Guess what?!

I bought a box of pregnancy tests last week just in case I had a missed period and...

...this is what I saw 30 seconds later! It was much darker at the 3 minute mark that you are supposed to wait for. Definitely pregnant!

First reveal to Jeff, Mitchell and Tammy

Second mass reveal to members of my side of the fam

By my calculations, I'm due October 23, but I have a dr's appt on Friday to officially confirm the pregnancy and estimate the due date. I might also have an ultrasound but I'm thinking they'll make me wait til I'm 6-8 weeks.

Family Get Together

My side of the family is pretty crazy. Just sayin'. We have a lot of fun when we get together and, now that my mom moved to the area, we have a lot more get-togethers. This was kind of a just for fun party, but a lot of out-of-town family was present. I love my family. :)

My Aunt Jen and Uncle Tim (II)... plus my photo-bombing step-brother Michael. :D

I can't believe this is the only picture I got of Amy's new boyfriend, Will! He's the one in the pink shirt and hat. This was his debut/meet and greet with Amy's family. Hehehe... We like him a lot.

My step-sister Melissa and her partner Patty. Love them! Melissa just finished firefighter training! AWESOME!

My soon-to-be step-sister-in law (Stacie), my cousin (Tyler) and needs-no-intro Michael. I think he was doing that on purpose. ;)

Ally, Tyler's sister. She's adorable!

Me, my mom and Amy

My great aunt Mary and my cousin Johnny



My cousin (Beth) and her son (Declan) singing songs. He's only 18 months old! Such a cute kid!

Derek got into the last brownie bomb!

No closeups please!

Jesus Wants YOU For a Sunbeam

Think the WWII Uncle Sam Posters. If I had Photoshop, I might have had a visual. ;)

Best. Song. Ever

http://youtu.be/e4ujS1er1r0

The Cuteness that is Derek

Derek and I went to the dr earlier this week because of a strep scare. Luckily, we only have upper respiratory infections and the dr gave us some antibiotics to help fight off the bugs. We also got to have our height/weight taken! Not so excited about mine, but here are Derek's stats...

At 33 lbs, he's in the 91st percentile for weight and at 3ft 2 in (38 in), he's greater than 97th percentile for height (meaning he's almost off the chart). If you go by the double-at-age-two rule, he'll be as tall as Mitch at 6ft 4in. To all the future tall girls: You're welcome. :)

For being so good at the dr's (and because it was so nice outside), Derek got to play with moon sand outside. We love this toy! My friend Sheila gave some to us months ago and I finally dumped all of it out at once. Usually it was just one bag at a time, but I stopped caring about mixing colors. Whatever, right?

He really liked it

Telling me stories with sound effects... see videos below

Stories and sounds

He picked up this,"A-HA!" remark from me, I guess. I usually say it when I find something I'm looking for. Derek has adopted it more as an expletive/universal comment and uses it for various entertaining situations. I finally got him to say it for the camera!!

Binkie Ceremony

We had a Binkie Cutting Ceremony for Derek last month to help him get rid of his addiction. :) But before I get to that, I had to share this funny moment in the life of Derek: I walked into the room a couple weeks ago to find this...

Megamind is currently his favorite movie, and he looooves climbing on the couches though we discourage him every time we catch him, but I just had to grab my camera before I did anything. He's blissfully oblivious to my presence...

Until I catch him!! He was in such a rush to get off the couch, he face-planted. Awesome.

Moving on to the Binkie Ceremony... I got this idea from somewhere other than Pinterest. I know this because I can't find it in any of my boards there, so I must've picked it up, well, elsewhere. Regardless, it worked like a charm. We had a rough first week, but Derek has done marvelously well. He helped me weed through all these movies and pictures this morning and kind of had a little binkie revival, but we squashed that with a let's-go-play-with-your-cars distraction. Hehehe...

We brought out all the binkies we could find and let Derek have them to suck on for a few minutes while we set up. He and Grandma aren't sure what we're doing yet, but they will.

Happy with his binkie

The premise is simple: let the kid see/help you cut the tips off the binkies and then try to suck on them. Tipless binkies are usually too short to keep in their mouths by just sucking. Once they show lack of interest, help them throw them in the trash - and then immediately take the trash out. Voila!! No more binkies, and the kid thinks they did this on their own. Genius.

Attempt with Binkie #2 - we could only find two that night. I found two more later, but secretly threw them away. Bahahaha!!

See? He's trying so hard to keep that binkie in his mouth, but the tip is waaaay too short.

Operation: Binkie Dump!

This video is optional viewing: it shows what happens 30 seconds after the binkie dump, when he finally realized what we'd done. :)