Photos!

Roxanne and me at Piedmont Park today. This is not the most flattering angle for Mama, but at least you can see my 13-weeks-tomorrow belly. I haven't gained any weight during my first trimester (not that I'm bragging since I realize that I have to work this hard to not gain weight since my weight was high to start with) so that is more or less baby bumblebee, and not as much pregnant lady cravings gone crazy. The baby is around the size of a peach now! Crazy!
I love how she's looking up at Justin here. So cute. This weird mound at Piedmont Park (in the awesome 1976 modern playground designed by a Japanese artist that I played on as a kid!) is surprisingly fascinating for little ones. It's just a concrete bump, but everybody loves it! I say it looks like the moon, but Justin says it looks like Stone Mountain. But that's probably flattering Stone Mountain. It has that scrubby foliage around the bottom. It's like a balding man's head.
Roxanne enjoying the playground... She was screaming "I'm stuck, I'm stuck!"
She likes to hang from the monkey bars, but only for a few seconds. Then she drops.
Justin and Roxanne were pretending to solve a mystery of what was in this "cave."
She really loves the mountain/moon!
Candid photos are as good as it gets with a wiggly little one.
She was doing a sand dance or something, but I think she looks like she's doing the kind of walk that the monsters do in "Where the Wild Things Are." She's obsessed with her rain boots these days.
I love this castle slide in the background. I am so glad that they saved and refurbished this equipment. It's gorgeous, and for a while, it was really in bad shape.
Here's our new stroller! It's a Joovy double stroller. I got it for $25 second hand at a consignment sale. New, these babies are $125ish, and this one is great shape! The front is where the baby will go since it converts to support any baby carrier. The little platform on the back, facing Justin, is where Roxanne can sit, facing whoever is pushing the stroller. It even has a little seatbelt. She can also stand on the bottom platform instead of sitting. I think with the age difference, it will be ideal. She will be able to hop on and off as needed, and there is a storage basket underneath and even a cup-holder for us! I wasn't really planning to buy a double stroller, but when I found this, I couldn't pass it up, even though it's so early to be buying stuff for the baby. It was just such a good deal! I also got the stink eye from some other moms shopping at the sale, watching to see if I was really going to buy it. Sorry ladies!
Watching the geese at Piedmont.
At a recent trip to the zoo on one of the nice warm weekend days. Is anything cuter than these pigs?
Roxanne brushing a goat is pretty cute. She insists on a pink brush...
At the zoo, the baby bird.
Look how close that lion is!! They never sleep so close to the glass!
It took a lot of convincing to get her to wear leggings and a skirt and not leggings and a dress. But we call this skirt a tutu, and I kept telling her she would look like a ballerina. I won, but by a close margin. Mostly, I don't bother trying to fight that battle, but her dresses were dirty.
Roxanne's first princess dress! We went to her cousins' birthday party, which was a princess tea party. I found this dress at Target, marked down to $7 and it's really cute. It's not a Disney dress, but she says it's a Cinderella dress if you ask her. I still don't really understand how she knows so much about princesses...
Another shot of the princess dress. It was really cold, which is why she's in a shirt underneath. She's also talking to Nana on my phone (the orange thing). She's always multi-tasking...

Now that everyone knows...

I can blog about it! We're expecting a new baby on or around August 22. For now, we are calling the new baby "baby bumblebee," which is one of many names Roxanne picked out. I'm almost 13 weeks, so I'll try and start posting belly photos soon. Things are progressing much faster in that area this time around... I'm feeling pretty fine, just the usual extra tiredness and some nausea/heartburn stuff. But I'm working out between 5-7 days a week (just 30 minutes on the elliptical) and I think it's helping most of the pregnancy symptoms feel much more manageable.

I had a doctor's appointment on Friday. Well, a midwife appointment. We are going that route this time around. I love the midwife I saw Friday, but the one I saw the time before that is kind of a jerk. Oh well. Everything is going fine, and she was able to find the heartbeat right away with the doppler. Roxanne was with me, so she got to hear the heartbeat. She was very excited about it, but confused (understandably so). She said, "I don't see baby bumblebee, Mama." So I explained again we couldn't see the baby, but we could hear it's heartbeat. When I asked if she could hear it, she said, "Yeah, it sounds like the ocean!" Which really is pretty accurate... For documentation purposes, the heartbeat was 145 per minute. Which is in the girl range. So I'm convinced it's a girl. But according to the Chinese Gender Prediction Chart, it's a boy. Go figure.

Roxanne is excited about the baby, but she now asks if almost everyone she knows has a baby in their belly, too. So we're working on that issue. These are big things for a toddler to grasp... She's funny in that she decidedly says the baby is a boy or a girl depending on when you ask her, but she never waffles. Yesterday she told me it was going to be a girl because it had to be. I kept trying to explain that we didn't get to pick, but she just kept saying, "no, it's a girl baby. It's going to be a girl baby." Who knows?! Once again, we aren't finding out early. So we're thinking about boy names and girl names. We always ask Roxanne for suggestions, and although she usually lists names of kids she knows, or nonsense words that don't mean anything at all, she sometimes says fun names like "Rocket Baby" or "Blast Off Baby." That has a nice ring, right?

In all seriousness, any names that we think might be contenders we have her say to make sure she can pronounce them. Although her pronunciation is almost always cuter than how it's "supposed" to sound...

Roxanne-isms

So, now that she's officially 3, she might as well be 15. She's quite the conversationalist these days, although she still likes to talk about "naked booties" or Hello Kitty more than anything else. We're trying to discourage the booties thing a little because it's getting kind of out of control. Oops. Here's some new stuff:
*Since we have XM radio in our Honda, Roxanne has learned that she can ask you the name of each song that plays, as well as "What's the band name?" She asks for almost every single song. If I'm listening to NPR and a song comes on, she'll ask, "Is this just a song between the news?" because she knows I don't know the names of those songs. I wish I knew where all of that information was being stored... She loves most music, but her favorite seems to be the 1950's station.
*She plays and plays and plays with all of her tiny little animals/Hello Kitty figurines, etc. She makes them talk to each other and have elaborate story lines.
*She's definitely more into TV than she has been before, so we have to make an effort to limit it. I think that's pretty standard for lots of little ones this age. Her favorite show right now is Busytown, which is the Richard Scary cartoon. She sings the theme song all the time, and will tell me randomly, "Mama, this is a mystery!" about some situation. They solve mysteries on Busytown. She loves it.
*We are hoping to be able to get her into a pre-school program next year. Because of her birthday, she won't be able to start Pre-K until the year after next. But for fall, we're trying to get her into Ben's program. It's really expensive, but really good. She would go five mornings a week (9 to 12) and I think she would love it. She loves talking to Ben's teacher when we pick him up from school, and she went right into his classroom when we went for the tour and got right in the mix. Of course, there's only one slot open, so we have to keep our fingers crossed. And we might have to ask for a tuition break. Ugh. We looked at programs near us, which are MUCH cheaper, but logistically, I can't pick both her and Ben up if they are at pre-schools across town from each other. Especially since by next fall I'll be keeping Ben's new brother (Nate) full time, too. Well, I'll be keeping Nate full time starting in April. So we'll see...

Alright, off to work. I promise not to lapse so long between posts! School is keeping me busy!

Snow Days!

Our Three Year Old Girl

So, I know I'm terrible and didn't post on Roxanne's birthday. She turned 3 on December 19! We had a Hello Kitty party for her at our house. Our house is so tiny, and people get kind of crammed in, but December birthdays make it tough to plan parties. That time of year, everyone is either getting sick, getting over being sick, or in a brief window of wellness. So it goes. Roxanne had lots and lots of fun having her cousins and friends over for her party, and got completely flooded with wonderful gifts (that I need to write thank you notes for...). She asked for a giant cupcake cake, so I bought a Wilton cupcake cake pan and did my best. :) I'm definitely an amateur. She was happy with it though. She gets a little overwhelmed at these kinds of things, so she gets kind of zombied out and sometimes fussy. But this year she was pretty much fine. We were actually able to get her to nap a little bit before the party started, but we ended up having to wake her up as the first guests started to arrive. Not ideal, but she pulled through. I had taken her to Old Navy the day before to pick out a special birthday outfit, so she got a Hello Kitty shirt with a cupcake theme, and some stripey tights. She has a pink skirt with tulle edging that is one of the few things she will wear that's a non-dress. She loves loves loves tights. Somehow they are highly preferable to leggings. Leggings apparently do not make her a "girl." So she insists on peeling them off as soon as we get inside our house (or work).

Christmas Morning!