Yay!  I'm gonna be the best big brother!!

I think I finally have enough scientific evidence to formally, publically announce that Mr. Harry will be a big brother!!  I have made it to 16 weeks so far, and the chances of something going sour gets less and less every day.  We are so head-over-heels excited!...also very apprehensive and nervous about adding another little one to our crazy schedules, but I'm trying hard not to focus on that part!  So far, we have been to the docor twice, and we have even had an ultrasound at 10 weeks!  That was pretty exciting for us since I only had one with Harry.  Everything has gone pretty smoothly, except I have been a lot more sick with this pregnancy than I was with Harry!  In fact, when I went to the doctor last week I hadn't gained any weight from the previous appointment and I'm pretty sure it was because it was so difficult to keep things down.  I still have some bad days, but they are getting fewer and further between.  The doctor was able to pick up the baby's heartbeat right away last week, and it was a healthy 155bpm.  So far, the signs are pointing to a girl (sickness, fast heart rate) but I absolutely do not buy into that since I was so convinced that Harry was a girl!  I 100%; do not care what we have.  A boy would be great because it would be so great for Harry to have a brother, and a girl would be wonderful too since that would be a new experience for us.  Whatever God decides to bless us with is more than fine with us!  4 more weeks until the big ultrasound day!

Last weekend we headed down to Tennessee to visit with Nana, Poppy, Brian, Sara, and finally...Baby Brady!  With some crazy things going on with our rental property and the markets we hadn't been able to get down there since the baby was born.  He is so, so sweet and we were so excited to finally get to meet him.  I was really curious to see how Harry would react to him since he will soon have a little baby around all of the time to contend with.  He was so good around him that he exceeded all of my expectations!  It was almost like he instinctively knew to be gentle with him, and he even gave him a hug and a kiss while I was holding him.  We had a lot of fun in Tennessee, and we wish we could have stayed a lot longer than we did! 

Hard at Play

I think our extensive Elmo DVD watching to and from Tennessee has paid some dividends!  Harry can now officially identify his ears, head, mouth, hands, and my personal favorite...feet and toes!  It is so cute when he sticks his little feet in the air when you ask him to!  It is so amazing how much kids can change from week to week! 

Mommy, PLEEEEEASE turn Elmo on!

Cute new words/sayings:  "Elmo" (said when Nana asked him where he wanted to go when he was trying to open the door...Elmo was in the car!), "No, Mommy" (first time he put two words together! said when eating and he was definitely done), "Bye!" (yelled at the day care kids when I picked him up yesterday.  He waves bye all of the time, but I have never heard him say it before then.).  When we got home from Tennessee on Monday, he was so excited to see the animals but the dogs were still at Mom's.  When he saw the Roxy the cat, he said "Doggie!"  I said, "no, that's a kitty cat".  He said, "Oooohhh.  Kii cah!"  Smarty pants in the making!!

We have started a bad, very bad thing.  When we bought our super-bad minivan last Spring, Travis insisted on getting a model that included a DVD player.  I wasn't so hip on the idea.  Surely kids/passengers can find something interesting to do in the car that doesn't involve TV, right?  You know, old fashioned things like reading, talking, playing games.  But I backed down, and our vehicle is equipped with a very nice, built-in DVD player that wasn't used much.  That is, until now.  I'm not really sure how it got started, but Payton and Janson left their copy of The Incredibles in the player when we went to Tennessee over July 4th weekend.  Every once in a great while, we would turn it on when were in the car for a while or if Harry was overly fussy.  Then I noticed that he started to point at it like he wanted it on.  Grrrr.  Just what I didn't want!  Except, well, he is so cute and convincing that he usually gets what he wants.  Then I made the ultimate mistake.  I bought an Elmo's World DVD on Friday (read again that part about how cute he is asking for the movie to come on...and I was tiring of hearing The Incredibles all of the time).  He looooooves Elmo Has Two!, which is a cinematic masterpiece about Elmo discussing the joys of hands, ears, and feet.  The happiness it brings him is hard to describe.  If he is not cracking up laughing, he is transfixed on the screen with a half smile plastered on his face.  It's not all bad though.  He still doesn't watch TV at home very much (still too busy getting into everything else!) and I decided to only let him watch it when we have to go on a longer car trip.  He got to watch it today since I took him to Mom's while I'm at work.  It has also taught him to point out another body part--ears!  Before, he would only point out his head so Elmo must be doing some good! 

Harry has been developing a bossy attitude towards the dogs recently.  He loves to tell them "No, no, no, no!" for whatever they are doing at the time.  Usually it is when they are sitting by his highchair (he still feeds them food) or eating their own food!  Do you think he has heard us say "no" a lot to both him and the dogs over the past year??  He also likes to help us get them into the room they stay in while we are gone, except this time the command is "Go, go, go!".  As if they didn't resent him enough!

Here are two, funny new words said in the past week or so:  nine (Mom has been trying to get him to count to ten, and he will repeat a sound after all of the numbers, but nine is the only one that he says right!  Go figure.), and David (it is a kid in the afformentioned Elmo video).  Toddlers can be so random!