Hannah's going to have a little...

...SISTER!

Our baby girl's cute little profile. :)

 She was super wiggly during the entire ultrasound, so the tech had a hard time getting good pics. At least you can see one of her feet pretty well in this one.

 It's a girl!!!

Her healthy heartbeat.

To be totally honest, I was a bit of a basket case for a few days before the ultrasound. I was feeling super emotional, and I was really anxious that they were going to find something wrong with our baby. Apparently, it's hard for me to believe that my body is capable of making a healthy baby on its own. Anyway, I finally told Scott about my worries the night before the ultrasound. And that got him worrying, which made me worry even more. Thank goodness our worries were completely unfounded.

Scott and I are very happy to be expecting another baby girl (Hannah seems quite happy too). And we are relieved and extremely grateful that this baby girl is growing and developing normally. We're so excited to meet her!

embracing the belly :)

Last week, it seemed like my belly just popped right out overnight. (A couple of people thought I was showing sooner--that was just fat, not baby belly.)  At this point in my pregnancy with Hannah, I wasn't showing at all. Now, at about 4 1/2 months, I look like I did at 6 1/2 months with her. Oh, well. I hear that's pretty normal. So instead of trying to conceal it, I decided to embrace my large, pregnant belly and start wearing my maternity clothes. They're way more comfortable (and actually even cuter) than most of my normal clothes. Plus, I couldn't handle having my belt push against my belly anymore, and my regular pants won't stay up without one. And for some reason I just don't want to mess with the bella band this time around.

So, without further ado, my pregnant belly...

Scott was overjoyed to be the photographer. :)

Call me crazy, but I actually like the way my body looks more when I'm pregnant. Maybe it's because I finally have a good excuse to have a belly. :)

Tomorrow afternoon we will find out what we are having. Lately, Scott and I are thinking more and more that we are having a boy. I'm not sure if I'm only thinking that because I want a girl more. It's strange to me that I don't have a strong feeling either way this time. With Hannah, I could only imagine her as a girl, and I had 2 dreams that she was a girl. This time--nothing. Oh well. Surprises are usually fun. If you haven't voted yet, be sure to go to the side bar of my blog and vote whether you  think we're having a boy or a girl. And then please leave a comment about what you voted for (also if you've already voted) because I think it would be fun to see who's thinking what.

I'll keep you all posted...

mini golfer

Last night, we finally used our Passes of All Passes for the first time (after having them for several months). We took Hannah to Trafalga to miniature golf for her first time. She liked it a lot more than we thought she would...

We were afraid that she wouldn't like how dark it was inside, but she didn't mind at all.

She insisted on using my long, pink golf club to try to hit all of our balls.

And she spent a lot of time throwing the balls into the holes. All day today she has been asking for her "pink ball."

A few bonus pics...

Last weekend we went to The Chocolate for Hannah's and Scott's first time. We shared a cazookie for their first time (I've been many times with friends), and we are all in love. Yum!

I love this pic of sleepy Scott reading to sleepy Hannah.

This is Hannah's serious, concentrating face. Love it!

And a couple of Hannah-isms...

**Lately she likes to refer to herself as Hannah Carter. And whenever we ask her what our names are, she says Mommy Carter and Daddy Carter. Way funny!
**We try to get Hannah to say words that start with S as much as possible because she almost always replaces the S with an L. Soup is loop. Super Bowl is looper bowl. Silly is lilly. Sheep is leep. You get the idea. We thinks it's super cute and funny and will be a little sad when she starts saying S words correctly.
**The other day, I said to Hannah, "I love you." And she responded, "I love Brinton." (For those who don't know, Brinton is her baby cousin.)
**Hannah is very good at announcing to the world when she or her parents burp or fart. Good times. :)
**Hannah still sings all the time and can now sing a lot of "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" on her own. Her mommy is so proud. :)  I especially love when she sings that if the Cubbies don't win it's a "lame." Awesome!

early anniversary get-away

Last weekend, Scott and I spent a night in Salt Lake at a bed and breakfast to celebrate our 5th anniversary 3 weeks early (we will be in St. George watching my niece's play on our anniversary).

The evening was full of mishaps, starting with Hannah waking up from her afternoon nap super sad and crying for 30 minutes straight (including part of the car ride to meet my brother-in-law to take her to be watched overnight by my sister). Thankfully, Hannah finally calmed down and had a wonderful time with her cousins, aunt, and uncle.

Scott and I got on the road to Salt Lake about a half hour later than we had planned. We soon discovered that some plastic cover thing was dragging on the ground under Scott's car, so we got off the freeway and headed to the nearest Jiffy Lube to get an oil change and the plastic cover screwed back on. Good times.

We finally made it to Salt Lake and got checked in to our bed and breakfast. Then we headed to a sushi place that Scott had looked up online, but it was temporarily shut down. Bummer. So after getting a bit lost on some side roads in Salt Lake, we ended up at another sushi place where the sushi was delicious but the service was insanely slow (don't worry--my pregnant self only ate cooked sushi rolls).

By the time we got back to our bed and breakfast, our favorite Friday night show (Dateline) was halfway over and boring to boot. So we went to bed early, and I got the best night's sleep I've had in a long time. Nice.

Scott and I got to chat with an interesting couple at breakfast. Scott was laughing on the inside when we were first served a roasted pear (I HATE pears). I choked down half of it and felt like I was on the mission again, afraid of offending the cook. Thank goodness the rest of the breakfast was good.

Overall, Scott and I enjoyed our night away and had some much-needed, good quality talk time. We were happy to see Hannah again, and she was happy to see us.

Some pics...

 We stayed at Wildflowers, a historic home turned bed and breakfast.

 We loved the claw-foot bathtub.

It was quaint and cozy.

I got a picture of our last of 5 sushi rolls. Yum!

Adorable, random pics of Hannah...

 I had to get a pic of Hannah in her hand-me-down Clifford pajamas before she outgrows them soon.

Woof woof. Adorable!

Hannah has been on a hat kick lately. She loves wearing Scott's Red Sox beanie--backwards and homey style. She looks a little Asian, eh? She got mad every time we tried to help her pull the hat up. Silly home girl,

She also loves to wear her adorable snow hat backwards.

By the way, I'm glad I married Scott almost 5 years ago. Very glad. :)

"My new kitchen!"

No, I do not have a new kitchen (nor will I probably ever have one). But Hannah has one, and she often exclaims "my new kitchen!" while playing with it.  After all the shopping we did for Hannah for her birthday and for Christmas, the only thing we didn't get her that I thought she would really love was a toy kitchen. But I couldn't justify it because of the price and because of our lack of space in our condo. But after the holidays, while I was trying to figure out what to get Hannah with her gifted birthday and Christmas money, I ran across the perfect kitchen for her. Perfect price. Perfect look. Perfect size. And boy does Hannah LOVE it.

I think it's adorable, and it only took me almost 3 hours to assemble (I'd read online that it would take 1-3 hours--I'm slow).

 

 It's the perfect size for Hannah and for our condo. And all of the toy food she got for Christmas fits inside it perfectly.

Hannah loves to make us food and to wash her hands. "I washing my hands." "I making _____." Super cute!

Bonus pic of Hannah half-dressed and mesmerized by American Idol. That's my girl! Notice she has a spoon from her kitchen in her hand.

And now the potty-training update some of you have asked for:

It's going about how I thought it would. Hannah uses the potty when she wants to (which varies depending on the day and her mood but averages to be about 75% of the time). We don't push her when she doesn't want to because we certainly don't want a repeat of her refusing-to-walk stubbornness. :) I actually think she's doing quite well, but I don't have any previous experience to compare it to. After only 3 days of training, she pooped in the potty. Yay! And she has repeated that since then. We put her in underwear instead of pull-ups for the first time last Saturday. Unfortunately, Scott and I hadn't thought that through. It was also Hannah's first day with her new kitchen, so she was too busy playing with her kitchen to give a rip that her pants were all wet. Silly us. We also haven't been able to be as consistent as we had hoped. Sunday and Monday were complete washes due to church, a trip to Salem, and then coming home to a broken furnace on Sunday night. And then it was still freezing all Monday morning, so I was not about to have Hannah sitting half-naked on the potty all day. After the repair guy finally left and Hannah woke up from her nap, we visited my grandma, and no potty-training had occurred for 2 days. Oh well. Hannah actually has done pretty well the rest of this week. She even only had 2 accidents yesterday. Today has been another setback thanks to our furnace breaking down again last night (lame). But now it is fixed, and potty-training shall resume.

So that's our potty-training in a nutshell. I didn't have super high expectations going into it. I'm in it for the long-haul, just hoping she gets it down in time for the arrival of the baby. I'm just glad that when Hannah's in a good mood, she still really loves reading books on the potty, washing her hands afterward, and getting a little M&M afterward. We actually have a lot of fun with it.


A funny side note. Some good has come from having our furnace break down twice within a few days during one of the coldest snaps in Utah's recent history--Hannah has picked up on saying "ridiculous." And it's ridiculously adorable. :)

Let the countdown begin!

I had a doctor's appointment on Friday, and he found a healthy heartbeat right away. Thank goodness! He also said that I can start exercising (moderately) and doing a little more because I haven't had any bleeding in several weeks. Yay! I'm feeling quite well, although I still haven't regained much energy yet (I'm 3 weeks into my 2nd trimester now). Here's hoping that it comes back soon. I have an ultrasound scheduled for February 6th, and we will definitely be finding out the sex of this baby. More than anything, I want a healthy baby. I truly don't care if we have a boy or a girl. However, part of me would like to have a boy so that I can have a son. But a bigger part of me would like to have another girl. I think it would be easier to have a girl because we already have so much girl stuff. But more importantly, if Hannah only ends up with one sibling, I would like her to be able to have a sister. Scott would prefer a girl too, but he will definitely be happy with a boy.

With each doctor's appointment and seeing or hearing my baby's heart beat, I have been able to let my guard down a little and get more excited about having another baby. It's still a little hard for me to get my hopes up too high that this is really going to happen, but I'm feeling more and more peace and assurance about it. I even just made a countdown on the side of this blog. I also made a poll for you all to guess if Hannah is going to get a brother or a sister, so be sure to vote!

A few pics of Hannah playing in our first snowstorm back in November...

 

Hannah is going to be such a fabulous big sister!

Let the potty-training begin!

Today was our first day of potty-training Hannah, and I feel like it has been successful. She really enjoyed sitting on her potty about every hour for like 15-20 mins each time (minus the couple of hours I spent trying quite unsuccessfully to get her to nap). Hannah's favorite potty past-times were reading books, singing songs, and placing several of her dolls on her doll potty. And she loved getting an M&M every time she tried to go potty. Hannah finally had success (peed in her potty) once in the late afternoon and once in the evening. Boy, were we proud! And so was Hannah. Super cute!

Some pics of the potty-training cutie:

She refused to wear a (princess) pull-up until late morning, but then she loved them.

What a big girl!

Here's Hannah right after her first success in the potty, eating one M&M for trying and holding another one her for success. Happy girl!

We'll see how tomorrow goes...