What's Eli been up to??

Typically, Eli's days have looked like this:

6:30/7:30am Wake up with daddy, eat breakfast, "daddy" time
9:30ish Mommy & Eli go to some fun activity that may include: Toddler Town, Music with Mar, playdate, mall play area, or other fun play place. If we stay home, play with mommy & daddy
12:30pm Lunch with mommy
1/1:30pm Nap (although somewhat hit or miss these days) with either mommy or grandma (daddy on weekends)
3pm Snack with either mommy or grandma
3:30pm More play with mommy or grandma
6pm Dinner with either mommy or grandma
6:30pm Bath with mommy
7pm Quiet play with mommy
8pm Bedtime with mommy

So, the word used most often is "play"!! The below pictures show just a few of the fun things we've been up to!

We attended "Tunnel Voyage" a couple weeks ago & Eli LOVED it. Definitely have to return with daddy. Here's Eli sporting his Tunnel Voyage pirate hat:

Eating a bedtime snack with chopsticks with daddy:

Daddy was able to attend "Bump City" with us last week....another Eli favorite:

Eli's latest fascination is the "game on t.v." or Pac Man:

A weekly (or sometimes 2 or 3 times a week!) favorite....Toddler Town!! Eli likes to "help" push other kids around on the riding toys. Usually the boys think it's fun & the girls HATE it & I have to remind Eli to let them have their turn :):

Eli checking in to see if she wanted to be pushed....she didn't:

A doctor's waiting room favorite!:

Eli getting his own turn driving:

Today we attended a playdate at a playgroup mommy's gym they own. More fun times!!:

Tunnels!:

Eli practicing his gymnist skills:

Who knew tires were so fun....or made your hands so BLACK!!!:

We continued to be showered with love from Eli daily....what an awesome age. I remind myself that some day, not too far away, he will not want to kiss or hug :( He is doing better with picking up his toys, saying "please" instead of whining or begging, & allowing mommy to give hugs & love while SITTING. He insists on kissing my belly (bare is his preference) multiple times a day & likes to see her sonogram pictures. He likes to say he is a brother, too. We read books about a new baby & will soon get him his own doll to "practice". He shows such love & concern to our playgroup babies so I know they'll be no lack of affection for Anna. Independent play can still be hard, but we're working on it :)

23 weeks for Miss Anna!

Today is 23 weeks in utero.....she's a mover! I feel her more & more all the time. This week babycenter says she can hear a lot better the outside world so while working today, she just kicked & punched all day! Hopefully that means she will finally allow daddy to feel her!! I feel bigger each day & continue to feel random Braxton Hicks. Sleeping is about the same....some nights better than others! Otherwise, not much else to report!

Fun 23 week fact: With her sense of movement well developed by now, your baby can feel you dance.

I plan to post again this week about Eli so keep checking in!

P.S. I forgot to add a link to Eli's 23rd week update...here it is!

Random

Some of you noticed that your comments don't show up right away. I activated comment moderation due to getting a couple strange spam comments or something...who knows. This means when you comment, an email is sent to me & I then have to accept or reject the comment. THEN it will post to the blog. So, no need to publish a comment numerous times. Sorry for the confusion!!

Anna's room

Anna's room is complete, for the most part, except for cleaning out her closet, which is now storage, & of course, filling her closet with clothes!! :) You may wonder why I felt the need to finish her room so soon before her arrival, & I'll tell you! I will start to cover my supervisor's maternity leave the 2nd week of February & will be working about 25-30 hours a week for 12 weeks. This is a great financial opportunity for us & will look good on my resume so I'm glad I can do it. My supervisor will return 3 weeks before my due date at which time I will be done with work! YAY!! More on that later.....Regardless, I really wanted to get Eli & Anna's room done, living room organized, closets cleaned out, & several other chores done before I started this job. Plus, I feel good right now & I know later, I won't be so motivated!

We decided upon finding out we were pregnant that we would re-use Eli's nursery decor & furniture for baby & buy new bedding/decor for Eli's room to make his more "big boy" & save money. Thankfully, we had bought gender neutral nursery items for Eli so this has worked out great! While I know Anna will spend at least the first 5-6 months in our room to sleep (or more if like Eli), I like giving her her own space....maybe more for me than her :)

Anna's room used to be the guest room of our 3 bedroom house & it's pretty small. We had to be creative about furniture spacing. The previous owners painted it a dark brown & had white shelves on one of the walls. We decided to keep the shelves to save space (& money) by not having to buy a bookcase. Because the bedding already has brown in it, we decided to keep the walls brown & paint a stripe as we did in Eli's room. We chose green, since the bedding has a lot of green, & color matched paint at Home Depot. What's great about gender neutral or multi-colored bedding/decor is if you focus on one or two colors, it transforms the look. For Eli, we focused on the browns & blues. For Anna, we focused on green, brown & cream. In the end, we have only bought paint for the stripe & letters for her name.....yay for saving money!! For fun, you can compare pics here of how the same bedding was used in Eli's room....now for pictures!!

Eli's room is almost done, too. We have some more decoration to put up before posting pictures but I love it so far!! It's much more toddler friendly & thankfully we (grandparents did as part of Christmas I should say!) only bought the bedding, a lamp, a bean bag, & a few fabric toy bins. We're attacking closets this weekend....fun!

22 weeks

Our lovely little Anna is 22 weeks in utero today. I continue to feel good & sleeping, for the most part, has been going well! I haven't needed to bring out my body pillow! I sleep the best elevated, as I did with Eli, so I'm sure eventually I'll be sleeping that way all night. Whatever works! She's becoming much more active, but sadly, only I can feel her so far. Soon daddy & Eli will get to feel her kung fu kicks!

I have so enjoyed looking back at Eli's blog & journal entries to compare week to week to Anna. One symptom that I have enjoyed not having with Anna is pregnancy acne. Who needs reminders of high school while carrying your child?? Other symptoms have been improved with Anna's pregnancy, so let's hope that trend stays true!

Anyway, fun 22 week fact: Her eyes have formed, but her irises (the colored part of the eye) still lack pigment.

22 weeks

Our sweet girl shall be named.....

Anna Lorraine Clarkson

For Eli's pregnancy, we had several girl & boy names picked out....mostly girls....not because I preferred a girl, but I guess girls think of girl names, & boys...boy names! I knew I wanted to use our first letters (A & E) but was not sure if we would use an "E" name for a boy & "A" name for a girl or vice versa. Along with Elijah, we (moreso me) liked Evan, Ethan, Alexander, & Ashton. For girl names, I liked Abigail, Alexandria, Ava, Emma, & Eva. We decided to use an "E" name once we found out Eli was a boy. Then, as time went on, Elijah (we knew we would call him Eli) really stuck with me. I just kept going back to it! As for his middle name, Lee, it is a family name being my dad's & Eric's mom's middle name. Here's our post about naming Eli.

So, for Anna, once again, we just liked it. For the longest time I thought we would name her Abby, short for Abigail or Abilynn. But, Anna just stuck in my mind for a couple of months! Plus I think it is a very sweet & simple name.



As for Lorraine, it is my grandmother's middle name (the one I always refer to as the great cook, amongst other wonderful things). My grandmother loved birds, red birds in particular. Their house has a 3 window breakfast nook with a tree directly outside of it where they would very diligently maintain bird feeders. My grandmother loved sitting at the table & watching the birds....the red ones being her favorite. My sister, Holly, came up with the idea since my grandmother's passing about 6 years ago, that when we saw red birds, it meant grandma was near. These last couple of weeks I have seen several red birds around...just randomly sitting in a bush or tree outside my window when I happened to look out (of course this isn't TOTALLY odd since our neighbors have several bird feeders :). Regardless, it seemed to be a small sign to me that we needed to give our little girl her middle name.

So, there you have it, Eli & Anna....how cute is that?? :)

Baby Girl: 21 week appointment

Just a quick post to say my 21 week appointment went well today. No big news to share....good heartbeat (150 something....I forget...bad mama ;)....uterus in right position...20 lbs. weight gain so far....WAIT, really??!! With Eli I was only at 12 lbs. gained at this stage in the game!! Hmmm.....well, she was not concerned so I guess I'm not! What's funny is I feel like I ate worse with Eli...ice cream every night, as an example. Well, it's all for our baby girl!! Next appointment at 25 weeks!

Big brother Mr. Eli

Thought I'd do a post about how Mr. Eli is doing these days! I used to write down fun things to post about that Eli did during the week but haven't been so good at that lately. But, there are a few things that I would like to document, so here it goes!!

1) Eli has never liked footie p.j.'s. Last week he decided he did (could the cold weather have anything to do with that??) & wants to wear them every night. We only have a few pairs so maybe I can find some on clearance somewhere!!
2) Eli holds his arms & hands up in the air when he is about to do something he knows he shouldn't while sticking out his tongue & saying "ahhhhhh!" & then does it....at least we get a warning. Below you'll see what I mean about knocking down the tower of blocks. I think he's doing it because daddy said "Wait till I take a picture, Eli!"


3) Eli is at the stage where he insists on doing things himself, but yet wants to be held while going down our stairs....he's slightly unsure of how much independence he really wants.
4) Eli is so loving these days. He always has been, but he gives us TONS of hugs & kisses every day....must be on the lips, too....& his sister receives the same treatment :)
5) Eli talks in these too adorable broken sentences. He becomes very serious & determined, using hand motions & all, to say what he wants to say. A typical sentence may sound like this:
"Mocha...eheh...chased ball...eheh...hallway...running...FAST!"
6) I love to watch Eli as he learns how to socialize with other kids. Whether we are having a small playdate or attending Toddler Town, it's so amazing to see him read other kids' feelings & act appropriately, copy other kids, suddenly chase other kids & laugh & laugh, wait his turn on the slide, show empathy when they are upset, or in his own way, try to invite another kid to play with him.
7) We are making progress with Eli understanding how to be more independent in some areas & yet still feel close to mommy. He's doing better with walking up & down the stairs holding my hand instead of being held, walking to & from stores holding my hand, & learning how to crawl into his car seat. Small steps!

Now for some pictures!

Eli trying out his new bean bag that will soon be in his newly arranged/decorated room:

Can we say bored?:

Daddy & Eli made a fun transportation mat for Eli to play with his cars & trains on:

Sadly, he ran & it slipped out from under him & he hit his head on the side of the coffee table:

Another one of daddy's inventions:

Happy haircut day for Eli....now he looks 3 years old instead of 2!:

Today is 21 weeks for baby girl. Since I just posted on Friday about her, I'll just link to Eli's 21st week in utero for comparison. I have my appointment with my midwife this week so I'll get to hear little girl's heartbeat again. Yay!

Fun 21st week fact: Her eyebrows and eyelids are fully developed!

Have a great week!

New Year resolutions??

I guess I'm being a little slow about resolutions, but thought I would throw out a couple that interest me & get ideas from others about how to accomplish them!!

1) I never have been a cook. Any cooking I do from recipes are truly a "force myself" to do it thing. I think my issue is that I don't like messes. To be a good cook, it seems you also have to be messy & okay with spending an hour or more in the kitchen preparing the meal, eating it in 5 minutes (okay, maybe 10), & then spending another hour cleaning up. Yuck. Now, do I like good food? Of course!! My grandmother was an excellent cook & I have fond memories of her food. Another reason for lack of desire to cook is my hubby works evenings, so it's just me & Mr. Eli for dinner. He's so hit or miss on eating well that I could prep a wonderfully amazing meal & could care less. We also don't own a deep freeze or have a large freezer. As much as I would like to freeze a lot of food, storage seems an issue. Regardless, I also want to overall eat healthier (I do okay, just not great), not buy pre-made meals as much, & have "favorites" our family loves. I hope that once our kids are older & Eric returns to a normal schedule I will be more inspired! Any ideas to help me get our "pantry" & meal prep in order (fiscally minded, too) this year??

2) Along with hating messes, I hate cleaning them up, too. I am a "tidier", meaning I hate things "out of place" & love to reorganize. But, cleaning the kitchen floor, bathrooms, dusting, vacuuming, windows, etc., etc. are of little interest to me. I of course do these chores, but not as often as I feel I should. Poor Eli has probably ate too much food off of our not-so-clean kitchen floor (his idea, not mine!!). I used to be good & clean weekly on the weekends...prior to Eli. Working part-time I used to schedule one chore a day during nap but that never stuck (as you can see what I am doing now while he naps :). I just plan don't like it & cleaning with Eli can be hard. I try to incorporate him in cleaning duties, but he wants it his way or no way which would include spraying the mirror with Windex 50 times instead of 2. I also want to spend time with him doing fun stuff since I only have half the day instead of a full day with him due to work. How do you get your cleaning done??

ADDITION LATER IN THE DAY:

3) I would also like to compile a list, in some organized fashion, of Eli activities. I started this already, & have it on our fridge, but it really isn't being utilized. Because Eli has time with daddy, mommy, & 3-4 partial days a week with grandma, we all need ideas that everyone understands & are easily accessible. I have printed out some simple games & put in ziploc bags which were used for awhile, but somehow got lost in the shuffle & just came back out again. My big goal for this is that we have ideas for Eli that he can do independently & ideas he needs assistance with. Eli is so quick with his attention span & need for changing activities that it would be helpful to have ideas readily at hand for all 3 of us. PLUS, Eli needs ideas for independent play ESPECIALLY with baby on the way in 4 1/2 (give or take) short months. He can play independently for awhile if he is really liking something. Otherwise, if it is not structured AND he gets bored....WATCH OUT! This is when throwing, hiding behind couches, etc. occurs. While I get that he is 2, he is just curious & ACTIVE!! Ideas?

There are my big ones...maybe some smaller ones too, but what do you think??

"Isn't SHE lovely!" (as sang by Stevie Wonder)

"Isn't she lovely

Isn't she wonderful
Isn't she precious
(20 weeks in utero) old :)
I never thought through love we'd be
Making one as lovely as she
But isn't she lovely made from love

Isn't she pretty
Truly the angel's best
Boy, I'm so happy
We have been heaven blessed
I can't believe what God has done
Through us he's given life to one
But isn't she lovely made from love"

We are excited to announce that we found out we will be adding a lovely little girl to our family in May!! As we did with Eli, I thought I'd choose a song to "represent" our excitement for our little girl....the above words are TOO true!


The sonogram appointment went wonderful & she looks very healthy. She is measuring a week ahead of my due date, but as we know, that means nothing as Eli did too and he was a week late! Eli enjoyed the appointment, for the most part, but would momentarily get scared of the darkness & heartbeat sound (I guess to a 2 year old surround sound heartbeat would be a little scary :). Baby girl is currently breech, which would explain why majority of the movement I feel is low. She was really active during the appointment & while curled up in a ball, would do little karate kicks over & over! Since being home, Eli has watched the video 3-4 times & loves the part where she is opening & closing her mouth over & over as though she is chewing gum. He mimics it a lot along with the "shwi-shwi" of the heartbeat.

Enjoy the below pics & videos!

Her lovely profile:Cutie pie face:

Showing off her flexibility:

Video of when we first found out she was a girl:

LOTS of movement & Eli's reaction to sonogram:

Chewing gum??:

Isn't she lovely?? :) Have a great weekend!

20 weeks-1/2 way!

It really is amazing to me that I have reached the 1/2 way mark!! As all mommies of more than one child know, subsequent pregnancies are so different for the simple fact that you focus so much on #1 that you sometimes forget you are pregnant!! I am definitely beyond the point of forgetting (how could I with THIS belly....see below!), now, though!

All is continuing to go well. I am thankful for feeling so great....while I realize I will probably begin to feel more aches & pains as the weeks continue to fly by! Something new with #2 (on Friday I can start to say him/her!) is I have already started to feel some Braxton Hicks. They are thankfully painless, just random tightness. I think with Eli I didn't start feeling them until 3rd trimester!

Random 20th week baby fact: teeth buds have formed under the gum line!

Here's what I wrote about & a belly pic (notice how much bigger I am this pregnancy!) for 20 weeks with Eli.

Enjoy the belly parade!


12 weeks

14 weeks

16 weeks

18 weeks

20 weeks

Look forward to a fun post about the sonogram on Friday....VERY excited & praying for a healthy little girl or boy!!

Bidney Christmas

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

This weekend we celebrated our Bidney Christmas up in COLD Iowa. I think the warmest it got was maybe 8 degrees with lows of -10....and wind chills even colder....brrr!! We stayed at Grandpa & Lola's the entire time & didn't brave the cold once!
Here are pictures from our gift opening fun.

Eli got fun "Yo Gabba Gabba" musical instruments from Aunt Holly & Uncle Chris:

And the Thomas the Train starter train set:


A fun art easel from Aunt Sarah & Aunt Stephanie:

Eli also got a nice addition to his college fund from Grandpa & Lola....yay!!

The most fun gift by far was for Grandpa & Lola. For those of you who have seen the movie "The Christmas Story", our family watches it multiple times every year & have for years. Some company was smart & started to make replicas & other memorabilia from the movie. My sister Holly started collecting lighted houses/buildings from the movie so she almost has the whole set from the movie. Shirts, shorts, ornaments, etc. are also available. Holly found that they make a replica of the leg lamp from the movie & we decided we HAD to buy it for them. It is actually a well made lamp & even comes in a box that says "fragile". Here they are opening it:

Eli touching the leg....like Ralphie did in the movie:

And here it is in all it's glory:

The Christmas feast:

Eli loved giving hugs & kisses to Turbo & Lily:

Playing with his new toys:

Aunt Sarah playing blackjack dealer while Eli learns how to work a Blackberry:

Cuddle time with Aunt Holly:

A good time was had by all!

Tomorrow is 20 weeks for baby Clarkson #2....1/2 way! SO excited about our sonogram on Friday!