Summer in Washington

The past few weeks we've been enjoying the summery Washington weather! I'm pretty sure people only live in Washington for the summers. Unfortunately, we haven't even had too many warm, non-rainy days, but the few we've had we've taken advantage of!

We've been to Coulon Beach/Park a few times

We went to Alki (Carter's first REAL time at the beach). Carter pretty much played with the sunscreen bottle the whole time. In all fairness, the sand was really hot.

Bringing Carter down to the water

Sticking his feet in...Carter HATED it! It's the Puget Sound, so it's pretty cold.

After his traumatic experience putting his feet in the water he wouldn't stop screaming until we walked further up the beach. Just the sound of the waves would get him going!

Playing at home, reaching for the camera

Carter likes to dump all his toys out of his toy bin. Our living room is basically a constant mess.

Carter's first time swimming! We brought him down to the apartment complex's pool and he hated it at first! He was whimpering for a long time until he finally got used to the water, then he seemed to have a good time...as long as he was holding on super tight to Mom or Dad. I'm almost positive it's not the water he hates, but the colder temperature of the water, because he LOVES baths.

I should have been taking pregnancy pictures before this but haven't...so here I am at 24 weeks. Oh, and I just got my hair cut ;)

Carter's not used to pictures being taken without him being in them, so he came to join me ;)

Other than our small daily adventures, life is pretty much the same as always. We decided to name our next baby Landon John Wallo and are looking forward to his arrival as always! At my last ultrasound he was measuring about a week small, but that's to be expected because of the medication I'm on. He's incredibly healthy and active otherwise! I'm still dealing with morning sickness everyday and can't wait till that's over. I think it was about 24-25 weeks when it subsided with Carter, but it doesn't seem to be waning at all, so we'll see. I also decided to follow my OB down to Tacoma! I just love her so much and couldn't fathom having to deliver with another doctor. It's so hard to find an amazing doctor that is your friend, an extremely skilled physician, and that you trust, so I'm not giving her up.

Tyler is busy as usual with work and Carter is growing like a weed! At his 1 year appointment he was about 25 lbs (80%) and 31 1/2" tall (95%). I'm glad I at least start off with small babies, because they sure do grow fast! He's continuing to make progress with his walking and prefers to walk until he falls, then will crawl. It's nice to see him taking the initiative and not getting deterred by stumbles. He's also attempting to talk a lot more, and loves to try and say any word with an "S" sound (especially shoes and juice). Carter and I are looking forward to our trip to Reno in a couple weeks and we're all looking forward to our California trip in August!

He's 1!

Our baby Carter is no longer a baby...yesterday he turned 1 year old!! Now he's a toddling toddler...I can hardly believe it! We've spent a lot of time reminiscing about the last year and how fast it's gone. It's crazy to think that our boy is getting so old. To celebrate we had a couple of Carter's little friends and their parents over (our apartment can't handle much more than that). It was pretty simple...snacks, cake, and presents. Carter had a really good time, though, and made out with a ton of loot! He loves all his new presents and is like a whole new child now. He was really getting tired of all his old toys, so now he's happy as could be! Here's some pictures and videos of the big day:

Carter decided to initiate walking all on his own (on his birthday!) without us even looking...naturally we were pretty excited when we noticed what he was doing and had to grab the camera ;)

This is the cake I made Carter for his birthday (with some help cutting and icing from Tyler). I was pretty darn proud of it since I have no sense of creativity whatsoever! I hope you can tell it's supposed to be a train cake.

Excited birthday boy!

Mommy with the birthday boy

Daddy with the birthday boy

Singing happy birthday and presenting the cake (he had no idea what was going on)

(Unfortunately the video of Carter eating his cake is too big to upload to blogger. Basically he stuck his finger in the icing and licked it a couple times, then got distracted smearing the icing on the balloons I'd tied to his high chair. I fed him a bit of the cake part with a fork and he seemed to like it but wanted me to feed him another bite. After that he was done. It was rather uneventful. I think he would've gone to town on it a little more if he hadn't just had dinner and some grapes.)

Opening presents!

After the first few presents Carter was really annoyed that we had to open more. He just wanted to play with the ones he'd already gotten!

Here are a couple other videos and pictures from the week or 2 before Carter's birthday:

I don't know who started this (I'm pretty sure Tyler) but Carter realized that when he did it he got a whole lot of attention, so now it's his new trick. We think it's pretty funny.

A few months ago I heard this strange sound on Carter's monitor when he was trying to go to sleep. I couldn't figure out for sure what it was, but had my suspicions that he was playing with the diaper genie next to his crib. Sure enough, I was finally able to get it on tape and see him do it in person.

Carter's first steps

The past few weeks have been busy for us as a family! I finished up the taping of the documentary that I will be a part of a couple weeks ago. For those of you who don't know about it, UWTV is doing a spotlight on the cardiology clinic that I attend, and they wanted to highlight one patient which happened to be me! I'm not sure why my cardiologist recommended me, but it was pretty fun to do. They interviewed me at our apartment, took some film of us playing as a family, and then did some footage of me chatting with my cardiologist. It should air sometime around July, so I'll let everyone know when it's on!
Carter has been growing by leaps and bounds! I've been a little worried that he hasn't been trying to speak or babble at all, but just grunts most of the time. However, he's officially started babbling, saying mamama and dadada and bababa and a mixture of other interesting sounds and consonants. He also took his first steps last night! I think it'll still be a while before he's walking around on his own, but he's definitely on his way!
My pregnancy is going pretty well, too. I'm still throwing up every day but have gotten a lot of my energy back which makes a big difference. I've felt this baby kicking since 15 weeks (with Carter it was 19 1/2!!! big difference!!) and he's incredibly active all the time. I did develop an umbilical hernia (like what Cohen and Carter both had when they were little) and apparently can expect it to get worse throughout my pregnancy. Apparently it's pretty common, though, and since mine is a little left of my belly button it's not sticking out or anything, yet. I also recently found out my OB is leaving so I've been incredibly bummed about that! She's one of the best if not THE best doctor I've ever had, so I'm determined to figure out a way to follow her, but we'll see.
Otherwise things are going really well for us! We're looking forward to Carter's first birthday in a couple weeks and will be sure to do another posting then!

We kept Carter in his baby tub for waaaay too long!

Such a bad sign...

Mmmm...Cheerios...

First time having a peanut butter sandwich...he kept shoving it into his mouth he loved it so much but then couldn't chew and swallow the mass!

After-bath hair

We finally broke down and put Carter in the big boy tub. He loves it!

Videos! The first is of Carter "talking", and the second is of him taking some of his first steps!

It's A...

BOY! That's right, we're having another little boy. We're getting excited to have two little rascals running around our home. Everything looked great on the ultrasound except that I have a small blood clot behind the placenta, but they're not worried about it at all. They couldn't see one chamber of the heart because of how the baby was laying, so I'll get another ultrasound in a month! Here's the first (well, the first that you can tell what it is) pictures of baby boy #2! (Sorry about the smudges on the pictures...apparently we need to clean our scanner!)

He's sucking his thumb! We've got an ultrasound picture of Carter sucking his thumb, too, but he was never much of a thumb sucker in the outside world.