I'm Up At 2AM Because...

I'm getting my butt kicked by KILLER acid reflux from the tuna salad I had for dinner. Tuna salad - REALLY?! UGH!

At least I'm not up because Alice is "crying" and screaming for no reason.

For once.

So It's Been 21 Weeks...

And I've hardly mentioned this pregnancy! Granted I haven't posted much either, but we won't bring that up again. So far things have been going well. I had the typical 1st trimester morning sickness and fatigue accompanied by killer migraines. Once I hit 13 or 14 weeks though things started to get back to normal. I'm still feeling a bit of fatigue, and I'm having some mild pregnancy related tachycardia, but it's nothing I didn't have with Alice. My doctors figured then that I'm just sensitive to pregnancy induced anemia, and they seem to think the same this time around. Thankfully I've already had all the testing done so I don't have to go through any of that again this time around (THANK THE LORD!).

I've been feeling the baby kick for quite a while now, but nothing that was too significant. In fact, up until a few weekends ago I never had a kick that I was 100% sure was baby and not gas (seriously). I was pretty sure, but it wasn't until we went to go see Changeling that I was absolutely sure I was getting whacked by the baby. I swear the little stinker didn't stop moving the whole time we were in the movie theater! In fact since then I've felt the baby A LOT (a lot more than I ever felt Alice at this stage) every day. It's kind of nice, especially since it's not the DAMMIT KID, THAT HURTS! kind of movement yet.

Here I am at 21 weeks - much larger than I was with Alice at this point!

So today was the anatomy scan that they do at around 20 weeks. Everything looks good to my untrained eye, but what do I know. Baby is measuring about 8 days behind my current EDD, but I tend to have longer cycles and my OB told me with my first ultrasound that he would like to adjust it to reflect the longer cycles, but baby measured 6 days behind the EDD and they only adjust it if baby measures 7 days or more behind. So we'll see, they may just adjust it to around May 11th. The tech didn't stay too long on one particular spot, so I'm assuming for now that that is good. With Alice they couldn't get a good look at the four chambers of the heart and they stayed on that for quite a while trying to get a picture. I'll find out for sure in a few days when the doctor calls. My uterus must just be more comfortable when laying facing outward because this baby, just like Alice, was facing outward. So no pretty profile shot with this one either. The tech tried for us b/c I had mentioned not getting one with Alice, but it's not quite a full profile.

Hands up by the face.

Skeletor Face.

The attempt at a profile shot. Head in the bottom left corner.

SOOOOOO...up until yesterday I was all set on NOT finding out the sex with this baby just like we did with Alice. For some reason my brain was churning all night and all day today and I broke down and decided that I wanted to find out the sex, if for nothing else than for the experience. I know I can prepare for a baby w/o knowing the sex because we did it with Alice, I don't care one way or the other if it's a boy or a girl so I don't need 20 more weeks to prepare myself for the opposite sex of what I wanted. I just wanted to know to say that I did it once in my life. So without dragging this out even more, in May the Bathje/Rice family is going to add one more...

GIRL!

Btw, Alice was so excited and could not stop talking about seeing the baby on the TV at the doctor's office. I sure hope she's this excited when the baby is actually here!

If any of you out there know my Mother in law, you're sworn to
secrecy because she absolutely does not want to know!

Happy Holidays - Part 3

This weekend was full of LOTS of baking. Cheesecake, peanut butter blossoms, sugar cookie cut outs, banana cake for my FIL, puppy chow, and cream cheese foldovers were all on the to do list on Saturday! It seemed like we baked ALL day, but I seem to forget that huge chunk of time where Alice napped on me, Matt napped on the couch (will get to Alice's horrible sleep habits in a later post) and I watched a Christmas themed movie or two on TCM. Needless to say it was quite fun baking with the whole fam! I seriously can't believe how big a help Alice was - she even perfected the dip and squish of the foldover dough!

Happy Holidays - Part 2

Up next - a visit from the Jolly Man himself. SANTA! He showed up at my Mother and Father in law's house 10 days early to check in on the Bathje clan, and he brought with him a big bag of presents (did you expect anything less from Santa?) for all the little kiddos.

Alice got in some practice for when the baby comes in May.
Matt's cousin Patrick brought his little girl Samantha over to have her first visit with Santa.
Alice loved it - Sam, not so much.

See - much happier when not being held by a toddler. :)

It's not Christmas at Grandma's w/o a train around the tree.
The kids could have watched it for hours!

Alice was VERY excited to see Santa when he came in the door.
She kept saying "Santa, PRESENTS!!"
Then she realized she had to sit on his lap.
It could have gone worse.

Needless to say she was extremely happy to get off of his lap.

MERRY CHRISTMAS FROM THE BATHJE FAMILY!

Happy Holidays - Part 1

I realized I had better make a post or two about all that has gone on this Holiday Season before Thursday comes and goes. We'll start this trio of posts off with decorating the tree. This year, surprisingly, we did it on time! Matt and I usually don't even get the tree up until very close to Christmas, which means we leave it up well into (and I mean WELL) the new year so we can have some time to enjoy it. This year, however, Matt scored some serious brownie points with me when he put up the tree and the lights while Alice and I were still down in J'ville visiting Grandma and Grandpa. All Alice and I had to do was add the ornaments and it instantly felt like Christmas!!










And yes she wore her Halloween outfit from Grandma and Grandpa to decorate the tree. What can I say, nothing gets worn once around here!

Some Thanksgiving Outtakes

So Matt updated you on most of our trip home. The rest consisted of holiday shopping with Grandpa, hanging out with Uncle Chuck, flirting with Travis - the contractor (Alice flirted, NOT me!), naming fishies after Travis, listening to Travis make lots of noise in the "brown" bathroom, baking cookies, and waiting for Grandma to come home from work (we did a lot of this, although one night we went to Grandma and got to watch a Jr. High Basketball game - woo hoo!). The following are picture outtakes from our time spent in J'ville.

Uncle Ry is great at building Duplo castles and trains.
Uncle Chuck could give him a run for his money though.
Uncle James - wish you could have been there,
I'm sure you would have smoked them both.

The daily ritual of riding the Uncle Chuck horsey.
I think she nearly ripped his face off this day.

GG wanted to get a pic of the three of us together - Alice had other ideas.

Like kissing Ava.

So we settled for a pic of the two of us.
MISS YOU GRAM, WE HAD A BLAST!

Alice and Emily had a grand time preparing for Black Friday shopping.

Lilly the Camera lover.
For those of you who weren't there, ALL of the Trimmer girls are SO grown up now!
Makes me feel so old. :)

They're definitely still kids though. :)

The annual GG Xmas photo went off w/o a hitch.
There were a few butt shots though.
(sorry to whomever is the owner of this specimen - it had to be done)

FINALLY, shots of the girls where ALL of them are looking!
(only took about 100 shots)

Then the cute look over at GG - excluding Alice of course.

And then Emily went digging for gold.

And then nothing happened for a while

Apparently we were hibernating or something between November 2 and Thanksgiving break, as we have no pictures during that period. The above was taken on 12/10. I guess that means we jump right into Thanksgiving pictures.

We visited Jacksonville for the entire week before Thanksgiving, so we got to spend a lot of time with Grandma Cindy, Grandpa Charlie, Auntie Tori and Uncle Chuck. Aunt JJ, Uncle Ryan and, of course, GG all stopped by to visit as well. The entire trip was a lot of fun; we just hung around the house and relaxed most of the time - which is pretty much my idea of heaven, even if it sounds boring.

GG stayed with us in Jacksonville for about 2 days, but we unfortunately didn't get any good pictures of it.

Here is the best I could come up with of GG.

I think she was taking pictures of Alice playing with her new puzzle.


Or possibly playing with Uncle James's Duplos

We had a great time with GG, and wished she could have stayed with us longer. Those tounges and hearts don't cook themselves. They were tasty too, thanks GG!

This is just another "no reason except I think it is cute" picture

By the way, I promise I didn't have to Photoshop myself seemingly picking my nose from the background of any of these pictures...maybe it was the Bathje side...just not so much uncles, and moreso fathers.

Playing Catchup

These pictures were taken on November 2, 2008. A few weekends before that Auntie Annie decided it would be fun for the kids to play in the leaves - which it would have been if there were more than 4 total leaves at that point. The 2nd was more when her plans came to fruition, plus it was just a really nice fall day.

Augie, Alice and Amanda hamming it up for the camera

I guess we didn't realize they were marijuana leaves

No funny caption for these 2, I just thought they were cute.

You may notice that these pictures don't look as professional as the ones Becky uploads. That is for 3 reasons. First and foremost, I'm lazy. Second, I'm stupid (what the heck does overexposed mean, which was the criticism Becky had for many of these pictures?) Third and maybe most importantly, I don't have the mad photochopping skillz like Becky...so deal with it.

Finally - a personal note to James - if my posts aren't good enough for you, just don't read them. But also don't look at all the cute pictures of your god daughter...jerk :)

Baby Update

If you dare to gaze at the horrors of the Creepy Floating Fetus in the sidebar, you will notice that Becky is around 20 weeks into the pregnancy. This is considered the halfway point for most human pregnancies.

Becky had a doctor appointment this morning, and they say things are going well. The doctor actually was trying to kill some time because Becky didn't have any problems or questions. Next week is the 20 week ultrasound - we explained that to Alice so she keeps saying "see the baby on the TV?"

The baby is starting to move around pretty hardcore, so Becky is starting to internally feel the kicks and punches. Hopefully that means Alice and I will get to start feeling them soon as well - I can't wait to see Alice's reaction.

We are also still working on coming up with names. None of the "other" ones we came up with to potentially name Alice seem very good anymore, so we are looking at anything right now. Since we liked Alice so much, the list so far is:

Boys:

• Alice-ter

Girls:

• Alice-son
• Alice-ia

Or we could go all George Foreman and just name all our children Alice. We'll see.

Do not adjust your dial...

Since Becky isn't feeling up to posting much and everybody is yelling at her for updates, I'm going to help out and post occasionally.

A quick update on what has been going on with us.

• I took the week of Thanksgiving off work, and we went down to Jacksonville to visit with the Rice/Carlson family. We also got to spend some time with GG, and have Thanksgiving in "the middle of nowhere" (Melvin) as usual. We had a great time and enjoyed seeing the whole Trimmer clan. We added a new tradition of going to another middle of nowhere (Blue Mound) to have Thanksgiving lunch/family reunion with Cindy’s extended family. Ryan also tried to add another new tradition – intra-family car accidents – but we all thought that should be a one-time thing.
  
• The week after Thanksgiving, I went home and rolled bachelor-style while Becky and Alice stayed in Jacksonville for the week. Grandma Cindy was pretty busy, so they mostly hung out with Grandpa and Uncle Chuck.
  
• The weekend of December 6th was the church bazaar and Christmas luncheon. We had fun looking at all the items for sale, eating chicken salad, spiced peaches and 4 Pringles. Charlie and I were the only men in a room of 100 old ladies - and a few young ones – Becky, Alice, JJ and Cindy.
  
• While Becky and Alice were gone, I setup our tree and put on the lights. We decorated the tree when everybody was home, and Alice LOVED it, although the bottom of the tree had a few extra ornaments at first.
  
• The weekend of December 13th was extremely busy (for us at least). Alice went to stay with Aunt Cathy and Uncle Bill on Saturday night. They went to Brookfield Zoo to see the animals and the Christmas lights. The weather didn’t really cooperate, but they had a great time. While we were childless, Becky and I went to a movie and out to dinner (and to breakfast). On Sunday, we went to Grandma and Grandpa Bathje’s house. Santa showed up to visit with all the little ones and bring them gifts. There were 9 kids in the house, and it was a riot.

Expect pictures of all this stuff soon. Here is one to tide you over:

>Alice obviously takes after some of her uncles. I'll let you decide which ones.

Fun With Grandpa

Grandpa broke out Great Grandpa Rice's Lincoln Logs today. He braved the floor long enough to show her how to build a much better house than her Daddy built for her, which still wasn't all that great. Tomorrow Matt goes home and we'll hopefully get Grandma and Grandpa's tree lit and decorated before he leaves us for the week. Alice and I will be spending another week here in J'ville, and I'm sure we'll have a great time!

By the way, this is my first iPhone post so bare with me.

Happy Halloween!

A little over a week late. Seriously you really can't complain, it's pretty par for the course for me. :) This was the first year Alice actually went Trick-or-Treating and MAN did she have a blast! We went over to Nicole and Paul's house so we could go out with them, and later we ate dinner together. Alice nearly jumped out of her skin when she realized that we could go from door to door with a little bag and say "Trick-or-Treat" and complete strangers would give us candy. 9 times out of 10 she said those words long before we ever got to the door. One observation I made was that my BARELY two year old had MUCH better manners than 90% of the kids (and a good portion of the adults too) we saw - and for the most part she did it unprompted.

She had a hard time going up the stairs carrying a bag bogged down with candy (she refused to let anyone else carry it) so I usually went up with her which meant people had to wait for the two of us to come up and down the narrow stairs (most of the homes we went to were all by the same builder so they had the same stairs) together. There were even a few ADULTS who pushed their way in front of Alice and I just so they could get to the door with their babies sooner. Needless to say I was quite happy when some of the homeowners refused to give them candy until Alice got hers because afterall she was there first. It wasn't the Halloween I remember when I was a kid (is it really Halloween when it's sunny and a high of 72*F?), but it was a good night that we ended in Paul and Nicole's backyard roasting S'mores.

Alice's Bday Party - By the Numbers

2 - number of years Alice has been on earth.
3 - number of people who were here to celebrate Alice's actual Bday (Uncle Chuck came a day earlier than most).


60 - the number of dollars Dad spent on Panera and White Castle for the Rice clan before we set up for the party (Uh, I mean 50. Yeah, 50).
1,200 - number of square feet in our house, and that's a generous estimate.
24 - number of people who crammed into about 500 of that.
5 - number of people who didn't outwardly mind sitting next to a cat box (not my idea, I promise!).
1 - the number of people in attendance who DIDN'T know I'm pregnant (maybe that someone should check his email more often then).
5 - number of dishes we made to serve all of our hungry guests (one being an excellent rendition of mom's potato salad - MMMMMM!).
1 - number of train wrecked, albeit very tasty, cakes.


1 - number of children I have with a split personality (Alice laughed, then cried, then laughed, etc when we sang "Happy Birthday" to her).
16 - number of presents received.
4 - number of presents thrown to the wayside - and they were all clothing.


10 - number of years worth of PlayDough we now have.
3 - the number of hours most people stayed.
0 - the number of dishes I personally ended up washing - thanks to my MIL and Cindy.
5 - number of guests who slept on the floor or couches (Dad got Alice's bed).
1 - number of scratched eyes endured at the hand of a balloon on a stick (and of course it was the Bday girl).
1 - number of migraines I had by the end of the night.
MANY - the number of people we wish could have been there.

That's all the pictures you get from the weekend. Why you ask? Well because we don't have many more that are worth sharing. When your house is crowded, you've got a migraine that just won't go away, and 20+ guests on their way in or out of your house the last think I think about is taking pictures (plus I'm thinking we REALLY need a zoom - anyone want to buy one for me?!). Of course that's MY excuse, Matt will have to find his own.

If any of you who were here have pictures you are willing to share, please email them to me!

In Case My Last Post Was Too Subtle...

Baby Bathje ETA May 3, 2009 (that makes me 13 weeks pregnant tomorrow).

Pumpkins and Bday Cake

We had a special treat this week, Auntie Mary and her boyfriend Andy came over for a visit with the then soon to be birthday girl. We had plans to carve pumpkins, eat yummy pizza, and a beautiful birthday cake made by Auntie Mary. We were celebrating her birthday early because Mary won't be able to join us tomorrow for all the festivities. We definitely had a good time!

Alice was still sleeping when Mary and Andy arrived.
In true Mommy fashion I decided to take a pic of her looking like an angel.
(By the way, that's "Daddy Doll" she's sleeping with.
One of the many items that we rotate at bedtime.
If we didn't she'd be lost in a sea of stuffed animals.)

The camera flash woke her up. Good thing too, Auntie was ready to scoop her up!

We started the pumpkin carving with out Daddy. We would have been up very late if we had!
Big thanks to Andy who played photographer for the night with my camera.
I really didn't want to get pumpkin guts on it!

I thought she'd be all over touching the pumpkin guts,
but she really didn't care one way or the other.

She sure did love using the big giant spoon though!

Surprisingly she didn't loose interest once.
I thought for sure after 20 minutes she'd be ready to get out of the booster seat and go play.
She was still sitting there when Daddy got home!

She was pretty upset that I wouldn't let her use a knife herself.
I had to resort to telling her to play blocks with the pieces to distract her.

When we were done and just waiting for the pizza to arrive,
(and for Matt to finish his pumpkin)
we decided to let her open her present.
I can't wait for tonight when she opens some from us
and the one from Mike, Rae, and Kaylee
because she totally gets what presents are now.
In fact I've been dealing with constant meltdowns since the package
from AZ arrived because I won't let her open it NOW!

She very much enjoyed singing Happy Birthday to herself.
Yes, she sang it, very enthusiastically I might add, to herself.
I'm hoping she does the same thing tomorrow so I can get it on video.

And here are the pumpkins - one for every member of the family. ;)

I can't believe my little girl is TWO! It's so amazing to see how much she's grown in just two short years. They've definitely been some of the best years of my life! Well we've got a lot left to do today to get ready for tomorrow (one of the big things is making the cakes) so I should probably run. Will hopefully update with pics from tonight before I head off to bed tonight, don't hold your breath though. :)