Potty Time!

I'm SO excited I want to run outside and shout down the street- "Serra used her potty!" Out of no prompting on my own, she was sitting in her bath [which did take some prompting] and she turns to me and says, "no stinky bath". To which I quickly reply, "yes, we don't go stinky in the bath! Do you need to go stinky?" Serra says yes and I fleetingly offer for her to sit on her potty which she just happened to pull out of the closet the other day and set on the bathroom floor- I was of course thinking she'd say no. But to my surprise, not only does she say yes, but she climbs out of the tub, sits down and promptly starts to go to the bathroom! After she saw my reaction and had the fun of helping me clean out her potty she sat in the tub again and then quickly asked if she could do it again. I said yes, and get this- she did it AGAIN!!! I was so proud of her! And while all of me wants to start pushing potty training, after some thought I've come to the conclusion that I should keep it at her pace. I'll occasionally ask her if she wants to use her potty- as a reminder of how much fun she had. I'm not going to pull out the underwear and start insisting on using the potty instead of diapers. But I'm excited that this is a first big step and I'm hoping it means we're on our way to potty training finally! Hurray!

Meet Alex

Here are the ultrasounds from our baby boy, Alexander [Alex for short- still working on a middle name.] Below each picture I've tried to give pointers so you can understand what's really in the picture.

Alex was not shy- anyone familiar with how to look at an ultrasound can see he's "pointing" to the top left.

Took me forever to see this one, but I finally did just today! His face is on it's side with his chin pointing right. If you look closely, you'll see a skeletal-looking face with black eye sockets, a tiny nose and frown [his two hands are right up to his face too, which makes it difficult to decipher.]

His shoulder is in the middle near the bottom with his upper arm pointing to the top left, elbow bent and lower arm pointing back down to the middle- his hand is nearly touching his shoulder.

His feet are on the far left with his leg extending all the way across the screen to the right.

His feet are on the far right side [this one is a little harder to see, too].

His profile is the easiest to see, but it was blurred a bit by movement- you can see the shape of his head and he's facing upwards [chin is on the left].

Happy Valentine's Day

Ian stayed over an extra night so he could spend a little time with us on Valentine's Day. But he had to leave before I had a chance to shower- or do Serra's hair. So I'm not in the picture, and Serra looks like a mess. But at least we got a couple of pictures! Ian gave Serra a cute Valentine's outfit- unfortunately, all you can see in the picture is the shirt [the pants are light pink with dark pink and red hearts tacked all over them- super cute!] We've also been dealing with colds/coughs. Serra is finally better, but it's my turn now. Hopefully today I've hit rock bottom and can start mending tomorrow! Hope you all had a great Valentine's Day!

It's a Boy!

There is a lady in our ward here who works at the women's clinic that I had Serra at- and for fun she lets anyone come down when she's not busy to do an ultrasound and find out what they're baby is! So when she heard that I didn't get my ultrasound last week like I should have, she offered for me to come tonight if she wasn't busy. Well, I got the call and ran down there. She hasn't been wrong yet, I don't think [but even I agreed with her after seeing the ultrasound]- and she says it's a boy! So I'm nervous, but excited- and in a lot of ways I'm glad that I'll have 1 of each, especially with the circumstances and not knowing if I'll ever have any more. I still have my official ultrasound with the real ultrasound technician next Tuesday, but I'm confident that they'll just confirm what we found out tonight. :)

Updates

Well, I had an appointment today that was supposed to be my ultrasound, but because of some scheduling conflicts it's been postponed until February 9th. :( Oh well- I'll find out eventually what I'm having! But everything else is going just fine as planned and that baby seems perfectly healthy, so that's good.

Also, next month's fun things are: Dental Month [which is funny because I already had a dentist's appointment planned], Embroidery Month and Return Shopping Carts to the Supermarket Month. Kind of some fun stuff this time around- hope you all had a great January, and I'm looking forward to a better February!

Christmas & Other Photos

Well, I finally did it- I went through all the pictures on my camera from over the last two months. Here are my favorites.

We bought a potty for Serra- haven't used it yet, but here she is playing with it with her baby doll.

Here are the adult stockings [R to L: Ian, Kristen, Brandon, Christina, Sommer]


Here are the kids' stockings [L to R: Timothy, Serra]

Serra loves to play Playstation games with Ian- she isn't completely naked, Ian's hand and controller are covering her diaper.


Serra LOVES to put on her Mrs. Potato Head glasses.


Here's Serra standing completely still during her first dance recital. Yeah, did that the whole time.


Serra checking herself out in the mirror before her dance recital.


Serra's dance outfit.


A back shot to see her cute hair I did.


Christmas Eve beverages- Miner wassail and no-egg egg nog.


Christmas Eve dinner- ham, twice baked potatoes and salads.

The tree with ALL of the presents.


Christmas Eve PJs- Christina & Brandon.

Christmas Eve PJs- Sommerlynn & Timothy.

Our Christmas Eve PJs.

Santa's gifts for Serra & Timothy.


Checking out Serra's stocking.


Serra's new Care Bear from Santa.


Christmas Breakfast- eggs, hash brown patties, sausages, bacon, cinnamon rolls, juice, milk and hot chocolate! Whew!

Brandon & Christina made these special BLTs for us.

Sommerlynn made this really cheesy/meaty lasagna for us.

Here's my new haircut- right after getting it done- too bad I didn't get a facial and some makeup applications done! Oh well.

Serra being her typical silly self.

This Month

Now that it's halfway through the month I realized I hadn't said what's special about this month! I missed the Festival of Sleep Day which was on the 3rd- have to admit, I haven't really been sleeping much or well for the last couple of weeks, so it wouldn't have helped! Hugging Day is on the 21st- so hug someone special. And this whole month is Diet Month, Volunteer Blood Donor Month and Eye Health Care Month.

Sometime when I feel like weeding through all of my pictures, I'll post stuff from Christmas. I just haven't felt like going there yet... today hasn't been one of my better days. But I'm getting the hang of things- a bad day is usually followed by a couple of good ones!