2 Months

On October 27th, JJ turned 2 months old! He had his 2 month doctor visit that same day. He weighed 12.9 pounds and was 23 3/4 inches long. He's really filled out and is very alert and smiley! He takes a 5 oz. bottle every 3 hours during the day and at night he sleeps from 9:30-4:00, takes a bottle then goes back to sleep until 7:00. He wears size 3-6 months. He is very squirmy and strong (like Andrew was) and loves his pacifier. It calms him down. He's a very easy baby so far! He's a cutie!

At his 2 month check up, he had to have 5 vaccinations in 2 shots. I spent the afternoon holding a grumpy baby. He didn't want to be put down. Poor baby! But, I didn't mind one bit!

Andrew Update

As well as being the best big brother ever, Andrew has some other great adventures he is partaking in now-a-days:
SOCCER - he is a part of the Gilbert Soccer League. His team is made up of 9 other six year old boys called the Crushers! He loves soccer and is very good at it. He is a super fast runner, can dribble the ball well without looking, and has been working on his passing skills. He passed the ball to a teammate that scored a goal during the second game. He has scored two goals in the last 3 games. We love going out and watching him play!

FIRST GRADE - Andrew is doing really well in school. Last Friday they had the 1st Quarter Awards Day where Andrew received the Principal's Award for having all As and Bs. He had a B in Art class (due to absences when we were on vacation). He works really hard in class, still loves to read, his teacher has nothing but praise to report on him when we meet with her, and he comes home every day with a green light (meaning he is following directions and behaving). We are really proud of him!

6 Weeks

Look who's happy to be 6 weeks old!!

1 month

Baby Jeremy, aka JJ, aka Thing 2 turns one month old today!
I snapped some shots of him while he was hanging out in his Pack N Play. This baby makes the funniest faces. Here are some of them:He doesn't smile often yet, but every now and then I catch a quick glimpse of a smile. I can't wait until he starts really smiling because he has the cutest dimples!

He likes to tuck his lower lip/chin in.

And he likes to bulge his eyes out.

A look back on JJs first month:

His belly button cord fell off on day 14 (finally). He hated the sponge baths we had to give him until his belly button and circumcision healed. Now he can be more emerged into his baby bath and he really enjoys that!

He weighs 10 pounds exactly.

*He wears size 1 diapers and 0-3 months clothes, however it is getting rather difficult to snap the onesies because he is so long.

He eats 4 ounces every 3 hours; including night time. Twice he has gone 5 hours without a bottle. Once that was during the night and it was awesome!

He has been in his crib at night since 3 weeks old. He seems to enjoy the quietness of his own room.

He loves his pacifier when he is awake and bored. I love that he doesn't need it to fall asleep. I use it to tide him over when he is still 20 minutes or so away from his next feeding. I'm glad it works!

This week he has really began focusing on people and objects. He is also realizing that he has hands that work. He is constantly holding his pacifier in his mouth, taking it out, touching his bottle, feeling his cheeks, etc.

I have one week left at home with him before I go back to work 3 days a week. I am much more worried this time around about his well being when I am not around. But, I only work 3 days a week from 9-3, and he will be at Jeremy's cousin's house that is just 1 mile away from where I work. All the more incentive to work hard to pay off debts so I can stay home.

*revised 9/28

Ranger Kid of the Year

Andrew is a part of a program at our church called Royal Rangers. It's like the Boy Scout program; he earns badges and merits, they go on camp outs, and he learns Bible stories and memorizes scripture from the Bible. Andrew really enjoys his class. He is in the Ranger Kids class (Kindergarten-2nd grade). I find him at home reading through his Ranger Kids handbook, reading through his Kid's Bible (which he read front to back over the summer!), and he's always making sure that I've sewn his latest badges on his vest.
Apparently his dedication and enthusiasm for the program caught the attention of the other Commanders (teachers) and they voted Andrew for Ranger Kid of the Year. Jeremy and I were extremely surprised (especially since the Senior Commander asked Jeremy who he thought should receive the award and Jeremy told him another kid from the class). Jeremy was worried that it looked really bad that Andrew won the award since Jeremy is the Commander of that class. Eh, what can ya do?
The Pastor recognized each Ranger of the Year during church service and asked each of them what the funnest thing about Rangers is.
Andrew's response?......
"Nothing."

Jeremy Jonah

It's a BOY!! I have to admit I was quite surprised this time around. This pregnancy was so different than when I had Andrew, that I was really starting to think I was having a girl. But we are thrilled with this little handsome man, that I think we'll keep him around!
Jeremy Jonah was born on Friday, August 27, 2010 at 1:29 pm. He weighed 8 pounds, 1 ounce and was 20 1/2 inches long. He was over a pound larger than Andrew was, but he is the spitting image of his big brother!
I began feeling contractions every 8 minutes around 2:00 am with them escalating to 5 minutes apart by 5:30 am. I was checked in the hospital triage room around 7:00 am at 6 cm dilated. I got my epidural at 8:30 am and was still at 6 cm dilated. At noon I was 8 cm dilated and my doctor broke my water and then left to grab some lunch. The doctor came back at 1:00 and I was ready to go. It took half hour for baby J to arrive.

Jeremy, my mom, and Jeremy's mom was in delivery with me, but as soon as the baby was born, Jeremy ran out to the waiting room and whispered to Andrew that he had a little brother so Andrew was able to announce to everyone else that the baby was a boy. His reaction when Jeremy whispered to him?... "YES!!!" I guess he is happy his prayers for a little brother were answered!

This little man is a charmer; complete with cute dimples! Right now he only flashes them when he's upset, but soon I'm sure he'll learn to flash them to flirt with the ladies.

We aren't sure exactly what we will call him, but we know that Jeremy just isn't going to work. It's too hard... A lot of people call him JJ. I call him baby J or just J. Andrew calls him baby brother or baby boy. Jeremy sometimes calls him Junior or Thing 2 (Andrew, of course, being Thing 1 - Dr. Seuss).
We've waited such a long time for this little blessing! We are so happy he is finally here and we are really enjoying having a baby in the house!

Wisconsin Vacation 2010

Another year, another relaxing vacation at Rock Lake in Lake Mills, WI!! We did our usual eating out every night for dinner with the family, relaxed by the lake, and ate a lot of ice cream and fried cheese curds! Yum!
This is our favorite Friday Fish Fry spot - Pine Knoll in Lake Mills.

We ate at a restaurant located on the North Shore of Lake Koshkonong in Fort Atkinson. The lake was flooding the neighborhood because of all the rain the Midwest had received.

We ate at a German restaurant, Karl Ratzsch's, in Milwaukee for my parent's and my aunt and uncle's 35th wedding anniversaries. We've always wanted to eat there and it did not disappoint!

Here's the happy couples (my parents on the left and my aunt and uncle on the right).

My sweet aunts and cousins blessed me with a baby shower in Watertown at a yummy restaurant called Upper Krust (amazing food and pie)! I had a GREAT time with all the ladies in my family!

This year we had a new cottage. It sleeps 6 and is right across the grass from my parent's trailer, the playground is in between our cottage and my parent's trailer, and we can see the beach access to the Lake from our cottage. It's a great location! We really enjoyed the extra space for sure!

Andrew spent a lot of time at the playground. It was so convenient to see him from our cottage windows.

Jeremy and Andrew played a lot of whiffle ball baseball.

We spent the majority of each day down at the Lake and in the water. The temperature stayed in the 80's all week so it was great!

Andrew made a friend that stays in the cottage next door to us! He is 4 months older than Andrew and they got along really well! It was awesome that he had someone his age to play with!

First Grader!

Here's Andrew on his first day of First Grade! This was on July 20, 2010. He was really excited to be heading back to school; especially with his new shoes and messenger bag!

He's been enjoying school the last couple weeks (except when they can't go out for recess because of the heat).

I have been enjoying my new work schedule which allows me to take Andrew to the bus stop before heading in to the office and being home before he gets off of the school bus. It's nice to have the extra couple hours at home each day, as well. I can actually get dinner on the table before 8:00 pm! In fact, it's on the table around 6:00/6:30. That's crazy!! I love it!

Diamondbacks Game

A couple Saturdays ago, Jeremy, Andrew and I headed out to Phoenix for a Diamondbacks game. It was Jeremy's Father's Day gift from Andrew. It was really cool this year, Andrew told me he wanted to get his dad baseball tickets for Father's Day. All his idea! It's so cool that he is old enough and sweet enough to think of gifts that he wants to give. And something that Jeremy would really really like, too!
We had pretty good seats in left field. We were about 6 rows back from the fence. In fact, while Jeremy was taking Andrew on a bathroom break, a ball came flying right at our section, it was going to be a Home Run for the Dbacks, but the Left Fielder of the Marlins barely caught the ball, robbing the Dbacks of another Home Run. The woman in the ball cap in the picture above had her hands on that ball, too, but let go so the Left Fielder could have it. Of course, the Dback fans razzed her for that, but I think she would've been kicked out of the game if she would've interfered like that. However, the play was on Sports Center the following Monday, Jeremy saw it and said he could see my pregnant belly in the shot. Haha!

I didn't take many pictures, but here is the Father and Son in honor of the Father's Day baseball outing.

It was 80s night at the game. We saw the Ghostbusters, including their car, Mr. T., Star Wars characters, Dukes of Hazard characters, including the General Lee, and Pee Wee Herman.

Summer Fun Friday Update

Jeepers
Last Friday we went to Jeepers Indoor Amusement Park in Mesa. Andrew really enjoys this place! We were so lucky this week because Jeremy had an early work day and was off in time to join us! That really made Andrew's day special!
We started with his favorite treat - a pretzel with cheese! Notice his top two teeth are missing!

Jeremy and Andrew in line for the bumper cars. They only had 3 working so it was kind of a long wait/boring only bumping in to two other people.

The spinning Monkey Barrel ride that Andrew loves! Jeremy - not such a big fan. Especially since he wasn't feeling well to begin with.

And, of course... the roller coaster! Andrew rode it a couple times with Jeremy and a couple times by himself. He loves it!

We made a pit stop at Dairy Queen for Blizzards. Yummy!

Peter Piper Pizza

For his last Summer Fun Friday of 2010, Andrew chose to have his buddy Brysen stay the night Thursday and go to Peter Piper Pizza on Friday.

They stayed up late playing Lego Batman on PlayStation, but they weren't too tired for Peter Piper Pizza!

They each helped each other play the games and earn tickets.

They pooled their tickets together for a prize. They had 116 tickets total.

Therefore they each got one miniature tiger animal toy. =/ They were so excited though!

We stopped at Target for some school supplies for Andrew and they were so well behaved that I just had to treat them to McDonald's ice cream.

Andrew is all set to venture back to school on Tuesday.

I can't believe how quickly the summer flew by.

Thankfully, my boss has allowed me to change my work schedule so I will be home before and after school. Andrew won't have to go to a sitter's house any longer! Yay!

Surprise!!

Last Saturday we had plans to go to dinner and a movie with Mindy and Josh (or so we though).

The plan was to drop off our kids at Kristi's house and head out to dinner from there.

However, when we got to Kristi's house, her driveway was full of vehicles from our friends and family!

It was so sweet that everyone had gone through so much planning and hard work to make this such a great surprise for us!

It was a nice relaxing evening. Us women hung out, ate, played a couple baby shower games, and I opened all the wonderful gifts from everyone. The guys were down in the basement playing poker. The buy-in was a bag of diapers; that's a HUGE blessing for us! And, of course, the kids ran wild all over the place! It was all so awesome! Now I feel quite a bit more prepared for this little one, and if you know me, you know that is a huge relief for me!

First Glimpse of Baby Dalmacio

This past Friday I had my first ultrasound of this pregnancy.
With Andrew, my first and only ultrasound was at the hospital when I was in labor. They wanted to be sure Andrew was head down and I don't think I even looked at the screen... I did remember, through my pain, to tell the nurse that we didn't know what we were having so please don't spill the bean now. Actually I told Jeremy to tell her because I didn't want to talk (I do recall I didn't want to roll over from my side to my back for the ultrasound either - I was a little uncooperative until I got my epidural...).
I got off track - sorry! Let's get to the point - the pictures!
This is the profile.

This is my little claymation baby. Notice the bumpy skull? The ultrasound tech said that means the baby has quite a bit of hair already. I see Andrew in this picture; the cheek and nose especially!

I liked this one because it reminds me of when Andrew would fall asleep in his car seat with his arms behind his head and he looked like he was just relaxing or "chillin.'"
We didn't find out what we are having again. The appointment went well and it was a really cool experience! It took about 30-40 minutes total and the tech never messed up and said "he" or "she" even though she admitted about halfway through that she had already seen what the baby's sex is. I have to admit that it was a little hard to not say, "OK OK what is it??," but I'm so glad I resisted the urge. We'll see in less than 12 weeks...

The baby appeared to weigh about 2 pounds 7 ounces and the other measurements put the baby at 28 weeks when my due date put me at 27 weeks. So, my due date may be off by a week, or the baby may just be on the big side for his/her age. We'll see!

Summer Fun Friday (3)

For Summer Fun Friday this past week, Andrew wanted to go watch Alice in Wonderland at the Dollar Theatre. Since the movie was at 5:05, Jeremy was able to come with us!
I had heard that the movie wasn't very good (and I didn't really want to see it in the first place), so I went in to it with very low expectations. Maybe that was a good thing, because I didn't think it was that bad of a movie. Different, but pretty good.
Andrew now says he liked it, but during the movie he had said he doesn't like it. I think it was darker than he expected and a couple parts made him a little scared.

Here is a picture after the movie of Jeremy and Andrew on a fake turtle outside the movie theatre. =0)