it's a...

healthy baby girl!

today was our anatomy scan ultrasound to check in on little bit's development and we were blown away by how calm she was... in fact, she slept through the whole thing! quite the contrast to mason's ultrasound where he wiggled and danced for the entire 45 minute appointment.

she's developing right on track and, outside of the fun surprise learning little bit was a she, there were no other surprises. she is currently 8 oz. (we won't mention the weight her mommy has gained so far) and looked so peaceful snoozing with her arm over her face. we did see one glimpse of the stink eye that mason made famous when the ultrasound technician tried to wake her up, so she does have a little "nasse" attitude in her. but hopefully not too much!

i declared today "pink or blue" day at work and encouraged my team and office friends to wear their best guess as to little bit's sex. we had quite a few participants (and i can't believe i didn't think to take a picture of it!). my team was so sweet. i think they were even more excited about today than brad and i were and baked homemade (and uber-delicious) cupcakes iced in pink and blue frosting for the "big reveal" when i returned from the appointment. my job was to eat the appropriate colored cupcake at the designated time. let's just say that i didn't have any trouble fulfilling my responsibilities!

it was definitely a fun day and it turns out that big brothers know all. mason predicted long ago that he was having a baby sister.

i don't have the ultrasound pictures scanned yet, but will add them soon.

thanks be to God for this precious gift!

a little bit about little bit

at the risk of sounding like a bad parent, i noticed that by this time in the pregnancy with mason, we'd posted multiple times. the new baby, affectionately termed "little bit" might feel a little bit left out when s/he reads the baby book years from now. the truth is, we're thrilled to be adding to our family, but i'd be lying if i said we weren't caught completely off-guard by the news!

in fact, little bit has dropped a few surprises on us already...

around my birthday (in may) is when i first thought "hmm... something seems weird here." i was absolutely exhausted, starving all the time, and had a couple of episodes of queasiness. the last time i bought a pregnancy test was january 2008 and thankfully they have a long shelf life! one lone stick remained tucked away in a bathroom cabinet for more than 3 years and was still a few months away from expiration. three minutes later, my suspicions were confirmed and brad and i both sat on the couch with our mouths wide open in shock. we were one week away from closing on the new house, beginning renovations, and moving. not exactly a stress-free time!

by my calculations, we discovered the pregnancy early, so i called the doctor to schedule the 8-week appointment. they were booked on week 8, but could see me the 9th week. close enough.

on june 14 we went in for the confirmation appointment and expected to see our little peanut and hear that awe-inspiring heartbeat. we might not have "planned" little bit, but we still had plenty of time to get ready for his/her arrival in early 2012.

the doctor came in and we began the ultrasound. "umm, we need to revisit this due date," she said.

"what do you mean?," i asked as i looked toward the image on the screen.

stop the press.

our little peanut wasn't a little peanut at all. little bit was quite developed and was a whole darn baby! complete with arms, legs, spine, brain matter and was even sucking a thumb. what the????

yes, little bit was full of surprises. not only were we having a baby, we were having one about a month and a half earlier than i thought!

i absolutely felt like the poster child for poor pre-natal care. little bit is lucky that mommy is straight-laced and boring. and i'd like to apologize for that glass of wine on may 6. and the diet coke on may 7. i'm pretty sure those were my only grievances.

the delivery is tentatively scheduled for dec. 6, but i'm sure little bit will let us know if that's the date s/he has in mind. clearly little bit's parents aren't calling any of the shots around here.

sidetracked

we were making such great progress completing rooms around here until we were sidetracked by a surprise project. you see, we discovered that our dishwasher only pretended to work, but didn't really clean dishes. that's a definite problem when you have sippee cups of milk around the house that need sanitizing.

so, progress stopped for an emergency purchase.

we had planned to replace the kitchen appliances eventually, but we really didn't expect to start this week. hopefully we can resume our regular programming very soon! on the bright side, the new dishwasher is remarkably quiet (and produces clean dishes)!

new digs: gameroom

the motivation worked! after relishing in our "finished" living room, brad and i were inspired to complete the gameroom tonight! just don't go expecting to see a new room every day...

on to the pictures...

before

why yes, that is a burgundy color on the walls with the
putrid orangy-brown on the stairwell

what, you don't like that?

yeah, we didn't either.

this is probably my favorite part of the room - too bad we almost had to kill brad to get those paintings hung in the stairwell like that... ;)

this room was fairly low key compared to the living room. we neutralized the paint, replaced the carpet, hung drapes and stuffed our furniture and most of mason's toys into the room. we still need to replace the fan (we miscounted when we purchased the others), so we're waiting for it to go on sale again!

new digs: living room edition

it seems to be taking us forever to "finish" rooms around the new house, so as a motivation for me and a preview for you, i'll be sharing before and after pictures as we complete things around here. first up: the living room.

we didn't take many "before" shots, and you'll see why. the house wasn't exactly in tip-top shape, but that's to be expected when you buy a foreclosure. we felt it had potential, though, and little-by-little, we're seeing glimpses of it come through...

enough talk.

before.

(please ignore the pile of junk in the dining room)

so, we still need a rug for the living room, but other than that we're pretty much calling it done. we neutralized the paint color, replaced the fan, ripped out the nasty carpet and replaced it with hardwoods, and tore out the fireplace surround and replaced it with mosaic tile. it's not nearly as impressive typed out as it is in my head! :)

one room done, 7 more to go (not including bathrooms).

a couple of firecrackers

with the extreme drought in texas, pretty much all fireworks in the surrounding area were banned. the fire district didn't account for these little firecrackers though...

we never "tire" of the backyard

daddy decided he needed a giant tire for the backyard so he could work on his muscles after work. mason thought he'd try it out first...

other than show off your muscles, roar like a barbarian, walk, skip and jump all around it, and finally sit in the middle, what else are you supposed to do with a giant tire in the backyard?!

one wild ride

the past few months have been one wild ride...

crazy traffic

we're still obsessed with cars these days. as i was cleaning off the camera from the last couple of months (sadly, there really weren't that many photos), i found these gems.

apparently traffic was the heaviest northbound at the corner of elbow and left side, headed toward mommy's shoulder...