We found out on Monday that we are expecting our second boy!  I’ll be honest…I was shocked.  I was so certain this baby was a girl, but he surprised us!  I was afraid I’d be a little disappointed after being so sure it was a girl, but I’m not at all.  It actually feels like more of a surprise, because if it had been a girl I think it would have felt like “old news”.

The kids, however, did not take it as well as I did.  Ava started sobbing in the ultrasound room and Kelvin was disappointed too.  Ava wanted to share her room and Kelvin did not want to share his, so they were both bummed.  They’ve gotten used to the idea now and Ava is already hoping the next one will be a girl. 

Chad is definitely thrilled to be having another boy, though I know he still wants one more girl.  I think he’s looking forward to having his two boys in his basement workshop, teaching them all about saws, drills, and millermatic welders.

Now that I finally know the gender, I’ve started knitting a blue sleep sack for him, and I ordered a ton of yarn to knit up some longies and shorties to use with his cloth diapers.  Since we already have a boy, I don’t “need” anything (except some newborn summer clothes because all of Kelvin’s newborn clothes are winter clothes) so it’s nice to be able to splurge on yarn and a few new cloth diapers without stressing about buying the necessities.

Our second little man:

Only 20 more weeks (or so) before we get to meet him!  Over halfway there…

Here is my annual interview with Kelvin.  This is the first one he’s really participated in.  I tried last year, but he wasn’t having any of it.  As with Ava’s interview, my comments are in {brackets}.

What is your name? Kelvin

How old are you? 3

When is your birthday? Um, I don’t know.

Who is your mom?  You.

What does your mom do during the day?  Watch TV, eat, just go to bed.  Amen.  {For the record, I very very rarely (if ever) watch TV when the kids are up, unless it’s one of their shows}

Who is your daddy?  Daddy.

What does Daddy do during the day?  Watch TV, eat.

What is your favorite color? Blue and red and purple.

What is your favorite song?  Toy Story song.

What do you want to do when you are a grown-up? Play outside with Amber and Bella {our dogs} and watch Garfield and sleep.

Where do you want to live when you grow up? Disney World and Florida.

What is your favorite food? Eggs and casserole.

What is your least favorite food? No vegetables, no carrots.

What is your favorite animal?  Ponies.

What do mama and daddy do when you go to bed? Um, I don’t know.

Who does our family love the most? Ponies.

What is your favorite ice cream flavor? Green ice cream.

Where do you like to eat? At Florida.

What is your favorite book? I don’t know.

What is your favorite toy? Pony toys and I don’t know.

How do you like to spend your time? I don’t know.

What is your favorite thing that happened last year? When we had a sleepover and Ava pushed me and you put ice on it (clearly the child needs a HJC IS-Max BT helmet!)

You can see how easily distracted he is.  Usually he doesn’t care about ponies at all, but suddenly three of his answers had to do with ponies. 

I’ve always been fairly involved in music.  I played the piano and the flute through my childhood and teenage years.  I haven’t played either instrument much lately, but Chad just got me a piano a month or so ago, so I plan to brush up on my piano skills.  I know our church congregation would like that, since I could start accompanying hymns.    I’ve always wanted to learn to play the alvarez guitar , though.  I know I have no time for that now, with two children and another on the way, but maybe someday when the kids are grown up and I have more time on my hands.

Every January, I interview the kids and record their answers.  I can’t remember where I got the list of questions that I use, but they work well for us.  This is my interview with Ava this year (and here is last year’s) .  Any comments I added in later are in {brackets}.

What is your name?  Ava

How old are you? Uh, 5.  {She’s really 4 and she knows it!}

When is your birthday?  March 21st

Who is your mom?  You!

What does your mom do during the day?  Uh, color.  Help fix toys. Eat.  Play with us.  Help the dogs feel better and do treats with them.

Who is your daddy?  Daddy.

What does Daddy do during the day?  Work.  And oh yeah, eat.  He fix toys {his utility knife does get quite a workout repairing toys} and plays with us.  And that’s it.

What is your favorite color?  Black and pink and purple and red.

What is your favorite song?  ABC’s

What do you want to do when you are a grown-up?  Be a fire fighter.  And a tutu dancer.  And a hunter for treasure.  And a princess.

Where do you want to live when you grow up?  Right next to your house.

What is your favorite food?  Eggs and strawberries.

What is your least favorite food?  Green stuff, but I like broccoli, but no peas.

What is your favorite animal?  Dolphin and cheetah.

What do mama and daddy do when you go to bed?  Watch shows and eat when they watch shows.  And talk.

Who does our family love the most?  You.

What is your favorite ice cream flavor?  Chocolate with cones.

Where do you like to eat?  HuHot.  That’s my favorite place!

What is your favorite book?  It’s about castles and a queen that doesn’t have a handsome prince.

What is your favorite toy?  Littlest Pet Shop stuff.

How do you like to spend your time?  Running around.  Play the piano when Kelvin’s watching TV.  Oh, and I like watching TV.

What is your favorite thing that happened last year?  Getting puppies.

I’ll post Kelvin’s interview next!

I just realized I’ve been very neglectful of posting belly pictures of this pregnancy.  So here are all the ones I have so far.

7 Weeks, 5 Days

11 Weeks

16 Weeks

And here is a picture of our little bean at 7 weeks 3 days

I can’t wait to find out if it’s a boy or girl in just 3 weeks!  I am predicting girl…I will be in major shock if it’s a boy!

Also, yesterday was the first day I was able to feel the baby move with my hand.  He/she was too stubborn to let Chad feel it though (of course).

Somehow, when Melissa & Doug designed this play kitchen, I highly doubt they envisioned kids taking the sink out and getting themselves in this predicament.

There is a hilarious caption just waiting to be thought of, but my tired brain is so not thinking of it right now.

I have to admit, I’ve been enjoying the very mild winter so far.  I am not at all a fan of winter (and yes, I’m from Wisconsin…what’s your point?), so this winter has been perfect for me!  We’ve even had a few days in the 70′s in the last few weeks!

But the kids were happy to see that we finally got a *tiny* bit of snow last week.  It was barely enough snow to consider a snowfall, but they still wanted to bundle up and head out to play!  It’s a good thing they did, because it was gone by the next day.

Ready to play

Scooping snow.  They spent most of the time scooping snow into sandbox buckets so they could bring it in and watch it melt.

Trying (unsuccessfully) to make a snowball

So, now that we’ve had snow, we can have spring, right?!  Wishful thinking?

On our way home from Florida, we happened to be going through St. Louis right after it got light out, so we decided to stop and see the arch.  We had to wait about an hour for the tours to open, but we walked around the grounds and went to see a historic courthouse.

Chad and kids pretending to hold the arch up.  I think if it was up to them to hold it up, they’d need lots of home depot coupons to design something to hold it up!

I had no idea what to expect when we went up to the top of the arch.  They put us in these little capsules with tiny windows and I thought maybe we’d only be able to look through the tiny windows and that would be it.  Luckily, we got out of the capsule at the top and got to walk around and look out the windows.

The view from the top of the arch.  It kinda makes me a little queasy just looking at the picture.  I hate heights!

This is the area that we got to walk around in at the top of the arch

After this, we only had about six more hours to drive to get home!

On our last day at Disney, we went to Animal Kingdom.  To be honest, it was neat and we’re glad we went, but I’m not sure we’ll go back to this park next time we visit Disney.  It was like a really big zoo with some shows and the ability to meet Disney characters.  Maybe it was because we knew we only had part of a day here and we were a little tired, but it wasn’t as much fun as the other parks.

Since it was our last day, I had to make sure to get another picture as we entered Disney

The focal point of Animal Kingdom as we walked in.  We got to go in the tree and see an Ants show and it was a lot of fun.  At one point, there were stingers poking us in the back and bugs running across our seats underneath us.

One of the best parts of Animal Kingdom was the safari.

Hippos

Giraffes

Elephants

Rhino’s

Meeting Pocahontas

Meeting Jiminy Cricket (Ava wanted NOTHING to do with him LOL)

Meeting Rafiki

The kids’ favorite part of the park was the Dinosaur Dig.  It was a giant sandbox with dinosaur bones buried in it so that the kids could search for them.

Ava digging for dinosaur bones

Kelvin digging for dinosaur bones

Daddy burying Kelvin

After this, we got to see Flick.  We didn’t get to meet him, but he walked right by us a couple times.

And then it was time to leave and start the long drive home.  We were all sad to leave and were really hoping that we would be back real soon.

On our third day at Disney, we headed to Epcot.  I didn’t know what to expect since I had heard it’s more for adults, but the kids had a lot of fun too.  The first two days, we took advantage of the Child Swap program so Chad and I could both go on rides that Kelvin was too short for.  But by this day, we had decided not to do any more rides that we couldn’t do as a family, so we missed out on Soarin’ but we still got to do other rides and lots of shows.  After the Finding Nemo ride, there was a huge aquarium where we got to see tons of different ocean animals…and even dolphins that could swim right over our heads!

We mainly did a lot of shopping and eating in all the different countries.  We bought some fans and pajamas for the kids in China, some tea in England, a pearl straight from the clam shell in Japan, and more that I’m sure I’m not remembering!

Our view as we walked into the park

The kids with the Finding Nemo characters

One of the shows along the sidewalk (I think it was in France)

Meeting Mary Poppins

Disney tattoos (I’m nearly positive they got these at Hollywood Studios, so I don’t know why they’re with my Epcot pictures LOL)

One of the few pictures of me with the kids.  I’m usually the one behind the camera!

Eating dinner in France.  This was one of the best meals we had the entire time we were in the Florida.  We also ate lunch in China, but I didn’t get any pictures of that.

Ava eating dinner in France

The only picture I got during the IllumiNations Show.  It’s hard to take pictures of fireworks!

I know there are fewer pictures of Epcot than the other parks, but since we did more shopping and eating than rides and meeting characters, there wasn’t as much to take pictures of!