9 Months!

Well, Little Man, you have been growing outside of me for almost as long as you were growing inside of me!  That's crazy to think about!

This month, you have been BUSY!  You are cruising around as long as there is something to hold onto, even if it's just the wall.  You are beginning to stand on your own for a few seconds at a time.  We have discovered over this past month that you are quite the daredevil!  You love to try to jump off of things, climb up on everything, and crawl over all kinds of furniture.  You are still very good about not getting upset if you fall or bump your head.  The only time you really fuss about that is if you are really tired.  I can only imagine how much crazier you will be when you start to walk and run around!  You love to "help" me with laundry!  I love it, even though it takes me quite a bit longer to get it done! You now have 4 teeth.  Your top two teeth finally came in.  Those suckers took about a month and half to get through, but they finally made their arrival a few weeks ago.

You are making all kinds of funny sounds.  You are still making the clicking sound with your mouth, as well as saying a very exaggerated "oooooooh" whenever you find something or we hand him something. It's hilarious!  Over the past few days, you've started whistling!  You keep your mouth in the "ooooooh" position and breath out and in slowly, causing you to whistle.  It's so cute.  You also love to go around saying "Doi doi doi" as you are doing things.  When you are working hard on something (usually pulling all the magazines or dvds down) you make a growling noise.  If you hear anyone clear their throat or cough, you cough.  It's so neat to see you learning how to mimic what others are doing, but some people tend to look at us a little weird when you are "coughing" so much!  You are saying "mama", "dada", "baby", "wow", "yay", and "ah".  We think you are finally connecting the word "mama" to me, which is fun!  You will say it and look at me or reach for me.

You still thrive on attention from others.  You are becoming more and more aware of the people and children around you.  You will crane your neck around if you see a baby or child pass.  If you hear someone talking or a baby crying, you have to find from where the sound is coming.  You love to hear applause.  If there is a game show or something on tv, you always turn around real quickly to see what all the clapping is about!

You are eating all stage 3 foods along with mum-mums, puffs, yogurt melts, and cheerios, along with 3-4 6-8oz bottles.  At your 9 month appointment on Wednesday, the nurse practitioner told us to start feeding you table foods.  I'm so nervous about starting that, but I know you'll do great.  You haven't had any issues with the thicker, chunkier foods.  You weighed 19 pounds 13 ounces and were 27.5 inches long (but the nurse didn't measure you straight, so I think you are longer than that).  You are right on target or ahead of all the milestones for your age.  In the past, it seems like you were a bit behind, reaching the milestone a few days after the appointment.  You're wearing mainly 12 month clothes, mainly because I didn't want to waste money on 9 month shirts when you would only be in them for a month then need something bigger.  So I just roll up the sleeves or roll up your pant legs and works just fine!  Some shirts I'm not even needing to roll up right now.

I'm giving you more and more freedom in your playing lately.  I am letting you play by yourself in your  room without me in there.  I'll let you explore all of the buckets that are on the shelf of your changing table.  I check on you from the doorway about every 2-5 minutes.  I think you like the alone time that doesn't confine you to your crib or your pack n play.  You, of course, love to make messes.  Some of the things you get into and do just cause me to shake my head!  You like to try to figure out how things work or are put together.  When you are working on something, I can just see the wheels turning in your head!

We just found out that you are going to have a little brother!  We can't wait to see how much fun the two of you are going to have, not to mention the trouble you both will get into!  I only have a little over 4 months of calling you "the cutest boy in the world" and telling you that you're my favorite little boy.  We love you so very much and are amazed at how much you are learning each and every day.  One of my favorite times of the day is right before bed time when I listen to your daddy read your bedtime story to you and then I go in so we can pray with you.  I love that quiet time just the three of us.

We love you more and more every single day!  You are so precious and we look forward to each and every day with you!

Mommy and Daddy

19 Weeks

Pregnancy Highlights

How far along: 19 weeks

Size of baby: 6.5 inches, 10oz (about the size of a mango)

Maternity Clothes: Yes! Although, I think I'm about to outgrow my maternity jeans!  The hiney is getting a bit too big this time around!

Movement: Yes, thank the Lord!  Monday morning, Tim got up with Robby and I was awake but laying in bed.  Right then I just started feeling a ton of little precious kicks!  I forgot how precious and tiny they are at first!

Sleep: Not much, but not the fault of the pregnancy!

Symptoms: Not really.  Just feeling every ache and pain a little more this time around.  It definitely seems like this one is a bit harder than the last time, but I'm sure it's because I'm so busy chasing and carrying Robby!

Food cravings/aversions: Everything!  

What I am looking forward to: Meeting our precious Charlie!

It's a....

BOY!!

He was very proud to show us, too!!

Charles "Charlie" Edward Weigle will be making his arrival in late February! We could not be more ecstatic to add this little boy to our family!

This, That, and the Other!

I feel like it's been forever since I've done a real blog post!  It's only been about a week but it seems like longer!  I was doing well writing some and scheduling them to post each day, but the end of my week last week got a little out of control.  I don't have anything specific to talk about, just a hodgepodge of things, so I might just do some bulletpoints.

-Robby is loving being all over the place.  I close the doors to our bedroom and the hall bathroom and let him crawl all around and go in his room to "explore".  He loves it!  I go in and check on him about every 2 minutes or so and make sure he's doing ok.  I've taken everything out of his reach that he could choke on or could hurt him.  He likes to take his little buckets down from his changing table and dump them out to go through everything.

-Speaking of that, he's really into dumping things out of baskets or buckets.  Folding laundry is super fun around here now, not to mention takes three times as long with a sweet little helper!  I have an extra laundry basket that I put some of his toys in for him to dump out and play with in the living room.  He's so funny to watch and discover new things.

-He's dealing with some allergy or sinus issues today.  He had a bit of a rough night last night and I think that's why.  After talking to a few of the moms from my moms club here, I decided to just let him cry it out when he wakes up in the night instead of going in immediately with a bottle.  His feedings have begun to be earlier and earlier.  For the longest time it was 5-5:30, but lately it has been as early as 2.  Thanks to some encouragement and shared experiences, I have a plan to get him back to needing his first feeding at 5ish and eventually getting rid of that feeding all together.

-Friday I helped prep for a yard sale benefitting some local charities here.  It was fun to get together with the other ladies and get to know them better.  I was there from about 6-10 that evening and got up at 5 to help with the actual sale on Saturday.  I was there until almost noon when I started to realize I probably was starting to over do it a bit.  I tend to forget that I need to take it easy.  I'm feeling the aches and pains of pregnancy much earlier this time.  I don't know if that is simply because it's my second or if it's because this second one is so soon after my first.  When we were starting to pull things out for the sale on Saturday morning, it suddenly started down pouring!  The sale was supposed to start at 8 but we knew people would start showing up at 7, which is why we planned to get stuff started at 6.  It didn't stop raining completely until close to 8, but that didn't stop people.  We had people come by at 6:30 in the pouring rain, asking to go through the things!  Although it was a long day and a lot of work, the sale raised over $1300 for the charities!  Pretty impressive for a sale where we were practically giving things away around 9am!

-Tim had yesterday off for Columbus Day.  It was so nice to spend the day together.  We had a gift card to Chili's so we went had lunch out.  We don't usually do that, so it was nice!  If we grab lunch, it's usually fast food that we grab to eat in the car or something.  What also made it nice was just getting to eat out together.  When we were in Amarillo and he was working retail, we ate out A LOT!  Whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted.  It has been quite an adjustment to not be able to eat out like that.  It's good because I'm getting creative with recipes again, but I still miss the freedom of being able to just go out to dinner whenever we want.  This past month, we had to cut eating out from our budget completely.  We agreed that if we wanted to use our own personal allowance on a meal out, that was fine, but it could not be debited or come out of our grocery food money.  I think we only spent about $25 the whole month on food that wasn't groceries.  We would usually share something if we were going to grab a meal.  There's a burger place here who has a combo with a burger and a hot dog, fries, and a drink.  We got that and Tim ate the hot dog and a little of the burger, I ate most of the burger, we split the fries and Tim had the drink.  We ended up having our Sunday lunch for about $7.50!  Another time we went out we had a groupon, so we pretty much just had to pay for the tip out of pocket.  Hopefully in the next few months, we can get our budget back under control and have a little more eating out freedom, but for the time being we are trying to do without it as much as possible.

-Tomorrow is the big day!  We get to find out if our sweet little Weiglet #2 is healthy and growing properly, and HOPEFULLY, find out if we're having an Abigail Lauren or a Charles Edward!  I thought I would be super anxious and ready to find out.  While I am definitely excited, my mind keeps going to wanting to make sure the baby is healthy and the organs look good.  If we don't find out, it's not the end of the world.

-I made these cookies on Sunday evening.  They are incredible!  I am not a fan of pumpkin and chocolate chips, but the white chocolate with the pumpkin was amazing!!  They might be might be my new favorite pumpkin baked good!  Mmmm!  You have to try them.

-Robby said "baby" today!  He's been mimicking some different sounds and actions we've done, so I decided to see if he would repeat some words for me.  He usually says words, but won't necessarily repeat them for us.  Today I looked at him and said "baby" and he looked back at me and said "baaabbby"!  Oh it was so precious.  I'm working on getting it on video.  But we all know how that usually goes!!

I hope you are all doing well and had a great weekend and start to your week.  I'm going to do my 19 week pregnancy highlight post tomorrow after we have our appointment!

Lemonhead!

Wordless Wednesday: Favorite Afternoon Activity

18 weeks

*First, let me say, if you tried to watch the videos on the past 3 posts or so, I was a dumb-dumb and uploaded them incorrectly.  It's been fixed, so you can go back and watch them now!*

Pregnancy Highlights

How far along: 18 weeks

Size of baby: 6 inches, 1/2 pound (about the size of a mango)

Maternity Clothes: pants, but regular shirts are becoming harder to wear.  When I was pregnant with Robby, I was wearing mostly regular shirts the entire time, but this time my regular shirts don't seem to be long enough.  Sadly, I only have 2 maternity shirts and I don't foresee getting any more anytime soon.  So I guess I'll just raid Tim's t-shirt drawer! (The shirt I'm wearing in this picture was a gift from Catie!  It is so comfy and Tim complimented me twice the day I wore it!  It definitely made me feel nice!)

Movement: I haven't really felt any movement.  I think I felt the baby push it's head or butt at one point, but I'm not sure.  I cannot even tell you how relieved I will  be to see that sweet baby moving around on that screen next week!

Sleep: Not much, but not the fault of the pregnancy!

Symptoms: My back and hips are beginning to hurt.  Other than that, I'm tired and hungry most all the time.

Food cravings/aversions: Everything!  

What I am looking forward to: Hopefully finding out if this baby is a boy or a girl next week.  But I will be happy just finding out that he/she is healthy and growing.