Ta Da...

Well...I've hit 18 1/2 weeks already! It seems like forever long, but yet so fast that we're already at this point! Anyway, I'm for the most part feeling pretty good, however I've continued to have headaches everyday still. Thank goodness for Excedrin Tension Headache!

We had our ultrasound appointment today. Everything looked good and healthy, which we are grateful for. I had originally wanted to make this one a surprise, but this last week I've been worried that if I kept it a surprise and we had the baby and it happened to be a girl, that at the hospital I would be upset that it was a girl and feel guilty as a mother to be upset about my baby girl. So I asked the ultrasound tech to put the answer in an envelope so I could have the opportunity to find out if I felt I needed to. Well, Nick thought it would last until the end of the night and I have to say he was wrong as it only lasted for about 4 hours until I gave in. When in the ultrasound room, Kayley said it was a boy because the baby didn't have any hair. Well.....

She was right...but not because of the no hair thing, but luckily that is what she still thinks for now!! :) We are excited and to be honest a bit relieved, however let the record show that we both would have been ok with a girl, it may just have taken me a bit longer to be ok with the idea of it. Now I have to get over the fact that we are actually having a boy, which means a total change of scenery for us! Oh well, we are excited either way!

Pictures of our boy

Well, with all the excitement of finding out it was a boy the other day, I forgot to post pictures of his actual ultrasound. There are not any "boy" pictures as obviously the ultrasound tech just put the answer in an envelope so the pictures she gave us wouldn't give us any clue about the gender...which, I think makes them a bit more lop-sided than normal baby ultrasound pics, but anyway, here they are.

Typical front profile here on the left and then the right is a side profile with an emphasis on his baby belly!

This group is my favorite group, the one on the left looks kind of funny cause he was just caught at a bad angle and then the one on the right looks like he's scratching his head trying to figure out what we are doing to him.

Then here are some more side profile pics on the left and a pic of his backside on the right, which I don't ever remember having of the girls...I guess of the spine. Also, I didn't get a pic of it, but the tech was able to show us a picture of one of his ears, it was funny cause it already for sure had Nick's shape of ear. Funny that at such a small age and being so small...he was only 10 ounces...he's already just like his Daddy! :) We are so excited to have a boy, but I'm still in a bit of shock that we're having a boy! Now I have to get boy toys like trucks and things for him otherwise this kid will have a complex playing with all our princess stuff in this house! :)

Lately...

Well, it's once again been a while since I've posted something...I just need to realize that once a month is a great accomplishment, especially while I'm pregnant. Anyway, as most January's have been for us, this month has been pretty uneventful, but it's been nice that way and relaxing! So here are just some pictures of the girls, since that it what this blog is mainly focused on anyway.

These two pictures are of the girls playing so well together. They have their moments as most siblings do, but for the most part they play very well together. The one on the left is of them playing "Prince and Bride" as they call it. They alternate who plays the Bride...it's pretty cute! Then the one on the left is of Kayley reading to Cora, which happens often and Cora has this new small addiction....sucking on a pair of eyes from Mr. Potato Head as a binkie. She has never used a binkie and at first it was cute, but then she started needing it to sleep, etc and so I had to hide it! But also take note of her sweater. It has a big pink heart on it. She calls this her Grandma Edna shirt. Back when my Grandmother passed away, the girls asked how she died and I told them she died of a heart attack...well they didn't know what that meant so I told them it was when your heart stops working correctly. So now when she wears this sweater she talks about Grandma Edna dying because her heart stopped working. Although it's a bit disturbing, it's really cute.

About a week ago we watched Katrina and Olivia for the day on a Saturday. Bass Pro was having a Boat Show day and they were doing a free boat making for kids and refreshments. So we took the girls to go make a boat. They loved it because they got to paint their own boats. Here's a picture of them hard at work on each of their boats!

We also watched Katrina earlier today and while I was doing the dishes, they were all three playing quietly in the other room, so I didn't disturb them as most of the time if one of them (namely Katrina and Cora) ran into the other one for whatever reason, the other one would come to me and say, "she hit me!" This occurred probably about 50 times that day! So needless to say, when they were playing quietly I did not disturb them! So, they then came in showing me their artwork! Apparently the girls had a lip gloss necklace that I had forgotten they had (I usually don't do real/fake makeup so it doesn't end up all over my house!) Luckily Kayley told me she didn't like wearing lip gloss, so it was the two misfits below...but it was funny! And actually after I washed it all off, I couldn't get quite all of it off and I have to say that the purple color actually looked pretty good on Cora...I think that might be her color when she is old enough to wear makeup!

I love my girls

Just a few cute things my girls have said/done recently...

Cora: the other night she wanted Daddy to lay in bed with her, she was literally begging him to sleep by her (she's in this scared for a bit before bed stage now)...Nick went in to lay by her and then he pretended to snore, she turned toward him and said "That's annoying Daddy, I don't want you to sleep by me anymore! Get up!"

Kayley: (the same night or the night before) Kayley is into to this thing now with having us (Nick and I) carry around our favorite stuffed animals. I chose Abby Cadabby, Nick chose Oscar, Kayley carries around Zoe, and of course Cora carries Elmo...Kayley has even tried to get Einstein to carry around Big Bird. Well, the girls were already in bed and Nick and I were brushing teeth, etc. Nick was on the side of the bed taking off his shoes and Oscar and Abby come flying out of no where...scaring Nick half to death!! It was funny cause she knew she wanted us to sleep with them, but knew that if we saw her out of bed, she'd get in trouble!

Then just the other day on my Dad's birthday:
Kayley came in and asked me if I knew it was Papa Felker's birthday today? I of course said yes. She responded, "Well, don't worry that you can't celebrate with him, he can celebrate his birthday with Heavenly Father today!" It made me cry!
Then Cora followed her with singing "Happy Birthday" but got confused and sang happy birthday to me instead of to Papa Felker.

Have I said I just love my girls!?!

My Dearest Baby Bell

My dearest baby, I wish you could give me some answers...

Why am I showing this much this soon (14 weeks...but I feel like I'm already 20 weeks)?
Do you enjoy giving me headaches EVERYDAY?
Why do you already make me uncomfortable sleeping at night?

Are you sure it's just you in there and not another sibling that hid during the ultrasound?

Could you be a boy because of the way you sit differently in my belly?

Why do you make me tired all the time?

Do you have all my desire to do anything hidden with you, cause I sure don't have any drive right now to do anything!

Do really just enjoy making your Mom miserable during these 9 months?

So, if you could get those questions answered for me that would be great and please get back to me as soon as possible! Oh yeah...and I still do love you, even though it may not seem like it at times!

Love,

Mom

Girls banging pots and pans for New Years 2010

Ok...I didn't realize my voice was SO loud when I was taping this video of the girls...oh well. It was fun having them up for New Years this year. We had a party with Grandma (Nick's mom) who came up and surprised the girls for the weekend. When she got there that evening, the girls opened the door and just started running aroudn the house screaming with excitement! New Year's was fun since we all got our "party clothes" (our PJ's) on and had lots of fun snacks we had all made. We (I) even got to get some "special juice" (Welch's sparkling grape juice, which I could drink everyday...especially being pregnant!) The girls had lots of fun! The girls got to bang pots and pans after watching the ball drop and we had to call Daddy on the phone and wish him a Happy New Year over the phone as he was on call that night and sadly got called in right at 11:45pm...he got to spend his new years with an 85 year old patient! It was a fun celebration and we hope all had a great New Years as well!

Our Christmas 2009

Ok...it's been a while since we've posted, but such is life! We had a great Christmas! I'm really sad that it's over as it's been so fun to see the girls get so excited about Santa Clause and Christmas in general. We were lucky to have Nick have a 5 day weekend for Christmas, which was really nice since last year he was on call for Christmas! Here are some pictures from our Christmas.

Here's the Sunday before Christmas with the girls' Christmas dresses. Kayley was not having a good morning and it reminded me of myself when I was younger and being upset about doing things like this at times. So, I only got Cora to smile, who we can always count on a smile, but I still think they looked pretty in their dresses.

Then here are some pictures a couple of days before Christmas of the girls in their Santa Claus hats. I love them in their hats as they are actually adult hats and are way big for them! It's fun! They also did some good silly faces.

And I'm just cheesy as I love to coordinate the girls outfits any chance I can! So here are their coordinating Christmas Eve outfits. I only got a few without Kayley's cheesy grins...and of course Cora had to do a cheesy grin as well!

For Christmas Eve, the Carles came over and made cookies for Santa Claus with us. It was lots of fun...the girls enjoyed of course having their cousins over and also eating all the icing they could eat! They also put out carrots for Rudolph that night as he definitely needed it trying to get through the snow we got Christmas Eve.

Here's the girls hanging up their stockings Christmas Eve. Growing up my Mom made all of our stockings as a kid and I still have mine today. So to carry on the tradition I've made all the girls stockings, as well as Nick's. Also as a tradition we would always have father/child interviews with the video camera while hanging our stockings Christmas Eve. I'm going to try to upload the videos I got of the girls after this.

Here they are with visions of sugar plums dancing in their heads Christmas Eve night. Even notice that Kayley wanted to sleep with the Night Before Christmas book that night (it's up by her head.)

Christmas morning was lots of fun to see them open their presents. Cora had asked for a new baby, which she got and loves it dearly. Santa Claus also got her a new Einstein doll so that Mommy now longer has to hear about the fights between Kayley and Cora over Kayley's Einstein doll. Kayley had asked for a Rainbow Brite dress, new Dorothy shoes that sparkle, and a Dorothy doll. She got all three, except Santa thought Kayley was extra special and instead of just getting her a Dorothy doll, she got the whole crew, Glenda, wicked witch, lion, tinman, scarecrow, Toto, and Dorothy. Kayley was pretty excited and grateful to Santa for getting her all of them! She also learned what the term "White Christmas" meant that morning. I had asked them if they were so excited that it was a white christmas? She didn't know what that meant so I told her to go look outside and told her that it was because of all the snow outside. She said, "I thought Christmas was just red!" Now she knows that Christmas can be white too with the snow! Kayley also got a Little Einstein's learning laptop computer. When she opened it, she was excited that it had a "dot com" like Daddy's (pointing to the mouse on the computer)! We got a chuckle out of that, but she later corrected herself and told us it was a mouse and that you could look up "dot com" on her computer now since she has a mouse like Daddy's mouse. It was cute! It was a great Christmas and it was so much fun watching the girls open their presents.

Later that day we headed to Nick's Mom's house for Christmas weekend and had a great weekend with the Bell family. We froze our rears off at Silver Dollar City, but the girls loved it and were excited to go one more time for the year. I didn't get any pictures though as my fingers would have frozen off if I did it was so cold! It was a great Christmas!

Kayley hanging her stocking

Cora Hanging her stocking

Merry Christmas

Make a Smilebox scrapbook Enjoy our Christmas Card for this year and we hope you all have a great Christmas! Love, the Bells!