Update on Joshua

So, Joshua is going to be a huge baby, just because I guess! No gestational diabetes, my repeat test was even better than the first! He's healthy and even with as huge as he is right now (over 5 1/2 lbs) he's still moving and groovin all over the womb. While my due date isn't until Feb 2, 2007 I will be having him in January. There was no doubt about that even before we figured out he's big! I was to be induced around 39weeks just to make sure he comes before week 40. Well now that he's so big there is a possiblity that he'll be induced even earlier. No earlier than 37 weeks as that is considered full term but any time after January 12th would be fair game.
I see the OB next Thursday after Christmas then weekly there after. I'm having non-stress tests done every other week and growth ultrasounds have been every three weeks. Maybe more will be done as we get closer to the full term time. My OB is still out on his medical leave but the OB I found to replace him is very nice and I'm comfortable with him taking over my care. My perinatologist is very involved so I'm being watched closely. Oh I found out at my last appointment they have technically labeled Joshua as LGA which is large for gestational age!
Funny when Joey was IUGR intra-uterine growth restricted! I guess there's no argument from me how no two pregnancies are alike, even with the same parents!
So far, so good! Thanks all I can ask for. God has blessed me and my family very much and for that we are truly thankful.

Pictures November and December 2006

My little climber especially loves the tight spots and the high spots as well!


He loves mommy's belly and reclining in the chair with the phone.



The snow was great, can't wait for more to play in
and the musical doggy from St. Nick was a great hit!

Lots going on the past month

Wow I didn't realize how long since I've update on here! Sorry to you all who check frequently. Time sure does fly when you've got children, something you never quite understand until you're in the right shoes! LOL
Well we managed to get through Thanksgiving. It was very nice and even if I do say so myself, the food was wonderful! I may not be able to make chicken and rice but I sure can roast a flavorful and moist turkey and my sweet potatoes are awesome!
On December 1st the Midwest was hit with a great snowstorm. Here we managed the most in the state with an official total of 17 inches! You know Joey was only 2 inches more than that at birth! LOL
I took him outside the day after and he just loved it. He's always loved the snow but this is the first chance he's gotten to play in it. In the past, since he was little, he only got to stick his face up in the air and feel the flakes fall on his face. This time he got to hold it in his hand and attempt to stand in it. Do you believe he is wearing his INFANT snow suit? LOL He's still such a shorty that in length he still can wear that thing. It's not really suitable for walking it but it did the trick and kept him warm.
He will be 18months old on Friday. I can't believe it's been 18 months since his birth. So much has happened, he's grown and developed right before my eyes and yet I feel like I missed it all! He has his pediatrician appointment in the morning. His only shot this time is his flu vaccine and then he doesn't see the doctor until he's two and no more shots until next year's flu shot!
Yesterday I went in to get Josh checked out by the perinatologist. Josh is doing extremely well. He's gaining weight the way Joey should have but didn't! Acutually I'm a little concerned that he's going to be huge! 21 days ago he was 4lbs 0oz, yesterday he was 5lbs 7oz. If I go to my due date of 2/2/07 I'm estimating 8lbs 5oz at least! That's a huge difference between Josh and Joey who was only 3 days early and 6lbs 13oz. Can you all say WOW big Joshie??!! LOL
The perinatologist and I discussed that maybe I have gestational diabetes. I had my 1 hour glucose test done at the usual time around 26 weeks and it was normal but on the high end. It was 133 with 140 being the highest it goes. So I called the new OB I will be seeing this week (my OB is on medical leave and will probably miss Josh's delivery) and told them that I would like a repeat test to make sure. It's important to know so they can watch Josh after he's born and make sure his sugar levels don't bottom out right after birth. I hate that if I am diabetic they may have to give him a bottle to keep his sugars up. I would hate for that to ruin my breastfeeding ability. Though I did allow Joey to have the pacifier during his circumcision and it didn't ruin his breastfeeding so we will just have to see. I'll do whatever I have to in the best interest of my children.
We'll have our little Joshie in about 7 weeks if not sooner!!!

Well the site won't let me put up any pictures for some odd reason. When it's working correctly I will get them up. I do have quite a few!!

Pictures missing from previous post

I don't know why it didn't add these on, I guess I can't have more than a few per post? And as you can see they all got mixed up but I'm sure you can tell what's what! LOL

Pictures of the boys

I had another 3D ultrasound yesterday so I have a couple pictures of Joshua and some pictures of Joey from this month. I'm posting quite a few face shots....Joey's fat lip he received while tripping in the driveway. I'm not sure if he hit the cement or the sippy cup in his hands but it bled pretty good. I couldn't find the camera so I didn't get a pic until the next day and it looked so much better!
Chocolate all over his mouth, have him some M&M's and they were melting all over the place. I guess their motto is only for people who don't squeeze the M&M's in their hands! LOL
I babysat for Joey's little second cousin the other day. He did very well having the baby in the house though he did regress in wanting to sit in the bouncy seat!!
Last but not least, today he is 17mos old and for his "birthday" his cousin Colin gave him a quick little Mohawk! Very cute, Colin's just lucky he didn't shave the sides of his head. LOL

Enjoy!!

Toddler biting

Ok, over the past few days my toddler has become unbelievable! I used to love that he was teething and getting all those toofies in his mouth and now I just want to pull them all back out again! I think due to his lack of vocabulary and complete frustration he's biting ME! And he knows just where to make it hurt (ie, under the arm, inside the arm etc.) I don't know what I'm going to do with him! When he doesn't bit he bashes his own head into the floor! I swear he carefully puts himself down on his hands and knees, backs his head up and bashes it down on the floor. Totally looking for attention. It's much easier to ignore him hurting himself rather than when he's hurting me!

I think we're pretty far from 2yrs old but we're approaching the terrible twos as warp speed! Ugggg...save me!! :)

3D pictures of Joshua

My beautiful little boy. He looks so much like Joey and they said they saw some hair on him!
Mommy's favorite picture, looks like Josh is praying
What a perfect hand right next to my ear!
I'm still a boy no doubt about it!

See my muscles mommy?

Indian Summer Day

Outside with the doggy Bosco, one of my best friends!










Decided I'm thristy from all this playing with the dog. Good thing mommy and daddy leave this cooler out. I'm self sufficient!!








I'm a happy boy as daddy looks on proudly! Now how do you get this thing open?






Come on mom, open it, I want my Miller!! :)

Cool Milestones for Joey

I forgot to add this to my last update. Joey is now doing a very good "itsy bitsy spider." He LOVES that song. He's done the spider part for a long time now but he's added the "washed the spider out" part and "out came the sun" too! He's also doing peek-a-boo too! He will cover his own face (not always his eyes) and wait for you to say peek-a-boo to him and he'll cover again! It's so cute.

In swimming he's made a giant leap forward. He's always done very well but then we took the summer off and I thought for sure he would have forgotten things. Well over the past month he's has consistantly been closing his eyes just prior to doing under water and blowing out to keep water from going in his mouth! It's wonderful. He's also trying to jump off the wall to mommy but doesn't quite get air after he bends his knees! LOL He will also hold onto the wall and then reach for me and let go of it to come to me and visa versa!!!!

Wow, he's getting sooooo dang big and growing so much so fast!

And more pics

Joey's first professional haircut!
I love my Joey and my Joey loves me!
See what happens when you leave food laying around when there's a toddler in the area???
ooooohhhh...doggy makes good pillow and backrest!
Handsome boy!!! Beautiful blue eyes just like his daddy

More pics

Mr Smiley loves the camera!
Joey fits perfect in this box! Silly boys
Did someone put something in that sippy other than milk or water?? LOL
Love his laughs!
Joey and his girlfriend, they get along soo well together.

Ultrasound pics of Joey's little brother

I went today to have an ultrasound done of Joshua. I got quite a few pics, here are the ones that I have on disk.....my 2nd son is doing GREAT!!!!!

Joey goes on Vacation!

Joey went on his first vacation ever. We all went to the Niagara Falls area of New York!! It was a nice little vacation, more of a business trip for daddy but we got to do a little sight seeing and cross the border to see the falls. Joey loved the falls and did very well with the long car ride. Can I just say portable DVD players are a God send!!!???!!!! If not for the DVD player Joey would have been just miserable. As it was he had a difficult time sleeping in the car for some odd reason and we had to stop about every 100miles to stretch his legs out (mine too) as he appeared to get cramped up. Those dang car seats aren't meant for comfort I'm afraid, just safety!

One really cool thing about our trip was getting to meet an internet friend and her little girl who is the same age as Joey, for the first time. It was wonderful to finally meet and I hope we can stay in closer touch now too!!!

Another update on the boys

Yesterday I had a Level II u/s done to check up on Josh. He's doing very well. All the body part are there and appear to be functioning at they should!!! I got to see him swallow, that was so cool. He's measuring ahead now. At my 6w u/s he was 4 days behind. At my 8w u/s he was 1 day behind now at my 20w u/s he was 3 days ahead which changes my EDD from 2/2/07 to 1/31/07 and makes me instead of 20w today 20w3d today!! Yeah!!!! Oh and he was 13oz (approx). If I remember correctly Joey was 12oz at this age (well younger by a week).
My Josh is a wild child. He was very uncooperative with the u/s tech. She would no sooner zone in on an organ or bone or area to measure and he'd flip away so she couldn't! He was flipping around so much he's really making me nervous that he's going to knot up his umbilical cord or get it wrapped around his neck too much/too tightly! Joey was such as quiet child in-utero. He was uncooperative in the sense that he'd be in a bad position and not move out of it! LOL

Now Joey had his 15month pediatrician appt today. He is doing great as well! He was 6lbs 13oz and 19in long at birth. Today, 15mos later he is 23lbs 5oz and 30 1/4 in long!! That's just under 25% for both! Which is great because he's never gotten above 10% in height before. Dr said he thinks Joey will be around daddy's height (5'10) not 5'2 like I was dreading for him.
Everything is great, nothing was wrong. He's teething well, no ear infections, no other issues. He's a happy and heathy little boy and dr was impressed with how happy he was an the lack of stranger anxiety!!

He goes again on his 18mos birthday (12/15/06) then not again until his 2nd birthday!! WOW!! I can't believe it, it seems like that's just around the corner. My little baby is growing so fast it's scary! I'll post a picture later when I get my camera downloaded into the computer!

Update on the boys!!!

I had a doctor appt this past Wednesday. It was just a regular check up and he threw in an ultrasound to verify baby's gender. I was so excited and yet while I feel the baby kicking all the time now I still get nervous at the ultrasounds. Something that happens frequently when someone has suffered a loss in the past.
Anyway all looks great. It appeared that all the boy parts were still there so we're definatly having a Joshua James come January!!!!

I was really very excited. I didn't care either way, boy or girl, but after thinking it was a boy for over a week I'd gotten all these plans in my head and was so excited about them. I think I would have been a little disappointed if he'd said it was a girl. Not that I"d hate to have a girl but I wouldn't be able to do any of my plans with a girl.

Since it's a boy he gets to take over big brother's room and Joey will be moving into a big boy room. Hubby and I already went and picked out what theme we want to decorate his room in and many of the thing in the spare room have been removed. So soon we can start building his new room and that's so exciting!!!

Joey's going to have a sports themed room in mostly blue with red and white accents. I've got it all picked out and in our registry at T-R-U!!!

Joey is doing wonderful. He's going to be a great big brother. He already knows where the baby is. When you ask him he'll come over to me and life up my shirt and pat my belly!! I'm sure he has NO clue what a baby is or that it's in mommy's tummy but it's cute none the less!

He's still getting all those toofies in all at once. One molar has made some good progress but the rest are still pretty dang slow.

He's eating great and I've tested tomato stuff on him recently and he's had no problems with diaper rash as a result so I guess he can start having tomato stuff again!

Teething Toddlers

OMG is about all I can say. Along with oh my poor little boy! Joey has decided that it's fun to get all his teeth at once. (yeah right, like he had a choice in the matter) It started out with my finding the beginnings of 3 molars, then while he was screaming while I held him down to change a diaper I find that he has two teeth (one on either side of the 4 already on top center, I think those are called the laterals??) well those have broken the skin already!! I didn't even know they were coming. Well then this morning I notice he's got one in and the other coming soon on the bottom (laterals). Now he teeths slow, once the tooth breaks the skin it's still another month or so before it grows out to the point it's supposed to reach. So all in all that is 7 teeth he's getting all at the same time. 4 through the skin (one of them is a molar) 2 others you can see are right there and 1 is still swollen and trying to come in!

I have to say he's been in pretty good spirits for 7 toofies all at the same time. No he's not an angel and has been crabby but nothing compaired to what I'd think would have happened!!

IT............is.................a...............

BOY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I'm thrilled! Didn't matter to me and we're not quitting yet anyway :) DH wants 3-4 kids total (if my body can take that much).

So anyway, last night at work (really Saturday morning) we were all bored. We can no longer surf the net so we had nothing to occupy our time. Well, then one of the nurses suggests we do a u/s to check gender because my dr wouldn't peek at my last appt. He said we couldn't really tell until 18w due to his machine, of course the one in his office isn't as nice as one to you find in a hospital. Well another nurse says he told her what her daughters gender was at only 11w!! I think he didn't want to take the chance of being too wrong having to u/s through all my excess chub! LOL
So, I'm like, how are we going to do this? Lo and Behold we have these smaller u/s machines for when the doctors place a PICC line in a patient. (PICC line is a type of IV that goes into the inner upper arm, the line is long and travels through the vein, across the chest to the tip of the heart and they can use it to give meds, IV fluids or draw blood) This is usually done in radiology but they use the little u/s's so they can do it in our ICU room so the nurse can assist and doesn't have to travel to radiology (ICU nurses can't allow their patient to go anywhere without them!)

The nurse takes me into an empty room and I lay down in the bed and tries the machine. Well she couldn't see nothing, couldn't even make out a uterus or anything like that. So she gets another machine I didn't know we had and tries it, still nothing. So on a last ditch effort she tries a different wand and BAM there's the baby. It was great, he was jumping all over the place, doing flips, had his left arm up over his head. I think he was very head down because we kept seeing a lot of his really awesome little feet. Finally he showed us between the legs and it looked very much like a blob (scrotum) she said she thought she saw the little penis too and of course just like Joey his little anus was very visable as well.

So since none of us are trained to use an u/s for this type of thing and the machine isn't made for this type of use I'm saying we're 65% sure it's a boy. I wouldn't be too shocked if on the 6th my dr said girl but I'd really want a good shot on his machine to be able to plan for a girl instead of boy. KWIM??

And his name will be Joshua James. We were going btw Benjamin and Joshua but someone who shall remain nameless told me they liked Benji over Joshie because they had a dog names Benji....well how can I name my son their dog's name??? I mean would you name a kid Rover or in our case Bosco!!! NO WAY!!! So Joshua it is :)

Talking Toddlers

While wasting time, awaiting news of my friends newborn baby I'm listening to my son playing and talking to himself in the crib patiently waiting for me to come get him out. Well it hit me, I have an update I need to post...my son is finally and 14 1/2 very long months saying ma-ma!!! He just started it yesterday. He's been saying da-da and daddy forever now but ma-ma was elusive. I was just reminded of it as I'm listening to him now going ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-mum in his crib! Too adorable.

Another newer word, less than a week old is eye. He will say eye and proceed to poke you in the eye to prove his point! LOL

He knows where the nose it but won't say the word yet and isn't very good at pointing to it on demand.

Ok, so that's it for now. ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-ma-mum needs to go get her kid, guess my friend hasn't had that baby yet!

Went to the orchard yesterday

Joey and I met up with some mom's and kids from our playgroup and we went to the orchard. We had a nice time, it's very much a place for kids. There's a big play area, pony ride, train ride (that's really a tractor not a train engine) petting area with goats and chickens and ducks....oh my. Then of course there's the orchard but I'm not sure where it is! We didn't get that far. Oh and there's a maze made out of "maize" stalks! LOL

We it was fun. Joey went on the train while I walked next to him. I couldn't even imagine how I'd get into the cart as it had to step and not door. I just don't bend like I used to and with this big old belly in the way....NO WAY. Lucky for me it went slow so I walked next to it. There was another pregnant mom there too, she is even further along than I so she too walked next to her 22mos old daughter instead of trying to climb into this thing!


Then I put Joey on a real pony. At first I just let him sit there hoping he wouldn't freak out. Then the guy took him for one trip around and that was enough. Joey did real good but I didn't want to push it. Not to mention they take the horse poop and put it in the middle area, you know the area where I am walking! YUCK!!

Well I was pooped, after the trips I did in circles I needed to sit my pregnant rear down and put something in my tummy. So we all went into the restaurant and had lunch. I have to say that with 4 mom's, 1 grandma, and 5 kids (6,3, 22mos, and 2 at 14mos) we all did real well! My kid was the whiny one, he was so over tired and missing his nap but it was a great day all together!

Afterwards we came home and both of us took a good 2 hr nap!

Lazy day

Joey has this horrible thing right now that he's peeing more than his diapers can hold over night. So every morning when I get him up and change his diaper I have to take his PJ's off him too due to leakage.

Well this particular morning, daddy's army tee shirt was right there. So instead of takeing my lazy butt to get an outfit I decided the tee shirt would suffice for breakfast (works as a great bib too!)

Since my kid is only 10% in height, the tee shirt was longer on him than he is tall! LOL It was just too darn cute though. And he was too adorable trying to get the sleeves to move out of his way when he'd bend over to pick up a toy on the floor!

County fair trip

Well since the State Fair trip was a bust, I though we'd try the county fair as it was not going to be anywhere near the size of the state fair and not have near the amount of people.

Ended up being a good trip. Joey got to see some animals, he really loves pigs!

Then his little girlfriend's grandpa took him to play the ducks. He LOVED that and did very well. He got a little stuffed doggy as his prize.

We had a good time at this fair!

State Fair 2006

Joey took his first trip to the State Fair this year with mommy and her friend from work. Just like his daddy, Joey isn't too fond of big crowds so he didn't have that great of a time unfortunately. Mom's biggest reason for wanting to take him was for the carousel ride. As soon as he got on it he was in heaven, just loved the horse and was petting it. Then that darn old carousel started to move! Oh my, that is not good. Joey don't like when the horsey moves. Maaaaaaaa, get me offfffff this thing!!!! Save me ma-ma!!!!
Ok I'm going to jump, ma-ma you catch me ok?!

Well that was it for the ride. I held him the rest of the time and boy is that ride slow when you just want to get the heck off! After that we went to the expo to maybe buy Joey something for this first time trip but he didn't like the crowd in there in spite of the fact that it was air conditioned. So we didn't get anything and just left. We had a good time, while it lasted!