And it's a....

It's a puppy!!! Oh, wait. No, it's not:


20 Week Ultrasound
I had my 20-week ultrasound last week, and we know what we're having. Can you tell from the pic below?

Yeah, well, me either. :) But, it's a BOY!!! Yay! :) We can't wait! I think Nathan and I were both hoping for another girl so Avery could have a little sister to play with, but this pregnancy was so different, I wondered if it was a boy. It felt natural from the beginning to call it "he," and I had several dreams that it was a boy. Granted, those dreams weren't "prophetic" by any means (just more strange pregnancy dreams), but we both kinda felt that it'd be a boy. We're excited to get lots of boy stuff. Hopefully between the girl stuff for Avery, and the boy stuff for baby #2, I won't ever have to go shopping again for future kids! :)

And what the heck is up with the Jelly Beans in the background? Well, I've been craving Laffy Taffy like CRAZY lately! I can't eat enough of it. And, since Blogger didn't have a Laffy Taffy background, this was the closest I could find.

Where is My Camera USB Cord?
I really will post pictures of us, but I can't find the cord that connects the camera to the computer. It's been lost for awhile, but I'm sure one of these days I'll uncover it! Until then, you'll just have to deal with not seeing Avery's cute face for a little while.

I'm feeling much, much, MUCH better than I was feeling a few weeks ago. Compared to my pregnancy with Avery, this one has been almost as close to "normal" as I could probably get!

My Girly-Girl
It's been so fun lately to watch Avery develop this little personality of hers. She really is very girly. And I really have no idea where she got that from. She loves her doll that Grandma and Grandpa Lemmon got her a few months ago. She has to have it when she goes to sleep. She calls it "baba" for "baby." She doesn't like when things get on her hands or fingers. One morning it took us nearly an hour to eat breakfast, because when she picked up some egg to eat it, there were a few bits of egg left on her fingers, and she would start to panic if it was left on there for too long. That meant that I got to wipe her hands off after every bite she took. :) Luckily that doesn't happen every morning! We've been teaching her how to wipe her hands on her bib so that we don't always have to wipe her hands for her. She also needs to have her fork on her highchair tray turned right-side up before she'll pick it up to take another bite. If it's turned over, she'll drop everything to turn it the "right way." She also has always been a thumb sucker, so when she sits in my lap with her blanket, she sucks her thumb and rubs the fingers of her other hand back and forth on the "rough side" of her blanket. It's cute how she likes the feel of it on her finger tips.

Avery + Music = Love
She LOVES music. She can't stand playing with her toys unless she has music she can hum, dance, and sing to. Oh, and man, can she move those hips! For some reason I don't really listen to my old popular music anymore, but I have lots of classical CD's that she loves. I'm hoping that it'll rub off on her when she's older, and she'll want to play a stringed instrument. :) She knows the words for guitar, piano, violin, and xylophone.

The Little Bookworm
It's crazy how quickly she picks up on language now. She still doesn't say the words she originally learned doing sign language (she still signs "book" if she wants a book), but she'll say new words all the time. Her favorite thing to do is read. Her current favorite books are

and


We honestly spend about 2-3 hours a day "reading." She picks a book, sits on my lap, and she'll spend the whole time just pointing to things while I tell her what the word is. On one page, she learned about seven new words (camera, letter, picture, scarf, etc) and when I quizzed her back asking her to point to each one, she got them all right. Children's brains are amazing! If someone would have done that to me when I was still learning Dutch, there's no way I would've remembered what each item was after telling me only once. She's even started to dabble saying two-word phrases like "hot fire," and "bye daddy."

My "Oops" Moment
Speaking of "hot" things, about a month or two ago, I had boiled some water for some herbal tea, and had poured it into my mug. Tension Tamer is sooo good if you haven't tried it:

I left the mug within reaching distance of her fingers on the counter, told her it was hot, and not to touch it. I walked five feet away to grab a spoon, and she grabbed the mug and it poured all down her arm and her belly. I felt sooo bad. She cried for about 30 minutes while we stripped her clothes off and put a frozen package of veggies on her arm. The next day, sure enough, she had boils on her arm. :( Poor girl. We had to put a bandage on her arm for the next two weeks, which she hated wearing! Needless to say, she knows what "hot" means now. She won't get near something when I tell her it's hot.

So that's about all the updates. Hopefully I'll find my cord soon so I can download all of my pics and videos. When I do download everything, it will be a very long post!