Little Cowboy

For the last few weeks, Ledger has been obsessed with guns.  I wonder why? (See last post...)  Until recently, we have tried to avoid guns to discourage the shooting games that little boys always seem to play.  What a joke!  My sister, Brandy, always warned me that boys would make guns out of everything and she was right.  He pretends that any toy is a gun or builds a gun out of his Legos.  So now we're past fighting it and just going with it.  We bought him a set of "cowboy guns" at Walmart and he thinks they're pretty fantastic.  So here are some photos of my favorite little cowboy.

In other Ledger news, he continues to amaze me on a regular basis.  He's such a little sponge!  When we are in the car, he's constantly pointing out places we've been and narrating our trip for us:

• "There's Dr. Travis' office.  He looks at your eyes." (Our optometrist, who he has seen once.)
• "Is that the ice cream place where no one was working?" (I told him once we couldn't get ice cream because it was closed)
• "That's the football place where the Coytoes play." (I guess his dad told him that at the KWU football field?)
• This week we pulled into Menards and Ledger looked at the sign and said: "That says Menards.  It starts with 'M'."

I could probably come up with a hundred other examples, but those are the most recent ones.  He's becoming such a big boy so fast.  We are very proud of him and can't wait to see what an amazing big brother he becomes.

In pregnancy news, we are into week 34 of this pregnancy and have 6 weeks until my due date.  In case you're wondering why this is being posted at 3:30 in the morning, it's because I have a mild case of head congestion this week combined with a gymnast in my belly that really has made it difficult to get any sleep!  Rhodes continues to be a very active little baby.  He is still making me quite uncomfortable with a lot of pelvic pressure and abdominal tightening -- I assume that is probably only going to get worse over the next 6 weeks.  He is still carrying pretty high and that is causing my stretch marks from Ledger to grow northward -- awesome.  This is the primary reason you haven't seen any pregnancy pics of me online -- I really dislike my stretch marks.  I need the photos to be airbrushed or something. :(   I am finally having to make some concessions to being pregnant -- 1) I had to take off my wedding ring this week because my fingers and hands are swelling.  2) I have been finally forced into wearing pregnancy jeans.  One benefit to a "high" baby is that I have been able to get away with wearing pre-pregnancy jeans tucked below my belly up until 2 weeks ago. (Thanks to Emily for finding me some awesome maternity jeans off of Craigslist in KC)

So far, we have done almost nothing to prepare to bring a baby home. I'm hoping to turn our "junk room" back into a nursery over the next week or two to start getting things in order... but my motivation is definitely faltering.  I should also start dragging out our newborn clothes and washing and preparing it for use.  We did move the nursery dresser back into the nursery this week and Grammie and Papa Michel gave Ledger a replacement dresser for his bedroom.  We are looking on craigslist for another changing table as well since we will definitely have 2 kids in diapers for a while.  Heck, the crib is still in toddler-bed mode from Ledger... so I guess I need to fix that too.  (OK, I have to stop making this list or I will never get back to sleep tonight!)

I have a doctor's appointment this week which should be uneventful.  However, I will schedule an appointment for the beginning of March and expect to get some more information and possibly even make a decision about whether we will be scheduling a c-section or trying for another vaginal birth.  I will definitely keep the family updated.

Love you all!

Another Too-Short Weekend...

This weekend we traveled to Oklahoma to enjoy some family time with the Powell and Perkins families.  Josh, Chris, and BoomPa got going early on Saturday morning to go to the shooting range and try to fire some guns.  It was Chris' first time and everyone said he did great!  We have pictures to prove it!  Saturday noon, we met up with family for a pizza lunch together.  Ledger really enjoyed his cousin Peyton.  Saturday night, we had a family dinner at a local Mexican restaurant to celebrate BoomMa and BoomPa's birthdays.  But most importantly, we really enjoyed spending time together as a family.  As always, the weekend was WAY too short and we look forward to spending time together again soon.  I'll let the pictures do the talking...

Ledger couldn't wait to get up and see his family on Saturday morning!

Check out that shot!

We're still working on using the potty chair.
He really liked bringing it into the living room and "performing" for an audience.

Is there anything in there?

Ledger's version of "planking"

Kinley is happy!

BoomMa with her 2 grandkids.

Ledger "helping" feed Kinley.

Ledger and Peyton have some cousin bonding time.

Busy busy busy

On Saturday, we had dinner with Shawn, Jarod, and Briana.  They are so good to us and brought the entire dinner over to our house -- I didn't have to lift a finger!  After dinner, all of the boys brought back SCW in our basement.  Oh, you don't know what SCW is?? Way before Chris and I met... Jarod, Shawn, and Chris made their own backyard wrestling league called S.C.W. - Salina Championship Wrestling.  That's right.  This weekend they officially inducted Ledger as their newest athlete, and (of course) he LOVED it!!

Sunday was extremely busy.  It started early in the morning when we hit the grocery store to get some mega-shopping done.  Then we had lunch with Grammie Pam at La Hacienda.  When we got home, we unpacked all of our groceries just in time for Oma to come over.  We spent about an hour making some adjustments on Chris' 2012 Halloween costume that Oma is helping sew.  I think the costume details are still under wraps, but I can tell you that it is coming along very nicely!  By 1:15, we put Ledger down for a nap and Oma and I got to work to do some major freezer cooking!  For the next four hours, we worked together to cook up almost 30 meals and get them frozen for quick access after baby Rhodes is born.  (This is a lesson we learned the hard way when Ledger was born and we ate fast food for every meal for the next two weeks.)  Unbelievably, I didn't get a single picture of us working.  But, I can tell you that there were no breaks and we worked HARD to get everything together.  I am so proud of the accomplishment and so appreciative of my Mom's help.  I never could have gotten it done without her!  With all of those meals in the freezer, I had about thirty minutes to sit and rest before our next project -- painting!  Jarod and Briana were forced volunteered their services to help us repaint a few of the massive walls in our living room.  Since I'm pregnant and Chris doesn't have a fantastic sense of balance, we needed some able-bodied workers to climb the 20 foot extension ladder to get to the top to paint up to the vaulted ceilings.  (The Simpsons can't even claim they didn't know what they were getting into because they helped us paint these walls when we originally bought the place 4 years ago!)  Briana was also very helpful in wrangling Ledger and keeping him from "painting" everything in site.  I was so exhausted, the only thing I could do to help was paint the trim that was on the baseboards -- an excuse to sit down and still be working! :)  The Simpsons left about 9 p.m. and despite the fact that I was exhausted, I ran to Bogey's to grab some caffeine to keep Chris and I awake a little longer while he was trying to finish up his school work for the week.  I got home and climbed in the bathtub to unwind and de-stress before bedtime.... but it was not to be.  About 10 minutes into my bath, Ledger started crying, and crying, and crying.  So I got out of the tub to get him and he was very upset and complaining about an ear ache.  We sat up together until 11:30 just trying to get him comforted enough to fall asleep.  And when he finally slept, he slept with us.  Phew.

By Monday morning, I was d-r-a-g-g-i-n-g.  Ledger and I managed to get ourselves up and out of the house to go to our optometrist appointment with Dr. Sharpe.  It was Ledger's first eye doctor visit!  I was a little nervous as to how they were going to "test" his sight and Ledger was a little nervous about what Dr. Travis was going to do to him!  Dr. Travis put Ledger at ease by talking about boats and wakeboarding.  They tested his eyesight by making him do an eye chart with pictures -- airplane, horse, car, etc.  It was pretty cool.  Then Dr. Travis used some neat "flashlights" to look in Ledger's eyes.  He said that both of our eyes checked out just fine!  :)  Yay!  Ledger got some really cool "first appointment" gifts including a bear with glasses and certificates for free ice cream and free personal pizza!  Woah!

A little nervous in the waiting room.  Mommy bribed him with an icee.

To keep the nerves at bay, we tried on some of the glasses in the optic center. 

On Wednesday morning, I had an OB appointment and everything checked out great with me and the baby.  That evening, we had an appointment with our favorite hair stylist to get Ledger's mop of hair under control. He did a great job of sitting in the chair like a big kid.  It helps that Tracy's shop has "cool toys" to play with while we're there (like these cowboy pistols!).

On Thursday morning, Ledger and I got up early to go visit a preschool.  When we started asking around about preschools, it seemed like everyone gave us the same answer -- go to Mrs. Freeland at Four Seasons Preschool.  Chris called last week to check-in with the preschool and found out that for next year's 3-year-old class there was only 1 remaining slot!  So we quickly snatched up the last spot and scheduled a visit for this week.  Visiting the preschool this morning was so much fun!  Ledger really wanted to play with all of the children and fun toys!  So we picked up all of our paperwork and we OFFICIALLY enrolled Ledger in preschool 2 days a week starting next school year.  Another exciting landmark to look forward to!

Have you made it to the end of this monster blog?!  I guess I need to stop slacking off and do a better job of blogging more frequently!!