20 Weeks & a Baby Name

We have decided on a baby name!  I thought it would take us a while to decide since I had no idea what to name a girl (I had a boy name picked out and ready to go).  The boy name I had chosen was River Daniel or River Drake.  So, Dan suggested that we stick with River for a girl and he came up with Audrey River.  We will call her River.

I am currently 21 weeks along and I still feel like it is going pretty quickly.  I am feeling River move around a lot but Dan and Raine can't feel her yet.  

I recently broke my pinkie toe and had to get stitches along the under side of the toe crease so I have been limping around.  Raine caught her first sickness at school and slept through most of labor day weekend but she was feeling much better by Labor day.  Then I promptly caught whatever she had and have been coughing and congested for most of this week.

I have also been working on our baby registry:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/registry/baby/ref=gno_listpop_br

19 Week Ultrasound

It has been a busy few weeks.  We moved, Raine started kindergarten, we found out the sex of the baby and I got my Bachelor's degree.

Here is the baby at 19 weeks!  She is completely healthy and doing well.  And yes she is a GIRL!

This is what Raine opened up to find out if she was having a brother or a sister.  She was a little disappointed because she really wanted a brother but she is excited now.  She told me on the way to school the other day that she can still do somethings that she would do with a brother with a sister.  Like, kissing, snuggling, hugging and zurping the baby.  She is just concerned that a little sister won't like dinosaurs like she does.

It's official!!  I have graduated college and am no the proud owner of a Bachelor of Arts in Holistic Wellness!

Raine's First Day of Kindergarten!

I can't believe my baby is in kindergarten!

This was Raine's very first day of kindergarten.  She went in for a few hours to meet her teacher and do assessment testing.

She was so excited she literally RAN to the door!

This was the first official day of kindergarten.  We all went early for the welcome to school assembly where each class got to enter school under a balloon arch.

Again, she RAN to school, excited as can be.

Raine under the balloon arch.

I spent so long trying to ease Raine's fears about going to school and get her excited about it that she was so ready.  The important thing I forgot was to prepare myself for her going to kindergarten.  About a week before school started I read a friend's blog about her daughter starting kindergarten at the same school.  At that moment I realized what Raine going to kindergarten meant to me, the enormous change that was coming my way.  So, of course I immediately burst into tears.  Which I then did again anytime I thought about her going to school, when I dropped her off at her assessment day and again on her first day of kindergarten.  (And I am starting to tear up yet again as I type this - and we are finishing our 3rd week of kindergarten).  I wasn't really crying because I was sad although I do miss her while she is at school, I was just so proud of her and the little person she has become.  She was so grown up and brave about going to school!  More brave than mommy, who was just pretending to be brave. 

15 Weeks Pregnant and Kindergarten!

As many of you already know we are expecting baby #2!

This pregnancy has been strikingly different from my last.  I felt continuously tired and nauseous the majority of the first trimester and my belly seemed to pop almost as soon as wee found out we were expecting!  

Now in the second trimester I am feeling quite a bit better.  Raine and I have even left the house several times in the last few weeks! :)  I feel my ligaments stretching and my body accommodating the baby much earlier than I did when I was pregnant with Raine.  I felt amazingly like myself up until the last month with Raine and this time around I worry that I am a bit whiny because I am feeling everything so early.

Raine is SO excited to be a big sister!  She is looking forward to the new baby and has told Dan and I that she will get up to feed the baby in the middle of the night. :)  She is also looking forward to kindergarten (I know I can't believe it either)!  I think all the coming changes and the hard work of growing is making her a little grumpy but she is handling it pretty well anyway.

She got accepted to 2 really good kindergartens:  Mountain Phoenix Waldorf Charter School and The Studio School (an art based magnet school).  We are still figuring out which school we will send her to but are excited to have such great options (considering 2 months ago we had no options and were just going to home-school).  Raine really likes the playground at Mountain Phoenix and she LOVES that the Studio School has a ceramics class and a stage!  We will decide for sure in a week or two which school she will be attending.

Happy Birthday Raine!!

We had a little family birthday on Raine's birthday last week. We are having a party for her in a few weeks so we just let her pick whatever she wanted to do on her birthday.

I took her to a place called Little Monkey Business, it is just a play center for infants to preschoolers. She had a great time and then we came home to celebrate with Dan. We played all her games and then Raine and Dan played play dough while I made dinner. She requested pizza and watermelon. And then she had a very large cupcake that she picked out from the store. We opened presents and watched Sid the Science Kid.

It was pretty fun to have a day that we did whatever she wanted to do! Her favorite gift from Dan and I was her Kilan night light, she loves it, and even wanted to take it in the car and everywhere she went. But when she saw the playhouse from Nana all else was forgotten. :)

Last night we spent last night making our own Christmas tree decorations. (We have only a handful of real decorations). It was pretty fun. I thought the decorations would be cheesy and silly on our tree, but I think it looks cute. :) Raine was super excited because she got to use scissors and glue! A very big treat for her, she feels so deprived not getting to use scissors that whenever she has a chances that's all she wants to do. :) Raine was in charge of hanging the decorations on the tree, which she really enjoyed. Grami Tami gave us a nice tree, it is actually our first tree bigger than 2 ft tall. And it already has a pile of presents under it for Raine from Grami Tami. We also made super chocolate cookies for Dan's work cookie bake off. Raine loves to bake (she thinks everything requires a cup of butter, cup of sugar and a mixer). She loves licking the beaters more than eating the cookies.

Raine Reading

Raine loves to read to Jasper (the boy I nanny for now) and I. Here she is reading Brown Bear, Brown Bear. Usually she just reads the pictures and makes up a story, but there are a few books she remembers the words to pretty well. :D

Raine was going to do some signing in this video but once I turned on the camera she decided to talk about dinosaurs.