Jared's Life is Coming Full Circle

To help you understand the title of this blog post, I need to tell you a little bit about Jared's childhood. He was welcomed into a wonderful family by his parents and three older sisters. A few years later, he got to welcome a new little sister into the family. So he had the opportunity to grow up with the influence of four wonderful sisters. I actually feel that marrying a man who is so used to being around women is great. Now in our own household, Jared is beginning to be outnumbered by females.

Somehow I forgot to mention the newest addition to our family in the Christmas post. Allie loves seeing the fish at Walmart and Petco, so we got a really pretty female Beta fish for her for Christmas. We call her, "Fish." Allie loves watching us feed Fish, and sometimes gets distracted by meals and points at Fish and says, "Fish, Fish, Fish..." (We can see her from our table.) She has brought a new form of entertainment and joy into the home. Fish is the first female that we are introducing to you in this post.

Fish

 Perhaps I should have introduced myself as the first female, since I was the first woman with Jared in his new family. I am the love of his life, and he is mine. We have almost been married three years, and I can honestly say that we have a wonderful marriage. We cannot recall any arguments between us, and we are truly each other's best friend. I consider myself so blessed to be his wife. (Female #2 in this post)

So surely you know who Female #3 will be. It is of course, our beautiful daughter, Allie. She is nearly 20 months now. I think that I comment on how busy she is in almost every post that is about her. Well, she is still as busy as ever. She continues to learn so much. She is good at recognizing and saying shapes; animals and animal sounds; and she loves music and dancing. She is beginning to recognize some letters, too. She knows O, U, and B consistently. She is catching on to other letters, but is not consistent with them, yet. She is trying to improve her climbing skills, despite her parents' attempts to dissuade her. She has put herself into some dangerous situations (i.e. climbing up to windowsills and onto the keys of a piano and then being stopped from going higher by Daddy). Luckily, we have caught her before she has had any falls from these high places. She has a funny sense of humor and can also be very sweet. She will occasionally come up to me and just give me a hug and kiss just because. And when I tell her thank you, she will do it again. Oh how we love our little Tornado Allie!!!

Daddy and his little girl

So who is Female #4? You may have guessed it by now, but we are pregnant with Baby Girl #2 and due July 2nd. I am 20 weeks pregnant today. Yea for halfway there! We are excited for Allie to have a little sister. She does not understand, yet. I doubt that she will until the baby is here. It is really going to rock her world. But we think that she will be a good big sister. I was quite sick until 17 weeks, and therefore did not do much of anything that did not need to be done. As a friend from church said, "I entered survival mode." Allie probably watched more TV than I would normally let her, and our floor completely disappeared at times due to Allie's toys being everywhere. And clearly, I got a little behind on the blogging. Jared has been absolutely wonderful! He did extra when it was tough due to his school load. I only have to change poopy diapers when I am home alone with Allie. And he still tells me I am beautiful, even when I am exhausted, have no make-up on, and have thrown-up. Now that is love! I am excited for Jared to have this fourth female come into his life. I know that he is going to be a great daddy for his two little girls.

Now here are some pictures of our little girl who is preparing to enter the world.

10 weeks
Profile (Baby looking down with head at left of picture)

Profile at 19.5 weeks

Bottom of Both Feet

Right Leg
(left image is of femur, right image is of shin bones and foot)

It's a girl!!!
(What you cannot see clearly in this scanned picture are three little lines that indicate that it is a girl.)

As mentioned above, Allie doesn't quite understand that there is a baby in Mommy's tummy. But I think that she has caught on to the word "baby" being said more. We had the infant car seat out for a few days because we needed to fix a part on it due to a recall. I told Allie that it was for the baby. She then put her baby doll in it, followed by her teddy bear, then her stuffed dog, Buddy, and lastly, herself. She's a little long for it, I think. It is amazing to think how big she is getting and how little the new baby will be in this car seat. 

Allie is preparing for the new arrival