Shapes!!!

Shapes and painting are the big things in our house right now. Page is learning her shapes and "studies" a new one every day. She has also developed a LOVE of painting and demands painting all day long. I am trying to be creative and find ways to combine these two things to make sure it's all educational (even though Steve said painting is still refining her small motor skills). So, here are some pictures of Page the last two days painting pictures with her Daddy and painting shapes! She has so much fun!!!

Pregnancy Update

So, we went to our monthly prenatal appointment on Wednesday. We got to have yet ANOTHER ultrasound. We just had one last month to reveal the sex of the baby, but this time they wanted to measure the baby's organs and check to see how big he was. There was some confusion as to how far along we really were. The first u/s showed him with a due date of January 3, 2011. Two weeks later, they did another u/s to check his progress and he was then showing a due date of December 27, 2010. This time, they checked his size and he was showing his size with a due date of December 25, 2010! Alas, they decided to keep his due date as the original January 3, 2011, and just know he is a big boy and weighing in 9 days bigger. He is the size of a large banana and weighs one pound!!! It was great to get to see our little guy again!!! And again... he was NOT shy!

In these pictures, you can see Logen punching me (he was VERY active that day - as usual), his "boy" picture (Steve loves how they label those pictures with "boy" in the top left corner), and lastly, he's looking at us!

As far as me with the pregnancy, everything seems to be going great. My belly bump is measuring 22 inches which is exactly where it should be and even though at this stage in the pregnancy I should have gained 8-14 lbs, I am still 2 lbs less than I was when we first found out we were pregnant. The Dr said since Logen is growing great and my belly is progressing fine, it's just fine! I've really been trying to eat well and keep my weight gain down... let's hope this trend continues throughout the pregnancy.

At this appointment, since we found out the official due date, we asked Dr. Bass a couple of questions. First of all, would he give us clearance to fly home for Thanksgiving (since we won't be home for Christmas)? He said, SURE! He'll evaluate again as it gets closer, but as of right now, he sees no signs of any kind of issues that would keep us home bound, so we bought our tickets on Thursday! Now we'll be able to be home for our baby shower! YEA!!! The second question we asked him... Will we induce again and how early can we? We REALLY want to have Logen home for Christmas if at all possible (of course not jeopardizing his health or safety), and Dr. Bass said it would be possible. So, as of right now, we plan to induce early, on December 22. If Logen is still growing bigger and bigger, we may even do it a little earlier! So... it looks like we will have our little boy home for Christmas! Since it will be RSV season, Page will not be allowed to come to the hospital to visit, so what better Christmas present... meeting her little brother when he comes home a day or two before Christmas!!!

We are all very excited and everything seems to be coming together. We have his baby bedding bought and should be delivered sometime this week, we registered for our baby shower, and we're just enjoying our time together the three of us, until our little family becomes four!!! We'll keep you updated as the pregnancy progresses!

Fun Weekend

We had such a fun weekend this weekend. I was a little down on Friday night and Saturday morning... wanting a night out, but Steve surprised me with a great night in on Saturday! We spent the day together running errands and taking a nap (as most Saturdays go) and then I made a yummy Chicken Parmesan dinner. After we put Page to sleep (who he must have bribed because she went RIGHT to sleep) we sat outside on the front porch for a little while and then came in and played Monopoly on the Wii. Steve knows I LOVE board games and he LOATHES them, but we were able to meet in the middle by playing board games on a video game console! WIN-WIN!!! We had such a great time, just playing and joking around. What a great evening.

Today, Page slept in so we all got up together and I made a big breakfast for us all. Page decided she wanted to go out. She didn't want to stay in the house for a relaxing Sunday like Steve and I had planned. So, we turned it into fun. It's still MUCH too hot to do anything outside, so we decided to take Page to the Baby Mall (i.e. Babies R Us) and registered for Logen! Let me rephrase that. I registered for Logen and Steve and Page played in the toy section and picked out some toys for Logen. We all had a blast, though! I went a little crazy with the register gun. If it had a monkey on it... I scanned it! He's going to be a little monkey boy!

It made the weekend complete. It's all really starting to come together with Logen. It seems like this pregnancy is going by so fast. We bought our tickets for our Thanksgiving trip home last week and we are SO excited! Steve's mom is throwing us a baby shower the Saturday before Thanksgiving so we decided to go ahead and register at Babies R Us and Target. I can't wait. Page is really excited for her little brother to arrive. She's so cute, kissing my belly and always asking to make sure he's OK. She's going to be a VERY good big sister!

So, there is only one way to end this weekend right! We are watching the Bears Preseason game tonight. I know they played last night, but it's not televised here until tonight. We've been pretty good about making sure not to watch anything about it, but we did hear Brian Urlacher got hurt. :( Other than that... tonight is BEARS football! And all is good with the world!!!

Have a great week everyone!

Proud Parents

So, this week at daycare, I decided to really step it up on the Pre-K stuff for Page and the other kids. Emily is only here on Thursdays and Fridays and Gabriel is only here on Wednesdays, but I hope to still get Page working every day, if even just for a little while. I was SO impressed with how smart she is. (I don't know why I was so surprised... her Mommy and Daddy are geniuses... LOL).

Anyway, it all started when she was watching Mickey Mouse's Clubhouse. Yes, yes... I know. TV is bad for kids. I don't necessarily agree with that 100%, though. Too much TV is bad for kids, I'll give you that, but Page has learned SO much from her educational shows that she watches. She's learned her colors from Yo Gabba Gabba, some shapes from Mickey Mouse's Clubhouse, some Spanish and Chinese from Dora the Explorer and Ni Hao, Kai-lan, and so much more.

Anyway, she was watching Mickey Mouse and as always they had to call for Toodles for help. Page was able to tell me every tool that would solve the problem they were having, before the TV told her. Then later, she was able to tell me the order in which the rocket ship needed to be put back together... in order of size. I was SO impressed. I've never taught her these problem solving strategies, but she knew them. Wow... I was literally knocked off my feet. I was beaming with pride.

After that, I started to feel bad. Why does she have to learn all of this from TV? I should be teaching her this stuff. And I have a little. We do flashcards and puzzles, but I think she really grasped it from the TV. So, I made a bunch of copies and today we started doing "school" which Page was SO excited about! She told Steve about it first thing this morning, that she was going to "school" while he went to work. Too cute!

So, today we started small. We worked on shapes and her name. On the shapes page, there were 8 shapes (heart, oval, square, triangle, rectangle, circle, diamond, and star). She was able to tell me 5 out of the 8 - the ones in red. I was impressed. So, we started the shapes packet and the first day was circles. They had to trace the circle of different pictures and then they colored INSIDE the circle. She did great. Later, we iced circles (Vanilla Wafers) and enjoyed eating circles. Page and Emily both had fun. They also had fun learning how to spell their names (we'll keep working on it) and then they got to trace the letters of their name over and over again. They looked so smart sitting at the table with their pencils and their worksheets. My baby is growing up!!! Look how big she looks. Our big girl!!!

I have attached some pictures of Page and Emily (Emily not pictured) working on their packets and also fingerpainting with pudding paint yesterday. I have video of them going over their shapes and their names, too, I just need to edit them and figure out how to upload video on here. :) Anyway, I'm so proud of how smart our little girl is! I hope that all this learning we are going to be doing will give her the edge over the curve in school. I'm also happy she LOVES "school". I guess it's all about making it fun!

Page starting her pudding paint fingerpainting project.

Her finished product... just for Daddy!