Yes I know it has been over a month again since I last updated. I just keep not getting around to it. Enjoy the snow pictures though.

We had a great time at my parents for Thanksgiving, Eloise and Desmond enjoyed playing with Nonnie and Pom, and it was nice being there with just the 6 of us for the first few days before everyone arrived Wednesday night. Eloise loved hanging out with her Pom, and Desmond had fun running around and baking Pom a birthday cake with Nonnie.

On the way down we actually drove straight down, which wasn’t too bad, but Eloise was done about 2 hours before we arrived and she made sure we were well aware of that fact. On the way back we stopped at a hotel room, as Desmond likes to say. He was a bit disappointed that we didn’t go to the Parking Lot (Sesame Place) the following day, since we stayed in a hotel room! He did however break out in hives, shortly before we arrived at the hotel room, and he still has them randomly breaking out now 2 1/2 weeks later. No clue what is causing it, don’t think it is environmental or food related, since they just randomly appear, but who knows, it is possibly a virus, I just wish it would finish running its course and go away.

I am now 25 weeks pregnant and have an appointment next week. It is nice to have hit the viability point in this pregnancy. Yes I won’t want newbie born right now, since that would be super early and cause major complications for him. It is nice knowing that if he was born he has a chance of survival though! He is happily kicking away, and causing me lots of heartburn at the moment. I will be taking the glucose test for Gestational Diabetes after my next appointment next week and before the appointment I will have after that. I am not too worried about it though, hoping I pass so I don’t have to do the 3 hour test again though.

I am eagerly awaiting the arrival of my new niece or nephew within the next week. I can’t wait to learn if my sister has a little boy or girl! She was due on Sunday, so baby should arrive soon.

In other news Desmond is enjoying preschool, though he isn’t thrilled about getting up to be there at 7am. He has been evaluated for speech issues through the public school system and we are waiting on a call back to have the next set of evaluations. He has a pretty bad articulation issue at this point in time, so I am sure he will qualify for services. He passed the hearing test with flying colors though, so we know he hears us, even when he is pretending not to though! I figure he’ll probably be evaluated after the new year and have an IEP for speech by mid-January.

Both Desmond and Eloise are enjoying their gymnastics classes as well, and Desmond moved up a level in swimming. We also moved his class time, because 5:10pm just wasn’t working for us, since Dan was taking him and if his train was even 5 minutes late, Desmond tended to end up missing half his half hour lesson. So now he has lessons at 7pm, which is a much easier time for us to get him there.

Nothing much else going on, we enjoyed Hanukkah, and Desmond keeps trying to get us to celebrate just one more night so he can get another present! We are mostly ready for Christmas as well, just need to pick up 2 things for Dan and we’re done. The tree is up, and I’ll try to get up pictures of the small ones putting up ornaments later.

We are busy, but it is mostly routine things at this point in time. Everyone is having lots of fun and we are enjoying the slightly less busy winter months. I am going to try to remember to post to the blog more then once a month, but not promises at the moment. We’ll see what happens.

Just a comparison of how much each of them has grown in one year.

Here is Desmond last December in the snow:

And here he is today:

And here is Eloise last December in the snow:

And here she is today:

It snowed today! I actually kept Desmond out of preschool since it was predicted to start before he got out and I didn’t want to drive in it. It started around 11am here, so I was glad I decided that. We got maybe an inch and a half total, but I still didn’t want to be out driving in it, people don’t know how to drive in the snow, and honestly I don’t have much practice at it either, so I’d rather just stay off the road.

I did dress up the two small terrors to take them out in the snow. It took about 40 minutes to get them all dressed in their snowsuits and hats, I couldn’t find mittens, I know we haven’t some but they were no where to be seen so we went without. We were out for maybe 10 minutes before Eloise decided she was done, and I was able to get them back in, after about 15 minutes, since Desmond wanted to stay out longer when Eloise was done, so I told him 2 more minutes. He got to throw 2 snowballs at me so he was happy.

Here are a couple of pictures of them in the snow.

She was not happy falling and face planting in the snow!

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boy! We are expecting a little boy come the end of March, and he was not shy about letting us see he is a boy! My ultrasound went great today, the tech was wonderful and spent an hour getting all the pictures so we got to see a lot of newbie. We did decide to find out, and are thrilled to have another little boy! We would have been just as thrilled about a little girl too, but boy it is! Newbie is measuring 13 ounces and looks perfect, no issues at all.

Now the tough part starts coming up with a good name for newbie. We have been fairly stuck on coming up with a boy’s name that seems right, we were having better luck with girl’s names, but oh well, I am sure he will have a wonderful name by the time he is born in 20 weeks give or take a week.

I know I haven’t updated in the past month or so. It has been pretty busy and I apparently just haven’t been in the mood. Anyways as for updates, my big ultrasound for newbie is on Thursday I’ll be 20 weeks 1 day then, it is weird to think I am halfway through this pregnancy already, I am feeling newbie kicking fairly often these days which is nice. Dan and I still haven’t decided if we are going to find out gender or not. We have about 7 boy’s names on our top list and about 6 girl’s names. We still aren’t really certain on any of the boy’s name but we do still have 20 weeks. I’ll let everyone know Thursday or Friday if we decided to find out gender. Knowing me we probably will, just because 20 more weeks is a long time to wait, and I’m impatient like that, but who knows maybe I will hold out.

Desmond and Eloise are doing great. Eloise is off milk again, she was having issues on it and though she is upset because she likes cheese, she is doing much better when she doesn’t have any. It does make meal planning a bit of a pain since we have a lot of things with cheese in them here. So she tends to get alternative dinners 2 to 3 times a week. Desmond is enjoying preschool, and has made some friends which is good. They are both having fun together and have recently really started playing together which is neat. They really like to sword fight with straws and glow sticks, which is really cute.

Eloise and I had fun in Atlanta for Laura’s baby shower. We had fun with everyone there, so my Mom, Laura, Nancy, Clare, Sandra, and Rona. We also enjoyed our Monday out with my Mom and Nancy before we headed to the airport that evening. Desmond had fun at home with Dan and my in-laws on Monday. We are looking forward to see everyone again in a few weeks at Thanksgiving.

Other then that it has been fairly quiet here. We celebrated Devali on Friday at my in-law’s and Desmond enjoyed the sparklers. Eloise enjoyed her glow stick. Other then that it has been fairly quiet here which is nice, it was nice to have a down weekend after a fairly busy summer and early fall.

I actually have pumpkin carving pictures, but I haven’t edited them yet, and looking at my recent history for posting, I figured I would just skip them and post the pictures from Halloween instead. Desmond was Buzz Lightyear and Eloise was a Bumble Bee. They both had a fun time, Eloise made it about 5 houses before she was done, but since she got some lollipops from one of the houses she was happy. Desmond was out for an hour and a half and according to Dan they went down 3 or 4 streets and he filled his pumpkin. He had a great time. So here is Buzz and Bumble Bee!

Getting ready to head out, you can sort of see Eloise’s pumpkin at least in these pictures.

Here is Eloise after we came back.

And here is Desmond after he and Dan got back.

And here he is out of his costume looking at his loot.

As I mentioned in the previous post there was also a straw maze at the farm. They had a toddler maze, where Eloise spent most of her time and a bigger maze. Desmond quickly decided the toddler maze was boring and moved on to the big maze with Dan. Which made sense because the toddler maze was very low key and not really mazelike. Desmond had a ton of fun wandering the big maze though I think he went through 5 times or so. Eloise went through once, she was not impressed and liked the toddler maze a lot better.

Here the two of them are in the big maze

And here are some pictures from the toddler maze.

Desmond found it fun to jump off the bales of hay onto the ground in the toddler maze.

So the weekend before Halloween we went to the pumpkin patch. We were also planning on going apple picking, but apparently the harvest was rather picked over so the orchid was closed that Sunday. We did visit the straw maze though which Desmond loved. We all had a good time, and both Desmond and Eloise picked their own pumpkins which was fun.

I’ll do the straw maze pictures in another post.

So Desmond hasn’t nursed for over a week now! So I am thinking he might be officially weaned, at 3 and 1/2 years old, okay technically he isn’t 3 1/2 till tomorrow, but I am counting it at 3 1/2. He hasn’t been nursing much since I learned I was pregnant, well actually he has been restricted to twice a day since May, but once I found out I was pregnant he was restricted even more, because my breasts have hurt and nursing 2 children while pregnant really wasn’t helping that. In the past month or so he’s been down to nursing for 10 seconds in the morning a couple of times a week. Which hasn’t been to bad, but since I did want to wean him by the time the new baby came, I’ll admit I can tandem, but I don’t think I can tandem with 3, this really is a good time for him to stop.

It is a bit bittersweet though because he is my first baby, and now he isn’t nursing anymore and soon he’ll be potty trained (please soon, pretty please soon!), and he already seemed so grown up going to preschool this fall.

I am thrilled to have made it 3.5 year though, my original thought was I’d make it to 1 hopefully. I think it made it a bit past that. I did start with small steps when we started nursing, once he was born and in my arms, 5 hours after my c-section, we tried nursing and he had a bit of trouble, but he finally latched within the 24 hours that the hospital gives you before they start supplementing. Once I got 2 of the lactation consultants in to help me with his latch, my goal was to hit 6 weeks, I figured if I made it to 6 weeks then I could probably make it to 3 months. Once I made it to 3 months then my goal to hit was 6 months and then 1 year. Once I hit a year I decided to just go with the flow, he loved nursing and seemed to need it, and I had no reason to stop. So we kept nursing, through my pregnancy with Eloise and now through Eloise’s first 18 months. I am really happy about how easy nursing him ended up being and that I didn’t need to stop before he was ready to.

So I now only have one nursling, well at least for another 6 months when I’ll have 2 again! Him weaning just makes him seem so grown up, now if only he would potty train! Changing his diaper is one thing I am so not going to miss once he finally is potty trained!

And here are the only 2 nursing pictures I think I have of him. It is really weird to think we have hit this milestone and that he is fully weaned.

Yep still tiny. Eloise had her 18 month appointment today. She weighted in somewhere between 19 pounds 6 ounces and 19 pounds 8 ounces. I’m going with the 6 ounces because that is the one the nurse went with. It keeps her under the 5th percentile for weight still. She didn’t really grow taller in the last 3 months either, she is now 30 1/8 inches tall, which puts her in the 12th percentile. Her head stayed steady in the 50th percentile.

She gained 1 pound 2 ounces in 3 months which isn’t bad, and 3/8th of an inch which is a bit low. The doctor didn’t seem overly concerned though she did want us to watch her weight. We are probably going to bring her back for a weight check in 3 months or so, since she needs another shot anyways, which she will just love!

She is ahead developmentally and doing fine as far as all her milestones go, she is just tiny. Which isn’t a huge surprise considering I was tiny as a toddler too. All in all it was a good appointment though she is not happy with us having her get two shots. She has been clingy and upset all evening.

At birth 7 pounds 5 ounces and 19 3/4th inches
At 1 month 8 pounds 8 ounces and 20 3/4 inches
At 2 months 10 pounds 4 ounces and 22 1/2 inches
At 4 months 12 pounds 14.5 ounces and 24 inches
At 6 months 15 pounds 4 ounces and 25 1/2 inches
At 9 months 16 pounds 12 ounces and 26 3/4 inches
At 12 months 17 pound 15.5 ounces and 28 inches
At 15 months 18 pounds 4 ounces and 29 3/4 inches
At 18 months 19 pounds 6 ounces and 30 1/8 inches