Belly

I'll get an actual "belly shot" one of these days. I've noticed the girls love seeing pictures of me when I was pregnant, and ask who is in my tummy and love knowing which pictures are of them in there. So I can't fail to have a few in case this next one cares to see himself pre-birth!! It's been a good pregnancy. I really can't complain, even though I often do :-) It's hard, but it could be so much worse, so I count my blessings that it's gone so well. I'm pretty sure I had an actual contraction today, but it was just one. I sometimes get in a mode where I ignore my belly and just do what I need to do, like today I cleaned the windows with Cora, she really wanted to do it and there is not WAY I would say no to a child who wants to clean. Lots of carrying Soren here and there-- or chasing him down in the store like today and holding him while he kicked and arched etc. In any case, I think the reason I haven't quite reached the weight gain I did with Isabelle with any subsequent pregnancy is because I haven't had quite as much sitting and resting time. And in the end, that is good! The exercise is necessary--of course unless I go into labor heaving that boy around, but so far I just have a sore back by the end of the day :-)

Hey, I think this was an actual blog-type entry instead of just picture captions. Nice. Well, for me anyway, anyone reading might not have gotten this far :-)

Baseball in the Backyard

We have this little backyard, but luckily our kids are little enough to play no-damage-to-the-neighbors baseball with tennis balls :-)

Spring!

Here are some pictures from the last month or so.

We spent Easter up with Brad's parents and his sisters, Karin and Heather and their families. It's SO wonderful to have family nearby and all those cousins for our girls and boy to love and play with :-)

Brad also took Isabelle to an Astros game, which she thoroughly enjoyed (especially the hot dog, popcorn and cotton candy :-) )

Brad took the girls up to go fishing with the Huntsville cousins, and isn't it grand they both got to catch a fish!!

happenings

First of all, we found out a couple of weeks ago that we are having a boy! Very exciting, since it has felt like a boy and we secretly wanted another boy to have a nice even situation :-) Isabelle is happy for Soren to have a brother, Cora is getting used to the idea since she was hoping for a little sister.

Here's the three sharing a chair and snacks. Soren is remarkably tolerant of the smothering he gets from all of us :-) . He loves to get and give hugs and kisses and snuggles in right with the girls or us when the mood hits (at least for a few seconds!)


And Isabelle lost her first tooth a few weeks ago!!! She now has an extremely loose top tooth that has been bothering her but it's pretty stubborn and hasn't come out yet. This bottom one that came out had a little help with some string and a Mom :-)

"I yike it!"

Soren has taken to expressing his enjoyment of something with "I yike it!" ('like,' in case you can't figure it out :-) ). So I finally captured it on video, here he is with Cora eating some oranges...

Family Picture

So hard to get family pictures, but Brad's mother organized a big huge Olson one over Christmas, and we had a smaller one taken of just us immediates as well. Such fun to get together with all the Olson cousins.

17 weeks

I am 17 weeks pregnant today, as anyone with access to this blog knows we're expecting by now. But I have to say it's REALLY nice to be in the second trimester. Everything is going well, and I've already started to feel the baby move. Earlier today I ate some chocolate (which is happily not as nausea-causing as it was before :-) ), and the baby REALLY moved around a lot. I was quite surprised to feel that much movement so early.

Soren has been delighting his sisters lately with all the things he does to make them laugh. This is such a fun age for communication, he is always talking, and some of the words and phrases come out quite amusingly. Lately my favorite is when he drops something or breaks something apart and says, "wookit Soren did!" Just like his sisters say :-) He loves his blanket and puppy, it's been so easy to put him to bed, just pick him up with his fuzzy blue blanket on your shoulder and he snuggles right in.