More Grover pictures

We had our first trimester screen today which was fun. My mom happened to be in the city so she got to check it out which was a nice treat! The first picture is a profile shot of the face and body. Its hands are up over the face...The next shot is an aerial view of the head and body. The head is to the left and you can see a brain with two halves, the eye sockets, and the nose/mouth area. The right hand is up over its head and the body is the blob on the right...

And this is a cool shot but a little hard to see. The legs are "hanging" down in the upper right corner and are crossed and the knees. You can see the little feet waving around...


Everything looked good, measurements are right on track and we'll see how the bloodwork looks. The heartbeat was nice and strong and it moved all over and made the tech's job quite difficult!

here's the pictures that I somehow deleted from my last post of the three boys (Ethan, Charlie and Quinn) cheering as the Eagles "flew" to victory! Go Birds!

More fun pictures...

Not much new to report really. We had a fun weekend (Chuck E Cheese on friday, Linvilla on Saturday, Playground and Eagles game on sunday) so I thought I'd post some of the pictures. Below is Charlie "playing" some crazy video game at Chuck E Cheese. After we played for a while we went to Bahama Breezes for dinner...yummy!

This is a picture of my belly at 11 weeks. It gets alot bigger at night although to most people I just look "bloated". It is definitely baby though and I cannot wait to actually look pregnant to the rest of the world! I always loved my belly with Charlie. He actually kissed and hugged my belly the same morning I had Alex take these pictures. He looked curiously at me as I had my shirt up and I told him that daddy was taking pictures of the baby in my belly. He gave my belly a hug and kiss and said "hi baby"! So sweet! I am feeling better now, less tired and less nauseous. Yeah!

We had a great day on sunday. We walked to a park in the city and I ran the trail while Charlie and Alex played and then Alex went for a run while I played with Charlie. I was a bit jealous as the Philadelphia distance run was just finishing and I was jogging my three miles. I miss running long and hard but it's worth it to have another little one! It is tough though to run a route that I ran so often and have it take me twice the time! Everyone (family) is pretty shocked that I am running and that I am allowed to. If my doctor said no, I wouldn't do it, but he says it's fine, I'm doing everything I need to do to be safe, and I will stop as soon as my body tells me to, so don't worry!

We also hosted an Eagles party sunday evening. Here's a picture of the kids having a "picnic" on our back deck. They thought it was cool to eat on a blanket on the ground and it kept my dining room that much cleaner!

Here's Quinn stuck in our ball basket. I love his hair!

I had another cute picture but managed to delete it just now. I'll have to put it up when I am home on my computer...darn!

Fun fall day

We went to Linvilla Orchards today and we had so much fun! We didn't think it would be terrible crowded since it's early in the season but we were wrong! Today was the apple festival so the place was PACKED! We had a great time though. There is a really cool playground with lots of cool structures shaped like boats, and cars, and trucks, and trains (sound like something Charlie would like?!) that the kids can climb in and on and slide off of. He spent a lot of time there. Below is Charlie and Ethan in a rare sitting next to each other, both smiling, both cooperating picture. We also saw Diego and Dora and danced with them. We had a yummy lunch and then went on a hay ride. Below he's "patiently" waiting in line for the next tractor:
And, drum roll please.....he had his first pony ride! I love horses and love to ride them and am so happy to get him on one. We tried last year and he freaked at the last minute. But this year, he was being a cowboy and he really thought it was cool!
Before we left, we hit the market and got some fresh apples, apple cider donuts, and a pie. What a great day!

Please Help Support the FFB!

The Visionwalk is fast approaching! This is the second walk being held in Philadelphia, and we are hoping to surpass last year's total! The proceeds go towards funding vital research that will hopefully stop the progression of Alex's blindness. They are close to a cure, but without funding could still be decades away. You can visit this site and click on the Philadelphia walk. We are under the team name "The World According to RP". We have a few walkers so far but would love some more! Thank you to everyone who has contributed monetarily thus far, even the smallest contributions add up! I look forward to seeing some fresh faces out there this year, and maybe sooner than later, Alex will be seeing better than ever!

You can visit my original post about the Visionwalk here

Thomas and Friends

Lancaster, PA really seems to have all the cool stuff to do! A few weeks ago we went to Dutch Wonderland, and today, we went to the Strasburg Railroad where we had a "Day out with Thomas." Charlie posing in front of Gordon, Percy and James. He thinks this is cool. You should have seen his face when he saw Thomas!Daddy and Charlie watching a train come into the station...

Here we are riding on Thomas. He was in total shock I think and it took him a while for the whole thing to really sink in!

He thought it was very cool to give the tickets to the conductor. When he "plays Thomas", he always makes sure someone gets tickets and gives them to the conductor.

Watching the cows and horses out the window...

Posing in front of the real Thomas!

Thomas pulling out of the station with another load of families!

We tried to get Charlie to take our picture, but he couldn't really get it, plus I imagined the camera flying out the window. We settled for an "extended arm" shot!

Charlie snoozing on the "regular" train, not pulled by Thomas but still very cool!

A fun day all done!

Long fun weekend

We had a busy weekend that started Wednesday with Alex's Aunt Hilda visiting for five days from Waterloo, New York (the birthplace of Memorial Day). We had a nice time with her and had lots of family time with Alex's brother and sister-in-law and their son Ethan. Below is Ethan and Aunt Hilda on Wednesday night. Sadly, I got no pictures of Charlie and Aunt Hilda! She was with us so much I didn't ever think of it. Maybe it's the pregnancy...I blame alot of my oops moments on it!

The nest pic is of Charlie and Ethan helping uncle Sam blow out his birthday candle. Charlie was so excited because it was strawberry cake!
Charlie raided Ethan's dress up trunk which has plenty of costumes like spider man, police man, cowboy, etc. He chose the Hula costume. Grass skirt and all! It was cute though!

Here is Quincy Brown showing off his beautiful eyes!
Saturday, we trekked out to Harrisburg to a family friend's house. My dad's Uncle Norman (Uncle Mormon as Charlie called him), was visiting from Hawaii so we took Aunt Hilda out there with us and met up with my side of the family. Here's Charlie exploring their beautiful back deck which overlooks the Susquehanna river.

Here's Uncle Norman holding Charlie and Bode (who by the way pulls himself up to stand and can cruise around holding onto things...crazy!).

Charlie and "Gampa"

Charlie likes drama

Charlie gave us a bit of a scare the other night...I was two hours away from going in for my 2nd of 4 nights of work and Charlie decided cleaning up his toys was not on his agenda. He ran into his room and stood on his bed. I demanded that he get down and he dove onto his pillow to pretend he was sleeping. The only problem is that the headboard of his bed is a bookcase and rather than hitting his pillow, he landed on the part of his bed where the bookcase meets the bed...the sound was horrendous. He got up stunned and then then started screaming.

Long story short, we went to the ER after calling work to tell them I'd be in late. They got us in quick because of "possible head injury". After looking in his ears and nose for signs of CSF (there was none thank goodness) they performed neuro tests...he passed them all and was just anxious to get home. We decided to pass on the CT scan and chose to watch him through the night (sedation and a cold and an asthmatic kid don't mix well). So they glued his forehead (less scarring than stitches) and said his nose is probably broken but there's nothing they would do for it anyway...and we were on our way. We got home at 9pm, he ate PB and Jelly sandwich and went to bed, I went to work. Alex woke him up twice to check on him, he acted appropriately and was back to his old self the next day. Thank goodness for hard heads!

Here's his glued forehead (don't mind the PB & J all over his face). His nose is all swollen but no more blood and no black eyes!
Here he is the next day cheering for the Eagles. He's back to himself and active as ever. His nose is alot less swollen and still no black eyes!
He's quite proud of his glue and talks about going to the "hopspital" after he hit his head "sooo HARD now". He doesn't seem too traumatized by it but it's a good way to get him to stop acting like a maniac..."Charlie, don't run like that, you could bang your head and have to get glued again"...may not be fair, but it works. He did have to get papoosed (sp?) for the glue which I could not watch. I remember being papoosed for blood draw when I was a kid and hope he doesn't remember this. I guess it's the life of a boy's mamma!

For now, we'll call it Grover

We have some fun news to share with everyone...

yup, Charlie is planning on being a big brother in six months time! We are pregnant, and very happily so. I had my appointment with my high risk OB today and they did an ultrasound and I finally got the picture to prove it (all my other ones wouldn't give me a picture). This one at least looks baby-ish and was wiggling around...the others were a little line with a heart flutter. Everything looks great, the heart beat was 178, and is measuring right on track. We have a due date of April 11th, and I really hope this one takes its time getting here. Charlie just brought about too much drama and since this is our last planned baby, I'd love to have it in my room with me and start bonding right away! So Charlie is excited and seems to actually "get it" to some degree. He knows there's a baby growing in my belly, he saw the picture today and called it baby and said "baby look okay now". He adds the word now to the end of every sentence for some reason! I am feeling fine but am really tired and up until this week was nauseous all the time. It's better now which is nice. I am allowed to be a normal pregnant woman for now with exercise and work. At 16 weeks I'll start progesterone shots to keep my cervix closed tight hopefully. That's about it! We get another ultrasound in three weeks so stay tuned for more pics of little Grover!

So here's the bean. It's back is facing us with it's head to the right and body to the left. The bump under the arrow is an arm bud and the light line going horizontally through the body is the spine. It was wiggling quite a bit which is amazing to watch considering I can't feel a thing! Keep this little one in your thoughts please, for healthy growth and development and lots more time spent in my belly!

Family pictures

Warning, Scary picture of large insect:

So, I wanted to post about another excitement that happened at the beach, but did not want to ruin all of the cuteness in the previous post by adding this following story and picture. So it goes like this. Alex, Charlie and I are at the house, showering and getting ready to hit the boardwalk and the outlets (Alex and Charlie to the boardwalk, myself to the outlets). I had the sliding doors open because all three dogs were lounging out on the deck. Charlie was playing cars (of course) and I was relaxing on the couch, Alex was showering.

Suddenly something large and back flew into the house and it was so big that I thought it was a giant butterfly. Eager to show Charlie I followed it into the kitchen where I realized with horror that it was a monster insect. Huge, buzzy and had a large stinger on the end of it. I guessed it to be about and inch and a half long...horrendous. So while I panicked, the first thing I did was call my dad who was relaxing on the beach a block away but who would certainly come save me. I told him he had to come home so this monster didn't kill us all. While waiting for him to come (Alex was still showering), I armed myself with a fly swatter. I seriously don't think the fly swatter would have harmed the wasp in any way but I felt more powerful with it. So the wasp lands on a window screen and is frantically trying to get out. After about five minutes of debate, I decided to throw a cereal bowl over it and at least trap it. SO I did. I got close enough to it to slam a cereal bowl over it (after displacing all of the furniture to have a better angle) and then started to hyperventilate. The thing was shaking the bowl, that's how pissed off it was. This is what it looks like (according to Google): Long story a little shorter, my dad came, took over the bowl, slid a plate under it and placed the whole trap on the deck. I have serious issues with bugs of all kinds, but especially large prehistoric ones like cockroaches and Great Wasps. I was quite proud of my bravery...had I not trapped it, it may have hid in someone's bed or in the bathroom. It could have killed a small child, I'm sure of it. I googled wasp and after panicking because of seeing too many blown up pictures of wasps, decided The Great Wasp is the one that scarred me for life. I can now add this to cockroach in my list of bugs that make me want to crawl out of my skin. So, that's it, the drama for the weekend. No one else seemed shaken by the incident, no one else is still talking about it, but it left a mark on me and I won't soon forget my tangle with this big boy.

Labor Day Weekend=Ohana

Boy oh boy did we have a fun filled weekend! We went to the family beach house in Dewey Delaware (best beach town ever!) and had a weekend full of beach, kids, dogs, family and fun! We got down there Friday night and had a yummy dinner at Nalu (which coincidentally means little wave in Hawaiian and was Bode's name before he was born). They had yummy nachos and salads. The boys took a bath together that night which was so stinkin' cute. Later, Grandpa supervised some play time with the boys. They are very good together although Charlie freaks a bit when Bode goes near his cars. The whole "little baby doesn't know any better" concept isn't getting through to him. Of course he can touch Bode's toys all he wants though! And little Bode is all over the place, crawling, pulling himself up and basically trying to run a marathon already. He's such a physical little guy! It was fun to watch.
We went to the beach every day and Charlie took every opportunity to get as messy and sandy as possible. He even looks muddy in this picture! He had a blast with everyone at the beach, he had lots of people to take him in the water and play in the sand with him. Here he's eating fruit snacks (boo-acks as he calls them) on the beach in his "Cars" chair. He's basically in heaven.

Bode looking stylish in his shades...

Charlie and I getting ready to hit the boardwalk for some rides and ice cream...he of course has a stick because, being a boy, he has to be obsessed with sticks!Riding the motorcycle ride...

Bode testing out the water on another beach day...not visible but definitely there are two teeth he cut plus more that he's working on...and he's still smiling...

We got up early Monday morning and went to the beach for family pictures. Here's Alex and Charlie waiting for everyone to get ready. I'll post the pics later once I crop and fix them all. They came out really well and everyone cooperated nicely!

And finally, Ohana means family in Hawaiian. That is what our whole weekend was about and we loved every minute of it. Everyone had their dogs at the house, there were two young kids, and some family friends of my parent's, and we all had a blast. The more the merrier! We are so lucky to have parents who love us so much and are so generous and loving to our children. Thanks for such a great weekend mom and dad!