Week 20 Baby Bum #2

We had our 20 week check-up and ultrasound on Friday. We were a bit disappointed because we didn't get very many pictures this time. The baby was just in a funky position making the tech use almost the entire time just trying to get the required measurements. The position did allow us to a get a clear shot of the baby's gender. For those of you who are not familiar with ultrasound gender determination, a "hamburger" (three lines) means its a girl, a "turtle" means its a boy. Based on the baby's gender, we will NOT need to have a big rummage sale this summer (if you don't get it, just go to the end of the post).

Enjoy the pictures!

These are the 4-D ultrasound pictures. The baby is all snuggled up against the placenta.






These are the regular ultrasound pictures.

Drum roll please...and the baby is....a GIRL! Sheinah is actually really excited. She had just told us on Thursday night that she didn't want a boy baby. We were struggling to explain to her that we don't really get to choose what we have. When we told her it was a girl, she was very happy! We do have an ultrasound picture showing the "hamburger" evidence. However, Travis made the point of the strangeness of posting a picture of our baby's "hoohoo" (as he called it) so we took the picture down.

Finally, many of you have been asking if Melissa is showing yet. She is, but she can actually still hide it pretty well. She has only gained a total of 6 pounds so far and she's half-way through the pregnancy! Actually, since she lost three or four pounds in the first two months of pregnancy, she is actually only up 3 pounds from her pre-pregnancy weight, but who's counting? Glad you asked...Travis is actually counting because we made a deal that he would lose weight equal to the amount Melissa gains during the pregnancy. Starting tomorrow, he's taking it seriously and going back to his protein shake routine. We are still debating on if he has to go by the actual weight gain or the physician-recorded weight gain :)

Magazine Contest

So we finally decided to enter Sheinah in a photo contest. Parents magazine runs a contest every year to put a new kid on the cover of their magazine. We've always felt Sheinah was one heck of a cute kid but we really didn't want her to be a part of the modeling lifestyle (John Bennet Ramsey anyone?). This contest is a one-time deal so we figured it was pretty safe to enter her. There were 75,000 entries last night when we entered her and yesterday was the deadline so the odds of Sheinah making it to the top five are pretty slim. The two things we have going for us are (1) she's really cute (2) 34% of the judging score is based on the quality of the photo and Travis takes really good photos. The best part for us was going down to Canal Park last night to take some more photos since the photos we submitted had to be between certain dates. Sheinah had so much fun throwing rocks into the water and climbing on the rocks with her daddy that it doesn't really matter if she doesn't win the contest. Anyway, the photos we submitted are below. We'll know sometime in July if she gets to go to New York for a photo shoot.

These are the park point pictures from yesterday:

These are miscellaneous pictures from April and May:

Buzz off

Sheinah has a series of movies called "Hermie and Friends" by Max Lucado that her Nama buys for her. The latest one she got when Nama came to visit involves a bumblebee called Buzzbee. His niece and nephew come to stay with him and they have bad manners. The point of the show (similar to the VeggieTales series) is to teach moral lessons in 30 minutes or less. The lesson of this episode is learning manners. The little niece bee in the movie tells her uncle Buzzbee to "buzz off." Sheinah decided that this was a fun phrase to say and started saying it frequently. We reminded her that the girl in the movie had bad manners and that it wasn't nice to say "buzz off." So, Sheinah started saying "the girl in the movie says BUZZ OFF" so that she could still get away with saying it. Who knew that two year olds could figure out a way around the rules?

Skee Ball

Tonight after swim lessons we went to Grandma's Sports Garden for dinner. For those of you who are familiar with Duluth and the Canal Park area, you know that the Sports Garden has all sorts of games for the whole family. Tonight, Sheinah decided she wanted to play skee ball (click on the hyperlinked word if you aren't sure what skee ball is). Sheinah didn't quite grasp the concept of rolling the ball up the incline. She wanted to throw it like she throws other balls...and throw it she did. Of course, throwing a solid ball that weighs a couple of pounds is a bit different than the balls she normally throws, and a lot noisier too! She caused quite a ruckus with the skee ball game. We finally just let her climb up the incline and drop the ball in the holes so as to prevent any damage to the game or the other customers. :)

Baby moves

Travis got to feel the baby move for the first time tonight. The baby has been "feelable" for mommy for several weeks, but it's hard for people on the outside to feel little butterfly motions. The baby is moving enough now that non-mommy's can feel it :) Travis was pretty excited because last time he couldn't feel Sheinah move until after week 20. Go Travis!

Sheinah-isms Part Two

Sheinah has been proclaiming frequently how big she is getting...likely because Melissa says that every time she picks up Sheinah :) Today, this is what she told Melissa: "I'm getting so big...I'm a woman!" Honestly, we have no idea where she got this from. Later that afternoon, Melissa asked Sheinah to tell Travis what she said earlier. Interestingly, she knew exactly what Melissa was referring to! She proceeded to repeat her statement to Travis and then followed it up with the following comment "I'm a woman and mommy's a woman and daddy and Samson (our puppy) are boys." At least she has her genders figured out!

Sheinah-isms

One phenomenon associated with being two-and-a-half years old is that your vocabulary develops at a rapid rate. Apparently, such rapid development isn't necessarily directly linked with words learned from mommy and daddy.

Today, we began our annual summer tradition of yard-sale shopping. One of our finds was a fisher-price doll house for $2. It comes with a few little plastic people. While playing with the doll house, Sheinah brought the little girl to Melissa, pointed between her legs and said "there's her pee-pee" and proceeded to laugh hysterically. Now, we are pretty sure that we have not referred to that particular part of the anatomy as a "pee pee." In fact, Melissa at one point referred to it as the "not bottom" for lack of a better word. We've also used Zach's suggestion of the Hawaiin word "punani" (not sure on the spelling). Thus, she must have learned "pee pee" from someone else. Now, Travis is a firm believer that only boys have "pee pees" but Melissa didn't think she needed to discuss that with Sheinah right now.

One thing we do know is we've been hesitant to teach her the real word yet after hearing Annetta's story about Grace. Apparently, Barney and Annetta had been teaching Grace the proper terms for anatomy. Grace was in the bathroom at church and Brenda (one of our pastors) called her pumpkin. Grace proceeded to remind Brenda that her name was Grace, not pumpkin. Brenda explained that pumpkin was a nickname and asked if her mommy had a nickname for her. Grace told Brenda that her mommy called her "vagina." Very funny story...as long as it's not you and your daughter :)

We're open to any suggestions folks might have for the best way to teach kids the proper names of body parts...