Here we are!

Brooklynn has just started getting into the mimicking stage. Seriously, it has been so hard to try to get her to repeat or say things, but now it seems like she is constantly amazing me with new words and actual phrases. We spent the day with my parents 2 Saturdays ago because Eric had to work. We took a long drive and ended up on the other side of the Puget Sound. We thought it would be fun to take the ferry back (Brooklynn has only been on one in utero). When we got upstairs and found a seat my dad said, "here we are." Brooklynn pretty much repeated that phrase the whole time we crossed the Sound. It is so cute to hear her excited "Here we are!" exclamation. She has reused her new phrase the last few days and it is super cute every time! 

Some other new words/phrases:

~Light on (She is constantly exclaiming "light!" when she wants to play in the kitchen, but adding "on" was a fun new development)

~ Help please (she has long been saying each word separately but we spent last week working on her combining those two words and she is doing pretty good at it.)

~Phone (she misses the "ph" sound and adds an "n" at the beginning)

~In there (usually referring to the baby when we ask her where he is and she pokes my belly button)

~somersault

~work

~look (usually when she is telling me to look for trucks and buses in the car for her)

~House (anytime we talk about family we ask where they are and she will say "house." She is so adamant about it that she gets upset if we tell her they are somewhere other than their house). 

~I don't know (it used to be "no know")
~I see you
~I got you
~another one
~other one

Brooklynn is also getting much better at pronouncing words she's been saying for awhile properly. "Doh" has become "show." "Dar" has become "Char." She is also working on her letters and colors. Thanks to "Super Why" she can sometimes point out letters along with the show and will even sound them out with Princess Presto. She also now loves to sit on my lap and pick out the letters on my sweatshirt/shirt, and she's getting pretty good at it. I absolutely love watching her grow and develop this way!

"Here we are!"

It's a......

We were supposed to have our ultrasound last Wednesday, but the tech was sick. Fortunately they were able to reschedule us fairly quickly and we were able to have our ultrasound this evening. YAY!!!

She really wasn't digging having her picture taken, but we are super excited to be having a boy! Fortunately Brooklynn's brother wasn't shying away from the "camera" this evening. We got plenty of great views of him and we don't have to wait 2 more weeks (like we did with Brooklynn) to find out that he is a boy!

I love that the tech put "looks like a boy." Eric did make a point to ask her how sure she was and she said, "I'd be surprised if we were wrong." So diplomatic.

 I love little feet!

20 weeks

So I have finally decided that I look pregnant and not fat. In fact, at church yesterday as I was climbing over Eric and Brooklynn to get back into our pew I could see the couple behind us whisper to each other. And then he asked if we were expecting another. They did say that it's the first time they have noticed any showing-ness, so hopefully that means I wasn't looking as fat as I thought I was! I guess this makes my prego belly official. So, here's a belly shot (please forgive my end of day no make-up appearance!):

I have also been feeling pretty pregnant the last week or so. My lower back has been killing me! I am experiencing the difficulty breathing (shortness of breath/getting winded) and have chronic nasal congestion. (That combination makes it hard to eat without my mouth open, which Eric loves to make fun of!) I don't remember when that all started with Brooklynn, but I feel like it is way early this time. It is getting more and more uncomfortable to bend over and to have Brooklynn sit/lay on my lap. I have also seen the return of my pregnancy toe cramps. I used to get them pretty frequently even before I was pregnant with Brooklynn and then while I was pregnant with her all I had to do was move my toes the wrong way and they would instantly cramp. No fun and definitely not something that I am excited to have return, especially since I don't recall experiencing any cramps since Brooklynn was born.
One thing that I am excited has not shown up yet (knock on wood!) is heartburn. I remember taking a bite of salsa in my first trimester with Brooklynn and I had almost instant heartburn. I pretty much stopped eating spicy food with her (which seriously decreased my tolerance for my love of spicy food). And even without spicy food I still had heartburn pretty much constantly. With this little bundle I have been eating tons of tabasco and I had a jalapeno burger last Friday. I have yet to experience any heartburn! I wanted to test it out last night, so I had some of my mom's buffalo chicken wings (even though I hate eating meat on a bone). Nothing! Let's hope it never shows up!
We are so excited for our next ultrasound and to find out what this baby is!! We find out later this week, feel free to place your guesses!

We bought.....

....A HOUSE!!!!

That's right, we are now officially homeowners! We found a super deal on a multi-family home. We have a 3 bedroom 1 1/2 bath home and a one bedroom detached apartment. So not only will be homeowners, we will be landlords. Scary, right?!

It is without a doubt a fixer-upper and it has tons of potential. Because we don't have tens of thousands of dollars laying around to do the work ourselves we went with a rehab loan. So the cost of fixing the two houses will be wrapped up into our mortgage and we will have a contractor do the heavy work for us, which will take like 3-6 weeks. We will do the easy stuff. Like paint and replace doors (because interior doors would cost like $200-300 through the contractor because of labor. Crazy, right?!) and of course decorate! I am so excited to decorate! I never really did much by way of decoration in either of our places the last 3 1/2 years because they never really felt like "ours." Well, now it is most certainly ours and there is so much fun decorating that will be happening.
I am so happy that the loan process is finally over! It took FOREVER....like nearly 5 months. We put an offer in on the house in September and were on track to be done with the loan and in the house by the end of the year. We were going through a family friend to obtain the loan through Bank of America. A few weeks into the process he was told that BoA was no longer going to allow outside lenders to offer their loans. He talked them into letting him finish ours. He was just about to get into the meat and potatoes of the process and he was told that he was not going to be able to finish our loan. So we had to go directly through BoA and they started completely over and did so at a snail's pace. They kept saying things would happen by a certain time and then it would actually happen like 2-4 weeks later. We had to get like 3 or 4 extensions, all of which they said they could close the file by and then couldn't. It was absolutely frustrating!! But it is finally OVER!! And now the real fun begins!

Gymnastics

I've been wanting to sign Brooklynn up for gymnastics for quite a while now. I finally got Eric on board with the idea (probably because our Parks and Rec department offers it for $33/month) and intended to sign her up starting in January. Oops! Totally forgot!!
Last Friday I got a great reminder that our little girl needs to try out gymnastics. Brooklynn was playing around and she had her head on the floor and her butt in the air and she just kicked her feet over and did a somersault! I know, I know. It was totally not intentional. But she realized how cool it was after it happened and then she did like 3-4 more, and those were intentional. So I called that afternoon and signed our little Monkey up!
We had her first class tonight and it was tons of fun (and super tiring for this mommy). We were waiting for her class to start she kept saying "play! play!" She did really well considering it was her first time and she's really not used to such structured "playing." Her favorite part was jumping down the long trampoline but she also like swinging on the bar.
It was so crazy trying to keep her in line and not running off and helping her do all the different things that I wasn't really able to take any pictures, maybe someday someone will be able to go with me and they can be the photographer.

Off we go....so excited!!

It's really blurry because she was moving so fast, but
you can still see how much fun she was having.