Baby Update & Our 200th Post!

It's our 200th blog post! That's got to be something worth celebrating, even if the last 15 posts have taken us all of 2010 to complete!

Well, if you haven't already heard......

Yes indeed, we will be evening out the balance of estrogen & testosterone in the Studer house by adding another little girl to our family in May!

Profile shot from our 20 week ultrasound on 1/4/11

Profile (nose & chin) on the left, arm/hand in the middle, little foot with all 5 toes on the right!

I feel like the 1st 1/2 of this pregnancy has flown by! Can't believe in about 4 months this baby will be here! I am loving the 2nd trimester -- having said good riddance to the sickness & exhaustion of the 1st trimester, and yet I have not arrived at the "I am huge and SO OVER being pregnant" feeling of the 3rd trimester. :) Although most nights still find me fast asleep on the couch by 8:30 PM.  

For your viewing enjoyment (although mostly for my own documentation), here are a few shots of the baby belly from today, at almost 22 weeks...please ignore the filthy mirror. And let's be real about this 3rd pregnancy...the 1st two times, we were religious about the weekly belly shots. This time I literally hadn't given it a thought until I sat down to write this post. Poor undocumented baby.

PS - Our top New Year's resolution is to be better about updating the blog. Let's face it, this is the closest thing my children have to a baby book. Yikes!

Crazy? Quite Possibly. Blessed? Absolutely...

It's time to spill the beans.

Studer Baby #4 is due mid-May. 

More Funny.....

I am trying to be more intentional about recording the funny things our kids say & do. I am also planning to challenge myself with a 30-Day Blogfest soon.....yep, that's 30 days in a row of blog posts. I have a list in the computer desk drawer full of events and ideas to blog about, so we may be stretching as far back as May to the Huron Turkey Races...we'll see. Honestly, I'm just hoping it will kickstart our horrible blogging year and get us more in the habit of posting regularly. :) Hoping.

With that all said, here's a funny from Ellie yesterday. I will preface the story by sharing (for those of you who might not know) that Ellie is allergic to nuts/peanut butter....

This past weekend, we had a blast in Willmar, MN, renting a large cabin with several college friends. The cabin was on 20 acres of walking trails and we took advantage of those trails and tried to tire out all 6 kids with some looooong walks. We did lots of stick-hunting and leaf-gathering, and somewhere during the weekend Ellie rubbed her hands against something that gave her a rash. We were at Wal Mart yesterday, and decided to buy some medicine to help the healing process along, and I was trying to explain to Ellie how exactly she got the rash. She is only five, after all, so I just went with the simple "You touched a plant that you must have been allergic to, and it made your hands itchy and sore." She looked up at me with a face of horror and whispered, "A peanut butter plant????"

Random Funniness

I am constantly amazed at the differences in how boys & girls play....even with the exact same toys.

Overheard this conversation today while the boys were playing with Ellie's dollhouse...

Maguire: "Hi Daddy!"

Alex: "Hi kid!"

Maguire: "Daddy, let's wrestle and then I'm gonna pee in the sink!"

Alex: "Okay, kid!"

All Grown Up

Guess who lost her very first tooth today?

You Are Getting Veeeerrrryyyy Sleeeeeepy.....

After spending a long morning out in the sun & wind at the Ingalls Homestead in DeSmet, SD today (blog post coming soon), Alex was beat.

Wii Did It

Yes, the Studer family finally jumped on the bandwagon (only 2 years late!) and bought a Wii. We had lots of fun trying it out with the kids this morning. Not surprisingly, they are better than we are at a lot of stuff. Ellie in particular is some kind of Wii prodigy, and seriously schooled both of her parents at Wii bike racing and sword fighting.

The boys' favorite game is an airplane one, and it didn't take Maguire long to figure out how to make the plane do all sorts of flips and dives. Check out his tongue....

Ellie tried out the canoeing game.

Here she is tearing up the racetrack on the bicycling game.

Alex loved the airplane game, too.

Concentrating soooo hard.....

Check out Ellie's extreme sword-fighting skills. Should we be nervous that she takes this so seriously? Maybe it will help to channel some of her 5 year old rage into the game, instead of directing it at her siblings...