Happy Thanksgiving and Giving Thanks

What a gorgeous Thanksgiving Day we had here in Minnesota!  All of the snow from last Saturday had fully melted and the temperature went into the high 50's!  John, Megan and I had a great Thanksgiving Day at church, the Gennrich Thanksgiving lunch and the Lewis leftover dinner and outing to Michael's craft store.  I hope all of my friends and family had a wonderful day as well and took time to give thanks for the many gifts around us every day. 

Here are some of the things I am thankful for this year:

• My wonderful and amazing husband of three and a half years.  He is always so understanding and quite photogenetic too!
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• Our beautiful, funny and smart daughter Megan.  She's brought so much joy into our lives and I hate to imagine life without her.

 

The rest of our family and friends.  We are thankful that we have such a close family that is able to help us care for our daughter and be our support.  We couldn't do it without you! 

The changing of seasons.  I know we complain about winter, snow and extreme hot and cold temperatures but without such changes we wouldn't appreciate nice fall and spring days. 

Our house, clothes, food and always having enough of what we need. Even though our house isn't as big as we'd like, we don't eat steak every night or dress in the latest fashion, we always have exactly what we need.

Everyone's individual talents and uniqueness.  Some people are blessed with talents of cooking wonderful meals (see picture above) while others have musical talents or are athletes.  Everyone is special and it's what makes the world go round!

And something new to be thankful for this year... the new life that is growing inside of me.  What a miracle.  And, although I cannot feel any movement yet, I know he or she is in there growing and moving like crazy.  I'm thankful that I had been feeling very good most of last week and able to enjoy Thanksgiving.  I'm sure every day won't be perfect but I'll take the good days whenever they come.

Megan at 20 Months

This past Monday our Megan turned 20 months old!  She has been toting her Halloween bucket around everywhere since trick-or-treating.  So to celebrate the big occasion, John gave her an entire bag of peanut butter M&M's.  Of course she shared some with Daddy since those are his favorite!  We really don't give Megan a lot of candy; it's mostly there just so she can play with it.  She's probably hiding it randomly throughout the house so she can eat it in the future for all we know.

This was a rough past month in the bedtime department.  Megan fought me almost every night when I tried to read the bedtime story and had to cry to sleep many nights as well.  Jumping on the bed was much more fun than laying there during the prayers.  But alas, we just started another new month and I know this one will be much better.  Maybe we need to think about getting her in a toddler bed soon!  One thing that does seem to help is when we make sure she gets lots of hugs and kisses from Daddy before bed.

Megan keeps getting better at her talking.  She's saying so many new words this month as well as really perfecting some words she's already learned to say such as cat, book, button and go.  John is happy because this past month Megan has started to say Daddy and now says both Daddy and Mama freely throughout conversations.  Other new words are wash, mess, juice, cheese, poop, put, pot, water, car, stairs, blocks, hot, brr, hat, dirt, stir, pour and whee.  I think the coolest new thing she's saying are the names of the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse characters.  She is able to point out Minnie, Daisy, Donald Duck and Pete.  Megan has also started to say the name of one of Grandma Lewis's cats, Coco!  She walked around our house the entire last weekend with her hand out calling for Coco the Tat!  Megan likes to basically narrate her way through life and we are always asking her to say and repeat words as we go through the day.

John and I have also learned that when we are in the other room, we do not want to the phrase "Oh, mess" come out of Megan's mouth.  We heard it twice one night last week and we found a big pile of spilled milk on the couch and then a bracelet of mine that broke with the beads all over the recliner!  Megan also tried to "feed" her baby doll some milk from her cup one night.  Poor baby ended up with an entire head full of milk. 

Yogurt has been Megan's recent food of choice.  After getting us to open up the refrigerator door for her, she quickly is able to spot a little cup and poke her little finger through the top.

 
Megan is really starting to reach high and test her limits.  Lately we've had to lock the water and ice maker on our refrigerator because she is able to push the levers in and get water all over the place.  She also has a recent obsession with closing doors.  By standing on her tippy toes she can pull all of the doors shut behind her after exiting the room.  I'm glad she hasn't learned how to lock them yet!

I'm going to finish this post with a cute picture that Grandma Lewis took on Megan's actual 20 month birthday.  She titled this picture "Whee!"

Oh Baby!

John and I are happy to announce that we will be parents again this spring.  And that will make Megan a big sister!  Many of you have already heard the big news but wanted to finally get something up here on the blog.  This baby is due on May 1st and I am about 15 weeks along now, so into the second trimester.

Here's an early ultrasound done of our little peanut back on October 12, about 11 1/2 weeks.  I believe it measured about 44 cm at that time and also had a rapid heartrate of 177.  When I went in for the doctor appointment I was told that the heartbeat was right on track but I felt a little "generous".  They concluded that I felt a little large simply because it was my second pregnancy - as you can see, there's just one little nugget in there!

All seems to be going fine with the baby.  It's just Mommy that has had a rough couple months.  It started off just fine.  Right after Labor Day was when I started to have symptoms and it was mostly that I wanted to eat anything and everything in sight - I was so hungry!  As time went on, I have still been pretty hungry but there is absolutely nothing that looks good to eat.  Smells of foods bother me and if the food has the wrong texture, there is no way it's going down.  It's because of me not eating much that I've been throwing up much more - about twice a week.  Hopefully, since I'm into the seconnd trimester, all of that will soon be done.  Taking Benadryl every 4-6 hours seems to help but is by no means a cure.

I had a good six weeks where I hadn't gone to Target, gone grocery shopping, clipped coupons or really did much around the house.  John has been wonderful and very patient with me.  He is even sacrificing eating nice meals to eat whatever I can manage to put down which often means a lot of breakfast foods for dinner.

John and I always chuckle when we remember who the first person was to find out that we were expecting.  We had found out on a Thursday and then at church on Sunday I opted for the juice instead of the wine at communion.  After church we were talking with some friends still in the sanctuary when Pastor Phil walks up to us and says that he "assumes we have another one on the way!"  I think I turned about five shades of red as we hadn't even told our parents yet! 

The rest is history and we are so excited to welcome a new baby into the world this spring.  Oh, and I have been working really hard on trying to get this one red hair too as it seems the foods that agree best with me are the ones orange and red in color! 

Cousin Alexa's 2nd Birthday & Princess Party

Megan's cousin Alexa turned two this week and we had a blast celebrating her birthday tonight!  Her party theme was Disney princesses.  Alexa was Rapunzel from Tangled and Megan was Sleeping Beauty.  Megan and Alexa always have so much fun together and tonight was no exception.  They both enjoyed being the centers of attention.  Here are just a few pictures from the night.