Okay, okay...

So, I've gotten a bit of flack recently for not having updated my blog in a few weeks!  Morning sickness does that to you!  Good news, though: I am in the second trimester!  Hooray!  Starting last Saturday, I've actually been feeling pretty good, but that only comes after 7 weeks of not much fun.  I went to the doctor on Tuesday, and she says everything is looking pretty good, especially since at the worst point I was 10-14 lbs. less than I had been at my first doctor's appointment!  I'm still 7 lbs. lighter than I was pre-pregnancy, but I've generally been nausea-free this week.  (Of course I did catch a cold by the time I left the doctor's office on Tuesday, which made for a miserable Wednesday, but now I'm doing pretty okay again!)  I'm hoping that by Monday I'll actually start getting some of my energy back, too!  At least I got to hear the baby's heartbeat.  I was a little worried because the nurse couldn't find it, and then the doctor had a hard time finding it, but the little one finally came out of hiding before we had to do an ultrasound to find the heartbeat.  Speaking of ultrasounds, by the way, we are having ours on April 8th to make sure everything is growing as it should and, if the baby cooperates, we'll find out if Nicholas gets a brother or a sister.  We're all very excited about all of this! 

 

Other than morning sickness, we haven't been up to much the last few weeks.  A couple of weeks ago we had a pretty decent snowfall in the area, and Nicholas got to experience his first bit of sledding.  Unfortunately for him, I can't steer very well, so that made for a wild ride, but we had fun.  Nicholas has also started doing lots of new stuff.  He now signs when he's "all done" with eating (and even says something sounding kind of like "all done" when he does the sign), he will pat his belly every time we say the word belly, he spins around in circles all the time, much to my distress when I'm feeling a little queasy, he has started going down the stairs, and he's becoming quite the dancer whenever he hears any music playing.  He will be turning a year old in just 5 more weeks!  I can't believe how quickly this past year has gone!

Brandon is continuing to do well with school and work and church and family!  He's a busy guy!  He's really been so sweet to me, though, and I even caught him doing the dishes for me this morning, which is a big deal because he hates to do them so much.  We're looking forward to this quarter ending in just another two weeks so that we can all spend a little more time together.  I think Brandon has generally enjoyed his classes this quarter, though.  One night he even dreamt that his geology teacher had brought donuts to class.  The next day he actually told the professor this, who thought it was pretty amusing.  Brandon skipped his next geology class, though, because I wasn't doing well and Nicholas was running a fever (we found out later that day he had a double ear infection).  When he went to class the next time, his professor gave him a hard time because he actually had brought donuts to class because Brandon suggested it, and then Brandon wasn't even there!  Go figure!  His job at the airport has also been interesting lately.  With the Ohio primary just this week, they've had political people all over the state.  A few weeks ago Michelle Obama flew in through their terminal.  Brandon saw her, but didn't get to meet her with all of the secret service guys all over the place.  He was hoping to meet Barack Obama when he was in last week, but even though he flew in through Brandon's terminal, he didn't leave through it, but opted to drive to Dayton from Cincinnati instead.  

As for me, I just keep trying to move our lives along as smoothly as possible.  Even though this doesn't mean that I actually keep our home as clean as I'd like or that Brandon doesn't get as many hot meals as he'd like, we're doing pretty well.  (And now that I'm feeling better, Brandon seems to be eating better, too!  Thanks to those of you who have made us some meals, though!)  I've started working on some goals that I want to accomplish this year for my sanity and to make me feel like I'm actually doing something productive.  Each week I've been trying to have one day be a Nicholas and Mommy "play day" where I don't worry about housework, laundry, etc and I just let myself enjoy being his mom, and we do something special together.  The funny thing is that I've come to find when I do this, I also seem to find time to get some of those other things done, too!  I've also been doing the familysearch indexing program.  I try to do 200 names a week, and will usually hit this mark.  I think this is mainly because Brandon's gone in the evenings, and I actually get a chance to use the computer!  Amidst all this busy-ness, Brandon and I also got to go on our first date together in a few months when we went and saw the musical "Little Women" at the University of Cincinnati last Saturday.  It was a lot of fun, and we agree that we need to get out more often.  

That's us for now!  I hope you all actually made it to the end of this post, and I don't blame you if you didn't-it was a long one!