Laura- 20 months

Yesterday, Laura surprised us by going potty in the toilet all by herself!

For the last couple of weeks, her favorite thing to do is take off her diaper and run around the house yelling "pee pee" and then climbing up on the toilet. Since she has such a little bum she had to be creative in how to sit on such a big seat. So this is what she came up with:
After a couple of seconds of sitting in this position, she will yell "all done" and climb back off. I figured since she had no idea she was supposed to do anything while she was on the toilet potty training was still months away. Plus, she is still my little baby, not a big girl. But yesterday, while running around the house with her diaper off, I saw her start peeing on the floor. I went over and told her that was yucky and that we only do that in the toilet. While I was cleaning up the puddle, Laura ran into the bathroom, climbed up on the toilet and finished the job. Does this mean she is ready to start potty training?

After talking to my sisters who are experienced in potty training, I figured I would give it a try. I went and bought a pink potty and pink panties at Target. (Don't you love buying pink stuff for little girls?) Laura looks so cute in her big girl panties, I figured she didn't need to wear any other clothes. Plus, more clothes means more washing for the accidents I know are bound to happen. And it is always a fight to keep Laura in clothes anyways, since she is constantly yelling "off' and trying to remove them.

We officially started potty training 3:00 this afternoon. Laura loves her potty and hates her panties which means she has been running around naked for the last few hours and has spent quite a bit of the time sitting and playing with her potty. So far, we have had 3 successes and 1 accident. Not too bad for the first day.

I still think she is way too young to learn, but I figure it can't hurt to try.

I took her in to the doctor today because she has an eye infection and has not been sleeping well the last week. Sure enough, she has an ear infection as well. Poor thing. No wonder we were up all night last night.

Laura is so much fun these days and I love staying home with her all day. She is repeating everything she hears and is constantly amazing me with how smart she is. I love this age!

She is still loving her play kitchen. I just wish she loved to clean up all the pieces as much as she loves taking them all out.

Laura's First Birthday Party

Laura got invited to attend her first birthday party. The theme was "pink." I dressed her up in the cutest little pink outfit and she looked so cute with the little girl's present in her hand as she walked into the party. She was the youngest one there and Stacy, the mother of the birthday girl, told me she spent more time in the girl's bedroom playing with her toys than she did with the older girls doing the party games and activities. She especially loved the pink cake and icecream.

Our Baby

A week before Christmas, Peter and I went in for our 18 week ultrasound to find out the sex of our baby. The doctor found some serious abnormalities in the ultrasound and recommended that we do an amniocentesis to find out more information. A few days later we received the difficult news that our little girl has trisomy 13.

Trisomy 13 is condition in which the baby ends up with an extra chromosome 13, which is similar to down syndrome where the child has an extra chromosome 21. However, the extra 13 chromosome is much more serious and in most cases, as the nurse told us, is incompatible with life. Eighty percent of babies born with trisomy 13 die within the first month and the rest rarely live past a year. We have an appointment next week to meet with a heart specialist who will do an ultrasound of our baby's heart, the most serious defect, and help us better prepare for what to expect for our little girl.

It is obviously not what we were expecting, but we are grateful to learn the news ahead of time so we can appreciate each day of pregnancy as precious time we get to spend with our little girl as part of our family.

Thank you for all your prayers, love and support. We are doing fine. It is hard to be sad or depressed when I spend my days taking care of our beautiful, healthy daughter who is constantly reminding me how alive (and busy) she is! And I have the most wonderful husband in the world. We are grateful that God is giving us this special baby girl and hope that we can spend a little bit of time with her before He takes her home.



21 Weeks Pregnant with Daughter #2

"Another Tender Tennessee Christmas"

This is our fourth Christmas since we've been married and I think it was the best yet. Last night we went over to some friends' house and ate great food, enjoyed a nativity by the children,I got to speak in spanish all night with my Venezuelan friends and Peter spent the night arguing constitutional law with a lady at the party. It was perfect. We spent the ride home singing Jingle Bells the whole way because Laura insisted that we kept singing it. Each time the song ended, she would begin to yell "jingle" until we started singing again. When we got home, we each got to open up a present with pj's in them. I scored at Wal-Mart and found $1.50/yd fabric that was not entirely hideous. Peter thought the print wasn't quite manly enough for him but I thought the navy blue polka dot was kind of cute. And it was so fun to all have matching pajama pants.

After we put Laura to bed, we set up the play kitchen that we have been working on the last couple of weeks. I think it turned out so cute. I was so excited for her to see it. So by 6:30 am I was awake laying in bed wondering when Laura was going to wake up. By 7:30, Peter and I couldn't wait any longer so we woke her up and brought her down stairs to see what Santa had brought her.





She seemed pretty happy about it and immediately began going through the cupboards and pulling out the dishes and food. We helped her put on her little apron, chef hat, and oven mitt that I made to go with the kitchen and she looked so dang cute.

We spent the rest of the morning in our matching pj pants watching "It's a Mad, Mad, Mad World" which we got for Christmas from my brother Jeremy. It brought back a lot of memories of my childhood.
I love Christmas time! It is so wonderful to have my husband home all day and to be able to spend time with the two people I love most in the world.

What I'm grateful for:

1. A wonderful, kind husband.
2. An extrememly energetic and fun toddler.
3. That I'm 16 weeks pregnant with baby #2!

The Latin Dance Party

Our latin dance party was pretty much the best party ever. Really. It turned out even cuter than we imagined. Celebrating 5 people's birthday at the same party is really quite fun. My friend, Julie, who threw the party at her house did a great job decorating with our homemade birthday banners and hats. I loved the bright colors. My favorite part about the decorations were the brightly colored cakes. They took a long, long time to make due to the fact that I had one small cake pan and I was too cheap to buy another so I had to bake 10 cakes in order to make 5 double layer cakes. It was a lot of washing and regreasing that dang pan. Well, it wasn't even a cake pan, more like a casserole dish that happened to be just the right size. Each of the cakes had the initial of one of the birthday people on it. Really, how cute is that? We converted her upstairs into a dance floor with lights, a crystal ball and some ripped pieces of dyed sheets. Peter was a champ. For some one who hates latin dancing and latin music he was such a good sport. He danced with me and did a great job. Here are some action shots: And one of the best birthday presents was my friend Angela drove down from Iowa to be here at my birthday party. Angela was my latin dancing friend who went with me 3 times a week back in my single days. Sometimes 4 times a week. Here is a video of us dancing. (I just told Peter I was uploading this video and he told me he wants me to make it clear that this video does not represent the extent of his moves.)

Vacation, Vomit, a Very cute angel and a Very fun date

My sister-in-law, Cyndie, had a 5K run that she was participating in last weekend to earn money for ovarian cancer research. We wanted to be there and run as part of her team. So we decided to drive to North Carolina for the weekend and spend some time with them. We all participated in the race. Cyndie, Grandma Munk, and I jogged while the dads took up the rear (literally, I think they were the very last people) with a full double stroller and one walking child. About 5 minutes into the 5K, the walking child got injured and so Laura was taken out of the stroller and carried on Peter's shoulders the rest of the way. I was waiting at the finished line when they walked in at 59 minutes and I saw a very sad and very cold baby sitting on her daddy's shoulders. Peter said she cried the whole 59 minutes with out stopping. She spent the next hour cuddled up in a blanket on my chest. She seemed a little traumatized by the whole thing. I was glad that Daddy had the hard job so I could enjoy jogging the race. The park where we ran was so beautiful with misty lakes and trees with brightly colored fall leaves. If it weren't for the freezing cold weather, it would have been a perfect jog.

That night, the kids put on the costumes to go to the ward trunk-or-treat. Laura hated her costume and screamed every time I tried it on her. She hates when I sew things for her because I have to try in on her at various stages to make sure it is going to fit. So by the time I had finished this dress she already hated it and would run away every time she saw it. So we didn't get a whole lot of Halloween pictures with a smile.




She did, however, really enjoy the trick or treating part. She quickly caught on and would walk from trunk to trunk and hold out her little orange bucket and wait for a piece of candy to be placed in it.


That was the fun part of the trip. The not-so-fun part was the driving part. On the way there, about 2 hours into our trip, Laura threw up. A lot. Everywhere. We pulled over on the side of the road and spent 15 minutes trying our best to clean up our baby, the car seat and the back seat of Peter's car as best as we could with baby wipes. We spent the rest of the 7 hour trip in a very stinky car. When we got in our car Sunday morning to drive home, none of us where feeling very good and it didn't help that you could still vaguely smell the throw up from the previous car trip. A couple hours into the drive we had to pull over so I could throw up. An hour later, Laura threw up once again all over herself, the car seat, and the backseat. Once again we tried our best to clean the car, but the smell was horrible. A couple of hours later, we had to pull over so I could throw up again. Peter was strong until the end. About 35 minutes outside Nashville we pulled over to get gas and Peter threw up. The last 35 minutes were the worst because Peter was so sick and feverish he turned up the heat. I felt like I was in a vomit sauna. We were all feeling so sick and the car smelled horrible. Laura was the only one who seemed fine, except she was screaming because we wouldn't give her any crackers because we didn't want her throwing up again. When we got home, Peter dragged himself into the house, sat in a hot bath tub for 30 minutes and then went straight to bed. I had to haul in all the stuff from the car, clean up the throw up off the seat, start some loads of throw up laundry and clean up a very stinky car seat. It was a horrible day. The good news is we woke up the next morning feeling great. The bad news is Cyndie's family woke up the next morning feeling horrible and spent the whole day throwing up. Well, at least it wasn't in the back seat of their car. Peter and I went out on a date last night to celebrate our shared birthday. He lined up the babysitter and planned the whole thing. It was awesome. He took me to Red Robin where we both got free dinner for our birthday. (Peter made fun of me for this at the time, but I signed us up a couple of months ago when I heard that Red Robin gives you a free hamburger each year on your birthday. I thought awesome, we will have a totally free dinner each year on our birthday since we both eat free. I think our waitress thought we were trying to work the system, but we could have proved it if she looked at our drivers license.) So we splurged and got appetizer and dessert, mostly because we felt bad if our meal was totally free.
After our totally unhealthy but pretty delicious dinner, Peter then took me to Steinnmart to buy me something pretty. It was a perfect b-day celebration. And now I am looking forward to my latin dance birthday party my friend is hosting for us this Saturday. It's going to be awesome! And my friend, Angela is driving down for the weekend to be here for it. It's going to be a great birthday weekend!