2nd peak at Peanut

We had our 2oweek ultrasound today to check in on the little one. Since about week 16, I've been feeling movement in there. Faint at first, like little pokes. However, this past week the wee one has been grooving up a storm, like popcorn on the stove. There have been strong enough kicks that Brian has felt the movement too. I just can't wait until I'm holding Tam on my lap and his baby sibling gives him a surprise kick.

This time around, I again had a Quad screen, but unlike with Tam, the results came back extremely negative for any genetic problems in screens for. This good news meant less worrying for us, but also we won't need the extra consultations / ultrasounds with the genetic specialist. So the ultrasound this week might be our last glimpse of the little one before the big day.

Today, we bundled up, braved the wind and snow, and trucked over to the women's clinic as a family. Our ultrasound specialist was a young thing that was extremely happy, talkative, and nice. Right away, she said the peanut looks great and then asked if we wanted to know the sex. With just a glimpse at the scream, there was our unbashful little dude with knees spread and displaying prominent junk.

Yep, we are in for another little boy :-) I'm still tickled that Tam will have a little brother to play with and that I don't have to deal with pink / pretty princess stuff...but I'll miss the chance to use the name Iris Louise.

Over the course of the next 45minutes, the tech took us on a detailed tour of our little one from the top of his head to his sweet little toes. Peanut was being very cooperative and photogenic by waving his oh-so-cute hands all around. It was only a little odd to see him moving on the screen and feeling the poke from the inside at the same time. Overall, each measurement fell right within the normal range, the heart was beating well at 150beats per minute (very cool to see), and he had the right number of all limbs.

Oh, it is such a wonderful experience to see such a little one on the screen and realize that is OUR little one :-)

Here are the photos from the second glimpse of our newest little peanut.

Photo 1: Face shot...yes, still slightly alien because the machine is picking up most of the skull bones.






Photo 2: Head shot 2, but from the side. Umbilical cord near belly, knees pulled up near belly too.








Photo 3 : Money shot; yes, definitely a boy








Photo 4: Another shot from the side, but you can see the hand waving at us

Last chance for gender bets

So my New Year's resolution is to blog religiously this year...even if that means only one sentence an evening. I'm usually so good about this in the first half of the year, but fall semester usually kicks my butt with it massive amounts of grading / time sinks.

Today is the last day for friends and family to post their thoughts on the gender of our newest member. Tomorrow is our scheduled sonogram for checking out the workings and finding out the sex.

Me = Boy with 75% confidence
Brian = Girl just to be contrary to me
Sister, moms, aunts = Girl because they desperately want to buy / make little dresses
My botany class = 41% boy and 59% girl


On our drive home from the holidays, Brian, Tam and I disscussed potential names for the new wee one.
Highly popular boys names were:
Tiberius - as in James Tiberius Kirk
William - popular on both sides of the family
Jude - both for St. Jude and the Beatles
Lyle - a name from Brian's family
Adair - meaning oak tree

On the girl side, we have:
Louise - Brian's side of the family
Rosilyn or Rose - my side of the family
Irene - my side of the family
Iris or Irys - love the flower
Lydia - the tattooed lady

Let the confusion begin

I handed Tam a marshmallow today.

It was the first time he had ever seen or touched one.

He looks at me and goes, "This?"

Naughty me replies with, "Meat."

He takes a big bite, grins wildly, and exclaims "mmm...meat!"

. . .

My hope is that when we serve him true meat, he'll think of the marshmallow and eat it up!

Bring On the Snow!

Tamlin was driving me a bit batty this morning. He's a bundle of energy and being cooped up inside because of weather is NOT A GOOD IDEA. When he's tired of cars, cars, cars, buses, truck, and cars, he begins to run laps through the kitchen, dining room, family room.

This got old pretty quick.

But not old enough for me to get out the playdough...yet.

So, I decided to bundle us up and head outdoors. I laughed in the face of the chilly temperatures and the light falling snow, especially after having lived in Minnesota for five years.

Tam was packed into boots, snow pants, snow coat, mittens, and hat. I was fairly confident he would stay toasty, even if he did lose a bit of mobility.

We got outside and Tam just wanted to keep walking and walking, all the way around the block.

He was quite the trooper! A few times he wanted

to just sit down and rest / watch the world from people's sidewalks. Otherwise, he was all for tromping on his own...

Until we hit an icy stretch of sidewalk. About the third time he nearly lost his balance, he wanted to be carried. Not the best idea for the pregnant lady with a shifted center of gravity to carry the 30+ pound squirmy kid on icy cement. I humored him for about 30 steps. Luckily, he was then easily distracted by chunks of ice from a plowed driveway. After about 3 attempts to pick up said chunk of ice, he insisted I pick it up and carry it for him. We ended up with 4 ice hunks total that made it back to our doorstep.

Once home, Tam decided to see how is cars worked in the snow :-)

Then, with rosy cheeks, we headed inside to a bowl of chili and grilled cheese sandwiches made by the hubbs!

Names?

Well, the date is set for the 1st Tuesday of the new year as our time for our next ultrasound...You know, the BIG ONE. Our little peanut will hopefully be feeling randy and cooperate by flashing the goods so that we'll know if it is a boy or girl.

In preparation for learning this big news, Brian and I have begun tossing around our favorite names for little one number 2. We are also leaning toward this wee one taking my last name too. If it is a boy, perhaps utilizing Thomas as the middle name or have two middle names...Lots of time to decide yet.

Girls

Brianna

Eve or Eva

Iris

Irene

Joselyn

Lydia (The tattooed lady)

Moonbeam

River

Rose

Roselyn

Skye

Boys

Adair

Aspen

Cleatus

Elric

Finnegan

Jeb

Jude

Quercus

Ricky-ticky
River

Storm
Tiberius - First name James :-)

Tristen


Oh...and I've started to waddle already...I'm only 17 weeks.

Halloween 2010

This year the weather was great for Halloween...but unfortunately, Brian had to work most of the weekend. And, I still felt that Tam was on the young side to actually go trick-or-treating.

We still celebrated and had a good time. Recall that I grabbed Tam's dragon costume earlier this year at a yard sale, so no sewing for me. He still looked uber-cute; he even would give a quiet roar when asked what a dragon says. Tam didn't seem to mind wearing it all, even the head-hood.

On Friday, Tam and I went to our church for their family-friendly Halloween presentation. This was a nice way to celebrate the holiday without wandering around outside in the chill and it allowed us to interact with other little-ones. First up was pizza dinner and cupcakes. Tam LOVED the cupcakes. He proceeded to lick the icing off slowly while interspercing squeals of "yum, yum" before devouring the cake. After dinner, the high schoolers set up and ran games for the younger students to play. Everyone won little prizes or tickets for cupcakes at the games, so no hard feelings for any of the wee ones. Tam really liked playing with the duckpond (quack, quack), but I think he mostly liked playing in the water. He also enjoyed the bean-bag toss. For this game, the kids were supposed to stand a yard or so away from a giant jack-o-lantern face and toss the beanbags into the gaping month. Tam stood right next to the grin and dropped the bean-bags in...and then clapped excitedly! Oh-well. He ended the night by just running around everyone and saying "hi." I'm glad that he had a good time.

On Saturday, Tam and I headed over to the mall to windowshop for Christmas ideas before the stores opened...and to let Tam run around among all the mall-walkers. For this, Tam was sporting his Halloween shirt and I had on my home-made skeleton shirt. Oh-yeah...check this shirt out!

Yeah, that's the new peanut's skeleton on there too :-)

A fellow mom-to-be posted this freezer-paper stenciling as a last minute costume and I totally had to try it. Hey...this is probably the final chance I'll get to wear it.

Our neighborhood trick-or-treating was tonight, but we go NOBODY at our door. This may have been because our next-door neighbor kids had stopped over the night before to show costumes so we were mostly sans kids tonight.

Lastly, we have learned that Tam's very into kit-kat bars.