"It's ber white outside Mommy!" ~Madelyn

ber=very (in Madelyn's vocab.)
It snowed ALL day on Friday and continued through the night on into Saturday morning. The snow was SO beautiful falling that I opened the blinds in every room all day Friday! As I was going to sleep last night I heard sleet hitting our bedroom door. This morning when we went outside, the snow had a sheet of ice on it. It sounded very crunchy!

Madelyn has been sick all week with a terrible cough and runny nose so we only let her go outside for about 15 mins.

She is holding a big sheet of icy snow.

Elsie even had a little fun...until I looked down at the ice and noticed that she was leaving a blood trail. The ice had cut her foot a little.

14 wk. Baby belly pic. hemm..yeah...so it's true that you start showing much sooner with your second than your first! HA!

front of our house

"Oh Dear, I've gone crosseyed!"

14 wks

We are 35% of the way there!!

This week's big developments: Your baby can now squint, frown, grimace, pee, and possibly suck its thumb! Thanks to brain impulses, its facial muscles are getting a workout as its tiny features form one expression after another. Babys kidneys are producing urine, which releases into the amniotic fluid around him/her — a process it'll keep up until birth. He/she can grasp, too, and if you're having an ultrasound now, you may even catch the baby sucking its thumb.
In other news: Your baby's stretching out. From head to bottom, baby measures 3 1/2 inches (about the size of a lemon) and it weighs 1 1/2 ounces. His/her body's growing faster than its head, which now sits upon a more distinct neck. By the end of this week, its arms will have grown to a length that's in proportion to the rest of its body. (Its legs still have some lengthening to do.) It's starting to develop an ultra-fine, downy covering of hair, called lanugo, all over its body. Your baby's liver starts making bile this week — a sign that it's doing its job right — and its spleen starts helping in the production of red blood cells. Your little baby hands and feet (which now measure about 1/2 inch long) are becoming more flexible and active.

~I had a few fun baby things happen this week...I felt our baby move at
12 wks and 3 days and have been feeling it 2-3 times everyday ever since! Very early...I know! If you know me, you know that I LOVE feeling baby's movement more than anything! That is what I missed the most about being pregnant with Madelyn...O-yeah and just FYI, I felt Madelyn at 16wks and 4 days. So this baby is really on the move! HA! ~On Wednesday night at church I got my first baby belly rub by Mrs. Linda Hardeman! (you made my week!) For some reason that makes this pregnancy a little "more real" for me! so...Thank you Mrs. Linda!

I also had a Dr. appointment today with Dr. Draughn. Baby's heart rate was 160 and sounded great! We go back on March the 1st to get our "big" ultrasound.
#1 We are praying that baby is healthy and is growing well!
#2 Shane and I are still undecided if we are going to find out the baby's sex or not. We did not find out with Madelyn which was SO much fun. I never had a doubt in my mind what Maddie was though! Call it motherly instinct! I've really not gotten that vibe from this baby though.hum..Let me know what you think...We have 5 weeks to figure things out.
Madelyn getting ready to be a "big sista"!So far so good...

2nd Trimester/ wk13

We're 32.5% of the way there!

I welcome the second trimester with open arms!!
Not sure why they have a "shrimp" for this week...It seems smaller than last weeks item. hem...
Fingerprints have formed on your baby's tiny fingertips, baby's veins and organs are clearly visible through her still-thin skin, and her body is starting to catch up with its head — which makes up just a third of its body size now. If you're having a girl, she now has more than 2 million eggs in her ovaries. Your baby is almost 3 inches long (the size of a medium shrimp) and weighs nearly an ounce.

Shane made a 9:15pm run to Publix last night for me. I was REALLY wanting fruit!! I also have a thing for BLTs right now so I got him to grab a few avocados for the BLTS for lunch the next day (YUMMY...right?!)
I'm a new fan of them! (Thanks Jenny!)
Who says that the husband of a pregnant wife doesn't crave things too?? Shane brought home coconut macaroons too...for himself...I don't really like coconut.

Beware of Blunt Toddler

So Natalie thought this story was so funny that I had to post it on the blog. Some are already familiar with this tale, others are in for a laugh.

It has come to my (through Natalie and a sharp elbow to the ribs at 3.14 am) attention that I grind my teeth at night. Not a light grinding, that would be to half-hearted. No we are talking about a fully on hardcore teeth grinding. The kind Arnold Schwarzeneager would do in his 80's action movies as he delivered poorly written lines in an even poorer version of the English language.

My teeth grinding was so bad it woke up Natalie several times in the night. This is not easy seeing that Natalie is 90% deaf in her right ear so she sleeps with her "good" ear in the pillow to block out any unwanted noises. My teeth grinding was so bad that the noise was heard by a sleeping woman in the ear that she is 90% deaf in. That is loud.

So at the beginning of this wonderful new year I decide to buy one of those nighttime mouth guards that you boil and mold to your mouth to help with grinding. Now I don't make teeth grinding noises, but if you listen carefully you can hear a high pitched squeaking noise of me trying to grind my teeth. It is almost as bad. I kid you not it sounds like to mice reenacting the classic fight scene from the 80's movie "They Live". You know, the fight scene that lasts for 20 minutes straight.

Warning: the following part of this story acknowledges something that we all know happens, but none of us admit to... Morning Breath. There...I said it.

So as per Madelyn's routine, one morning a week or so back, she gets into bed with us and as usual her very fine, baby hair is all full of static and floating around.

Natalie, half asleep, tells me to push it out of her face. Nothing. That hair wants to fly as bad as the Wright Brothers. It was going every which way.

So Natalie tells me to do the next best thing, something that every mother on this great planet has done to every one of their children at least once in their life....

I licked my hand and slid he hair back across the top of her head.

*Now I would like to plug the Dentist's Night Guard. It is a wonderful mouth guard that helps the annoying concrete-grinding-concrete sound of my teeth grinding to sound more like two mice having a battle royale in my mouth. The one problem that arises from using a mouth guard (it's not looking funny. It actually looks dead sexy and women love it.) is that it traps saliva in between your teeth and you can't flush it out like you normally do while you sleep. Thus you get a super concentrated form of morning breath the likes of which will peel the paint off walls.*

Having given little thought to any of this, I settle back down, going back to sleep. Proud of the job I had done to help my child fight the problem that is "fly-away hair", I was suddenly awoken to the small, groggy voice of my daughter looking at Natalie and asking her rather bluntly, "Mommy. What's that smell?!"

That would be my breath Maddie. More precisely, my unrecycled spit... all over the top of your head.





-Shane

A visit to to ER/ wk12

We're 30.7% of the way there!
The most dramatic development this week: reflexes. Your baby's fingers will soon begin to open and close, its toes will curl, its eye muscles will clench, and its mouth will make sucking movements. In fact, if you prod your abdomen, your baby will squirm in response, although you won't be able to feel it. Baby Iveys intestines, which have grown so fast that they protrude into the umbilical cord, will start to move into his abdominal cavity about now, and its kidneys will begin excreting urine into its bladder.

We have had crazy week so far! I was sick Monday night with the stomach virus (YUCK!) I ended up calling Dr. Draughn (my OBGYN) to see what he thought that I should do. He said that he highly recommended me going to get iv fluids in case I were really dehydrated. Shane and I dropped Maddie off at Nino's house and headed for the Baptist Hospital. The Dr. wanted to make sure baby was okay so he brought in a small sonogram to scan the baby. It was the first time we've gotten to see this little peanut!!! Baby Ivey was jumping all over the place! We saw its head, torso, two tiny arms, two tiny legs, and even its cord! and yep....We shed a few~! The ER Dr. thought that I would only need one bag of fluids but after the first liter he gave me a second. I could tell a huge difference. I'm just happy all of the is over with and I know Shane is too! whew!!! I jokingly told him that he would make a great male nurse!!
Feeling MUCH better!
If you had been 12 wks pregnant, vomiting and had the unmentionables for the last 9hrs, you'd look like this too;)
(Shane insisted I post this picture!)

Christmas 2009 (Picture with Santa!)

Just thought I should share this with ya! We thought it was pretty funny. Maybe next year will be better...

Day 3 of Snow!

After breakfast Madelyn was looking out of the window asking if she could go outside and play in the snow.Elsie enjoyed eating the snow! I would never thought she would last more than 5 mins outside.
(We have gotten down into single digits at night...as low as 7 degrees!)BURR!
We haven't gotten above freezing in a week!!

She LOVES it! Unfortunately she was the only one that was dresses correctly for playing in the snow. Our ski clothes are put up in boxes at JoeJoe and Ninos house. I completely forgot them the other day (pregnancy brain)...

We tried making a "frosty the snowman" but for some reason we could not get the snow to stick to itself!

Just enough to have a little fun...

It's Cold Outside...but inside...

it's nice and warm...and well, we have to entertain a very busy 2 year old!!

What better way than to DANCE!

"Peek-A-Boo Mommy!"

She was learning how to stand on her toes! She did a good job too!

whew! getting tired now...