Ten on Tuesday

So...we accidentally missed a few Tuesday's, and everybody is clamoring for an update so I'm going to do one for you.

1. Here are some Christmas pictures, since we haven't done a real update about that.
   
   Santa got Uncle Ryan a sweet new toy. The girls weren't allowed near this obviously.
   
   
   The leopard girls.
   
   
   
   Alice and Kaylee got matching strollers and dolls for Christmas and had a blast running around Grandma and Grandpa's house with them. Unfortunately this is the best picture we got of that.
   
   
   Alice and JJ. Not sure why Alice is attempting to pick her nose through her upper lip, I taught her the proper way...
   
   
   Alice tracing her hand on the day after Christmas.
   
   
2. We had several visits from Auntie Tori, and Grandma Cindy/Grandpa Charlie/Maggie made a visit as well. The chicken and dumplings were (was?) awesome, it just took about 3 hours longer to cook than we thought it would.
   
   
   Alice and Tori playing with the easel Alice got from the Arizona Rice's for Christmas. She loves this thing, thanks guys!
   
   
3. Alice LOVES to read. We read her books every day, and she reads them back to us as well. When she is reading, they usually go something like "once upon a time, there was a girl named Alice and she was a princess - she had a mommy and a daddy, THE END". I've read War and Peace 3 times, and that was definitely the best version.I think Becky was just testing the camera or something - but this is a darn cute picture.
   

   
   
4. Becky and the baby are doing OK - Becky is mostly just tired of being pregnant and can't wait for it to be over. As of her last doctor visit the baby was breech, but they said that is nothing to worry about...yet. We think she (the baby, not Becky) flipped sometime recently, but neither of us are doctors.
   
   We just got back from our successful "Steal the Watermelon" caper. Strong Bad would be proud.
   
   
   
5. Alice is getting very excited, and talks to the baby in mommy's belly a lot. She also comes up with elaborate little stories about how she is going to help us with the baby, or play with the baby. Some of it is in the video below, but she wasn't really into it when I recorded this.
   
   


6. Unfortunately, both Alice and Becky have been perpetually sick for...a long time... Alice has a hacking cough that won't go away, and Becky keeps getting cold/flu like symptoms on and off. We've all been to the doctor (I had it for a few days myself) but it looks like this is a (non-flu) virus so they can only treat the symptoms. No pictures for this, that would be gross.
   


7. Thanks to the unseasonably warm weather recently, Becky and Alice have been outside to play a few times. One day they even got to go out for a picnic, and Alice loved that.
   
   At the park
   
   
   Playing hopscotch - only missed it by 3 feet
   
   
   Eating at the picnic in the backyard
   
   
8. The picnic made me sad - because when I got home from work that day, this is what Alice said to me "we had picnic and ate apples and peanut butter sandwiches and you were at work and I miss you!" (I'm paraphrasing of course.)
   
   
9. Alice has grown up a little since our last blog post - she is talking in fuller sentences, and can mostly hold a conversation. This also means a change in her TV viewing habits. She isn't on the Caillou and Sesame Street so much anymore, but she LOVES Dora.
   
   Too bad she's already outgrown this shirt
   
   
10. For whoever was frightened by my poor attempt at a beard - that scraggly, wispy, ugly thing is gone. The result of my experience is this - it is not possible for me to grow a ZZ Top beard in 3 months. Even 3 years seems dicey.
    
    Seriously? This is nearly 3 months of growth?

That is 10 things, so hopefully this is good enough for you all. Becky says she will be doing a post soon, but if not I'll try to be better at keeping them going. Here is one last picture of Alice to get that ugly visage of me out of your brains.

Oooohhh, a movie star!

Look Who Fell Asleep...

Holding my hand in the middle of lunch.

I haven't updated much lately, but I promise to get pics from Xmas and the trip to Jville up soon. Most of you know that we lost our 13 year old nephew, Wesley, on the 2nd to a massive stroke, and Gram was hospitalized around the same time. I've been under a lot of stress as one would expect, so I've been trying to take it easy and de-stress. I'm having quite a few contractions (which the doc isn't terribly worried about) and my blood pressure has been high (something we're keeping an eye on) so the less stress the better. Please keep the family, especially my BIL and SIL, in your thoughts and prayers. We could all really use them right now.

Baby Isabel (we have a name!) reached viability on Sunday, but let's hope she cooks at least another 10 weeks more or better! It's a nice milestone to reach because I know that if, God forbid, something were to happen and I'd have to deliver her now that she'd have at least some chance of survival and that the docs would actually take drastic measures to save her. I found out I have placenta previa (basically the placenta is blocking the opening of the cervix) and will have another ultrasound in 6 weeks to see if it has moved. Doc said that in about 90% of cases it does move with the growth of the uterus so I'm not too concerned about having a c-section at the moment. Obviously if it doesn't move I'll need a section because she won't be able to get out w/o killing her blood supply. Plus I don't particularly want to bleed out.

Despite all of the hard things we've been dealing with, things are good here. Our 6 year wedding anniversary is coming up on Sunday, and Tori is coming for a visit this weekend. Hopefully they will both be a good distraction!

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!