24 weeks

Now that I'm nearly 25 weeks, I should probably post an update about my 24-week prenatal appointment that I had on Monday. I've been so bad about blogging ... but that's nothing new. We've been crazy busy around here with fun event after fun event and now that the holidays are here, we know our schedule isn't going to get any slower! In fact, even after Christmas and the New Year, we'll have Emma's second birthday and then BAM! Our baby boy will be here (hopefully not that quickly nor that violent-sounding).

So, after a fun-filled weekend of Emma's first road trip across the mountains to eastern Washington to visit Amanda (one of my BFFs from middle/high school) & Eric, Emma and Mommy got up first thing Monday morning for the 24-week prenatal appointment. It was POURING down rain -- as bad as I've ever seen it. We got there safely and had an uneventful appointment.

Here are some stats. I like comparing with my stats with the boy to my stats with Emma at the similar milestones (these are 24-week stats with our son, 25-week stats from Emma):

BP: 102/52 and 100/70

Belly measurement: 25 cm and 31 cm (wow, I remember that growth spurt month!)

Fetal heart rate: 140 BPM and 150 BPM

My 24-week weight with our boy was eight pounds lower than my 25-week weight with Emma. I've been consistently about 6-8 pounds lower this time around, though truthfully these last few weeks I have been eating like crazy so I was surprised to see I hadn't already made up those 6-8 pounds. This week I've been really trying to cut back but every now and then I just really "need" a small bowl of ice cream (you know, with some Hershey's syrup on top) or something cheesy. We had grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch three days in a row this week! Good thing Emma likes them too.

Still not settled on a name for our sweet son yet. To be honest, it does sort of leave me feeling unsettled when I remember he's still nameless. I want him to have more of an identity that others can grab onto. He's got a huge identity to me already, given his practically nonstop kicking and moving around inside. As far as I can remember, this boy is so much more physically active in the womb than Emma ever was. He is extremely mobile and sometimes very, very strong! I want us all to be able to relate to this big personality and talk about him by name. And I want to start personalizing things for him -- like, I keep seeing fun letters/initials and I want to buy big letter J's for him (because my favorite name choice starts with J).

It's just so surreal that we have another child who will be here soon. That the bedroom that right now is so plain with white walls and tons of clutter will eventually, over the next three months, be painted, decorated and filled with things for a little boy. That we'll have TWO KIDS' ROOMS in our home. That part gets me every time. When I walk up our stairs and see the two doorways, separated by the kids' bathroom decorated in blues/green/yellows and crazy monkeys, it is a visual reminder that we're going to be parents to TWO kids. There's one bedroom door that leads to our daughter's room and the other is marked for our son. Two places the siblings will play together and where we'll read naptime and bedtime stories ... goodness gracious.

I've got to give a quick Emma update before I sign off tonight. The girl knows 16 letters. SIXTEEN. And yes, I'm bragging. She's not even two for three more months and she knows so much of the alphabet. And she LOVES it. She is constantly pointing out letters she recognizes as she goes about her day. She'll point out an M on signs she sees (M seems to be her favorite letter right now), a Y on a sweatshirt I'm wearing (Y might be her second favorite), O's on the front of a magazine left on the coffee table. She goes to our fridge and picks up the magnet letters, telling us which ones are which. My new favorite game with her is to sit in our family room, point across the house to the kitchen and ask her to go get me a letter. I tell her which letter to get, she runs to the fridge and stands there, surveying all the letters, until she finds the one I asked for. Then she runs back to me, holding up the letter and saying the sound over and over and over. I can't even credit James and me for teaching her all of these, though we do work with her frequently. This girl just LOVES the alphabet -- it's her own curiosity and enjoyment that pushes her forward to do things like this. I am so proud of her and I already have visions of spending lazy weekend afternoons with her at the library or just reading together around the house. She loves words and books and still can spend huge chunks of time (45 minutes to an hour!) just sitting with all her books in her bedroom. Just for record-keeping purposes, here are the letters she knows well: A, D, E, F, G, H, L, M, N, O, R, S, T, W, X, Y. She mixes up V and Y sometimes and also sometimes says that a T is a Y. Her most difficult letter is B. She sometimes gets I and U and we've been working on Q.

She also did an amazing job on her first road trip with me. The drive to Spokane is 4.5 hours and we made the entire trip without stopping (though Mommy learned her lesson and did NOT do that on the way back because the contents of the diaper after a 4.5-hour drive were not pleasant nor very sanitary). Here she is on our "potty break" halfway home, in Vantage.

She is such a good kid. She is SO funny sometimes. We laugh together a lot and those are some of the most amazing memories for me ... that an almost-2-year-old can make me laugh so naturally and so hard that my stomach muscles hurt. She was cracking herself up just tonight as she tried to squirt me with her bath toys -- we had fun playing a little game with those for nearly 20 minutes and her face was all red from laughter and my mascara was all over my cheeks.

She's also really into opening and closing doors in our house. Today while I was doing laundry she kept closing the laundry room door and walking away, leaving me in there by myself. She also likes to close the door to her bedroom and stay in there by herself. Then she loves to open the door wide and say, "HI!" really cheerfully and loudly.

Two words she still says that have become Emma-isms amongst our family and friends: Hubbai and Dubbee. Dubbee generally means thank-you, but she says it when she wants something really badly ... she says it really quickly a million times over, like, "Dubba-dubba-dubba-dubba-dubba..." Hubbai ... well, we're still working on what that is supposed to mean. She usually says it when she wants help with something. I think maybe she picked it up when we'd say, "Do you want help up?" like onto a chair or the couch or something. She says that one a lot. She also loves to say, "Hi. Da-da! Hi. Momma! Hi. Papa! Hi. Nana!" (My mom's grandma name is Grammy and my mother-in-law is Gramma, but it always comes out "Nana" in Emma's voice.) She also says, "Hi. Duh-duh!" which is basically Bailey's name. Like I said, Emma's not great with the B sounds yet.

Okay, now this blog post is just sounding like a page out of Emma's memory book. I'm wondering if anyone but the grandparents have gotten to the end of this particular post. :) I guess I should write more often ... for now, it's off to bed so we can be ready for a full Halloween weekday of visiting family at their workplaces tomorrow! And when I say "we," I mean Elmo and me, of course. Stay tuned for pictures of me and that cute little red monster (this one will have blonde pigtails and patent leather shoes).