Baby Ballet

Well, I wasn't going to put Sophia in a ballet class yet... But last Thursday while I was taking class she saw the Baby Ballet class going on in the other room and loved it. So, needless to say, she got to do class today when my class was finished. Daddy ended up getting home early enough to go too! She LOVED it! Although, at times I could tell she was realizing that it's not real ballet like the big girls do. But she still went along with what the teacher asked her to do. The class is for one- and two-year olds, the parents join in, and it is only 30 minutes long. Perfect for that age.

Here she is waiting for class to begin

Listening to the teacher
Stretching our legs
And of course, dancing with a sparkly wand

Dancing with the Stars!

The new season has started! Obviously I LOVE this show! I'm very excited this season because there are so many good dancers and it will be very difficult to make any predictions. You never know who will go home each week because the public doesn't always vote for the best dancer, just their favorite person in general. This was already apparent last night when Cloris Leachman was not voted off, nor was Susan Lucci for that matter. Here are the Stars for this year. Share with me if you love this show too!

Baby Update

We had our first ultrasound last week! The doctor has my due date marked as April 6th, the ultrasound said it would be April 7th, and I of course am still sticking with my original date of April 10th. I'm sure I will have the baby around April 4th, though, since that is Kimberly's wedding date! Hopefully not, but wouldn't that just make everything more exciting.

I'm 11 weeks along now and starting to feel a little better, I think. I'll have a few days of feeling pretty good, and then a day that I feel really horrible. But I think I'm past the worst of it, so that's good. Sophia will reach over every once in a while when she's cuddling me and pat my tummy and say "Hi, baby." So sweet! She also has a baby in her tummy at times and she's been getting a lot of tummy aches just like mommy. It's so funny how quickly she picks up on stuff. Last night we watched the home video of her the day she was born. She was glued to it. She kept patting my tummy and telling the baby to "Come out, baby." She wants a playmate!

Joeball

No - I do not mean football. In our house it's only "Joeball." And it doesn't matter if we're watching an NFL game on TV, we have to find Uncle Joe "numma eight." So many reasons to love Joeball.

#1 - Uncle Joe

#2 - Hot dogs for dinner
#3 - Uncle Joe

And Finally #4 - The Aunties

A couple Saturdays ago, Kyle and I headed up to a Huskies game. We tailgated with Zach & Kimberly, and Richie and Marisa sat with us. (They were a little too late to tailgate.) It was a good time, even though there were a few bad calls that caused the Dawgs to lose. At least it was an exciting game - otherwise, I would have had a hard time paying attention. I tend to people watch more than anything. Afterwards Kyle and I went shopping a little, had dinner with Kimberly, and then went to go see Zach & Kimberly's new place where they live. Soooo cute!

What We've Been Doing

We have been having fun the last couple weeks and keeping busy. Yesterday we decided to go to Ocean Shores since the weather was supposed to be so nice. It ended up being a little chilly at the beach - but it usually is, so no surprise there. Sophia LOVES playing in the sand. The water was a little too cold to play in.

Saturday we went down to Chehalis to ride the Steam Train. It runs all summer, but the route has been cut very short since the floods last winter. It was only about a 15 or 20 minute ride, but Sophia loved it. She was looking for Thomas the Train the whole time. She got to sit up in the engine with the engineer before the ride began. He said she was the first kid that wasn't afraid of being up there. I told him it's because she's used to driving a Peterbilt!

Last Thursday, Kristie Meno came with the girls for a visit. Maggie is one and a half, and Taylor is 3. Sophia was having a rough day, but Taylor and Maggie had a great time!

Then Thursday afternoon we celebrated Don & Deniece's 37th Anniversary! We had dinner and then headed off to watch the Joeball game. HAPPY ANNIVERSARY!

Coloring

Here are a couple cute little video clips of Sophs coloring a couple weeks ago. Hopefully they both work, this is my first attempt at posting video clips.

Summer is Almost Over

We've been trying to take advantage of the last month of summer. Two weekends ago we headed out to my mom and dad's so Sophia could see Sadie Dog and the horses, and Papa Dan, of course. My mom was still out of town on vacation. We petted the horses for a little bit, then we went on a canoe ride (Papa Dan waited on the dock). It was a nice day.

Then last Wednesday, Sophia decided to spend the night with Grandma and Grandpa. She was a good girl and had a lot of fun. Here she is all ready to go.

Last Friday, Dylan and Evan (my best friend Sandy's boys) came to spend the night with us. Dylan is 10 and a great helper! I wished he could have stayed all week. Sophia loves him. Evan is 5, and also a very good boy. They were both nice playing with Sophs. We went to the circus in the late afternoon. It was hot, but fun. The boys rode on a huge elephant, right up front. Sophia had a little pony ride and they also got to feed some goats and some other miniature animals. All three of them had a lot of fun. There are more pics of everything in my August photo album.

If you haven't already heard...

Kyle and I are expecting Baby #2!

A few weeks ago (Wednesday, July, 30th, to be exact) when I was preparing for our trip to Desert Canyon, I was kind of thirsty for a glass of wine. I had just stocked up on a couple bottles for the house and a couple bottles for our trip. But thinking ahead, I figured I better just take a pregnancy test first to rule it out before I started a weekend of drinking. I hadn't been on birth control for a couple months, at that point.

So... I took a First Response test, knowing I wasn't expecting my period until Saturday at the earliest, and low and behold that second line that means "baby" was there! Only faintly, though. So I waited a few hours until I had to go potty again, and did another test. Sure enough that second line still showed up really lightly. I really, really was in complete disbelief! But - I did not have that glass of wine I was craving. Once Kyle got home, Sophia took him over the little baggy of tests and he just looked at me like we were playing a silly game or something, and said, "What's this?" I said that we were expecting another baby! I think he was in shock, too! We weren't really even "trying." I think I took one more test that night at like 11:30 before I went to bed with the same result. So for a couple days we contemplated when and how we would share the news, knowing the Hussey family vacation was coming up. They would know for sure if I skipped out on wine for four days of vacation. We practiced with Sophia so that she could tell everyone she was a Big Sister! Saturday morning I did one more test before we shared the news the next day, and sure enough that second line was there, this time it was just as dark as the first line.

Once we got settled into the resorts Sunday and everyone was there all the aunties were asking Sophia little things, how old are you? - what color is this? etc. So I jumped in and said "What's your name?" "Sopie Hussey," she answered. "What are you?... A big..." "Sister!" "A big what?" "BIG SISTER!" The girls all went nuts - it was exciting. Grandma and Gramps were crying. It was fun.

I still didn't feel pregnant, though, at all. So it was still hard to believe, until... Puking. Same as with Sophia - 5 weeks along now (7 weeks LNMP for those of you who know that). Last Friday I felt a little nauseous in the morning, so I ate right away. Saturday, I did not eat right away, so I had my first bout of morning sickness. Then again, Saturday night, even worse. Sunday and today I was nauseous, but as long as I eat something right away I am not that bad. So I am keeping my fingers crossed that it doesn't get as bad this time as it did with Sophia. With her I was really sick from week 5 to about week 12. I pretty much laid curled up on the couch for half of my waking moments, knowing if I moved I would puke. The other half of my waking moments were puking and/or dry heaving (in between homework assignments and WSU classes). Awesome - I know. But I got a beautiful, happy little girl out of it. In fact, I thought in my mind all along that Sophia was a girl, because I knew that I had too many girly hormones in my body and that's why I was so sick. That is my theory on morning sickness and it has been proven correct once. We'll see how bad the puking is this time, and then I'll make a prediction based on that!

So here are the stats: I believe our date of conception was somewhere close to July 19th or 20th, which means I am 5 weeks along right now out of the total 38 weeks of pregnancy. (The doctors count a pregnancy as 40 weeks with the first couple weeks not actually being pregnant. This is call the Last Normal Menstrual Period - LNMP - way of calculating. I will refer to both (if anyone cares) when I update on the pregnancy.) Our due date, by my calculations will be around April 10th! I have my first doctors appointment on Aug. 26th. I don't think it will be a physical check, though. Just a meeting with our new doctor. I've chosen to go to Capital Medical Center this time so that I might be able to have a natural birth, instead of another c-section. St. Peter's does not do VBACs (vaginal birth after c-section).

Kyle and I are very excited - and I think Sophia will be too once she sees my belly grow. For her this means a big girl room downstairs next spring, and a bigger focus on potty training in the next couple months. Big news for Sophia last night - she did her first poopy in the potty chair! Two treats for that! She was excited!

So there is pretty much everything I have to talk about right now! Here's a cute pic of her in her Big Sister shirt that she wore when we told daddy the news. (She doesn't sit still for pics anymore - she's running towards me in this shot.)

Hussey Family Vacation

Last Sunday Kyle, Sophia, and I headed out to spend a few nights in eastern Washington with the fam. We stayed at one of our resorts, Desert Canyon, that we bought into last year. Desert Canyon is about one mile up the road from Daroga State Park on Lake Entiat (which is really the Columbia River). The park is beautiful and the weather was, of course, HOT! It was a fun time. Here are a few of my favorite pictures:

Our little family at dinner Sophs and Gramps taking a little break
Sophia couldn't get enough time with Uncle Joe
Taking a break with daddy
Having fun on the putting greens

Here is a link to the rest of the photos on Kodak:
http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=rtmdsfo.70xgzfd4&x=0&y=-1uo0jr&localeid=en_US


Here is a link to my photos from July:
http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=rtmdsfo.cl6ly4eg&x=0&y=-3sfsut&localeid=en_US

First Time for Everything

First time going potty in a toilet!! My friend Echo gave us a little toilet for Sophia to try out, since she always had a bit of stage fright on the real potty, and Sophia LOVES it! She went potty on it twice in about one hour!

First time baking cobbler with mommy. She was so excited that daddy got home while we were baking so that she could show off her mixing skills.

First time on the kiddie rides all by herself! We decided to go to Lakefair last Friday evening because Kyle likes to go to the car show. We ran into Kora & Nick while we were wandering around, and then Don & Deniece met up with us later. Sophia kept asking to go on the rides, so we thought we'd let her try it out. She really looked terrified throughout each ride, but then would ask to go on another one!

This is what happens when...

... Daddy tries to use "mommy's" camera. OCD?? I don't know where she would get it. ... When the aunties drink wine.

Summer Fun

We've obviously been busy - I haven't posted in a while... I have been busy the last couple weeks gardening and planting, and also taking some ballet classes. It feels great to take class again, and I'm really excited about the new studio where I've been attending. It's on the west side of Oly, Studio West Dance Academy. So far I'm impressed by how the two co-owners are running it. Here's a link if anyone wants to check it out: http://www.studiowestdanceacademy.com/index.html

Since my last post we celebrated Don's (Grandpa's) Birthday. He had lots of presents this year!

My Aunt Marcia from Wisconsin came for a visit with two of her granddaughters (my cousins' children). Zoe is on the left and Alexis on the right, with Sophia out in our back "yard."
After that we had a day trip to Mayfield lake with Marisa and Joe. It was so beautiful. Kyle and Marisa were excited to finally water ski this year, and I am always the happy flagger. Sophia loved it, too. Her favorite part was our playtime on the shore. Our favorite part was her swimsuit up her buns all day. :o)

4th of July came quickly again this year. We like to go to the Tumwater Parade every year. We usually meet up with Kyle's family and his Unlce Monty's family. Sophia loves the cowgirls in the parades, so we figured she better dress accordingly. After the parade we went back to Monty & Beth's for a barbecue. They always have great food! Sophia and Kyle took a little swim before we headed home, which is pictured up top. It was a great day!