Edisto Part 2

More beach pictures!  Hopefully they're not boring, being so many, but I sure do think they're cute :)  Case in point:  Ben's "smile" for the camera...

Looking cute at a shrimp boil we went to one night:

Mark and Ben ~ I do think Ben's got his daddy's feet :)

Mama and Ben (and Anna!)

This one's alive!!  Ben liked finding these and would say "CRAB!"

More naps - this time with Daddy.

Ben's absolute favorite thing to do is play with water in any way...here he is with Grandaddy.

The whole gang (except Grandmama and Grandaddy, who were taking the pictures and getting Ben to smile!)

Edisto 2011

This year, we tried out a new beach for our summer vacation.  We went to Edisto Beach, SC with the whole family, and Grandmama and Grandaddy!  Ben was LOVING all the family time, of course.  We had a great time just relaxing on the beach, as that is really just about all there is to do there, ha!! 

One thing we thought was really cool was that there were SO many dolphins!  You could look out at almost any time and after a minute, see several swimming in front of you.  Fun!  Ben was a little hesitant about the sand and water at first, saying, "UH OH!" about his feet being sandy.  We laughed and laughed and just told him he's going to be sandy for the next week or so!!

He got used to it pretty quickly, thank goodness.  I guess he still didn't like it, though, because at least once a day he'd ask me to go "home"...one day he even asked me a few times for "home" and "bath" ~ ha ha!!

There were so many great pictures from our trip, I couldn't decide, so I'm going to make two posts from them all....here are the first few.

Ben eating his favorite food, Oreos.

Finally getting used to being sandy!

Fishing with brother Chandler...

and Mason!

 I'm so cute!!!

Fun times splashing Daddy :)

Napping on Mama's lap at the beach (Love Mason's action shot eating lunch in the background!)

"Otter Island" (no, there were no actual otters..ha ha)

Allllllmost Two!

Only a week and a half until my baby is TWO!  Here are a few pictures of him lately that make me smile :)

Ben's favorite pair of shoes are his boots.  He has yet to wear them in actual rain, but wants to put them on all the time!  The cowboy hat is fun, too, but a bit too small....ha!

Still wearing his rain boots....a favorite outside activity lately is to play with the water hose.  At first he wasn't strong enough to pull the handle, but he quickly figured out a way!  He's pretty good about not squirting water in the garage when we tell him not to, but it is everywhere else!  That little booger has actually squirted both of us with water in the face a time or two as we were coming over....REAL funny as long as you're not the one getting wet!

Ben also had his first visit to the dentist last month.  He's got all his baby teeth in except for three molars.  Dr. Bowers was really great with him, even though he absolutely did NOT want to open up -  not even just for a look!  I guess we'll attempt a cleaning next time :)

Ben and Bunny.  Bunny's presence is requested/required at every nap and night-night time.  He's already getting a little worn and dirty, but thank goodness, they sell more "Bunnies" on Amazon.  I've got the page bookmarked in case Bunny #1 goes missing!!

Some highlights for "What's New?" with Ben...

He's very loving lately, giving us lots of kisses and wanting to snuggle.  This makes my day!!  Sometimes he comes up and says, "I love you, Mama" totally unsolicited!  When I'm rocking him for a nap, he'll often reach up and touch my face and say I love you....

Ben asks for "appy jacks" and Oreos all the time...at dinner every night, even though we NEVER have them for a meal, ha!  He also asks for eggs a lot, and likes them with ketchup. (He must have gotten this from his Dad!!)

Favorite Books:  Yummy, Yucky and I Spy

Funny sayings:  “Mama Eat It!” when I'm trying to feed him something he doesn't want, and "Baby Aunt Anne" is what he calls Baby Anna because I taught him Aunt Anne's name right before we told him about Anna, and the two just run together, I guess!

Mr. Smarty Pants knows how to open childproof bottles and unlock deadbolted doors (yikes!) and can count to 20 and knows all his ABC's by name and in song!

Ben and big brother Chandler playing with dandelions and blow pops at Mason's baseball game:

Jonesborough Days

Today, Ben and I had a great time at "Jonesborough Days".  We'd never been this local festival before, so decided to brave the 90° heat to check it out.  It was VERY hot and tiring (Mama had to rest for FOUR HOURS when we got home, ha ha!!) but turned out to be all worth it....check out the video of Ben on the train ride!!  He loved it!

Here he is watching the parade.  He really liked the firetrucks...

Major refreshments were in order to survive this heat!

Ringing the bell on the choo choo :)  (AND, riding all by himself, too!  I couldn't believe what a big boy he was being.  He only tried to stand up once or twice before we got moving...thank goodness for the seatbelt!)

What a smile!!!  It makes my heart sing :)

Here's a video of Ben's first train ride!!

28 Weeks and On the Mend

Well, today Little Anna is 28 weeks along.  That means that she weighs over 2 pounds and is almost 15 inches long!  She can now blink her eyes and is putting on fat in preparation for life in the outside world. 

So, we have two things to celebrate at 28 weeks:  we're now in the third trimester, and am officially off bedrest!  Whoo hoo!  The bedrest was just for a week, but boy did I feel like I wasn't getting a THING accomplished!  Here's what happened last week...

A week and half ago, I had terrible flu-like symptoms, so I left work headed for the OB's office.  They checked me out and said it was probably just a virus and to come back in two days if I didn't feel better.  But, by dinnertime, I was so miserable, I called the on-call doctor and he advised me to come in based on my symptoms.

So, Mark took me to the Franklin Woods Hospital ER where they immediately took me back since I had talked to Dr. Hallman earlier (yay!  No waiting ~ whew!).  It was evident I was dehydrated, so they hooked me up to an IV and started doing tests...white blood counts, cell type counts, vitamin levels, temperature, lots of baby monitoring, flu swabs, etc.  My blood counts came back slightly elevated indicating some infection, but they just weren't sure. 

So, I stayed the night.  The flu test came back negative.  Then finally a culture came back showing an odd protozoa called Cryptosporidium. 

"Crypto"sporidium...is that like "Crypto"nite?  It sure felt like it could take Superman down!!

Apparently I had picked this up either in the pool at the beach the week before or in Boone Lake that Sunday.  It was odd, though, that I really only dipped in waist-deep both places, and no one else that was with me was sick.  So, apparently I just became sick because I was pregnant and the immune system is a little down in pregnancy.

Finally after 3 nights in the hospital, hooked to an IV for rehydration the whole time, my symptoms went away and I started to feel better and be able to eat again.  Thank goodness they did put me on bedrest (therefore out of work) for a week, though, because I've never been so weak in my life!  Thank goodness for Mark, because I have no clue how I would have handled little firecracker Ben in that state.  Fortunately, I was able to rest and each day got a lot better.  My checkup yesterday with the doctor went well, baby looked great, and so now we're on our way back to normal ~ whew!!

In baby news, Anna is kicking a LOT these days!  She really gets active when something tightens on my stomach, like tight pants or the monitor they use to check her heartbeat.  Last week, I felt her get the hiccups for the first time!  Coming up:  in two weeks, it's time already for the 3D/4D ultrasound!  We're so excited and totally curious to see if she resembles Ben in utero or not....we should have some neat pictures and maybe even a video from that!!!

I've really been thinking hard about her nursery lately.  I have two totally different ideas of "looks" for the room, and am having a hard time either picking one, or trying to incorporate little bits of both into a coordinated third idea room....either way, I better get going SOON ~ only 12 more weeks until we meet our baby girl!! :)

Briarwood Safari 2011

Our most recent adventure (besides being locked in the car, ha!!) was to the Briarwood Safari.  It's about an hour from Johnson City out in the middle of nowhere...but absolutely FULL of really cool animals just roaming around for you to see!  You drive through in your car "Jurassic Park" style and can feed them.  This, of course, attacts them to your vehicle so you can get a closer look. 

So, we bought 7 buckets of feed, and we were off into the safari.  The first animals that you come to are the emus...or, as we called them:  Veloceraptors.  They were JUST LIKE the ones in Jurassic Park that stalked the car the whole way through!!  It was a little scary at first - we had our windows TOO far down, because they just about climbed in the car with us ~ yikes!  They were really after that food, and we got a huge laugh at how jumpy we were over a bunch of birds pecking at those buckets.

Mason and Chandler had a ball feeding the animals.  Ben was interested for a few minutes, but mostly just enjoyed "driving"...as you recall, his MOST favorite thing to do :)

There were some REALLY big animals there like buffalos and zebras, water buffalo, etc..so we mostly just fed them by hanging out the sunroof.  That way, they weren't in our face, slobbering in the car. Thank goodness, because some of them were pretty disgusting up close.  Mark had a nice concoction of chewed up food pellets and buffalo slobber nicely smeared on his window by the buffalo's crusty beard...Mmmmm!

Mason had fun playing with the "Zorse" (cross between a zebra and a horse), and here's Chandler up close and personal with some kind of llama or something.  We all really like the deer...they were gentle and you could feed them out of your window.  Ben even kept saying, "Bye bye deer!"



25 Weeks

Wow!  Only 15 more weeks to go...This little baby feels like she's "cooking" a lot faster than Ben did, ha!!  Lately, she's been kicking a TON, making my belly bounce and jiggle all around :)  I had another doctor's visit this week to take the awful Glucose Tolerance test - thankfully, I passed it just fine so I won't have to drink that terrible stuff anymore.  I did test a little low for hemoglobin, so need to start taking an iron supplement. 

I was looking to see if I had any ultrasound pictures I hadn't posted yet, because I"m not really in the mood to post another belly shot right now, LOL!!!  I didn't have any, but did realize I hadn't posted this of when we announced that we were having a baby (and didn't yet know the gender!!)

I made this little sign to go with the pink and blue cupcakes I took to work that day (and, of course, sent some to work with Mark, too!).  It was SO cute, because just about everyone came by my cubicle that day to let me know that they were going to eat a PINK cupcake for me!! Ha, ha!!  I think by sheer force, our coworkers and friends willed us a girl!!

Since she did end up being a girl, we already had a name picked out for the most part.  We had picked it the first pregnancy before we knew what we were having.  Since I was just about worn out the first time around with so, so, so many questions about "What are you going to name him?"....I was ready to get it out there what this little girl's name was going to be!! 

On Mother's Day, we had brunch with Mark's mom Susanah and his stepdad Raoul, and announced then that we would be naming her  ~ Susanah Julia Williams ~ and calling her "Anna".  We just love the name Anna and were honored to name her after Mark's mom, and since I'm the fifth generation of "Julias" in my mom's family, we though it would be great to carry on that tradition and have Anna be the sixth generation to have that name :) 

We can't wait to meet you, Miss Anna!!

Ben's First Easter Egg Hunt!

This year was the first year Ben could understand some of the whole Easter thing, so we were all excited about his very first Easter Egg Hunt!  We spent a beautiful Easter afternoon at Grandmama's and Grandaddy's house, eating brunch and dyeing eggs (well, Mason and Chandler made some GREAT eggs; Ben would have made a GREAT BIG mess!!)

Then is was finally time for the hunt!!

Mama and Ben had "practiced" a little bit in our yard that weekend, just to make sure he knew the drill and he had a ball, so we knew this would be fun :)

The whole gang....

Ben with Mama....

...& Dada

...and big brothers "May May" and "Bo Bo" (Mason and Chandler's self-chosen nicknames!!)

My Lil' Monkey Goes to the Zoo

Last month, we took Ben on his first trip to a zoo!  We went on a gorgeous Saturday to the Knoxville Zoo and had a fabulous day :)  Lately, he's been a little anti-stroller, so I was worried about that, but really, at his age...it was going to be stroller or nothing at a place like the zoo.  Fortunately, he did GREAT.

First stop:  the penguins.  Some of the animals were a little difficult to see from a stroller, but these little guys were right on Ben's level ~ he loved them!

Here's his cute little safety tattoo...I thought he'd hate it since he's not into Band-Aids these days, but Mark and I talked it up about being cool, and he didn't mind it a bit! 

Next stop after the penguins was the camels.  These guys were fenced in, but you could pet them as they stuck their heads over the fence, and even pay to ride on them!!

I think the Merry-Go-Round was one of Ben's favorite things...he was such a big boy riding it!!

The Knoxville Zoo has a wonderful, entire area just for little children.  We spent a lot of time here on the slides, Merry-Go-Round, and petting zoo...here's Ben brushing a goat!

We also got to see monkeys, elephants, lots of snakes, giraffes, really cute meerkats, and of course, lions and tigers. 

Whew! As soon as we headed for the car, Little Man was OUT!  What a big, fun day for us all :)

Our Excitement for the Day

I may have mentioned it in an earlier post, but Ben's MOST favorite thing to do lately is to "drive".  He is just crazy about simply sitting in the parked car (ignition off, of course) and pushing all the buttons and opening/closing the garage door a hundred times.  (All I can think of is "Wonder how much sooner we're going to have to buy a new garage door motor because of this??").  He will even ask for the keys and say, "Bye bye"...as in..."Close the door and let me drive by myself"..ha!!

So, we typically let him do all this while we're outside doing other stuff, and be SURE to open at least one other door and/or window since he has the keys in there.  Welllll.....even the best plans go awry once in a while. 

Yes, Ben got locked in the car today :(  Poor little thing thought it was funny for about 10 minutes, and then bawled for the next 20 minutes until Pop-A-Lock got there.  You see, we only have one set of keys to my car.  That little booger somehow managed to hold onto the keys, open the driver door, hit the lock button on it, close it, then climb in the back driver door that I had opened so this exact thing wouldn't happen, and close it - while I was unloading our bags just from the garage to the dining room (not far!) from our trip to Gastonia this weekend. 

Well...lesson learned (by me,  not him - he wanted to drive again less than an hour later!!!)....1). no more driving with the keys, even with other doors open.  And 2).  Call Pop-A-Lock if it even happens again.  They were there in 20 minutes and it's FREE if a child is locked inside the car, LOL!!!

My poor baby...he was fine until I put him down to capture the moment for all eternity ;)

Two Months Away from TWO!

Twenty-two months old...Wow!  Ben was just turning one yesterday, it seems!  Little Man is growing and changing so much lately, and it's SO cute :)  He is really into copying us these days.  You never know what will come out of his mouth after it comes out of yours, ha ha!!  He also likes getting a laugh out of you, and knows that saying, "OH, Baby Bobo!" will do it (don't know where he came up with that?) so he hams it up for us often. 

Here we are watching Baby Einstein on the computer ~ love that snuggling! 

This is his "smile" when he's getting his picture taken...

A week or so ago, Ben had another little bug, and wasn't quite feeling himself :(

Daddy and Ben on the blowups at Rita's for the First Day of Spring! celebration

Trying on Daddy's shoes for size!!

Fun times at Wallabies at one of his first "real" birthday parties he attended.

21 Weeks and Counting ~ Over Halfway!

Last week, went to see Dr. Hallman for our next appointment, which came at 21 weeks.  He measured my belly and listened to her heartbeat and all was well with the baby :)  It was a pretty uneventful visit, thank goodness!  At 21 weeks, Baby Girl is now about 11 inches long and weighs just under a pound.  From the looks of my belly, she sure does seem bigger than that, ha ha!!!  Here's the progression starting at 10 weeks....

I'm pretty puzzled as to why 14 weeks and 20 weeks look almost the same ~ I think I was suffering from some serious bloating!  Whew...glad that's gone (for the moment ;) !!

Bathtime for Bonzo!

I don't know why, but Mark used to say that a lot when Ben was smaller and it was bathtime, and it always made me laugh. Well, Little Man was certainly due for a BIG bath after this episode at dinner Monday night!! And LAUGH, we did :)