Going to see "Mickey Skating" aka Disney on Ice

Meredith has loved Mickey Mouse (and the rest of his gang) since she was about a year old - and really I mean love! She has also recently loved watching people skate at the mall and pretends to skate all around the house, so we decided Disney on Ice was right up her ally!

Neal has been incredibly busy with his new job, but Gigi and I were able to take her for this special treat. We had amazing seats, but at first I thought it would be lost on her - from the moment we walked into the arena, she had her head buried in my shoulder. She was excited to see Mickey, Minne, Donald, Daisy, and Goofy as they came out in the beginning, but they were followed by the cast of Lion King and a gaggle of monkeys that were not Meredith's favorite. Once she saw Simba and Nala, though she started to get a little looser on her grip on me. Then she totally let herself go when Ariel and the other Little Mermaid characters. After that stretch, she went to her own seat and would "ooh and ahh" and clap and point.

She also loved getting to go get Popcorn and cotton candy (which came with a cute Flounder hat) and as soon as we got home she reinacted all the characters skating and Goofy falling for Daddy so that he could feel like he was right there with us!

Ariel to the rescue! She and her gang helped Meredith realize how fun Disney on Ice was - and it was probably my favorite part too!

Tinkerbell was a big hit too - plus Peter Pan came and "took a nap" on some rocks right by us, which Meredith thought was so silly!

\Meredith, dressed as Minnie Mouse, loving the skating.
Trying out her hat that came with the cotton candy - she will only wear it backwards though!

Another shot of a happy little spectator.
Waving goodbye to all of the characters.
Minnie's last good-bye kiss!

Looking good...

I just got back from my doctor appointment and today my blood pressure looked MUCH better. So even though I cheated on bedrest a bit this weekend, taking it easy must have helped which is encouraging! She also did a sonogram so we could see how Miss Jillian is doing - she was "practicing" breathing just like she should (which is something the dr said they stop doing if they are having trouble adjusting to things like the high blood pressure) and posed with her little hand on her forehead for a couple of pictures. She has Meredith's cute little lips and nose from what it looks like! She also appears to be growing like her big sister - her head was measuring 40 weeks (she is only 36!) and the doctor guessed that she is weighing 7lbs 4ozs. She is supposed to gain around a 1/2 lb a week, so by April 14th (when she plans to induce) she should definitely be over 8 lbs, luckily (for me!) the doctor said she didn't think she would quite reach the 9lbs that Meredith was, but we will see! She did say having high blood pressure can keep babies a little smaller, which as long as that isn't affecting her, I am ok with!

Hopefully I can get the sonogram pictures scanned and posted later!

Defining Bedrest to a 2 year old

Today I had my weekly check up with the doctor and found out that I have developed pretty high blood pressure. For the past week or so, I have had some pretty major headaches and apparently these are caused by the blood pressure. So I got to take a surprise trip to Labor and Delivery - I was reminded again, how blessed we are with our wonderful friends. Kim, who lives very close to my doctor, quickly answered my slightly frazzled phone call and was able to watch Meredith while I went to the hospital for a few hours of tests. Luckily, the tests didn't show anything too bad, but I have to monitor a few things today and then will go back to the doctor on Monday for a sonogram, but the doctor says that even if Jillian needed to come early, she will be just fine. So now, my task will be convincing Meredith that I need to lay down instead of pushing her in the swing, taking her to the mall, or any other number of requests! Piece of cake, right?

Showers for Miss Jillian

Our family is so blessed to be surrounded by a huge support group that have been helping us to celebrate Jillian's upcoming arrival. It started with a great lunch with my teammates at American a few weeks ago. They took me to Main Street Bakery (which included wonderful Petit Fors - thanks Laura!) and some fun gifts for our sweet baby girl.

This past weekend, I got to celebrate once again with my wonderful Sunday School class. This is a group of girls that have become some of my best friends and I have been blessed to be pregnant with lots of them this time around - I think at one point, we counted that there were 17 babies being born - and I think that number may have increased one or two in the past couple of months! How amazing that Jillian will have a Sunday School class full of kids whose parents Neal and I care for so much too!

I sadly didn't think much about pictures at either shower, but here is the adorable cupcake cake from Sunday!

Not only was this so cute - the cupcakes are amazing!

"The birdies will love it!"

Meredith has decided that everyone should have a bird house. She didn't necessarily care that we didn' t have one but would always ask me if Bubbie and Gigi had one (which they did luckily!) On top of the birdhouse obsession, there is a pretty much daily request for paint at our house, which gave me a good craft time idea. We headed to Michael's so she could pick out a bird house of her own. It took us a day or so to have time to pull out all the supplies, but Meredith reminded me quite often that this was a need-to-do task!

Hard at work on her creation!

Quite proud of her work, Meredith exclaimed "The birdies will love it!"

Firstish Haircut

I struggle with how to categorize our recent haircut experience, because in some ways this was a first for Miss Meredith and in other ways, not so much - so I will classify this before I tell you about this firstish haircut. When Meredith was about 14 months old, you could really say we took her for her first haircut - we went to this adorable girly girly place so that we could even out the sides of her hair (she was born with tons and tons of dark hair but lost a bit on one side specifically, giving her a very unique mohawk type effect for awhile). From there there were lots of at-home bang trims (which I now regret and am working hard to get those bangs grown out!) But these pictures will show you probably a more typical first hair cut.

Meredith has beautiful long hair but it was time to get a bit trimmed off the end, so last week we made a trip to a cute place near our house that has cars for the kids to play in while the stylists do their work - plus there are TVs to be a total distraction! This seemed to be key to getting Meredith to sit still and Meredith actually loved the whole experience. I was a little gun shy with how much I had them trim, so it isn't totally noticeable, but her hair looks healthier and maybe next time I will do a little more!

Disclaimer on the pictures - I have some crazy effect happening with these - I'll just claim this is a new technique my photography classes have been teaching me! :)

Meredith was so excited to get to drive the car!

This may look like she is a little concerned about how her style is going to turn out - but actually this is just a little girl very intent on what Barney is singing about on the TV in front of her!

The completed cut - and she even went for some blow drying!

Congratulations Daddy!

This is long overdue, but we are a house of very proud girls! Just a few weeks ago Neal got a well-deserved promotion and is now the Director of Communications. While shopping for some stuff to make for Jillian's room, Meredith found these wooden D's that she insisted we buy and paint for Daddy and I think they will look great in his new office! Unfortunately, we didn't get a great picture of the artist with her masterpiece, but I still wanted to post this just to tell everyone how excited we are for Neal!

Like I said, Miss Artist was not enthused to pose with her work, but you can sort-of see her masterpieces in the first one...

Petting Zoo Party

Meredith had a birthday party-filled day. I forgot my camera for the first, but luckily had it on hand at the second one - a petting zoo party! Meredith's friend from the Little Gym was turning two so we went to celebrate and had so much fun playing with all of her toys, getting our first experience with Pin the Tail on the Donkey, and getting up close to lots of fun farm animals. She loved brushing the goats, petting the bunny, and was excited to meet the donkey, lamb, pig, and cow, until she heard the rather talkative turkey who was a bit too scary for her. Luckily the pony rides were far, far from the turkey!

I think maybe I am disturbing her as she tries very hard to clean the animals (boy did they need it after such a yucky weekend around here!)

Petting the very soft bunny

Meredith was such a happy girl on her pony ride!
She made sure to say lots of "Giddyups" and "Yee Haws"
Buck, the pony, was nice enough to let Meredith have two rides - what a fun day!

Fresh Air

I took an improptu hiatus from blogging (not on purpose, just a creative block or pregnancy laziness I suppose!) but I decided today, when my camera memory card was full (that's like 800 pictures!) that it was time to not only download, organize, and clean off the card, but also time to put a few up on the blog...

Meredith and I celebrated some nice weather a few weeks ago with a trip to the park and lots of fun feeding the ducks!

This was before I got recruited to join her on the slide. Hmmmm - pregnant lady on kiddo slide must have been fun for others to watch!

The ducks enjoyed the snack as much as Meredith enjoyed feeding them!