22 months

Mary is 22 months old! (And baby #2 is a 38 week old fetus as of Saturday). I took some pictures of Mary while she was playing outside yesterday and was really happy with how they came out. They'll go in her baby book for her 22 month page and I might have some printed for her 2 year pictures:)

37 week appointment

We had our appointment today and everything is progressing well. Baby is engaged (meaning it's not just floating around anymore, its head is now down in my pelvis). That makes for fun times in the comfort department:) I've really been doing well though. No more headaches and very few aches/pains to speak of. So I can't complain. I will be 38 weeks in two days!

Something funny that has been happening lately is that anytime I call/text someone they think I had the baby. I could really mess with people if I wanted to! I was also thinking today about how I have a tendency to look forward to/wish for the next phase of life to come quicker. Earlier I was thinking I just want baby to be here. But I always do this! i.e. I just wanted to get married, just wanted to have a baby, just wanted that baby to stop crying, just wanted the baby to start crawling, etc...

So I decided I'm going to take Jesus' advice and stop being so concerned about tomorrow (or the next day or the next month). I want to focus on today and stop wishing my life away! God gave me today and He makes no promises about tomorrow, so this is where my focus should be. I just love when God puts me on the right path with His Word!

Cousins

It was time for another photo shoot with Mary and her cousin Brooklynn. My mom provided the matching outfits and the entertainment for the girls, and I provided the camera and editing. It's a win-win because Grandma likes to shop and I like to take pictures (I like to shop too, but that's another story). We were planning to go to a nearby park but nature had it's own ideas of what it wanted to do this morning. So we ended up indoors at the mall. I think it went well despite being inside! Here are a few of my favorites:

Hueston Woods

Ian is always coming up with good ideas for us to do with Mary in the afternoons/evenings. Some of his past suggestions have been: go to a bookstore and let her play in the kids section, going to any park, visiting a friend, and getting parfaits at McDonalds for snack and then playing in the playland. Yesterday he had a new idea that we'd never done before: going to Hueston Wood's beach! It was a lot of fun playing in the sand. Mary LOVES the beach and loves water so we had a great time. Then we went to subway in Oxford for some dinner:) Here are some pictures from our adventure:

Mary's words

We like to practice words with Mary. Sometimes the exchanges are pretty funny:

Me: Mary! Say butterfly
Mary: fu-fly
Me: Say Doggie
Mary: goggie
Me: Say horsie
Mary: aussie
Me: Say cow
Mary: moooooooooooooooo

Also, whenever she learns a new word it keeps her up half the night (she's not a fan of falling asleep anyway) because she keeps practicing it. The latest word is yellow. She's practicing it instead of sleeping right now actually. She doesn't know what yellow is, but she likes to say the word! I think it's because her current favorite toy is yellow. She wakes up asking for her bus and plays with it non-stop. And anytime we see a bus, or anything bigger than a car for that matter, she says bus over and over again until you acknowledge her.

And finally, she has learned how to say her BFF's name. We've been trying to get her to say Abigail for a while now, and we saw her and her mommy on Friday. After we pulled away from them Mary said, "Abby bye". I almost turned the car around to go back and have her say it again for them! And of course she has been saying "Abby bye" for the past two days. Here is a picture of the two little princesses from our vacation:

Mary's new room

Mary's new room is finished! We decided to keep her old room as the "nursery" (that sounds so traditional!). And thanks to Grandma and Grandpa Lubbers she still has nicer furniture than the rest of the house, except for her old room that is:) Here is the room before we did any work:

This is the only room of the house that I've never done any work on before, so I was ready to decorate once Ian got it painted! I tried to help with the painting but was sent away and told that I shouldn't be near all the fumes... Can you tell I kind of let this room go???

And here is the (almost) finished product:

There's a little bookcase on the other side of her crib that's not really visible in these pictures. But here is her dresser, including the rose Daddy got her and the picture frames that I made for her:

Here is a close up of the middle frame which happens to be my favorite. It says, "I praise you because Mary is fearfully and wonderfully made, your works are wonderful" We have been reading psalm 139 to our little princess since we brought her home from the hospital. We want her to know the truth that she is made in God's image and was crafted exactly how He wants her.

The pictures for those frames are on their way:) I wanted Mary to feel really comfortable in her room and I think that she truly is. We bought some crazy big and thick curtains so that it would be darker for her to sleep and I decorated it in a homey way so she would feel safe. I hope she does!

Zoo trip:)

After checking the weather last night we decided that today would be the best day to go to the zoo. And it was a beautiful day! It's been so hot lately I thought we would have to postpone zoo trips until the fall, but today was awesome! I finally remembered to take my camera with us, so I have some pictures.
Here is Mary NOT wanting to touch the animals at the kids petting zoo. It's strange how much she likes animals but wouldn't touch them with a ten foot pole. When she saw the lambs she started saying, "ba ba ba," but she would not go near them. Here's daddy trying to get her to touch a baby goat:

Here they are looking at the howler monkeys, or in Mary's words "on-keys". Notice where Mary's fingers are in the second picture, she always has them in his ears or hair!




She only tried to dive in once:

Bear's, or "be-as" as Mary calls them:

We paid a little more money to get the pass that includes rides and let me tell you, it's been worth it! Mary loves the train and we love seeing her so happy:) She also loves the carousel, but the line was too long today. Last time we rode it she said "weeeeeeeeee" really loudly the whole time...Here we are riding the train:



"Do we have to get off the train???"

She only wanted to run, the entire time, just running! So Daddy got to have that job. She did pretty good with holding his hand though:

"ishies"

Happy

I was at a friend's house the other day who has a 2 month old and the baby was crying because she was tired and they talked about letting her cry a little to fall asleep...oh those days! I haven't even thought about how we have to go back to those kinds of things. I'm used to Mary going to sleep and waking up happy. It took us a good 4-5 months to get to that point and even then it wasn't super consistent until about 7 months. Maybe this baby will be a great sleeper?!?
Anyway, it got me thinking about how, in her newborn stage, Mary would scream in her car seat all the time. If we were driving on the highway she fell right to sleep, but any time we stopped or slowed down she was not happy. Even up until a few months ago she would still be unhappy sometimes in her car seat. Now I can anticipate her getting into her seat happily and sitting like this most of the time:


I guess what I'm trying to say is I'm not looking forward to starting certain things again! But the cool thing is I know from experience that it will get better:)

Cookout:)

My parents had a cookout on Monday. It was good to see family and really fun to watch Mary and her cousin play in the sprinkler! Here are some pictures:

34 weeks

I'm 34 weeks along now and feeling pretty good. We went through a little rough patch where baby's feet were in my ribs and I was also getting headaches every few days, but that seems to have passed. Our doctors appointment today went well even though he was running a little behind. I had 5-6 questions for him so that made it even longer. I felt kind of bad for taking up so much of his time since he was already behind, but he is so good at answering all of my questions patiently. I really appreciate that!
Here we are at 34 weeks (that's my grandma, baby's GG, in the background):