Up next...baby #2!!!

Written 6/21/15, updated and posted 8/19/15


That's right...we're expecting baby #2!!!

Our second child is due January 23, 2016!  We just had our first ultrasound last tuesday.  We saw it's tiny little heart beating!  I must say, seeing the heart beating for our second child is just as special as it was when we saw Erica's little heart beat for the first time!  From what we could tell, everything looks great and is proceeding normally!  We will have our next check up in a month, and 2 months from now, depending on our desires, we'll be able to see if we'll be expecting a baby brother or sister for Erica.

Laura and I were cued in on that newest bundle of joy around Memorial Day.  Laura had been pretty tired for a week or so and was generally feeling wiped out and had little energy.  I suspected maybe we had gotten lucky, but she didn't seem as confident.  She took a home test one morning before I went to school and told me as I came into the kitchen that it wasn't positive...and that the result likely didn't mean much because the tests had expired 2 years earlier.  As I was getting ready, I noticed the discarded test in the trash, and coincidentally, the little "+" sign was facing up, and very obviously displayed!  I finished getting ready and went to gather my things to head out to school and I told her, "I don't know which side you looked at, but it look more like a '+' sign than a '-' sign to me!"  She didn't seem to react much and I headed to school.  I was excited, but because Laura didn't react at all, I thought that maybe the test was expired...even though I didn't know something like that could expire.  I'm not sure if it was that day or the next, but over her lunch break, Laura went to Target and bought another test.  The next morning, I was the last one out of bed, so when I went into the bathroom, sitting neatly on the counter was the newest test displaying the same, bold "+" I saw previously!!!  Although it wasn't as big of breaking news as it was when we learned of Erica's existence, I was still super pumped to see that "+" sign again!!!

Erica has seemed to enjoy the idea of being a big sister. We've been talking with her more about a little sibling lately.  She has requested a boy and girl at separate times, so it's nice to see that she has an open mind! (heavy on the sarcasm!)  When I first told her that mommy has a baby in her tummy, she gave me a very strange look!  Since then, when we talk about the baby, she goes and gets her play baby doll and cuddles it while sitting with mommy, so we're optimistic that things should keep going well for this new transition for her/us!  Since finding out, we've only told our parents and Erica about our next bundle of joy.  However, according to my mom, Erica almost let the cat out of the bag last week when she took her to visit Granny.  She wasn't sure what took place, but Erica started saying something about "mommy" and "baby."  My mom didn't pick up on it right away, but she figured it out pretty quickly and apparently she shifted the conversation and played it off as Erica's random babbling of words!!!

But enough about us...Laura has been doing really well so far.  The past couple of weeks have been "ehhh" as Laura puts it.  She doesn't have full-blown morning sickness, but as she says it, just doesn't feel right or normal. She has found that she feels worse with an empty stomach, so she has tried to spread out her meals into smaller snacks to try and keep her stomach calm throughout the day.  She has been sleeping pretty well, but has started to feel some discomfort from some of the changes her body has already started to go through as it prepares for the arrival of our second child!

So, for now, that's all I have on this first post on the 2nd Edition of my Daddy Diary.  I'm ecstatic to be a dad to 2 little kids!  Erica has done nothing but bring endless love and happiness to my life and I can't imagine how rich my life will feel with twice as much love and happiness!  Although someday in the future, I'll wonder why I ever wanted 2 teenagers, right now...I'm full of happiness and anticipation!!!  Thanks again for checking out my Daddy Diary as I start out the next edition.  The updates will again pick up in pace.  I'm not sure if you noticed the slight hint in my previous post, but now that another child is on the way, I'll be typing away on this blog more frequently in the upcoming months to keep you up to date on life in our home!  Thanks again for sending your best wishes our way.  We greatly appreciate it!  Take care!

Here's a picture of an ultrasound from a few days ago (taken August 17) 

A two year old!!!

6/21/15

(Cheering on mommy this weekend at the marathon)

Happy Father's Day to me!!!  My last post was 6 1/2 months ago, and it was just one of the previous few posts that began with something like, "where did the time go?"  Well, I guess I'll follow that theme/trend...I can't begin to think about how much Erica has started doing since the last post!

I'll just begin by saying my little girl makes me smile and laugh so often!  She has developed a charming and funny personality!  She is very high-energy and never stops moving.  She never stops moving...one thing that hasn't changed since the day she was born.  She isn't mischievous, but she is constantly exploring and discovering the world around her.

She loves to climb...anything she can get a foot on, she will try to climb up and over!  Her slide in the backyard is full of foot holes, so she scales all 4 sides of it...including trying to make it up the slide itself.

Erica is definitely an outdoors girl that looks great in camo!!!

She is a talker!  She is very inquisitive, and as my parents said about me as a child, she, "never shuts up!" She babbles non-stop.  She has a pretty strong vocabulary and is doing really well at putting sentences together.  She's no longer just making sounds, but expressing ideas, emotions, and above all...her fun personality!  She is really good at making people laugh, and she knows it!  She makes voices, asks silly questions, uses a high-pitch "puppy voice" when talking to our dog, Lexi.  She's just awesome!

Erica was baptized on mid May with my cousin Holly and long-time buddy, "Scuba" Steve. 

She is a relatively "funky" eater!  I don't know how else to describe her with food.  She absolutely loves salmon, rice and peas.  In fact, those 3 things make up her favorite meal that she never refuses and often requests.  She loves fruit and most veggies, but beyond that, it's a crap shoot!  She typically loves steak, but some nights she doesn't even want to take a bite!  She refuses most breads (except rice, noodles and macaroni and cheese).  She is the only kid I know that doesn't want to even try pancakes, grilled cheese, or typical "kid foods" like that!  It's not like she tries it and doesn't like it, but she refuses to even take a bit and see what it's like.  Of course, she loves candy, especially suckers.  Lately, now that potty training is well under way, she loves fruit snacks!  If she goes potty, she gets a "fish"...either a shark fruit snack or a red Swedish Fish, which she refers to as an "uncle Jorj fish" because our neighbor (who we refer to as "Uncle Jorj") first gave her Swedish fish for something one night by a bonfire and let us keep the pack because he predicted that we'd need them for potty training!!!  If Erica tells us she needs to go to the bathroom, she gets 2 fish!!!  Our night time ritual includes a healthy snack!  After bath each night, we snuggle on the couch and eat fruit.  Over the winter we had oranges.  But now, it's typically blueberries or nectarines nowadays.  We are pumped that she loves fruit as much as she does, and that a healthy snack is a routine and something she looks forward to asks for each day!

Potty training has been hit or miss.  We started her several months ago because she very curious about the potty and what mommy or daddy would do in the bathroom, so we thought we'd try...especially because she was so excited to tell us when Lexi was pooping in the yard or on walks.  Since then, she's had mostly good days, with a few bad days in the mix.  She does the worst with me.  Maybe because I take potty training seriously and I don't want to clean up messes if there's a mishap in the bathroom. But she does really well going for Erica, but does the best with my parents.  They are very intentional about using the bathroom often and she will usually tell them when she needs to go...something that rarely happens for us.

Now that summer is in full swing, Erica is no longer going to her usual daycare every day.  We loved having her a mile from home and with an excellent daycare lady who she loved and who did a great job with Erica during the year.  She learned countless things over the school year that often left us scratching our heads and asking, "where'd she learn that?"  One thing we've heard more over the past month or so is "what's the password?"  While holding her in our arms, she'd ask to get down and we'd say, "no way."  She'd reply with, "what's the password?  The password is macaroni!"  I'm happy to report that the password has never changed, so I'm feeling confident if I ever end up in a pickle and need to convince her to do something with a password lock, I'll be able to figure it out!  If we aren't asked for a password, she may ask for our arms to open by saying, "open sesame!"  Again, we didn't teacher her either of those phrases, but they bring us tons of laughs when she uses them without prompting!

Funny faces with daddy

She loves going to the "boat store" (Cabelas) and climbing around the boats!

Beyond this, I don't even know where to start providing other updates!  Laura and everyone else that is around Erica often would list a million other things I left off this blog update, but I'll just wrap it up here.  The past few weeks have been a whirl wind start to our summer.  Erica has been bouncing back and forth between my parents' and our house due to a couple busy weekends and several busy days with my year-end meetings.  Laura ran her 2nd Grandma's Half Marathon yesterday and Erica, my parents and I were her cheerleaders again.  This morning, we all woke up and we sent Erica and Laura packing as they headed to the farm in ND to be with Laura's parents for a week.  Laura will come home next week, and Erica will stick around for a few extra days into the following week until I meet Russ and Cheryl somewhere in the middle and pick up Erica.  It's going to be a long week and a half without my girls (although I have Lexi in the house to keep me company)!  I have to admit, saying good bye to my little nugget this morning brought a couple of tears to my eyes!  I've never been away from her this long before, and it's going to be a long couple of weeks for me!

And with that, I'll wrap up this edition of my Daddy Diary.  If you're still checking in on this once in a while, I greatly appreciate it!  My sincerest apologies for updating this so sparingly if you were a faithful follower throughout the first part of my journey to becoming a dad, long before my sweet, little Erica was born!  I'm making it a goal to be more active with my blog updates this summer, so please check back again when you get a chance and see what sort of things my little nugget is doing to keep me on my toes!  Thanks again for sending us your best wishes...we've always appreciated your best thoughts over the past 2+ years.  Take care!