Good news!

I'm excited to announce that we went to the doctor yesterday for another ultrasound and I now have all my privileges reinstated!! Tear is healed and baby looks good, so we are very grateful.  As promised, I took Alexa to the park to celebrate.  We went swinging and ran around looking for flowers (dandelions). She has to stop and touch every flower she finds :).

She insisted that her puppy come along.

Maybe because she's a lazy bum and wanted to use him as a pillow!!

We didn't get any really good ultrasound pictures from the tech (I should have made special requests!), but we saw lots of baby!  This was the ultrasound (20 weeks) where they check every little thing developing - every section of the brain, spine, chambers of the heart, kidneys, diaphragm, fingers, toes, blood flow, placenta, cord, measurements of head and waist (baby is 4 days bigger than the due date), etc. etc.  It's so fascinating to see all of that already developed and so teeny tiny!!  Baby was completely folded in half, playing with its hands with its feet up by its head.  Glad Kyle got off work early to come with me!

Alexa's favorite toys these days are fuzzy little pom poms (taking them in and out of containers), snaps and buttons (taking things on and off), stuffed animals, balls, and anything else she can take in and out of bags/containers.  She has started sniffing things a lot, so we may have a weird little fetish on our hands, we’ll see.  Her favorite food to eat while teething is corn on the cob.  She just picks it up and gnaws on it.  Cold broccoli stems kind of work, too, but she doesn’t eat them at all like the corn.  

She has started looking at pictures and pointing to the people in them, especially mommy and daddy.  It’s cute because she’ll do it all around the house with our pictures on the wall.  Oh, and she calls herself "baby" instead of Alexa in the pictures.  Her vocabulary is growing soo fast, and I can’t believe how many new words she learns each week!  This morning she grabbed my elbow and said “elbow” out of the blue.  I just stared at her in amazement.

Here's a video from last week of her feeding Kyle dinner.  She thought it was hilarious, and was laughing sooo hard before I started recording.  She loves to watch the video and laugh and clap for herself.

And a picture of her laying Kyle down for a nap :).  He got home from work and was putting her down for her afternoon nap, but when he told her it was time for a nap she ran over to her closet and pulled out all her blankets one by one and started putting them on daddy.

She’s transitioning between 1 and 2 naps right now, and only really takes a morning nap a couple days a week, but is still tired enough to need a little bit of rest every morning.  Sometimes that may just be laying there for 10 minutes and then jumping up or talking to herself.

Mike came and stayed with us last weekend while Peggy and Paul were gone visiting Grandma and Grandpa Swingle in AZ.  Kyle and Mike even got Todd to come down and play Super Smash, so life was complete.  Alexa joined in on the fun.

I made a new diaper bag this week and it was a really fun project!  It actually wasn’t as bad or time consuming as I thought it would be.  Complete with hidden zippers and sippy cup / bottle pockets.  I love scrap fabric (recognize this pattern, Malori?)!

One last random story.  We asked Craig what he wanted in a package we mailed to him last week in the MTC -- told him that I would make him anything -- homemade bread and jam, brownies, cookies, etc etc.  What does the kid ask for?  Chili Mac!!!  So we mailed him a huge bowl to cook the macaroni and cheese in the microwave, a pop top can of Chili, butter powder and milk powder all measured out so he just needed to add water, etc.  I laughed so hard that he really had us send him macaroni and cheese and a can of chili!