21 months!

Finley was 21 months on the 13th so I'm about a week late on this post. Better late than never, right?

Finley is growing everyday and becoming less like a baby and more and more like a little girl. She is saying sentences now and I can pretty much understand everything she says. She does have her own words for a few things, but we all know what those are so we understand what she is saying. For example, agoogwa means popsicle, Moves Like Jagger, and War Eagle! I'm not sure why she picked that word for those 3 things, but it is so funny.

She still loves music and is VERY picky about what she listens too. Dora is her favorite show. She won't sit down and watch a full episode, but she will watch a few minutes here and there. She also still loves people and is friendly to everyone. She loves to wave bye to everyone as we are leaving a restaurant or the grocery store. We were eating at Habaneros on Sunday and I forgot to order her drink. When our waiter put everyone's drink on the table except hers, she turned to him and put her hands up and said "where's mine?"! The waiter started laughing and he brought her her own drink.

I guess her biggest milestone, or maybe I should say our biggest milestone last month is that she is no longer nursing. It's not because she wanted to stop, but because this pregnancy caused my milk to dry up. She actually handled it very well and there were no tears shed at all. Well, maybe a few from me but none from her. My plan was to have her weaned by the end of the year, but this just really worked our perfect because I think if I would have tried to stop on my own she would have been upset.

I'm so looking forward to her second Halloween. She is going to be a witch and I know she will have a blast Trick-or-Treating! 

She is still a mama's girl but sometimes she likes to do this...

                                    Saying cheese :)

                                    She loves Bubba!

                                           Playing with Bella

Our busy weekend

Bella had a game at 11 on Saturday and Tyler had a game at 12 and 1:30, so most of our day was spent at the soccer fields.

Saturday night we had Tyler's birthday party at my parents house because this house is just not big enough to hold our family. We grilled hamburgers and hot dogs and we had a delicious ice cream cake from Bruesters. It was chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream with fudge filling and chocolate cake. So good!!

Tyler had another soccer game on Sunday and then we had fun stuff to do like go to the grocery store.

The girls sitting under the umbrella at Tyler's game trying to stay cool.

Tyler is 14!

Friday was Tyler's 14th birthday and I still can't believe he is that old! It seems like he should be around 7, of course Bella is 7 now so that's not possible.

We took him to Flemings Friday night for his birthday dinner. He ordered steak and Flemings potatoes. Since it was his birthday they gave him a huge piece of chocolate cake, but what he really wanted was the chocolate lava cake so we brought the chocolate cake home and demolished the chocolate lave cake. It is so good! I think we may have started a birthday tradition.

Tyler had a tournament Saturday and Sunday in Shelby county so that is where we spent most of the weekend. Bella spent the weekend with my parents and went to Oktoberfest at their church on Saturday.  Her soccer game was on Thursday night so she had the weekend off.

Jason had to go to the Alabama game Saturday night for work. An engineer from AT&T has to be at all the home games. He got to go up and eat in the press box and stand on the sidelines right behind all of the players. Needless to say, he was in Heaven! He gets to go back for the LSU game and he is super excited. 

This week is pretty busy. Bella has a game tonight and Saturday. Tyler has 2 games on Saturday and one on Sunday and we are having his family birthday party Saturday night. I will try and remember to take plenty of pictures!

The last week or so

I guess I will start with the weekend of 9/24. Tyler and Bella both had soccer games and they played awesome. Bella's team won their first game (even though they dominated every team they have played) and she did so well. It's amazing to us the progress she has made in just one year. Tyler's team tied 3-3, but Tyler scored 2 goals! He is now playing on the U16 team to help them out the rest of the year. So that means 5 practices a week and two games on Saturdays. They didn't have games this past weekend so it was a nice break. This week Bella's game is on Thursday night and Tyler has a tournament Saturday and Sunday.

Jason and his brother Jamie ran in the Pony Express 5K on Saturday. Jason finished 8th overall and 1st in his age group! His official time was 20:04! It was Jamie's first race and he finished in 27:14 and 83rd overall. That is awesome for his first race.

                                          Jason with his 1st place ribbon

                                            Running to the finish line

                                              Bella with one of the ponies!

The weather last weekend was amazing! I wish it was like that everyday. October, November, and December are the best months of the year. I love the holidays, I love the weather, and I love Fall clothes.

I can feel that end of sleeping on my stomach fast approaching. It gets a little more uncomfortable every night. I'm still wearing my clothes, but I know that will be ending soon too. I think I was 18 weeks with Finley when I couldn't fit in my jeans anymore and I will be 15 weeks on Friday so maybe 3 more weeks. Actually I'm looking forward to that because maternity clothes are pretty comfortable.

Baby #4...

is on the way and due March 30. That means that I'm 13 weeks today!

This baby was a bit of a surprise. To make a long and detailed story short and to the point, I didn't think that I could pregnant yet because of nursing Finley and that thing we have to have every month still hadn't started up again. After we got back to California I was extremely tired all the time and I ended up taking a pregnancy test the morning the movers were coming to load our house and it was positive. I was thinking I was like 4 weeks. The day our stuff arrived here I had some problems and so I went to the doctor that day. They did an ultrasound to make sure everything was okay and told me that I was 9 weeks! That was 4 weeks ahead of what I was expecting!! I was in shock for a few days because I honestly had no idea that I was that far along.

I decided to go to Brookwood Hospital because I really want to have this one naturally (as in drug-free) and their new hospital that opens in December is more natural birth friendly than any other hospital in Birmingham. I found a new doctor and saw him this past Monday. He is super nice and I think I will be really happy with him.

I had to go back Tuesday and see a different doctor because I wanted the first trimester triple screen done. I had an ultrasound and I'm still amazed how much the baby has grown in just a few weeks. They could also tell the sex of the baby! I don't want to find out what the baby is but Jason does. He wants a boy really bad and he said he needs to mentally prepare himself if it's another girl. I say just prepare for a girl and if it's a boy he will be really happy. I really want a boy too and for the sanity of our house we need a boy, but I also think it would be great for Finley to have a sister that is only 2 years younger than her. We want to have one more after this one, so if it is a girl Jason will still have another chance.

I have felt much better the last 2 weeks. I have never been sick in any of my pregnancies, but I definitely was nauseous for a while. I don't feel as exhausted as I did a few weeks ago either. I'm trying not to gain 400 pounds this time! No, but seriously I want to gain 30 at the most. I gained 60 with Tyler and 45 with both of the girls and I just don't want to be that big and have to lose all of that weight after I have the baby.  The first 25 falls off after a few weeks, but that last 20 likes to stick around. It took me 9 months to lose it all with Finley. Of course she was 4 months old before I even started trying to get the weight off, and breastfeeding helped a ton so I can't really complain to much. I have noticed though, that the older I get the harder it is to lose baby weight.

Here is the baby at 8 weeks and 6 days.

Here it is at 12 weeks and 5 days. Amazing!

I love this picture! It had its little legs crossed and was just relaxing. Hopefully that is a good sign!!

20 Months

Finley turned 20 months yesterday. I can't believe in 4 short months she will be 2!! She is the most animated child we have. She is very, VERY, independent and I can't think of one thing that she is afraid of. She loves to eat and will eat pretty much anything. She is so picky about music. If it's not something she wants to listen too she will say no until you change it! Her favorite words are yeah, mo (no), and mama, but she can pretty much say what ever she wants.

My dad has bought all their granddaughters a cabbage patch doll and so he finally found one for Finley and she loves her! She sleeps with her, carriers her everywhere, and even feeds her. It is precious! I don't think Bella was that "motherly" when she was Fin's age.

Thankfully Finley adapts to change really well and our latest move doesn't seem to have affected her at all. She remembered everyone from when we were here in the summer and she is always excited to see them.

She is doing great sleeping in her room. I have not had to go up there one time since we moved in. I can't even put into words how great it is to be able to sleep all night after 19 months of getting up AT LEAST 3 times EVERY SINGLE NIGHT. She goes to be between 7 and 8 and sleeps until 7 the next morning.

Getting settled

We finally got out internet and home phone set up Thursday!! I didn't realize I depended so much on it until we didn't have it!

Our move went pretty well in California but we had problems when it got here. They packed everything on 8/15 and then loaded it up on 8/16. DAS also picked our cars up on the 16th. We flew to Birmingham on the 17th and stayed at my parents house until our stuff arrived on the 25th. We have several pieces of furniture that were damaged during the move so now we have to file a claim and that is such a pain in the butt! Our cars didn't get her until the 31st, but we have everything and are pretty settled. Now it's time to start looking for a house so we can do it all over again!!

I'm so happy to be back here. At first I had mixed feelings, but now I know this is exactly where we are supposed to be.

Tyler and Bella are loving school and soccer. They both had their first games on Saturday and played great.

Here are a few pictures of the kids that we had made when we were here in July.