My favorite pregnancy ticker thingy

Look how cool this is with TWO babies in it!
LOVE IT.

19 Week Ultrasound

On Friday we went in for our routine 19 (usually done at 20-22 weeks, but we were wanting to check out the location of the placenta because of some issues) week ultrasound. We took Alex with us so that he could see the baby. He really liked seeing Kaitlyn move around last time and I think it helps them to see that there is indeed a baby growing and moving in there.

We got some great pictures, so I'll share those first!

Yes, that is two heads labeled A and B. The second picture is an individual picture of both babies. We're having TWINS!!!

We went in and told the ultrasound technician that we didn't want to know the gender since we already have one of each, so we wanted this one to be a surprise for fun.
She said okay and put the wand on my belly. She got a picture in focus and quiet for a second as we looked at 2 circles on the screen, each with a black pulsing thing in them. I was about to ask her if one was the heart and one was the brain when she said, "see those 2 black pulsing things? Those are 2 heartbeats...." long pause.... "you guys- you're having twins!"

And then we freaked out.
I think I said Oh. My. Gosh. at least 10 times. It was probably the craziest moment of our lives yet. 2 days later, I think we are finally over the shock. The whole thing is still a little daunting, but it's feeling more manageable every day.

After we found out we were having twins we told the tech that we wanted to find out the genders after all because twins were surprise enough for us and twins may require a little more planning gender wise if they were the same sex.

After seeing that they share the same placenta (but separate sacs) she found that both are BOYS!
It is highly likely that they are identical since they share the same placenta.

For those wondering, twins do not run in our families, but in the case of identical twins genes don't play any factor anyway.
The splitting of a single egg is a totally random thing and could happen to anyone. Where twin genes come into play is in the case of fraternal twins which is 2 separate eggs. This could be due to hyper-ovulation which may be a genetic trait passed from a mother to her daughter.
If all twins pass on a twin gene or were simply more likely to, the number of twins in the world would multiply much faster.

We are very excited to welcome 2 little boys to our house hopefully in September, but it may be the end of August.

Picture post!

I uploaded all of these pictures from my phone with the intent of sharing them weeks ago, and I finally decided to do so tonight (since I've now posted 2 days in a row!).
A few of them I've already posted on facebook, but decided they need to be on the blog too for all of you non-facebookers.

Enjoy!

Alex was so excited to go to the Dr. Seuss party at our local grocery store. When there were not any other children hanging around for the story reading, Alex decided he was ready for a story and made himself at home on the lady's lap who was reading. I guess he thought that sitting on the floor was too uncomfortable for him.

Trying to get both of these kids to look at the camera and smile is nearly impossible. Alex actually has a normal face/smile in this one though! yay!

See? Abnormal. They were so cute in the car cart though. Until the usual fighting starts anyway (Kaitlyn decides she wants to use Alex's steering wheel, which causes Alex to yell and push her over with his body which causes Kaitlyn to cry and scream and push back which causes Alex to cry and scream. It's awesome... let me tell ya).

Oh look! They both have mostly normal faces on!

This is Kaitlyn dipping her fries. She is so into dipping it's hilarious. The dipping obsession started when we were in St. George and she saw all the rest of us dipping in fry sauce. She of course had to do it too and she LOVED it. How could you not love fry sauce? My favorite thing is that my mom would take the fry and kind of scrape/tap off the excess on the side of the container and Kate does the same thing. I love the little things they pick up on.

She loves pushing in the little bubbles on soda cup lids.

Alex wanted me to take a picture of him too and I got this winner. Really though, I absolutely love it because it is so Alex (doing weird things with his hands for pictures just to see how it looks when I show it to him).

How could you not love that face?

When I was a kid, my dad would bring home paint buckets from jobs because I loved peeling the dried paint off of the sides. When we painted the basement, Alex got to experience the same thing and he loved it. No questioning whose child he is.

Just a cute picture of the kater in her cute outfit (homemade baby leg warmers matched the shirt perfectly!)

My dad took the kids on a little ride on the 4-wheeler down at his property. It took a little convincing to get Alex on the 4-wheeler and he was done pretty quick. Kaitlyn on the other hand loved it.

And speaking of 4-wheeler rides, we took our van 4-wheeling through a huge bog of mud (after going up a steep and kind of washed out road) while we were in St. George down by Zion's (taking a short cut through the mountains to check out a KSL listing for my dad in Centennial Park). This picture is of the guys surveying the site and trying to figure out the best route to take through the mud. Jon then made my dad drive and we were full speed ahead and almost didn't make it through. Luckily our front tires hit drier dirt just as our back wheels were spinning us out almost horizontal on the road. Thankfully we didn't slip off of the edge (to the right) with our back tires. We ended up with mud totally caked on and in our tires that after 2 washes of just spraying the tires and much driving, I was still getting clumps of dirt flying off the tires 2-3 weeks afterward.

Kaitlyn loves doing whatever Alex is doing. I thought it was so cute with both of them hanging out on the couch sharing a blanket. This is a rare occasion since Alex is not so great at sharing space with his sister.

This girl and her many seats crack me up. This is one of her favorites. She'll tip the stool over just to sit in it like this. The past couple of days she has actually tipped it so that all 4 legs are up in the air and sits in it.

Say aaaaah!

Kaitlyn has been a booger at dinner the past few nights. She is usually a very good eater and will down large amounts of food, but she's been bursting into tears and screaming minutes into her meal and not finishing. She will then demand to sit on my lap and will eat whatever is on my plate or if we put her plate in front of her she will sometimes eat a little more.
I suspect that she may want to be up at the table with the rest of us, which is unfortunate for me because it means I would have to do a lot more washing of the table. I like just sticking her tray under the running water and giving it a quick wipe off.
My other suspicion was that she was getting more teeth.

I loved that when I asked her to say aaah she did just that. It was so funny and cute! Much to my surprise she went from 2 bottom and top front teeth and 2 top molars to a bottom molar mostly in and another bottom molar poking through along with a canine tooth poking through on one side. Apparently when the girl gets teeth in she likes to get them in large batches!
After feeling her teeth she proceeded to bite my finger. For fun.
Several times the rest of the day she grabbed my hand and stuck it in her mouth so that she could bite my finger. And several time she just moved her mouth to wherever my finger was and did it herself.
Because it's fun to bite mama's fingers.

Kaitlyn also did something today that I had no idea she could do. She said knock knock and made a knocking motion with her hand in the air. She was so proud of herself and did it randomly and often throughout the day.

I currently have rolls and rolls of carpet sitting in my basement. Tack strip is down and the carpet should be going in tomorrow! HOORAY!
Now we just need it to stop raining so we can get some dirt moving going. I currently have 2 boys men vying to drive the big ol' tractor we will be renting. Jon is not one of them, but I am related to both of them. :)

Transition

The past week or 2 I've noticed that Alex will occasionally call me Mom instead of the standard Mama. After being Mama for 4.5 years, it always catches me off guard. I think it makes him sound so old. He still has a very little boy voice, so it's hard to hear such a big boy (at least to us) word in that little voice.

Other fun Alex randomness:

The other night Kaitlyn was screaming and crying during dinner and Alex turns to her and says in a stern voice (after Daddy was doing much shushing), "We're trying to eat here!" Any ideas who he got that one from?

Alex has been really into smells lately. The other day we were in D.I. and Alex goes, "I smell hot dogs! Mmm! I think I want to eat one when we get home!" There was some other place where he told me that it smelled like burritos and at my cousin's house on Sunday he walked up and told me that it smelled like dogs. How he knew what dogs smell like, I do not know.
I absolutely love seeing him recognize and get excited about familiar smells and seeing what he thinks things smell like. It's really fun!

The other night we went out to eat at a mexican restaurant and we were running low on chips and salsa when the waitress came to take our order. We had told Alex that we could ask the waitress to bring us more chips and salsa when she came back because he was sad that the chips and salsa were all gone. So we go to order our food and Alex interjects in a very matter of fact way saying that we need more chips and salsa. And then when we ordered a soda Alex interrupted again and ordered a soda for himself. He is definitely not shy about talking to people.

Alex has been loving the warmer days and being able to play out in all of our dirt. The rain boots from D.I. have been one of the best purchases ever! He loves to throw around clumps of dirt and he loves that he has 2 friends that live right behind him that also love to come and dig in our dirt. He's very excited about having a garden and planting things. I'm already trying to drill it into his head that we have to leave the plants in the ground. Last year he was quite handy at pulling all of my mom's flowers out in the name of his garden.

When we told Alex that we were going to have all of his toys downstairs and have a room just for toys to play in he was excited, but very concerned. He told me, in near tears, that if we took all of his toys downstairs then he would just have a grown-up room and he didn't want to have a grown-up room. It's so funny to see how his brain works.

Which reminds me, when Alex was a baby he slept with a green silky/minky blanket. I bought him a blue blanket like it, though not the exact same...it was a different brand and had an embroidered bear on the minky side, to use when his green blanky was in the wash. Eventually he developed a preference for the blue blanket and I could never figure out why. Recently when I was putting him to bed he told me to take the green blanket to bed with me and I asked him why he liked the blue blanket more than the green blanket. He told me it was because the blue blanket felt softer and nicer (all he cares about is the silky side). I was baffled and didn't believe him. They were the same silky fabric! So I felt both of them and the blue blanket's silk side WAS actually softer and silkier than the green. The green one felt stiffer and had some snags/runs in it that were affected how smooth it felt.
So there was actually a reason for moving to the blue blanket from the green... it actually felt better and softer to him. It was so interesting to me to finally figure that out and to have him actually TELL me why he liked the blue blanket better.

So that's a bit about Alex. He's mostly cute and funny, but still drives me crazy a lot. He's 4 after all.

black or white?

Okay. I have a problem. I don't know which bed color would look better in my room.
Black.
or white.

Here is what I have so far:

Color scheme will be light and bright. Since I have a small room, I want to keep things light and airy in there.
Thankfully, my bedroom and closet doors are all white, as is the base molding. I still need to do the molding around the door and closet.
I would like to paint my bedroom- probably a nice tone of gray.

General color scheme I'm thinking right now is gray, aqua (because I love my sheets and I have a couple of accent pillows), and a light coral.

I already have my duvet, which I love.
It's this one.
Only problem is that they didn't have the queen in stock and I thought they wouldn't get any more in stock, so I bought 2 twins. I actually ended up really liking going that route once I had them on my bed because it put the leaf pattern on both sides of the bed (thus adding more gray).
Here it is actually on the bed, but not stuffed at all, so it's not fluffy like it should be.

I still don't know what to do for nightstands. I have cream colored ones and like all the drawers. Decisions on those would come after we actually get a new bed. I'm thinking of doing a more open feminine one on one side and something different on the other.

New lamps will be in order.
I'm thinking something with a pretty glass base. I love this one that I like it, I love it has in her living room.

Another factor to be considered is that I have a dresser in my room. It's a brown/black Hemnes dresser from Ikea. I wouldn't be opposed to either getting something else or painting this one, but we really only bought it 5 months ago.

Please ignore the messiness and imagine a pretty white closet door/molding

So, considering all of these things, would you go for this bed:

or this one: