty cool, too, and we were all really impressed that he seemed to know exactly what he was looking at! He was quite the little narrator, telling us all exactly what "my baby brother" was doing at every second! "Oh that's his hand! He opened his mouth! Look his eyebrows! That's my baby brother!" It was so fun! The u/s tech got quite a kick out of him!

Oh, and once we got visual confirmation (okay, once Dave got visual confirmation, since we all know that I know what I saw at both of the other ultrasounds!), This One officially had a name! So, I'd like to introduce you to

Samuel Kenneth Reeves

Oh Yeah, I'm Pregnant!

My poor baby is so screwed... I'm already not paying as much attention to him as I did to Jack at this stage. I mean, don't get me wrong, I think about him all the time and I am so excited for him and I love him so much! It's just... when I was pregnant with Jack I would immediately update anyone and everyone on how he was doing and give them the play-by-play whenever something cool happened or I had a doctor's appointment, especially an ultrasound. This time, though, I have been so busy that I haven't had a chance to update the blog with very much pregnancy related news! I mean, I want to, but when I get a chance to update lately I don't have enough time to do much more than post pictures and run, and since This One is still baking, I don't have pictures of him! And it's pretty hard to post pictures that I don't have, you know? I hope This One knows that this doesn't mean that I love him any less!

So, to make up for my lameness and to catch you all up, I'm going to devote a massive post to This One! As of today I am 19 weeks and 3 days pregnant, and there are 144 days to go until my due date! I have been completely amazed at the differences between my pregnancy with Jack and my pregnancy with This One. I didn't have any morning sickness, or even nausea, with Jack but this time I'm still struggling with the nausea! Seriously, I'm almost to the halfway point and I'm still getting nauseous! I think the main difference in this pregnancy is that I'm feeling (and looking!) way more pregnant at each stage than I did with Jack. Things have been happening so much sooner this time around then they did the last time, and honestly my body felt as achy at 16 weeks this time as it did at 7 months the last time! The heartburn started almost immediately this time, where I didn't get it until 6 months last time (and boy howdy did I get it!). Crazy. Oh well, if that what it takes to cook this kid, then I'll take it! It could always be worse!

On the positive side, the fun parts of being pregnant also started much much sooner this time than it did last time! With Jack, I first felt him fluttering about when I was 10 weeks, and with This One, I could feel him without a doubt by 7.5 weeks! Feeling the big kicks didn't happen until 17 weeks with Jack Jack, but with This One I started feeling his strong kicks at 13 weeks! Dave first felt Jack moving from the outside at 19 weeks, but I've been able to feel the kicks with my hand and sit and watch my belly jumping around for the last month! Definitely my favorite part of being pregnant (isn't it everyone's favorite part?), and totally makes the nausea, heartburn and other aches and pains totally worth it.

So, the last time I updated on This One, I had announced that it looked like Mommy's Intuition was most likely correct and This One is a boy, but that we had another ultrasound on Sept 22nd and could have another peek to make sure that he stayed a boy. So on Sept 22nd, Dave and I dropped Jack Jack off with my mom and headed over to the hospital for our appointment! We were excited to get to see our little baby, and make sure that he was growing as he should be! And, of course, we were also excited and anxious to hopefully get conclusive evidence that This One is, indeed, a boy! So far our only evidence was my strong feeling that I'm carrying another boy, which doesn't convince Dave at all, and an ultrasound that may have been too early to be accurate (even though I still say that I know what I saw!), which still doesn't convince Dave. In fact, while we were in the waiting room, Dave turned to me and said "Now we'll find out that it's a girl!" So I turned to him and said "The only way that this is a girl is if the penis falls off!"

They called me in and I laid on the table as the tech started the ultrasound (sidenote: who in the world thought it was a good idea to make pregnant women drink an insane amount of water and then lay her on her back, a position that does not make it incredibly easy to 'hold it', and then proceed to push on her incredibly full bladder, which, by the way has already been made smaller by the presence of a growing baby who uses her bladder for soccer practice, with an ultrasound wand?! I bet you it was a man). It was so fun to get to peek at This One! The baby slept pretty much the whole time (which really is making me hopeful that maybe this one will actually sleep once he's born!), and slept in the cutest position with his arms up above his head in front of his face, and... his legs crossed tight! It figures, huh? She (the ultrasound tech) tried really hard to see something and just couldn't get anything! She seemed almost as disappointed as I was, but then right before she was about to give up on him he started waking up! Seriously, probably the cutest thing I have ever seen in my life was to watch this baby wake up in utero! It makes him so much more real! Not that he's wasn't real to me before, but you know what I mean... it felt like we were bonding a little Anyway, This One was kind of curled around my placenta so it was a really tough position to see anything at all, but he opened his legs slightly and we saw a penis! It wasn't incredibly conclusive, I mean, this u/s was the complete opposite of Jack Jack's u/s! Jack was totally dancing and bouncing around and wouldn't hold still for the measurements and he made sure that we could see without a doubt that he was all boy, whereas This One just slept in a very modest position! But, that tiny little peek in combination with my Momma's Intuition and the other u/s we had makes me pretty confident that I'm right and it's a boy!

Ang keeps insisting that God's going to turn him into a girl just cause He likes to screw with me, so we'll probably be getting another u/s at a later date to make sure that the penis doesn't fall off and he turns into a girl. Ha ha!

The very next day I had my regular 18 wk appointment. Remember when I said that I'm looking so much bigger this time around? I wasn't exaggerating. I mean, I thought maybe it was an optical illusion and people just don't remember what a person is supposed to look like at this stage (I went to a birthday party for one of Dave's old coworkers and the wives were all shocked when they saw me and told me that I looked 7 months pregnant, not 4.5 months!). But, at my appointment, when I laid back and lifted my shirt so that the nurse could position the doppler to listen to the heartbeat, her eyed practically bugged out of her head! She said "Wow, you're really popping out there! You're only 18 weeks? I'm going to measure you... you look a lot bigger than 18 weeks!" See, it isn't just me and people aren't crazy! I mean, you'd think that this nurse, who sees pregnant women all the time and knows what we're supposed to look like would not have that sort of reaction! I mean, she saw me throughout my entire pregnancy with Jack Jack and even though she told me I looked extra big then, she never had a reaction like that! She even grabbed her tape and measured my fundal height just to be sure! Thankfully, she said that I was measuring right on and that I just must be carrying in a way that makes me look bigger. Sheesh, everyone told me that I was huge when I was pregnant with Jack... but now I'm looking even bigger? Yikes, what am I going to look like in February?!?!

I don't mind though. I mean, I'm pregnant. I'm supposed to be big... right?

Mommy's Intuition

This past Wednesday, since Luke cooperated and was born the night before, Dave and I dropped Jack Jack off at my mom's house and headed to Santa Monica for an ultrasound! I was anxious and excited (and only slightly peeved that I had to drive to Santa-frickin'-Monica!) to get to check on this kid and see him (or her, I suppose) again.

I loved the setup in that office, as the u/s tech had her monitor in front of her (angled to where we couldn't see it, as usual), and there was an additional flatscreen up on the wall in front of Dave and me, where we got to see exactly what the u/s tech was seeing! She took some measurements, took some photos of specific parts of the baby, and mentioned that everything was looking good as she continued to inspect our kid.

Okay, I have to interrupt my story for a second to talk about my Mommy's Intuition. Ever since I first got pregnant, I've been feeling like this kid is a boy. So much so, in fact, that I've been telling Jack Jack that he's going to have a baby brother! Honestly, I would be perfectly over-the-moon happy if I were having a girl, but I just feel like it's a boy. Like 'girl' isn't even an option! It could be partly due to the fact that I so adore being the mommy of a boy, or even that the idea of having a teenage girl scares the crap out of me, but I've been referring to this kid as "he" and "him" and "son", "boy", and "brother" this whole time, with no real proof other than just a gut feeling. But hey, I'm the mommy, right? So a gut feeling is really all I need to declare something as fact, right? Mommy's Intuition is a seriously real thing! Seriously! Just ask my friend Nicolle, who continued to believe that she was having a boy even after the ultrasound told her that it was a girl. She was so sure, that she didn't even bat an eye when her sweet baby girl Maddie came out with a penis and turned out to be a Dylan! Mommy's Intuition= the best diagnostic tool ever!

If this kid turns out to be a girl... well, we just won't think about that, okay?

Anyway, back to the ultrasound. The u/s tech showed us the head, then the arms, and then the belly. Then, as she was showing us the legs... I swear I know that I saw some 'boy parts' in there! I mean, I have stared at enough ultrasounds to know exactly what I'm looking at, even when the tech moves the wand really quickly, so I think I'm pretty confident in my ability to determine a hot dog from a hamburger. But just to be sure, I asked the u/s tech if she could perhaps determine a gender. She smiled and said "It's too early!" But then she paused. "Well, I could make a guess..."

I jumped all over that! "I'll take a guess!!!"

"Well, if I had to guess, I'd say that it looks like a boy!"

Yessssssssss! Score another point for Mommy's intuition! Okay, okay, I know it's really early still, since I'm 13 weeks (or was at the time of the appointment... I'll be 14 weeks tomorrow), but it is still possible to see it... it's just really small and easy to miss at this point. So, I'm just going to continue on like I've been doing, and refer to this baby as a "he", a "him" and a "son", "boy" and "brother", and then I'll wait to make any major announcements until we find out for sure (which, if this little man cooperates, will be September 22!).

And now, pics of our littlest one!

Mark Your Calendars...

... for some unknown date in February! I mean, if you want to mark an actual date, then you can mark February 22, 2010- since that's the day that Baby #2 is due- but we all know how predictable babies can be, right?

In case you haven't guessed it by now, we had our first prenatal appointment today! We dropped Jack Jack off at my mom's house and Dave and I headed over to the doctor's office. Our appointment was at 1:50, and I like to be early, so we got there at 1:25. As soon as we sat down, they called us in (pays to be early!) and the nurse took care of us so quickly that we saw the doctor at 1:40! I'm definitely going early from now on! Anyway, long story short, we have a healthy little baby in there! I'm 9 weeks pregnant today, and that makes Baby #2's EDD (estimated date of delivery) February 22, 2010!

*sidenote: have you tried to type 2010 yet? I keep typing 20010 because I say two-thousand-ten in my head... I need to start thinking twenty-ten! This will be an interesting adjustment in January!

So, without further ado, here is our baby's very first Baby Picture! Isn't he or she beautiful? (Okay, so I know not everyone is going to be able to 'see' the baby in these pictures unless I point out exactly what it is you're looking at -ie, head, feet, body, sac, hands...- but I promise, that's a baby, and it's beautiful!)

And While We're On The Subject Of Blessings...

In case you can't read it, Jack's shirt says "I'm gonna be a Big Brother... but I'd still rather have a dinosaur!"
Yes, we've been blessed again, and Jack is going to be a big brother! I pretty much knew that I was pregnant right away since I felt so similar to how I felt when I was pregnant before (but much more intense!), but I didn't find out for sure until the Friday before last. It was the Longest Weekend Ever, because Dave was on a 72 and I didn't get to see him until Monday morning! It was soooo hard to keep it to myself until he got home, but I managed! Usually when he gets home from work Jack yells "It's daddy!" and runs to give him hugs and kisses, so when he got home on that Monday morning, I gave Jack the positive test to give to Dave. He was pretty happy :)

It was even harder trying to keep the secret until after Amy's baby shower! I almost told my mom so many times (Dave kept saying to me "I can't believe you haven't told your mom! You tell your mom everything!"), but I really wanted to wait until after Amy's baby shower. Father's Day was the next day, and it was the perfect time to tell my family, since my parents and my brother and sister were all in the same place for once!

I had this shirt picked out ever since before I was even pregnant with Jack! Even before I knew how I wanted to announce #1, I knew how I wanted to announce #2! The link to ordering this shirt has been on my computer for years, and I was thrilled when I was finally able to order it! I am due in late February, so I told my dad that not only was this for Father's Day, it was for his birthday, since his birthday is February 15th!


Jack is excited, too, for as much as he can understand. Here was our conversation:

Me: That is a pregnancy test
Jack: It a pregnancy test!
Me: That means momma is going to have another baby!
Jack: Momma has baby!!!!!! Momma have babies!
Me: Well, hopefully only one! You are going to be a big brother!
Jack: I be big brother!
Me: Do you want to be a big brother?
Jack: *gasp* YES!
Me: Are you excited?
Jack: Excited the Pregnancy!

And I ordered this shirt for NJ, too!


Jack and Grandma

And yesterday Dave came home and we gave him his present: a Chef's shirt! He thought it was pretty cool and said he'd actually wear it when he grills! He made such amazing ribs the day before for the baby shower, that I couldn't resist getting him this shirt! I went for black, since I thought it'd look cleaner than the white, and got the short sleeves since he grills. We may go exchange it for the long sleeve version, though, since he said he could just roll the sleeves up if he needed to.