Before I Forget These Moments

In the eyes of a 20-month old, every day is full of possibility. Opportunities to learn something new, to find new trouble to get into, maybe convince Mommy to give you a treat or two. Natalie is literally growing up before my very eyes and it is exciting and heart-wrenching at the same time. Her vocabulary has exploded to include approximately 80 words (I counted it up yesterday and today) and she's even started putting a couple phrases together like "shoes on", "want this", and "here, mama".

I wanted to remember a few moments and details that have stuck in my mind lately before I forget them. Yesterday, Natalie handed me a half-chewed piece of green pepper, so I told her to go throw it away in the trash and she ran to the kitchen to throw it away and then ran back to me yelling "Throw in trash!", all proud of herself. I was proud, too! Maybe it seems strange that I am proud of something like that, but she is just becoming so independent, plus that was only one of a handful of times that she has said two or three words together.

The grandparents have all gotten a kick out of Natalie's latest antic: checking mommy for a dirty diaper. Yeah. I guess she figured that since I pull her diaper back to check if she's clean or not that she should check mommy, too...

Natalie loves playing chase. She gets Layla to run after her in the backyard and just giggles and cackles and squeals in delight. When we're inside, she says, " 'Mon! 'Mon!" (c'mon) so that we will chase her around.

My independent toddler loves trying to buckle the chest clip on her car seat, the buckle in shopping carts and the buckle on baby swing on her swing set. She is starting to dislike eating in her highchair and prefers siting in a regular chair. Don't even think about trying to hold silverware for her or she will probably refuse to eat. Yogurt used to end up all over her face, hair, and bib, but now she manages to get the majority in her mouth. The first thing she has been asking for in the morning is to put on her shoes and a bow for her hair. I walked into her room to get her out of bed the other day and she immediately said, "Mommy! Hi!". Melt. My. Heart.

She might be growing up much faster than I'd like, but I'm going to do my best to remember as much about these busy days as I can and be a better mom tomorrow than I was today so that when my daughter looks back on her childhood, she will have fond memories, too.

Baby #2: Boy or Girl?

Last Thursday, our little family headed to our doctor's office for a gender reveal ultrasound! They didn't offer this option when I was pregnant with Natalie, so we went a little further away to Lexington to find out early (16 weeks) with her. The excitement of a new baby joining the family is just too much for us to contain, apparently :) They quickly took us back to the ultrasound room where we got to take our very first look at Baby Godin #2. Seeing your baby for the first time, even if it's on a tv screen, is just surreal and oh so wonderful. So, after convincing the baby to move it's little foot out the way, the tech froze the frame and said, "Here it is! It's a..." I was honestly surprised at her announcement because the ultrasound looked very different from Natalie's, but we'll take her trained and experienced word for it...it's a girl!!!

Very early on in this pregnancy, I had hoped for a girl because I wanted to Natalie to grow up with a sister. I love my sisters dearly and can't imagine life without them. Getting to raise sisters who are close in age is sure to be an adventure. Disclaimer: After the initial excitement of this pregnancy settled down, I got excited about the possibility of having a boy as well. We had a boy name picked out, which really vamped up my eagerness to find out the gender, so I was going to be really excited either way! We are still working on choosing this baby's name, although we are finally making some progress! Alex and I both agree that choosing boy names is far easier for us as we have very different taste when it comes to girl names.

On the Saturday after our ultrasound, we invited our parents, local siblings, nieces and nephew over for a gender reveal party. I was absolutely exhausted and thus did not put forth as much effort into cute decorations or any party games as I would have liked to, but it still turned out nice. And the main focus is finding out the gender anyway, right? The week of the gender reveal, I learned to crochet baby booties and found a cute pattern for a boy's style bootie and a girl's Mary Jane style shoe and went ahead and made a pair of each. I wrapped each pink bootie in several layers of tissue paper for each set of grandparents to open.

My mom (in the blue shirt) said she had managed to stay neutral on the boy vs. girl debate, so she felt genuinely excited by the news that she would have a 5th granddaughter (there are no grandsons on my side so far!). My mother-in-law said she had anticipated a boy, but she was happy about having her 5th granddaughter as well.

We spend the rest of the party just visiting, noshing, and tossing baby name ideas around. We had a really great time!

NH Vacation Part 2: The Rest of the Trip

 The day after we arrived in New Hampshire, we went to a family reunion on Alex's mom's side of the family. The kids swam in the ice cold water of the swimming pool pretty much the entire time we were there. The adults, however, only endured the water for a few minutes at a time to appease the begging children :) Natalie enjoyed playing with some water toys on dry land:

 Alex's Aunt Kathy had a tire swing in her yard that made for a great photo op:

 Tuesday, we went to a creative playground that reminded me so much of the wooden playground we had where I went to kindergarten. They seriously need to build one of these where we live. The closest one to us is 75 miles away. I wish I'd taken a picture of the whole thing because the little kiddy area where these pics were taken does not do it justice.

 At the same park, there were walking trails that led to this river (we are so not a photogenic family!):

 Friday, we hung out at Alex's Aunt and Uncle's for a few hours. Except for the first few days of the trip, it was around 100 degrees and soooo humid the whole time we were there. Natalie and Alex tried to cool off on a hammock in the shade:

 Natalie looking fly in daddy's sunglasses:

 Before we headed home on Saturday, we stopped to say goodbye to Alex's Grammy, Aunt and Uncle. Natalie was barely awake and hadn't eaten breakfast, hence the look of sheer delight on her face...ha!

 

We drove home separately from our little caravan so that we could stop to visit my lifelong friend, Boo, and her husband, Tim, in Pennsylvania. We have been friends since we were two years old. She was my maid-of-honor and now she's expecting her first child, a little girl, in August. Boo was a good sport and let us get a belly pic at 7 in the morning before we headed back on the road.

So, that about sums up our vacation! Natalie was a great little traveler and didn't get very fussy in the car. We kept her supplied with snacks and she watched a little Elmo, but for the most part, she napped, ate and played with toys and books. When we got home, she was excited to see her puppy, Layla, again and ran around the house doing a dance. I think she was glad to be free from her car seat after two long days of car riding!

NH Vacation Part 1: The Ocean, a Love-Hate Relationship

Well, we just got back from an 11-day family vacation to New Hampshire where Alex's family is from. Natalie went to bed fairly easily, leaving me plenty of time to upload the pictures from the trip. Alex's parents, sister, grandma, three nieces and a nephew drove up with us, making up a 3-car caravan. The 1,000 mile trip was an adventure, but it actually went much more smoothly and was far more enjoyable than I had expected. On Monday, we drove to NH's only ocean-front beach, Hampton Beach. The weather was cool and drizzly when we arrived, and then it just stayed cool and overcast for a little bit before deciding to rain buckets on us, driving us away to come back again on Wednesday. So, here was Natalie's first experience with sand and the ocean:

This last picture is one of my favorites from our trip, as awful as that sounds. It's just real and raw and honestly, it makes me laugh. She was tired, the weather was unpleasant, the water was frigid. I don't blame her for being less than impressed with the ocean! We ended the torture and went back to our blanket to feed some seagulls.

My mother-in-law and the kids found a tiny star fish, clam, and hermit crab:

 
Thankfully, we got another opportunity to go back and this time, the weather was absolutely perfect. Sunshine, warmth, fewer and fewer clouds as the day went on. And after a long nap in the car and eating lunch, Natalie was ready to give the beach a second chance.

 There had been a sand sculpture competition the week earlier, but the sculptures were still on display for everyone's viewing pleasure. The castle behind us was our favorite.

 Because of the downpour two days earlier, there had been some damage to the sculptures, but they were still cool to look at.

 Our nephew, Sky, loved being buried in the sand:

Drea had to give it a try, too!

I got a nice sunburn on my shoulders and the backs of my legs the second day, but we still had a great time!

How I Found Out About Baby #2

In case you missed it, here's the pregnancy reveal post I wrote yesterday. I'm writing this weeks before I'll actually publish this post so that I don't forget any details. Sometime after our miscarriage in January, I started having this feeling that our next baby would be due in January (2014). That thought just wouldn't go away. I wondered if it was God whispering to me about His plans for our family's future, but, to be honest, I still doubted because I didn't want to get my hopes up and be disappointed if things happened differently. That's how this whole waiting-to-get-pregnant process has been for me. It's like a repeating cycle of vulnerability, hope, anticipation, and then putting on protective armor to shield your heart from the pain of disappointment and uncertainty. This second time around has been a bit of an emotional rollercoaster, but still not nearly as much as it was before I got pregnant with Natalie. I vowed to myself that I wouldn't stress out about it like that again this time because ultimately, things truly do work out in God's timing. I know my journey doesn't look like anyone else's journey. So, the month came when I knew that if I did get pregnant, we would have a January baby. And things just felt different in my heart. I had a stronger positive outlook. I kept the doubt at bay, for the most part (again, putting up that protective shield in case my "intuition" was wrong).

Well, on a Thursday night, two days before I had told myself that I would take a pregnancy test, I went to bed super early because I was just really tired, and then I woke up super nauseated when Alex came to bed later. I managed to fall back to sleep, but woke up again at 4 and was really sick. Like, stomach bug sick. Curiosity got the best of me and I decided to take the pregnancy test at 4 a.m. Just a few seconds after the control line appeared, the test line appeared, forming that so deeply-desired plus sign.

Maybe it was because I physically felt so ill, but I didn't have nearly the same reaction this time as I did when I got a positive test with Natalie. I was excited and thanked God and vowed that I would not let my mind run wild, preventing me from sleeping the rest of the night (I still barely slept anyway because I kept getting sick). I think the thought of another early miscarriage happening a few days down the road probably factored in, too. After all, that was precisely why I was going to wait a few more days to test in the first place, but curiosity is a powerful thing!

After a rough night, my mom took Natalie later in the morning to help me out. I was pretty sure that I did indeed have a virus and not just really early on-set morning sickness, and tried to play it off as such to my parents. With Mother's Day just a little over a week away, I thought for sure that I could wait that long to surprise our moms with the news. And, I hadn't even told Alex yet! He'd been in a hurry to get to work that morning, so I figured it would be best to wait until after he got home so he wouldn't have the news of a new baby on his mind all day while he was trying to wrap up his work week.

My mom brought Natalie home for her nap and than a good friend took her to dinner before Alex got home so that I could rest some more. I wrote a quick note and taped it, along with the pregnancy test, to the cover of a baby name book I bought last summer and stuck them down in the most gender-neutral baby shower gift bag I had left from Natalie's baby showers. When Alex came home, I asked him to come sit next to me on the couch and he said, "But I don't want to catch whatever you have" and I said, "I don't think you can catch what I have" and I pulled the gift bag out and handed it to him. He was excited, but reserved about it being so early. Then he made a crack about having another winter baby. Oy vey. I just replied that if we had another girl, she could wear Natalie's hand-me-downs to save money and if we have a boy, well, we'd have to buy boy clothes anyway!

So there you have it! That's how I found out I was expecting baby #2!

Lately...

Lately, I've been cherishing all the cuddles, hugs, smiles, giggles and all other adorableness this cutie wants to dish out my way. She is just growing up way too fast:

Playing with her cousins' tinker toys in PA in May

 

I've been snacking frequently on garlic-lover's hummus, my new-found food addiction (Warning: You'll be keeping vampires and husbands away with your garlic breath after you indulge! Haha!). I got mine at Aldi. Pair with garlic, Parmesan, and herb pita chips and you're.in.heaven.

I've been spending more time doing this during Natalie's nap time:

Source

So, life is pretty good right now. Snuggles, snacking, and sleeping sounds like a mom's dream come true, right? Well, another dream is coming true because I'm expecting baby #2! I'll share more details in another post, but I found out the good news the weekend before Mother's Day and am due January 11, 2014. This pregnancy has been fairly similar to my pregnancy with Natalie. Lots of nausea, exhaustion, a few food aversions and lots of excitement! God is soooo good!!!

Busy, Busy

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We had a very busy and exhausting Memorial Day weekend, so I have lots to blog about and pictures to post, but Natalie will be waking up from her nap soon and there's a huge pile of laundry with my name on it, so my updates will just have to wait. I hope you had a great weekend, too!