Eden Amelia is TWO Years Old!

Can you guys believe it's been TWO YEARS since this happened?  

Believe it or not, it's true!  Last Tuesday, February 23, Eden turned two!  

I'm really having a difficult time finding the words to describe our girl.  She's spunky and full of personality.  She's bright and loves to talk, sing, dance, and go, go, go.  She is developing a great imagination and loves to play.  Her favorite activities right now are helping Mommy and Daddy in the kitchen, playing in the sink, taking bubble baths, coloring, singing, dancing, jumping, marching, bouncing, climbing the stairs and generally doing everything herself, and watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and Little Einsteins when Mommy needs a rest. She hates getting her diaper changed and going to sleep.

She can count to 10 (and sometimes all the way up to 14) only skipping a few numbers or needing some prompting every now and then.  She knows most of her colors most of the time.  She knows a lot of her shapes.  She loves to sing and has learned the words to most of her songs.  Her vocabulary is insane and she cracks us up with some of the things she says, especially when she is repeating us.  I am impressed with how well she listens and am reminded constantly how consistency is important because she is paying attention…it just takes a while for things to sink in sometimes.  One of my favorites right now is how she started singing a little song I made up forever ago trying to remind her to be patient and wait, wait, wait.  She just randomly sang it the other day and it took me a second to figure out what she was saying.  When I figured it out, I was like, "Wow!"  She isn't able to say the "k" or "hard c" sound making some words pretty interesting.  My current favorite is "shark" sounding exactly like "shart." LOL

About a month before her birthday, Eden had a doctor's appointment to clear her for eye surgery.  Her growth measurements at that time were a weight of 24 3/4 pounds and a length of 32 1/2 inches.  I don't know where that puts her on the growth charts but I think she's pretty average in height and weight.  It's crazy to think she's only gained 3 pounds since her first birthday but you can really tell how much she's leaned out when you look at pictures even as recent as September.  

Anyways, I'll spare you any more words and leave you with some of my favorite pictures of the birthday girl!

Eden loves to sing "Happy to you" (as she calls it) and has really enjoyed singing it multiple times this week.  I have an adorable video of her singing along on her birthday but it won't load. I'll try again later!

The Bird is 24 Weeks Pregnant!

It is definitely a challenge to get a good belly shot these days.  If I can even put myself together enough to look remotely presentable, all the stars have to align for the picture to actually get taken.  Then, we have to hope and pray that Eden will cooperate.  She wasn't very cooperative today but we did manage to get one or two decent pictures.  Looking at my belly from a third person perspective confirmed what I was suspecting--that I am carrying differently this time (at least right now).  As of about 6 weeks ago, I felt like my bump looked exactly the same as it had at the same point when I was pregnant with Eden but now, it's definitely looking different!  See for yourself!  Here is a link to my 24 week post with Eden's pregnancy.  And here is my belly today…

As usual, Eden had to get in on the fun and show her belly, too.  There's a baby in her belly, too, you know!

My pregnancy symptoms mainly consist of increased fetal movement (Yay!), rare heartburn, peeing a lot, and super vivid and weird dreams. I'm going to leave this short and sweet because it's actually the next morning now and I have a little helper trying to type for me.

The Long Awaited Name Reveal

Ever since we found out that our sweet baby #2 is a girl, the questions I get asked the most revolve around her name…"Have you picked a name?"  "Do you know what you'll name her?"  "What's her name?"  Since I can't pass up an opportunity to make a big deal out of everything, I decided to have a photo shoot to announce the long-awaited name.  So, this morning, Kerrisa of Kerrisa Joelle Photography & I spent an hour getting some great images of my bump with some fun accessories (thanks Pinterest).  Here are a few of my favorites…

So, there it is - Clara Randolph!  This was one of our name choices when we had Eden and I've just continued to fall more and more in love over the last two years.  Clara is significant to me because of Clara Barton and Clara, the main character in the Nutcracker Ballet.  It means "clear" or "bright."  Randolph is my middle name, my Daddy's first name, and his aunt's middle name.  I'm so excited to meet her in about 17 weeks!

The Story Continues...

I finally got to publish a pretty long post summarizing the highlights of my pregnancy but it got too long so I decided to split it into two posts.  You can check out the first part of this post here.

~Second Trimester~

I finally started feeling better around week 15 or 16.  Praise God!!!!

I fiiiiinally got around to taking a picture of my bump right at the beginning of my 18th week.

Eden wanted to show off her bump, too. 

I had another visit with the midwife at 18 weeks.  We found the heartbeat with the doppler again and it sounded strong and healthy (I can't remember what it was).

Just a couple days later, we had our anatomy ultrasound scan.  The baby looked completely healthy.  The ultrasound did confirm something that I suspected--I have an anterior placenta, explaining why I had not really felt much (or hardly any) fetal movement.  Thankfully, this shouldn't really have any other implications at all.

We did not find out the gender that evening but did have the ultrasound tech write it on a piece of paper and seal it in an envelope.  The following day, I gave the envelope to my good friend who bought balloons based on the gender.  That evening, we gathered with our friends and family at a local restaurant and, together, found out that IT'S A GIRL!  I was genuinely shocked.  I have no valid reasons for thinking it was a boy but I was just convinced that it was.  But I was wrong (unless, of course, the ultrasound tech was wrong, but I highly doubt that)!  Here are a few pics from our fun party. We did a "Baseball Player or Ballerina" theme.  Guests were asked to dress up according to what gender they thought the baby was.  Since I thought it was a boy, I dressed up like a baseball player and since Jeff thought it was a girl, he dressed up like a ballerina (tutu made by yours truly).

Unfortunately, I can't get the video of the actual reveal to load correctly.  I'll try again later!

Most people's next question is:  "Have you picked out a name?"  The answer is, "Yes," but we're not telling anyone yet.  I am planning to announce it in a fun way in a couple of weeks.  Stay tuned, hopefully that will be my next blog post!

I am finally feeling the baby move a lot more.  Jeff even got to feel her last night!  Eden has said and done some of the cutest things as my belly has gotten noticeably bigger recently.  First, she keeps insisting that it's a boy, which is pretty hilarious.  My friend who watches Eden when I'm sleeping after working or while I'm at clinical, was trying to get Eden to tell her the baby's name and Eden kept saying, "It's a BOY!"  Another super cute story:  When Eden stole my grilled cheese the other day and wouldn't let me have another bite, I told her that her baby sister needed to eat and she proceeded to try to feed her the grilled cheese through my belly button.  LOL

I did get around to taking one more bump picture this week at 21 weeks.

Eden had to get in on the action again.  So cute!

Hopefully it's not another 5 months before my next blog post (can you believe the baby will be here by then?!?).

The Bird is 21 Weeks Pregnant (and just now getting around to blogging about it).

Wow!  Talk about night and day between last pregnancy and this one.  I sincerely hope this child isn't very sentimental and doesn't take it personally that I blogged every week from 11 weeks on complete with belly bump pic and cute little stats when I was pregnant with her big sister whereas I hope to eek out a few posts this go-round, and I've only taken two pics of the belly.  Blogging when you have a toddler and are ridiculously sick from pregnancy hormones is really difficult!  I'm going to try to hit the highlights here because if I wait for all of the stars to align, I'll never blog at all.

In my last post, I announced that we are expecting our second child.  I didn't really give any other details, though, so I'll start from the beginning…

~The Test~

On October 2, I was 5 days late, so I took a pregnancy test.  I know 5 days is pretty late but I still really didn't think it would be positive.  I had taken one 3 days before my missed period because I was slightly suspicious that I might be pregnant but I guess the test I used wasn't sensitive enough to show up positive that early.  But, this negative result made me certain I wasn't pregnant so when that second test showed up positive, I was sincerely shocked…and very pleasantly surprised.  For those of you who are wondering…yes, we were trying for another.

~Telling Hubby~

Last time I got pregnant, I had already confessed my suspicions to Jeff and then, I told him immediately upon getting the positive on the pregnancy test.  So, this time, I thought it might be really fun to do something more elaborate to tell him.  But, then, I was too excited to keep the secret!  It was late at night when I took the test and I was practically jumping on the bed when he came up to our bedroom shortly after I took the test.  There was no way I was waiting until he got home from work the following day.  So, I just told him and we were excited together.

~Telling Our Families~

Last time, we waited until I was 9 weeks pregnant and had my first ultrasound before telling our families.  This time, I saw no reason to wait and the perfect opportunity arose very soon after I found out when my brother was visiting from Nashville and my parents came to town to see him (and us).  So, I bought a super cute "Best Big Sister" shirt for Eden and put it on her when she woke up from her nap one afternoon.  I plopped her down in my mom's lap and told her to show her Nanny her new shirt.  Hilariously, my mom was oblivious to the shirt and my brother, impatient to talk about our dinner plans (the hook I had used to get everyone in the same room), forced me to bring Eden's shirt to everyone's attention in a not-so-inconspicuous way.  It was pretty funny in the long run and, of course, everyone was super excited.  I FaceTimed with my sister and her family to share our news right after.

The perfect opportunity to tell Jeff's family came just a few days later when his uncles came into town and everyone (except his mom…and brother & family who live in HI) gathered at our house.  Eden wore her "Best Big Sister" shirt and we simply waited for everyone to notice!  It didn't take long and since, in Robin's words "I don't do anything by accident," they knew immediately that I was pregnant.  Those who couldn't be there got a text with this super cute pic saying that Eden had some exciting news to share.

~First Trimester~

I'm going to try to spare you of most of the details of my first trimester.  To sum most of it up, I had constant nausea, fairly frequent vomiting, and severe fatigue.  It was MUCH worse than my first pregnancy.  I'm so blessed to have a wonderful daughter who allowed mommy to rest on the couch while she played and watched cartoons every morning and an AMAZING husband who went to work Monday through Friday, brought his work home each night/weekend (as usual) and went above and beyond to pick up all the slack at home.  He changed every diaper when he was home, he gave Eden a bath every other night, he did all the grocery shopping, he cooked all the meals, etc., etc., etc.

I was going to forego the first trimester ultrasound because it really isn't necessary if you are pretty sure about your dates.  I was absolutely certain of my LMP and even pretty sure of my conception date.  But when I felt so terrible for so long, I honestly just needed to see my baby and get a morale boost that I could make it through the torture because the outcome would be a healthy baby.  So, I had an ultrasound on November 16th showing I was 11w3d and due June 3 or 4.  (My original due date based on LMP is June 5 and I am sticking with that because one or two days definitely does not matter in the long run).  The baby looked healthy and his/her heart rate was 162.

It was around this time that, after much thinking, praying, and talking with my insurance company, we decided to have a home birth with a local midwife whom we had met through various circumstances after Eden was born.  I have pretty much wanted a home birth since having Eden and the main determinant was the financial aspect.  I'm not going to go into much more detail about this here.  [Sidenote:  Please refrain from sharing your reasons that I should not have a home birth as I have done my research and made an informed decision that this is what is best for us.  If you choose not to have a home birth, I fully support that decision and I ask that you respect me in the same way.]

I met with my midwife when I was 12 weeks.  She drew some labs and checked my urine and all looked great.  She found the baby's heart beat with the doppler and it was 168.

To be continued...

Eden Amelia has a Secret!

Eden has some exciting news she's been anxious to share for the past few weeks (OK, not really…truth is she doesn't grasp concepts too well yet and she really has no idea what she's getting herself into, but…she has news nonetheless)…

Jeff & I are really thrilled about this new addition to our family.  We had a photo shoot with Heather of  Kidd Photography this afternoon to share our joyous announcement with the world.  Unfortunately, taking pictures with a toddler can be really stressful.  Especially when said toddler didn't get a long enough nap.  Thankfully, with a little patience and a lot of chocolate, she got at least a few good pics!  I'm sure there are more where these came from, as well.