Halfway!

Here's a cute picture of Preston and I with my 20 week tummy! As a comparison, here is my 20 week photo from when I was pregnant with Preston. I wasn't even wearing maternity clothes at that stage... I guess since I got soooo big towards the end that my muscles and ligaments are a bit over-stretched so not as elastic and firm as I was the first time around.

Nearly half way!

Wow, can't believe I'm nearly half way through my pregnancy. With Preston, every week seemed to drag on forever and I couldn't wait, but now that I know what I'm in for it's less 'exciting' and more practical, plus I'm usually too busy with Preston to be thinking about much else! On Friday when I am officially 20 weeks, I'll post a picture of my growing tummy - I'm sure it's bigger at this point than with Preston (I'm probably saggier I guess).

Here is the latest developmental news from Babycenter.com:

Your baby's sensory development is exploding! Her brain is designating specialized areas for smell, taste, hearing, vision, and touch. Some research suggests that she may be able to hear your voice now, so don't be shy about reading aloud, talking to her, or singing a happy tune if the mood strikes you. Your baby weighs about 8 1/2 ounces and measures 6 inches, head to bottom — about the size of a large heirloom tomato. Her arms and legs are in the right proportions to each other and the rest of her body now. Her kidneys continue to make urine and the hair on her scalp is sprouting. A waxy protective coating called the vernix caseosa is forming on her skin to prevent it from pickling in the amniotic fluid.

And this is what Preston should be able to do at the moment:


Names one color - well he knows pretty much all the colours
Count to 3 - er, we taught him up to 20 ages ago, and he counts backwards from 10
• Names one friend - he knows the names of EVERYONE
• Carries on a simple conversation - at great length, and often quite complex conversations!
• Alternates feet going up and down stairs - yes
• Uses prepositions (e.g., on, in, over) - yes, he thinks it's hilarious when we purposely get it wrong and he corrects us
• Speaks clearly most of the time (75 percent can be understood) - that's about right, maybe a little more
• Stacks eight blocks - block stacking is soooo last year, but he likes to build towers with his Duplo and Lego
• Is toilet trained during the day - pretty much
• Wiggles thumb - i'm sure he could do this when he was a baby as he would have done that for his baby sign language
• Expresses a wide range of emotions - most definitely!
• Draws a stick figure - the drawing has kind of been put to the side a bit (although he does a lot of art at daycare), and instead of drawing at home, he's become the master of technology. His precision with the stylus on the Nintendo is amazing and he is really good at lots of games. He also loves his computer and plays fun educational games and likes to type his name whenever possible. I'm sure he'll get to drawing stick figures eventually - it's just the computer literacy came first!

Clever Preston's morning news

At daycare, they have morning news where the kids get up and talk about something interesting. Usually it's a new toy they've brought along or something. I was there this morning at news time and Preston managed to completely bewilder his teachers! He says:

"Good morning everyone" (good morning Preston),
"I bought a snow suit on the internet." (the teachers were completely confused and laughed at the thought of Preston understanding the concept of internet shopping. I said it was true.)
Then, "Daddy's friend Jonny came to stay in the weekend to play Rock Band." (They didn't understand what this meant so made him say it 3 times to be sure, and each time he repeated it clearly. Eventually they decided that Dan and Jonny are in a band. Preston said he plays too, and they were confused even more so I explained it was a playstation game.)

I just thought it was so funny that he is so high-tech that other people just don't get him sometimes.

18 week scan

Here is our baby at 18 weeks gestation. We had our anatomy scan today - all is looking great! They wouldn't do the 4D scan like we had with Preston because it's too early (we had Preston's scan at 20 weeks), but we have to have a heart scan at 24 weeks so should get some better detail then. The heart scan is just because the baby is at a slightly higher risk of having a heart defect since there was the enlarged nuchal area, but from what could be seen today, the radiologist didn't expect there to be any problems at all. Also the nuchal area has resolved so that is a relief too.

So they scan through all of the baby's anatomy to check for problems and to check function. Everything was in the right place and doing the right thing so it makes me feel much more confident that all will be ok and the stupid stressful scare we had was just a precaution and there's nothing to worry about.

We've got a video of the scan, so I'll get Dan to edit the interesting bits and post it up.

It feels a lot more real now that I can see a properly-forming baby growing and can feel it kicking me. I told Preston this morning that the baby was kicking me and then I had to take it back as i could see his little mind ticking over the fact that maybe he could kick me and I might not be mad!

Preston's checkout

Not much to do today so in an attempt to keep the peace, I gave Preston a big toy that we bought him ages ago to pull out whenever we needed. It's a supermarket checkout! It has little pretend groceries and a till with money, buttons, lcd screen and even a little scanner area that you put the groceries on to find out how much they cost. Then when you're ready to pay, you can choose to pay by cash (notes and coins provided) or by credit card with the little eftpos machine. Oh, and there is even a microphone so you can say "Preston to checkout 3 please!" which he finds extremely entertaining!

We have our 18 week scan tomorrow which is exciting! I'm feeling lots of kicking now that is growing in intensity daily. I think I'm going to be in for another pregnancy kick-a-thon like I was with Preston.

Been doing knitting and cross stitch lately - I must get Preston's Mr Men alphabet chart finished before his birthday (since it wasn't done for the last 2!), and I've decided to do some more of the dinosaur I started last year.... it's very tedious but I completed a leg last night so now I feel motivated to do another.

Will add photos/video of our scan tomorrow.

locked in the car, and holidays

Had a bit of a crisis on Friday. I picked up Preston from daycare and he was being a mischief and running around inside the car, pressing any button he could see. I put my bag in the car so I could reach in and I eventually caught him and buckled him into his carseat and shut the door with a sigh of relief. Then my relief turned to horror as I saw that in his button pressing, he'd locked the car! With him strapped in, and my keys in my bag! OH NO! Luckily daycare was still open so I ran back in and called Dan, who had just battled through rush hour traffic to get into town. I had to make him battle the traffic all the way home again so he could pick up my spare remote (lucky I just bought one) and come to save us (before battling the traffic again back into town, poor Dan!). This all took quite some time as you can imagine, and all I could do was talk to Preston through the window. All he wanted was a cuddle, and he was getting extremely upset that I wouldn't just open the door and give him one. I decided to try to get him out of his seat so he could get my keys, and explained to him how to undo his carseat. Of course, they are completely childproof so he was getting very upset and yelling over and over, "Mummy I'm not strong enough! I need help!". I tried to get him to take his arms out from under the straps, and he got one out, but the other was just too tight, and this made him even more upset. We were completely helpless. I was trapped outside and he was absolutely beside himself trapped inside. Luckily, Dan turned up eventually and saved us! We all had a big cuddle and found some yummy treats for poor Preston. What an ordeal!

We went away for the weekend to One Tree Point for a Dad's birthday / Father's Day combo. Andrew and Natalie came up too so it was a big family weekend with lots of yummy food and beach fun. Check out some cool photos Dan took at www.flickr.com/regen, especially my fancy profiterole tower I made for dessert!

Here is Preston having fun sliding down a sand dune at Ruakaka beach:

This wasn't taken over the weekend, but is an example of how cool Preston is:
We've been invited away for a weekend at the snow next month, hooray! So today Preston and I bought this from Trademe so he can be dressed for the mountain. He's very excited about wearing it to make a snowman.

As big as an avocado!

Our baby is about as big as an avocado from head to bum (legs are not counted in the length as they get all folded up and are too hard to measure). I have more than an avocado sized tummy however and am rapidly outgrowing my normal clothes. I've got a whole lot of maternity clothes all ready but I'm not sure if I want to jump into them yet. But... some really nice maternity jeans just arrived by courier and I tried them on and they are sooooo much more comfortable than anything else I've been wearing lately so they might become my new favourite jeans.