February Feels

Luckily, February was a little better than our January. It was still slow, but not as slow as last month. We had a little more to do to keep us busy this month, so that helped. However, it was somewhat of a rough month with Ryan’s work schedule. Probably half of his shifts for the entire month were mid shifts, so either 12pm-9pm, 1pm-10pm, or 3pm-12am. With all of these shifts, he barely got to see the kids, especially Kinsie. As soon as Kinsie would get home from school, he would have to leave for work, and he wouldn’t get home until after they were in bed. Kinsie struggled this month because of this, so we really had to work hard at keeping her spirits up and taking full advantage of whenever Ryan was home. Luckily, we had some nice days so we got to spend more time outside, and we had a family visit at the end of the month, which helped a lot too. Here is how our month went down…

A Day at the Park

We pass by this bridge almost every day. And every time we pass it, Kinsie tells me she wants to go walk on it. On a nice Saturday that Ryan had off, we finally took that opportunity. We took scooters, cars, and snacks and made a morning of it. This was such a nice little park…once you walk across the bridge, there are some trails and a great view of the river. It was a great family park adventure!

Daddy Daughter Dance

The night before this event, I just happened to come across it on Facebook. I knew our town had a daddy daughter dance last year, but Ryan was working. As soon as I saw it this year and saw that Ryan happened to be off, I mentioned it to him, and he didn’t even hesitate to say that he would love to take Kinsie. This little girl was SO excited to get to go on a date with her daddy, especially in the midst of a couple of tough months of him working. She loved getting dressed up, getting her hair curled, and dancing the night away with her dad! These two truly have a special daddy daughter bond that completely melts me.

Outside Fun

We were definitely able to get outside more this month than last, and we took every opportunity we could get. Even if we only got to play outside for a half hour before ballet, or take a quick stroll on the path behind our house, we enjoyed the fresh air whenever we could.

Valentine’s Day Activities

I know I’ve mentioned this before, but I have never been a fan of Valentine’s Day…until I had kids. And since the last couple of months have been a bit tougher than we expected, it was a perfect time to show the kids a little extra love that they really needed.

Kinsie loves hand-making her valentines. She loves picking out a craft kit at Hobby Lobby and personalizing them for all her friends and family. We went to the store and picked out her valentines at the end of January, and of course she was working on them that day!

 

When we lived in Indiana, Ryan’s Aunt Renata always made valentine cookies with the kids when she would watch them while I worked. When we moved, I have tried to continue that tradition. I may not make them as well as her, but it’s the thought and effort that counts! The kids LOVE making cookies…especially covering them with every kind of sprinkles we own. They probably enjoy making them more than actually eating them!

 

The morning of Valentine’s Day, I had a short scavenger hunt that led to the kids’ gifts. They loved going around the house finding the next clue and were so happy to find their gifts at the end!

 

I got this idea from Pinterest and knew right away I wanted to do it. Each day, I would add a heart with a reason why we love them on their bedroom door. I started on February 1, and the last heart was added Valentines morning. Kinsie especially loved this, and definitely appreciated the extra love.

 

Ryan had to work that evening, but I still had some great valentine dates. We made heart-shaped pancakes and had a great breakfast dinner!

Special School Days

Kinsie’s class has been learning all about the human body lately. They traced each other’s bodies, and each day they would learn about a different body system, and would add it to their traced body. At the end of the unit, Kinsie’s teacher asked a special doctor to come in and speak to the class about how to stay healthy. The kids LOVED having daddy be a guest speaker in the class!

 

Kinsie’s class got to go on a field trip to the Clinton Library to celebrate Dr. Suess’s birthday. Ryan happened to have the day off, so we both went with her and had a special Kinsie morning!

Family Visit

We had been looking forward to this visit for months now. It seemed to take forever to come, but when it did, it was worth the wait. Both of our parents came to visit, and they brought along a surprise visitor. Kinsie was in shock when she saw that her cousin Kerigan tagged along. They were inseparable the whole weekend!

We enjoyed shopping at Bass Pro Shops and the outlet mall…

 

And taking the family to the bridge and park to ride bikes around the trails. (Papa and Yaya also surprised Kinsie with a new bike and she is in LOVE with it!)

 

The kids loved running around, riding bikes, climbing trees, and getting an ice cream treat after the park!

 

My amazing parents and in-laws spent almost an entire day helping us around the house. They cleaned up all the leaves in the front and backyard (and if you saw our yard, you’d understand just how big of a job this was), cleaned out our gutters, fixed our flower beds, replaced our air vents, and more. This was such a huge help to us, especially since Ryan hasn’t exactly had time to do all that yard work. While the adults worked, the kids enjoyed running around “helping” as well!

Boy, are we ready for March…and just spring in general. This winter was rougher than we expected, and we are ready to move on from it. March has always been one of my favorite months…especially when I was teaching. It was the end of the first round of ISTEP testing, March Madness, warmer weather, and spring break. Even now that I’m not teaching, it still brings hope after a few rough months. This month will hopefully bring more nice weather, and we will get to go on a trip with our families to Arizona, so we are really excited about that!

Enjoy our February 1 Second Everyday video. Cheers to March!

It’s a Boy!!!

I can officially say that we are having a BABY BOY!!!

It is truly hard for me to believe that in just a few months, we will welcome a son into our family! We are beyond thrilled! We had no preference either way…just wanted a healthy baby. We knew that no matter what, God would bless us with whoever was the perfect addition to our family. Lately I had been having very strong boy vibes. In fact, I would have been shocked had it been a girl!

We took Kinsie with us to the ultrasound, we figured she’d enjoy seeing pictures of her baby and sharing the special moment with us. She did indeed! She kept saying in a high pitched, excited voice, “That’s my baby!” Beforehand, she didn’t seem to care if she was going to get a brother or a sister, and she was pumped to find out she’ll have a baby brother! The ultrasound went great and our sweet baby boy is very healthy and active!

We planned a small get-together that evening to share the news with our immediate families. Ryan and I always like coming up with exciting and unique ways to share the news. With Kinsie, we did a pinata filled with pink candy. This time was harder to come up with an idea because it’s winter and it was in the evening. We finally both agreed to a “confetti gun” that Ryan made that would shoot out either pink or blue confetti. We were anxious ALL day to share our news, and we were a bit nervous that Kinsie would spill the beans before the official reveal. We prohibited our families from talking to Kinsie about the baby until it was time. As soon as our families arrived at my parents’ house, we gathered everyone around, and had Ryrob and Briggs shoot our cannon filled with BLUE confetti! It turned out great and was a fun surprise for our families. Their reactions were priceless!

The kids had a blast dancing around in the confetti and making “snow angels.” They were bummed when we cleaned it all up!

After the confetti play, we had ice cream!

We had a great evening with the people we love most. We are all so excited to welcome our baby boy into the world in May!

Pregnancy update:

I am now about 5 months pregnant and still feeling great. I am definitely still more tired than usual, and I have to really monitor myself since I feel fine and am busy working or chasing around a toddler. I have to force myself to take breaks and sit down and drink lots of water.

I am most certainly showing faster and larger this time around, which is normal, but causing to do double takes in the mirror.

I can tell this baby is sitting lower than in my last pregnancy. I can tell in the way my pants fit, and my bladder is affected much more this time around! Thank goodness for my teacher partner who has to watch my class several times a day while I run to the restroom!

I only felt the baby kick 2 or 3 times starting from 14 weeks until about 18 weeks…then once 18 weeks hit, I felt kicks every day, several times a day! This boy is a WILD CHILD, God help me! Ryan got to feel him for the first times a few nights ago, but I still don’t think it’s strong or consistent enough for Kinsie to feel.

We have a few name ideas picked out, but will not be sharing the name until he is born!

Stay tuned for more updates as spring approaches!

Fall Break Adventures

Well my fall break ended 2 weeks ago, so this may be a little late, but better late than never! It always seems that Fall Break is one of the most needed breaks of the year for me. Starting off a school year is long and exhausting (procedures, beginning of the year testing, more procedures, more testing…you get the idea), then throw in working full days PLUS parent-teacher conferences before and after school during the last couple of weeks, I was beyond mentally and physically exhausted and ready for a 2 week break with my family. During Ryan’s third year of med school, they get one “break” rotation…where they aren’t actually doing a clinical, but are usually still expected to do something. The nice thing was that Ryan got to choose when he got to have this break, and what he got to do with it. So we purposefully planned it so that he would have this rotation while I was on fall break. He chose to do some emergency medicine research, which mainly required him to enter data into his computer…which he could do from home. So for the first time in a LONG time, Ryan and I both had somewhat of a break at the same time. As much as I would have loved to go to Florida with my family, we just didn’t know what Ryan’s schedule would be early enough, but it still turned out to be such a nice, relaxing 2 weeks. Kinsie was perfectly content staying at home playing with her toys and playing outside (it was a BEAUTIFUL two weeks). We also took little day trips to places like the Children’s Museum, pumpkin patches, and even downtown Danville! I’ll share some pics from each of our little adventures!

We were finally able to take Kinsie to the Indianapolis Children’s Museum for the first time. She loved it! Her favorite exhibit was the dinosaur exhibit. Ever since then, she’s kind of been obsessed with dinosaurs. She has wanted dinosaur toys, dinosaur fake tattoos, and even made Ryan dress as a dinosaur for Halloween! Ryan’s inner child is pretty happy about this dinosaur phase that Kinsie is going through!

Like I said, we had some beautiful 60-70 degree weather during my break. You already know how much Kinsie likes to be outside, and now she is starting to embrace the beauty of fall. She loves the colorful falling leaves, and has even starting collecting them, thanks to some inspiration from her cousins. Ryan gets really into any hobby that Kinsie currently has, so he bought her a leaf-collecting kit. Between collecting leaves, sticks, and finding colonies of bugs, she was one happy girl to be outside!

Downtown Danville is always festive no matter the season, and I drive past it every day on my way to work, so I had seen that they had a scarecrow display around the square. Kinsie really likes scarecrows (and anything else dealing with fall), so I thought she’d like to walk around and see it. Plus, this is the closest place to us that has crosswalk signs, with which Kinsie is still obsessed, so we knew she would be happy either way! She LOVED the scarecrows! Different local businesses made different scarecrows to display around the square, and some of them were really creative! Kinsie’s faves were the Doc McStuffins and Olaf scarecrow. After we walked around, we ate lunch at Mayberry Cafe (their salad bar is one of my favorite things in life). It was a nice little family day trip!

We went to two different apple orchards/pumpkin patches over break. We first went to Anderson Orchard just the three of us. We picked out pumpkins, ate biscuits and apple butter, drank apple cider slushies, and played on haystacks. Kinsie probably could have stayed there all night. We love Anderson Orchard because it’s cheap and not as crowded, but still offers lots of fall fun. Once my family came back from Florida, we all went to Beasley’s Orchard. We took a hay ride, bought apple snacks, and let the kids run around the pumpkin patch. Kinsie became a pumpkin-picking pro, and even later helped carve her pumpkin (post to come soon).

I was very grateful to have 2 weeks off with not only Kinsie, but with my husband too. It was SO refreshing, especially after a month’s rotation of him being in Muncie again. We got to have so much quality family time during those 2 weeks, which is all I ever ask for. We didn’t go anywhere super special or do anything extravagant, but we were together, which made it perfect!

A Boot-Scootin’ Labor Day

Over Labor Day weekend, we traveled to Nashville, Tennessee to celebrate my dad and sister’s birthdays as a family. Kinsie is in that phase of life where you can’t really tell her things until right before we do them because she will get really excited and then get mad when we don’t do them right away. With this in mind, I hadn’t told Kinsie about the upcoming trip yet, but my dad spilled the beans and got her all pumped! She asked about the trip every day, multiple times a day, the week leading up. She would tell her toys and other random objects (like her toothbrush), “Bye! See you later! I’m going on a trip!” So once the moment finally came, she was stoked!

After I got off work and Ryan got home from Muncie (Yes, he is back in Muncie this month), we hit the road. I had plenty of movies, games, and toys to keep my busy toddler occupied in the car. She was an absolute champ in the car! Not once did she get bored or antsy. In fact, when we stopped somewhere to get food, she cried because she wanted to continue the road trip! She enjoyed listening to Barney music, watching episodes of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, and drawing on an Aquadoodle. As it started getting late, we stopped to put on her PJ’s and get her some milk, then “tucked her in” the car seat for bed. We hoped she’d sleep for the last couple hours since we wouldn’t get there until 10 or 11. Well, I guess she was just too excited to sleep. She never fell asleep, despite the fact that we arrived around 11pm! She wasn’t grumpy or anything, she just hung out and didn’t sleep. But of course she passed out as soon as we got there and put her in her bed!

The next day, regardless of her getting to bed so late, she was up at the crack of dawn ready to start the day. She hadn’t seen her cousins yet, so she was itching to get out of the hotel room and see them. We met my parents and the kids at the Nashville Zoo, per Kinsie’s request. We had a blast even in the sweltering heat! As soon as we were leaving the zoo, Kinsie kept telling us how tired she was, and she wanted to lay down. She didn’t even want to eat lunch first, and we planned on heading straight to the Country Music Hall of Fame, where we thought would be a good place for her to take a nap in her stroller. She fell asleep almost instantly in the car on the way there, and then slept in her stroller for maybe 30 minutes before she woke up, as grumpy as could be. She was exhausted and hungry, but wouldn’t eat or sleep…every parent’s dream! She eventually settled down, and we headed back to the hotel to just relax for a while. We ordered carry out, and then ventured back out for ice cream. Kinsie (and Ryan and I) are always up for finding fun ice cream shops. We found a little place that had very unique flavors. We tried peanut butter ice cream, mango ice cream, salted caramel ice cream, and a few others. Kinsie’s favorite part, however, was the waffle cone! After a long day, we were all pretty spent. Kinsie crashed hard that night!

The next day, we wanted to go to a very popular Pancake restaurant for breakfast, but as we pulled up, the line was wrapped around the entire building…so we went with Plan B…Dunkin Donuts! At least just to hold us over for a while. Then we walked around on the pedestrian bridge. We ended up just getting carry out from the pancake place for a late lunch. After naps, we took the kids swimming in the hotel’s indoor pool. Kinsie was SO happy getting to swim with her cousins! For dinner that night, we went to a nice sushi restaurant. They didn’t have high chairs, which I immediately knew was going to be a problem…mainly because our child is a nut and takes every chance she gets to waller anywhere and everywhere! She got a little ornery through the dinner, but we made it through by taking turns wrestling with her.

We left Nashville on Monday morning after breakfast. Again, Kinsie was a winner in the car. She even napped for the last two hours…which I was very grateful for because I was exhausted too! With our busy schedules and limited budget, we don’t get to travel much these days, so it is always a blessing when we do. Since we are not in the city much, Kinsie saw crosswalk signs for the first time. Most people don’t think much of these…in fact, a lot of people don’t even notice them or how common they are in the city. Well, our random child became OBSESSED. Every time she would see one, she would point it out and say “My hand!” or “My person!” depending on which sign was lit up. She made it her mission throughout the entire weekend to scout them out around the city, and she would become giddy every time she would see one! My daughter teaches me something every day…but here she really taught me to enjoy the little things in life!

A few hours after we got home, we ventured back out to take Kinsie to Frozen on Ice. This was kind of an early birthday gift, because she LOVES Olaf, and talks about Ana and Elsa on a regular basis as well. She was super excited to watch the “Oflaf show,” as she called it. Grandma Bev and Papa Tim gave her some money before the show to buy a souvenir, so between her toys that she picked out, the popcorn, and the great seats, she was in heaven! Mickey and Minnie opened the show, which was a fun surprise…but Kinsie cried when they left the stage. We had to reassure her that the real show hadn’t even started yet! She loved the show and danced around and waved to the characters. She even got to see her cousins before the show, so they were all showing off the different toys they got. On the way home, she was a little chatter box, retelling everything she remembered about the show. She even wanted to take her souvenirs to bed with her, but we compromised and put them on the table across from her bed so she could see them as soon as she woke up.

Even though I know she probably won’t remember things like this, just seeing the pure joy on her face while it is happening makes it all worth it. A Happy Kinsie = a happy mommy. It was so nice to spend a whole weekend with Ryan and Kinsie without the distractions of jobs, school, and household chores. Quality time is my love language, so after a great weekend with them and the rest of my family, my love tank is full!

Adventures with our FIVE month old!

It is absolutely amazing to see how much our little girl grows every single day. She is developing a personality that Ryan and I are just completely in love with. She makes us laugh constantly and her smiles alone make it worth getting up every day. She is seriously such a happy little girl, which makes me a very happy mama. It is very obvious that she already enjoys learning, which her teacher mom and med student dad definitely appreciate! With this horrible weather we’ve had, we obviously can’t go outside much, and she gets bored with our house and her own stuff, so we’ve been taking her on little trips like to Orange Leaf, or Dick’s Sporting Goods. She loves going to new places and looking at everything she possibly can. She is so curious and always seems to be trying to find something to get her hands on. I have a feeling she will be quite the mischievous toddler! We are falling more and more in love with our sweet Kinsie Kay every single day, and I can’t believe we made such an amazing little person!

This last month has brought a lot of fun new habits and personality quirks from our love bug. Here is what she is up to at five months old…

• She likes to touch faces.
• She has experienced her first stomach flu and passed it to mommy and daddy.
• She is very curious and wants to see and touch everything.
• She is becoming interested in food that she sees and will be trying solid foods very soon.
• She smiles when she meets new people.
• She is a pro at leg lifts.
• She seems to really like giraffes.
• She could watch her cousin Briggs play all day long.
• She loves to hang out with her cousin Kerigan.
• She still loves fish, but isn’t satisfied just looking at the aquarium anymore, but now tries to find a way inside.
• She wants to grab EVERYTHING.
• She has discovered her voice and likes to test her vocal ranges constantly.
• She likes to pet her dog Addie.
• She thinks daddy is hilarious.

 

Her 5 month photo shoot definitely reflects her personality!

 

  

Just hanging out in the reading corner in mom’s classroom

 

 

  

Getting all her fishing gear for this summer!