Mid-Pregnancy Ultrasound (and Pictures!)

We had our mid-pregnancy ultrasound on Thursday of last week.  We were so excited to get a peek at how our baby was growing and to find out 100% whether it was a he or a she.  During our appointment in April, our doctor did a quick ultrasound for us and said our baby looked like a girl.  She did say that it wasn't 100% since it was still early, but it definitely looked to her like it was.  So to me, that meant mentally I've been picturing our baby as a girl for the last month.  Kyle wanted to wait until we had 100% accuracy before committing to boy or girl.  He needed proof.  So we finally got it last week!

Up until that point, if people have asked me personally what gender the baby is, I've told them, but I also gave the doctor's warning as a disclaimer, too.  You know...just in case she decided to grow something extra in the month between ultrasounds.  But she didn't!  Kyle I think was a little bit overwhelmed with the idea of having a girl (pink, princesses, teenage years, dating), but we've decided to give her a blue bedroom and Kyle has vowed that during summer breaks he will be introducing her to several Batman cartoons, so he's definitely okay with it.  

Ultrasound pictures:

Remember when our baby girl was just a seahorse?  This picture was taken sometime in February at about 9 weeks.

At almost 23 weeks, she has a face!

And big Byard feet...

Arms...

And a full torso, complete with a spine, several working organs, and an umbilical cord feeding into her body!

Looks like she might sleep with her mouth open?  Well, we both do that, so she'll fit right in!

We have so much to do before she comes, but I'm so ready to meet her!  The ultrasound tech said she was perfect in every way; everything is working and she has all the parts she needs (they checked about a million things like kidneys, sections of the brain, the heart, the spine, the eyes...EVERYTHING).  Also she is very photogenic--every time the tech told us she was going to begin looking for the next item, baby would literally spin and offer that part of her body up for pictures.  What a turkey!  The only concern right now is that she's breech, but she's got about 10 weeks to turn herself around before the doctors begin to worry that she won't do it herself.  I say she can take her time as long as it gets done, but hopefully she won't procrastinate about it!  

She's also kicking away right now, although the kicks are very low in my abdomen and very light, so it's a little difficult for others to feel them.  Kyle has, though, and I know she's startled one of the cats that had his head laying on my stomach.  I've been joking that maybe we should put her in dance class when she gets older, but I think Kyle would rather die than sit through a dance recital (horrible memories of his sister's recitals).  I'm very excited to see what kind of a baby she'll be like! 

How far away is September again?

Summertime Again

Annnnnnnnnnnddd today is officially the first day of summer break!  I can't begin to tell you how excited we are about it!  Usually we're not done as early as we are this year, but I sure am glad about it.

As usual, the rest of May is pretty stinkin' busy.  I think when the beginning of May comes and the end of school is in sight, we sort of over-book ourselves for the end of May out of excitement.  The next week and a half will consist of birthday parties, graduation parties, having people over for dinner, garage saling, doctor appointments, taking the cats to the groomer (EVERYONE is getting a haircut this time!), and of course, upstairs demolition.  

I was just looking back at some of my blog posts from last year from the beginning of summer and realized how excited I was to remodel our upstairs.  We planned to do it all ourselves.  Well...that didn't happen!  We did begin the remodel by having a plumber out to check out the upstairs bathroom.  Which needed to be completely re-plumbed and leaks fixed under the shower (which meant putting a hole in the ceiling in the floor below).  And boy, let me tell ya, plumbers turn out to be awfully expensive.  This week's worth of plumbing adventures turned out to eat up our entire renovation budget that we had last summer.  Couple that with it being too hot to move because of the lack of rain, and not much got done upstairs last summer.

But guess what's going on up there this summer?

We're going to begin AND finish the remodel.  Except we've changed our minds on one thing--we're not going to do it ourselves anymore.  Well, not completely.  We're having an Amish crew come out to help with dry walling and mudding the walls.  But we're involved in doing everything else!  So far we've moved everything downstairs (we have too much stuff) and Kyle is going to use pizza to lure some friends over to begin tear-down of the old, ugly paneling.  After tear-down is complete, Kyle and my dad are going to oversee minimal installation of insulation.  Then the Amish come out at the beginning of June and will be done about half-way through the month.  Then we paint.  Then Kyle and his dad (and probably mine too) will come help lay a floor.  Then PRESTO!  Done!  Just in time to move everything back upstairs and begin working on converting our downstairs office into a baby's room.  In the meantime, this is the perfect opportunity to get rid of stuff we don't need/want anymore...just in time for my mom's garage sale in June!

I know we're not going to flake out this time!  Every time I even pause to consider it, I get a nice kick in the bladder to remind me exactly why the renovation is necessary.

So I keep telling myself...just get through May, then let the Amish take care of the walls.  Just get through May, just get through May.  We've gotten so much accomplished, but it still seems there's a TON more to do before that point! 

In the meantime, we will be enjoying the summer weather!  It might involve a little bit of rain here and there, but after last summer, that sounds heavenly :)

Announcing Baby Part Two

So hopefully this publishes a-okay...still figuring this video converter out.  Everything worked really well the last time, then when I tried to publish, the vids wouldn't work because of Adobe...I got fed up...then when I tried to preview a month later, magically they worked!  So I'm hoping these do the same.

We took a couple more videos of us sharing the big news that I really wanted to post.  The rest of the family members got phone calls!  These videos are from Easter on my dad's side of the family.  We put together a small Easter basket for the baby (we still had yet to figure out what we are having, by the way, but Kyle was insistent on dinosaur stuff!) that we put on the table until people noticed it: 

I've also been having problems with uploading pictures to blogger.  When this issue is resolved (hopefully soon!), we will upload baby bump/ultrasound pictures :)