My favorite cute things that Will says:

1. When he wants me to pick him up he raises his arms up and says, "Momma get you!". His little voice is so cute!


2. He loves playing peek-a-boo. He hides behind things or puts his blankie over his face and then says "pee-tew!"

3. When it's raining outside (so we can't go out and play, which makes him sad) he shrugs his shoulders, cocks his head to the side and says (with a very disappointed voice), "wainy, wainy. wainy day."


His fascination with signs continues. He likes to point ALL of them out of the window of the car as we drive and inform me what colors and shapes they all are. He particularly likes if they have arrows on them. And we now seem to be developing an odd obsession with hangers (like those used to hang clothing in a closet)...

And the verdict is....

One word: penis. It looks like we will be having two little boys.

I was worried he was going to be "shy" or uncooperative and we wouldn't be able to find out the sex today, but it was pretty obvious right from the start.

Everything looks good. He's very healthy, and is measuring right around where he should be. His legs are measuring disproportionately long compared to the rest of him, but that should be no surprise looking at his mommy.

Now, of course, we are faced with two dilemmas, one short-term and one long-term. Long-term: Do we have a 3rd baby to try for a girl? Tim has already expressed his distaste for this idea, which is creating some friction between us. We have a lot of time to decide on that, though, so we'll table that one for now. Short-term: What in the world are we going to name this kid? We always knew we'd name the first boy Will. And we have a girl name that we really like. A second boy name, though? We got nothin'. Granted, we've only been seriously talking about it now for 5 hours, but we're really starting from scratch, and neither of us have any ideas. And what one of us does come up with the other one vetoes pretty immediately. I guess the good thing is we won't have to buy new clothes...

One other thing we discovered today is that he likes to sit way down right on top of my bladder. This could explain why I've had to pee CONSTANTLY throughout this pregnancy, why it feels like someone is poking needles into my bladder while I run, etc. Having a 12 ounce little bundle of joy sitting on / dancing on your bladder does not make for a pleasant experience.

Here are some ultrasound pics. I think he looks a lot like Will, I mean as much as he can in Skeletor mode.

Almost halfway there!

Well, I was 19 weeks along yesterday. One more week until the half way point of this pregnancy. Now that I'm feeling better it feels like it's just flying by. Our ultrasound is a week from Monda

y so not too long now until we get to find out what we're having. It's very weird because I really didn't want to know with Will. I wanted to be surprised. But with this baby my normal control-freak, planning-obsessed personality has taken over and I CAN'T WAIT to find out. I go back and forth on what I would prefer. I really want to have a girl at some point so I will be really happy if it's a girl. If it is a girl, though, then this probably will be the last baby, which I have mixed feelings about. So it wouldn't be so bad if it's a boy because that gives me an excuse for a #3. And it would be nice for Will to have a little brother to play with. Can't control it anyway, so I need to stop obsessing. I'll find out soon enough.

I've been feeling the baby move a lot more lately. I really think I started feeling it a little around 14 weeks, which was crazy early. It was still just sporadic bubbly feelings at that point. Nothing that you would recognize unless you'd felt it before. Now I'm feeling it more often and it's stronger. It's definitely not like the pronounced kicks that you get later in the pregnancy, but I'm definitely aware of some of the acrobatics that are going on in there.

I'm also looking decidedly pregnant now. I've been wearing mostly maternity clothes for a good three weeks now, which is crazy. I feel like I'm a good 8-10 weeks ahead of where I was last time in terms of girth. Everyone says that you "pop" more quickly on the second one, but I guess I didn't realize it was a full two months ahead. I already have all the maternity clothes, though, so it hasn't been a big deal. I'm just glad to be past that fat-or-pregnant? stage finally.

It does seem like a lot of the other 'symptoms' have started earlier too, though. Running has already gotten harder. I'm really slow (11+ min miles) and my hip flexors, hips, and groin get achey really quickly. I'm already having a lot of hip and back pain. I have to get up and pee constantly at night. I don't remember most of that happeneding last time until well into the 3rd trimester.

I am still running, though (2 or 3 times a week). I've been doing 3 or 4 miles at a time. It's been especially difficult with how hot it's been lately, though. I had to run on the treadmill at the gym last Tuesday because it was too hot outside even at 8pm. I've done a few prenatal yoga classes and have been to the gym to do weights at least once a week for the last few weeks. And I ordered a pregnancy workout video I've heard good things about that I'm planning on trying tomorrow. I'm just trying to stay active and find fun things to do to add to the running while I still feel good.

Will is doing really well. We've made some progress on counting. He can get to five (and sometimes six), but still has no idea what it means, I don't think. For example, when we try to count pictures of items in a book he will just randomly point his finger at spots on the page and shout "one, two, three, four, five!" really excitedly even if there are only three lady bugs (or whatever it is we're counting). He's got the actual names of the numbers down, at least, though, and has them in the right order. That's a start, I guess.

I ordered him a little potty. We are definitely not anywhere near potty training yet. He's shown absolutely zero interest in it, nor does he have any awareness of his diapers being dirty, etc. I figure it can't hurt to start exposing him to it, though, so we've been reading a few books about using the potty and I wanted to have a potty around the house so he gets comfortable with it. He cried when I tried to make him sit on it the first time, though. And then he tried to wear it as a hat. As one does... It was funny because it's never been used. Won't be so funny if he tries to do it in the future after we've actually used it. Mostly he just wants to carry it around the house. He sits on it every once in awhile, though fully clothed and sideways. He's a weird little bird, that's for sure.

He's still refusing to try anything new and only eats a small variety of adult food. Very frustrating. He won't even try ice cream.

He LOVE playing blocks these days. He wants everyone to help him build "towers" which he then happily knocks over. He is also obsessed with "The Wiggles" which is, truly, the worst TV show ever. It makes me yearn for Elmo. That's how bad it is. He's really started to actually watch TV now too. He used to just want it on in the background while he played. Now he stops and just stares at the TV. I'm not a huge fan of this so we're limiting the TV time (not that I let him watch gobs of it before, but I'm much more aware of it now). We watch one episode in the morning after breakfast and one or two in the evenings and that's it.

I've been trying to play outside with him a lot lately. I bought him a water table and we have a small baby pool. I bought an umbrella for our patio furniture and it helps keep it at least relatively cool out there.

My mom and I took him to the pool yesterday and he LOVED it. It's totally weird because he hated the pool when we were in St. Lucia, but he really liked it this time. He wanted us to pull him through the water and he wanted to jump in over and over again. He played for awhile in the baby pool too, but I think he actually preferred the big pool. We'll definitely have to get some pool time in for him this summer. I also want to get him signed up for some swim lessons so he can get mo

re comfortable in the water.

We went to Florida a few weekends ago to visit Tim's dad and step-mom for a few days. Will did great on both flights. We managed to get him a seat on both trips. He played quietly in his car seat for the first 20-30 minutes of each flight and then fell asleep. It was great!

He was a very good boy at their house, and had a great time. For some reason he started calling Robin "Buddy". We have no idea where he got it from, but it seems to have stuck because he continued to call him that when Robin was here visiting the next weekend. Elaine is "E". He loved their dogs. The first thing he did when he woke up every morning was to greet the dogs. "Hi doggie! Hi doggie!". And they were very good sports about putting up with him.

We took him to the beach. He continues to hate the ocean. He was bothered by the sand at first (he didn't like that it made his hands "ucky"), but eventually won over by the vast world of building and digging it opened up for him. He insisted on sitting in a chair to play in it, though. He didn't want to sit directly in the sand.

We also went to visit my Grandma Gloria and Grandpa Ray, Will's great-grandparents (my mom's parents), which was nice.

He's started calling my mom something along the lines of "Munew" now. I guess it's better than "Ma", which is what he was calling her. So now we have Munew, Paw paw, Buddy, E, and GG. Whatever happened to grandma and grandpa anyway???