Life's a beach!!

Hi all...it's Tuesday night and this is my first time to get online since being down in Fort Myers. We arrived on Saturday around 4:00 p.m. as was the plan. Perfect timing considering check-in time to our house was 4, too! The drive was long and tiring, but our main concern -- being Emma -- turned out to be the least of our concerns as she did a great job for a toddler confined to a car seat for 21 hours! Of course, a good amount of that time she slept since we left at 6:30 p.m. and traveled through the night, but even through awake hours she did good.

Our house is big. Although it's a duplex, our "neighbors" are a really nice couple from Pennsylvania and we hardly see them. The husband spends all day fishing in the ocean and his wife just comes and goes as she pleases. We were worried about having wild, loud neighbors, but that's not the case at all. We don't even have to share the pool with them! Actually, speaking of the pool, we've only been in it twice and it's been in the cooler evening hours. We've spent a lot of time on the beach since it's only feet away from our house and BEAUTIFUL. I, wanting to get sun, didn't apply sunscreen at first and got burnt right away, but not TOO bad. I mean, it's not the most comfortable, but I'm not in agony. Time flies so quickly while on vacation and on the beach -- you know, not a care in the world -- but the sun caught up with me quicker than I thought. NOW I put the sunscreen on!!

We're all having a great time so far. Especially Emma. She is a total beach baby...she takes after her daddy. We can't keep them out of the ocean! She loves the "wawer" and even to bring her out of it to wipe her face or reapply sunscreen is a chore...she runs back towards it yelling "wawer! wawer!" She likes to sit and let the waves crash into her back...the bigger, the better. The harder they hit her, the louder she laughs. It's so cute!

Here are some pictures we've got so far. We took a trip Monday to Sanibel Island to do some shelling. We got quite a few nice shells, and it's a beautiful beach, but it was a bit too rough for Emma and the beach is more shells than sand, so it's not the best environment for a playful toddler.

I will, of course, post again upon our return. Wish us luck for an equally successful drive home!

...and her name is...

Maggie Lee Hamric!

IT'S A GIRL!!!

My original intention was to get a good "between the legs" shot and post it along with another poll for all of you to vote boy or girl based on what you thought you saw in the picture...however, the picture we ended up with is not so easy to decipher. I'm unsure of what I'm looking at and I was there!

Our baby girl is developing perfectly and is right 'on schedule'. Here are a few pictures from our ultrasound...I guess they look just like any other ultrasound pictures, though!!

In this one her mouth is wide open...already hungry!

This is her entire leg stretched out. She won't be able to do this for very long!!!

This is her profile. I think she has Emma's nose and cheeks...but I know it's too early to tell that...just looks like it in this picture!

We got 3D ultrasound images of Emma and plan on doing that again with this baby as well. Those are much better pictures!

This is Emma at, I think, 28 weeks:



Speaking of Emma, she's mastering her letters and numbers. She still has her unique way of saying the numbers 3, 4 and 7 (wewen), though. My mom got video of her counting by herself yesterday, but as soon as I pull my camera out she gets bashful. Today I got a quick video of her counting while on the phone with my mom. I missed her saying 1, and she just decided she didn't feel like saying 10!




A lot of times when she's counting by herself, she keeps going and going and going because she gets so much praise after she reaches 10. Sometimes she even cheats and says "8, 9, 10" but we don't allow that! No cheating! Start at 1 and earn your praise fair and square!! hahaha!


That's all for now....next time I post will probably be after we return from our week's vacation to Fort Myers Beach. We leave a week from today! I cannot wait!!!

Easy as 1, 2, 3...

This post is just a quick note to brag, once again, about Emma ;) of course! She knows her numbers 1 through 10 now, too!! We've been practicing her letters a lot since my last post. This past Saturday night while playing at her Nana and Papa's she counted 7, 8, 9, 10 all by herself and just out of the blue! She has a set of stacking blocks over there that have numbers on them, and along with her ABC toys, she's got plenty 123 toys as well! So I added number flashcards to her daily activities and prior to adding this post she read all 10 numbers without a problem! Well, she does say "4" in her own weird way, but it's 4 to her!

Side note: When Emma was saying "ba-mmm" for cat (don't even ask me where she got that from) I asked her doctor if it counted as a word and she said as long as "ba-mmm" was consistently "cat" and not some random sound, it counted!!!

Anyways, again, it just amazes me what she's learning. She's surprising me daily!!!

And don't forget, Thursday's the big "reveal day" so stop back to find out if Em's going to have a baby brother or baby sister!!!

Baby Genius!! (if I may say so myself)

I know, it's been almost a month since my last post! I guess there's been enough going on worth sharing, but finding the time in a day to sit down and actually write is a different story. Especially lately with the warmer weather giving us a tease. We've been outside playing a lot. Emma LOVES it outside and it's quite a chore to get her back into the house sometimes...shoot, all the time!













We took Emma to a nearby playground. She loves going down the slides! Although she looks a little apprehensive on the "swirly" slide!

Anyways, let's get to the point of my heading "Baby Genius"!!!! For the past week or so I've been practicing the alphabet with Emma. So far I've just been working on getting her to say her letters by repeating after me. I have to say aside from a few of her own pronunciations of some of the letters (she "gasps" when saying F and H), she does really really good. Here is a video taken earlier today. In this video, though, she stops at "J" to take a drink, and I lose her:

A couple times I've written letters down on her "Dora MagnaDoodle" and have shown them to her as I say them. Again, only a couple times; however, she's got a gazillion (give or take) toys that sing, say, show, play the ABCs. Apparently, she's been picking up a lot more than we thought because today when I wrote letters on her Dora MagnaDoodle, she identified all but five of them!!

At first I thought, "Maybe she just knows what's coming next," since I was writing them in order. NO!! Later on in the day I wrote random letters and asked what they were. She identified every letter I wrote for her!!! Then we went to the fridge and I showed her random magnet letters. Again, she identified all of them!! So I made her some flashcards so we can practice!

I am just so shocked and amazed!! Above all, I'm so proud!! A few months shy of two years old, and knowing her ABCs -- of course I had to share!!

In other news, I had an appointment with my midwife and all is well. In two weeks we get to (hopefully) find out if we're having a girl baby or boy baby!! That guarantees a post in less than a month this time!! "Stay tuned!"

Bring it on, chicken pox!!

No, no one in the family has chicken pox. I just found out yesterday at my midwife's appointment that I am immuned to them. YES! I had never had chicken pox and was really really worried about the day Emma (or baby #2) would come home from school with itchy bumps all over. I was so relieved to find out about my immunity, it just made my day! Well, that and being able to hear our baby's heartbeat for the first time, of course!! He or she was moving around all over the place, too! I can't feel it yet, but we heard lots of movement on the doppler before Julie found the heartbeat!

I can't wait to feel those first movements! I always concentrate when I'm sitting on the couch to feel for those wee little flutters, but nothing yet.

As for my last weather-related post, it did get a little warmer...Ryan's truck said 56 on the way home, although I saw 48 on the way home from my midwife. I did have my window opened a crack, and I left our front door open for some sunlight. Today, however, it is rainy and gloomy. That's okay, better than a blizzard any day!!

Oh, the weather outside is frightful....

....but not for too much longer. All the incredible snow that pounded us yesterday is now soon to melt with the warmer temperatures that are "supposedly" on their way. Northeast Ohio is the "I'll believe it when I see it" region for weather, though. So for now, I just have to keep my fingers crossed. Yesterday was crazy with all the snowfall.

This was taken Sunday morning.

That's my in-laws' house, and my father-in-law had just plowed Saturday morning!! Seems like a waste of time!

Looking out Emma's bedroom window, there's a HUGE drift on our porch roof.

Ryan opened the window and we thought it'd be fun if Emma were able to play in the snow from her bedroom. And it was, until we thought it was enough...Emma was having too much fun and threw quite the substantial fit. She was, however, able to play with the little bit of snow that was on her floor, so that eventually settled her. Outside of that unhappiness, it was cool.

That's all the updating I have for now. Nothing exciting is happening. Oh, I haven't gotten sick in over a week, so hopefully the first trimester "any-time-of-the-day" sickness has passed. I have an appointment this Thursday with my midwife. I'll write more then.