Malea turns 7!

I can't believe Malea is 7!!!  She is getting so grown up!  

We decided to have her friend party the weekend before her birthday because we had family coming in to town the next weekend and it was going to be a crazy week! This was the first year she didn't want a "character" birthday (we've done Frozen, Hello Kitty, Disney Princesses, etc in the past), which just goes to show that this girl is growing up!

My beautiful birthday girl!

She looks so grown up with her legs crossed like that!

Some of the decor :)

Showing some of her friends her room!

Playing a fun BINGO game!

Present time!

Malea with her bestie/next door neighbor Sarah

Cake! (This one's for you Di, love cute little Sarah in the background, we kept trying to get Malea to smile and Sarah was doing it too haha)

After the party, Sarah and Malea played with their dolls (Sarah got her a new ice skater outfit for it and they were twinners)

This was taken the day before her actual birthday.  She got some Frozen dress-up accessories from a friend at her party (crown, necklace, wand, etc) that went well with the Elsa dress she wore for Halloween.  I love that loves to dress-up and I'm going to be sad one day when she grows out of it!

The evening before her birthday Grandpa Dave stopped by to visit and bring Malea her birthday gift.  The kids always love to see Grandpa! 

Birthday morning!

She got to open her presents before school from mommy and daddy :)

She got some clothes and a new doll bed and stuffed animal pet for her doll!

We took treats in the morning for her class and then came back to have lunch with her at noon :)

That night we took her to dinner at Golden Corral (her choice!) and a bunch of our family came too. It was a lot of fun!

Malea with her cousin Sienna, they are a year apart

She opened her present from Grandma Vicki & Grandpa Rick, it was this adorable dress for her and a matching one for her doll!

After dinner we took her to build-a-bear to pick out a stuffed animal!

This picture was taken the next day, which happened to be the day her class was doing their Valentine's Day celebration.  I though the red dress she got from her grandparents was perfect for Valentine's Day!

Fun facts about Malea at age 7:

*She is very artistic and loves doing crafts.  I am always amazed by her creativity and impressed with what she comes up with.

*She is very sweet and tender-hearted, which also means she sometimes gets her feelings hurt easily.  But I always tell her that I would rather she be like that than the opposite.

*She LOVES stuffed animals and even though she has a million of them she always seems to want another one when she gets money for a birthday or something.  She actually plays with them quite a bit so I don't feel too bad about it.

*She has recently gotten in to the game Minecraft and loves to play that when she has down time.

*She loves the shows Wild Kratts, Pokemon, and Octonauts.

*She is reading SO well and has improved so much this year.  She can read quite a few books on her own with a little bit of help here and there.  She is so smart and is doing really well in school, especially considering that she is in Chinese immersion.  We are so proud of her!

Happy Birthday Malea!!  We love you SO much!

Half Way!

This week I hit the half way mark!  Yay!  I can't believe I'm already 20 weeks.  I get weekly emails from babycenter.com and apparently at 20 weeks the baby is approx. 10 inches long or about the length of a banana (hears a banana for reference ;)).   

I'm feeling much better nausea wise (thank goodness) but other unpleasant symptoms have started.  The doctor warned me that with #3 and on that women tend to complain of more aches and pains and boy was he right!  I have been experiencing things way earlier than I did with my other two.  For example, I started waking up with hip pain at about 18 weeks and I don't remember feeling that until I was at least 30+ weeks with my other two.  I've been having trouble with my sciatic nerve in my lower back (again, another thing that I didn't struggle with until later on with the others).  I have to be really careful not to lift things that are too heavy or over-do it.  Even today I was cleaning/organizing and my back got sore.  I got a back brace so hopefully that will help.  I've been such a whiner on facebook lately, I bet people are going to start unfriending me soon, haha ;)  I've only gained about 5 lbs so far because I was so sick in the beginning.  Now that the nausea has gone away I've started gaining.  It's sure nice to have an appetite again!

Here's one of my first prego pictures, this was taken at about 18 weeks.  I think I've definitely grown since then :) 

We went in for the 20 week ultrasound on Wednesday and got to see more pictures of baby girl! (and yes, it's still a girl :)).  The top left picture is a bum and legs shot (as if she were sitting on a copy machine, that's the only way I can explain it), bottom left is her facing forward scrunched up in a little ball, the top right is her cute little foot, and the bottom right....we're not sure lol.  It looks like you can see her spine and an arm or leg on the left.  She is head down and facing in towards me so it was hard to get a good profile of her but everything looks good which is the most important thing!  I am measuring about 5 days behind but they said that's not a huge deal. 

There was one little concern during the ultrasound that they found.....in the picture below you can see a big lump at the bottom with the word "lobe?" written across it.  They aren't 100% sure yet if this is what it is, but apparently it could be what's called a placental lobe.  Basically a placental lobe is when there is a smaller placenta that is still attached to the bigger placenta with blood vessels but is separate.  

The doctor said that they don't do much differently other than at delivery they have to make sure that all of it comes out because sometimes the bigger placenta will come out but the smaller one doesn't.  I wasn't too worried about it until I got home and started doing internet research about it (which is never a good idea but I always do it anyway).  I came across some message boards with some women who shared horror stories about having a placental lobe.  It sounds like it's more of a problem if you don't know it's there so its a good thing they found it.  Some women said that they had tons of bleeding/cramping for weeks after delivery and then passed it later (yikes).  I also read that one woman had to have an emergency c-section because of it.  Other women said that after deliver they had to have a D&C to get it out.  Soooo I'm a little nervous about how it's going to play out.  I'm hoping it just comes out with the bigger placenta and we won't have to worry about it.  I have another ultrasound in 4 weeks to check up on it so we'll see what they say then.  I asked around to see if anyone else had experienced this before and so far I haven't found anyone.  Most people hadn't even heard of it (neither had I until that day) and from what I've read it's pretty rare.

Anyway, moving on to more positive things :)  Because it's been 4+ years since our last baby, we've had to get quite a few new things.  Our infant car seat was expired, so we got a new one and we got a new sit & stand stroller that it clips in to.  I had a Graco double stroller that I loved and I was just planning on buying another Graco infant seat but apparently the new Graco car seats don't fit in to the old Graco strollers anymore because of their new design (little crooks, they totally do it to make you buy new stuff!).  So I still have it but I figured now that our kids are older we don't really need a double all the time so a sit & stand will be more practical.   

We also got a new high chair, with my other two I had a space saver one that we just put on one of our kitchen chairs but we only have four chairs and now that we're going to be a family of 5 we need all the chairs.  Plus I've always wanted a free standing high chair and I thought this one was really cute :)

I also got a new diaper bag, which I love!  I've always wanted a Petunia Pickle Bottom diaper bag but I just can't justify spending $150-200 on a diaper bag so I found this one at Babies R Us for about $70 and it looks a lot like a PPB.  It is a back pack style which I really wanted so that I could have both hands free, but there's also a shoulder strap as an option.

With the new baby on the way we have been doing some room re-arranging and organizing.  The "plan" is to have the girls share (although I don't think the baby will actually sleep in there with her at night until she's older, she'll probably sleep in with us) so the crib, changing table, and all her clothes will be in with Malea.  Eventually we will move Malea downstairs but she (and I, honestly), weren't ready yet so we're going to do it this way and see how it goes.  Because we are trying to put them in together, I had to do some serious organizing to make everything fit.  I think it's going to work though and it's going to be really cute.  I found crib bedding that matches Malea's room/bed spread so it's all going to coordinate well.  I'll post more pictures once everything is done.

I saw this idea where you buy spice racks from Ikea and turn them in to little book shelves.  I was trying to make more floor space so this was a good option.  I bought 6 total, three for Malea's room and three for Isaac's room.  Then I painted them.  I painted Malea's yellow and Isaac's gray.  I love how they turned out!!

You can't fit as many books as a regular shelf, but I like that you can see the books and I feel like my kids read more now because they are visible.

We also hung up another clothes rack so we will be able to fit both girl's clothes together.  This was before I pulled out Malea's old baby clothes so there's more hung up there now :)

  

I'm sure the next few months are going to fly by!  I still have lots to do to get ready but it feels good to be getting things we need!  Some days I get a little bit panicky when I think about another baby coming but the majority of the time I'm just really excited and anxious to meet her.  I can't wait to see what she looks like and see how the kids interact with her.  I think it helps that the kids are a little older (Malea will be 7 and Isaac will be almost 5).  The gap was a little bit bigger than I would have liked but maybe God knew what I could handle better than me ;)  Can't wait to meet our little princess!

We're having another....

 We decided it would be fun to have some of our family over for dinner to reveal the gender of the baby!  I saw this cute idea on Pinterest to put either pink or blue balloons in a big box and open it like a gift so I decorated this huge box I had with half pink/half blue wrapping paper and put the right color of balloons inside.  I made a bunch of different soups and had everybody over.

We found out what we were having on a Thursday but decided to make the kids wait in suspense until that Sunday when we had everyone over.  It was hard not spilling the beans for those few days!

The Big Reveal!!

We're so excited to be having another GIRL!!!

I pulled out some pink treats after we told everyone :)

Of course I had to go out and buy a few things once we found out ;)

While we would have been happy either way of course, I was secretly kind of hoping it was a girl.  Can't wait to pull out all the baby girl clothes again!