Bless you honey!!

Ever since James has really started to talk and communicate with us, he has been saying and doing the cutest and funniest things! The other day I started realizing that I probably need to write these down because otherwise there is no way I am going to remember this stuff.

Whenever I sneeze, James will look up and say "Bwess you hunee!", using the exact same inflection Anthony uses (since that is what Anthony says to me when I sneeze). I think he thinks that that is what you say to someone who sneezes: "Bless you honey!". I hope he always says it that way!

James has decided that it is fun to be a "good helper" and loves to pick up random things and hand it to us and say, "Helper!". Yesterday he climbed up onto my bedside table and started piling every single thing that was on there, including about four books, onto my body and face, all the while saying, "helper, helper, helper!"

Before we found out if the new baby was a boy or a girl, I would ask James, "So do you want a brother or a sister?" Each time he would look at me thoughtfully and say, "Car". I think he is going to be a little disappointed :)

I don't remember when exactly it started, but James all by himself named his pacifier his "boppy" and our rule is that the boppy has to stay in the crib and is only for napping and night time. He has started pointing out pictures of people sleeping in books and will look at me and say "boppy?", like he doesn't understand how they sleep without a pacifier! He does the same thing to animals that he sees sleeping, and yesterday Anthony tried to get him to pretend to go night night and James wouldn't do it, saying he needed "boppy".

James is obsessed with bouncy houses!! He can't stop talking about them! He loves to jump around and then throw himself to the ground and roll around, all the while repeating, "bouncy house, bouncy house, bouncy house, fall!!" If you ask him what you do in a bouncy house, he gets all excited and will start jumping and then throw himself to the ground.

In the morning when James starts to tell me "ready go", I will usually ask him where he wants to go (just because I am curious what he will say). He has never answered me except for once when he said, "See Jaxton (his little friend from church), cookie". I guess he wanted to go play and get a cookie!

Drumroll please....

We had our appointment today and came home with the envelope holding the picture that would tell us if we are having a boy or a girl. Here is the video of us opening it.....

Proof!

Can you believe it?? Another boy!!! We were both really taken by surprise, we were all thinking that it was going to be a girl! I also can't get over that I literally need nothing but diapers for this new baby. Now what do I get to shop for? :)

Here is a picture of his little feet. The sonographer was able to count all of his fingers and toes, how cool is that!

 This is a side view of just his nose and lips:

 Here are some profile pictures. He had his hands up by his face the entire time. So sweet!

 While we were at the appointment, James stayed home with my mom, brother and Anthony's parents. He had so much fun playing with the boy and girl balloons they brought!

My mom and brother had to leave pretty soon after we opened the envelope. I know James is going to miss them! Here he is giving Grandma a kiss goodbye:

We were all really hungry and luckily Anthony's parents had prepared this feast while we were gone:

We had a lot of fun visiting and talking about having another boy running around the house. I am going to be so outnumbered!! :)

Boy or Girl??

I thought it would be interesting to compile all the old wives' tales about predicting the gender of your baby to see what our predictions would be. As I was looking around the internet for these, I thought it was funny to see different ones advertised as being "as good as 50% accurate!!". Ummm, any guess you have will always have a 50% chance of being right. Since there are only two possible answers :)

1) If carrying high you are having girl, if carrying low you are having a boy: I'm not sure what to say about this one. I think it applies more to the olden days when you didn't know if it was a boy or a girl until you gave birth, because at this point in my pregnancy my uterus is just a few inches past my belly button so I don't know how I could be carrying any way but low...but I guess if I have to choose I would say low.
Verdict:  Boy

2) If you are having pregnancy cravings for sweets it is a girl, for sour/salty things it is a boy: I have definitely been having sour/salty cravings all the time! Pickles, potato chips, ooey gooey cheesy things, all of that stuff always sounds like heaven to me.
Verdict:  Boy

3) Ancient Chinese Birth Chart that uses your birth date and your date of conception to calculate gender: So according to the ancient Chinese I am about to have a boy.
Verdict:  Boy

4) Put drano in a cup of your pee, it if turns brown, black, or blue it is a boy, if it turns green, green/brown, yellow, or doesn't change it is a girl : So how weird is this one?? It is so weird, I had to try it!! I'm not sure how old this old wives tale is since drano doesn't seem that old, but why not?
Verdict: Girl

5) Ancient Mayan tradition of comparing the mother's age at conception and the year of conception. If both are even or odd, then it is a girl. If one is even and the other is odd then it is a boy: Do you think Mayans worried enough about what gender a baby was going to be that they came up with this? Or do you think someone came up with this and slapped the name "Mayan" on it? Hmmm...
Verdict:  Boy

6) If you have a lot of acne/breakouts then it is going to be a girl because they steal their mother's beauty (or the technical explanation is that girls supposedly produce more hormones than boys): I  definitely have to go with girl on this one. Especially in the beginning I broke out like crazy!!! I'm not really having those problems anymore, but I remember thinking at the time that it was way more than with James.
Verdict: Girl

7) Tie your wedding ring to a string and hold it 12 inches over your belly while you are lying down. If it moves in circles it is a girl, if it moves back and forth like a pendulum it is a boy: I had Anthony hold the string with his wedding ring attached at it immediately started doing circles!
Verdict: Girl

8) If you have a lot of morning sickness/pregnancy yuckiness you will be having a girl supposedly because girls produce more hormones which in turn make you sicker: Not that I need to be arguing the validity of these things, since they all have pretty much been proven inaccurate, but I always heard that you get morning sickness in the first trimester because baby's don't produce hormones in the beginning and so your body has to produce extra for them. So it is your own hormones making you sick, not the babies. Although if girls need more, then maybe your body produces even more and that makes you sick? Either way, the sickness was brutal with me this time.
Verdict: Girl

9) If the baby is very active (lots of kicks and moving around) it is a girl, if it is not than it is a boy (because boys are lazier): This definitely wasn't the case with James, and I would think it would be the opposite since girls are supposedly calmer children, but I guess we will go with it.
Verdict: Boy

So according to the old wives, we are having a boy but by a narrow margin! Tomorrow is our ultrasound appointment and we will be opening up the gender picture with our family afterwards and we will all find out together, so stay tuned for the official results! What do you think? Do we have a boy or a girl cooking in there? :)

*Since I don't know where else to put this, I wanted to update with my 21 weeks picture:

Our recent adventures

Last week we got to spend a relaxing Sunday afternoon with Anthony's parents. After dinner they realized that they had never actually seen the town we live in or the beach so we went for a drive and a walk!

 Anthony's dad took a picture of us taking a picture :)

 We walked all along the boardwalk over the dunes next to the beach in search of animals and gopher tortoises. We finally found one!

 Then we took a walk farther down the path to see if a geocache we found last year was still there. It was!

Last Monday I was on the phone with my mom when James came running up to me asking for the vacuum. He was covered in dirt and had apparently tracked it in the house and wanted me to clean it up. I had to get a picture of the filthiness! (He is saying "cheese" in these pictures :)

Look at those feet!!

Last week Anthony seemed to have a lot of plans/commitments away from home so I had even more time at home alone with James. He has recently been nap-striking and just playing in his crib during nap time which makes him a joy in the time between dinner and bedtime. So when Saturday came around and I was faced with another full day and night with just us (Anthony had work and then a priesthood meeting right afterwards) I was desperate to find something to do! Luckily I stumbled across a flyer for a spring fling at the Humane society. Animals plus a bouncy house? We were in!

The event didn't start until 10am, so we had some time after breakfast before we could go. James was not a fan of waiting! He found my shoes, put them on, and stomped around the house repeating, "Ready go, ready go!"

Almost as soon as we got to the event, they announced that they were starting the pony rides. When I brought James over to the field I was surprised to see full grown horses! I was imagining small horses and I was a little worried about how James would react to these big guys. He was definitely nervous at first as we approached them and he was gripping me really tight like he didn't want me to let go of him. The guy in charge said that they just put them up on the saddle really quickly and that they will get used to it. So I quickly put him up there and he was right! As soon as James got both legs over the saddle, he loved it!!

Every time he would pass by me he would tell me about the "steering wheel" (saddle horn) he was holding.

They held him still at the end so that I could get some better pictures of him. He was so focused he didn't want to look at the camera and smile until one of the volunteers jumped behind me and started waving her arms and making silly faces. It was so nice of them!

After our horse ride, we went inside of the building to see all the animals they had for adoption. Of course, the kittens were the favorite! I don't know why, but James loves him some kittens :) He definitely prefers them over big cats and dogs. Which is funny to me because our cat never lets James get close to him at home and our dogs always let him abuse them.

He kept getting excited and telling me that the kittens were "going night night":

Right before we left we spent a good amount of time in the bouncy house. This was James' second time ever in one of these things, but he definitely remembered it! He was such a good sport, nothing phased him! One little boy was even being a little bit rough with him (he would purposefully bounce next to James so that he would fall and even bounced on his back one time!) and James would just laugh and laugh!

I don't know why, but for some reason he decided that he was going "night night" in the middle of the floor. I was certain his head was going to get bounced on. I felt a little bad because the other kids would almost trip on him and their moms would yell at them to be careful for the baby. I say, let James learn that when you lay down in the middle you are going to get jumped on! It is always a bit awkward for me in those situations because on one hand I don't want to interfere with someone who is trying to teach their kids to follow rules that they set (like telling them that they have to be careful around younger kids) but on the other hand I want to let them know that I don't mind.

Jumping shots!

I could not convince this kid to come out when it was time to go. I even used the "let's go see Daddy" card (since we were planning on having lunch with him) which usually works to get him in gear but not this time. I had to haul myself through the tiny kid opening to grab him and get him out. All the rest of the day he would randomly start talking about "jumping" in the "bouncy house". I think we can add jumping as one of his new favorite activities!