Check out this blanket set!

Etsy needs a baby registry. Somebody buy me this. :)

*In the time it took me to post this, it already sold out. Guess I should’ve just bought it myself!

Had an urge to go back and look at baby pics of Halle at 14 months and found that I took a lot of pictures of her eating.  I’ve also been taking a lot of pictures of Elena eating lately, which I thought was kind of interesting.  I guess they just look so cute eating at 14 months.  :)

Also, I think its funny to note that Halle’s mess is around her mouth and down her chest, while Elena’s mess is all over her entire face. Elena is so much messier than Halle was!

I’ve been thinking a lot about boy nursery themes lately.  Of course I realize there’s still a very good chance there’s a girl in my belly right now, but I probably won’t change the nursery if we have a girl.  So the only themes to be thinking about are boy themes.  The two that really appeal to me are a swamp/alligator theme (not a blue and orange Florida Gators room, but gators nonetheless) and a hot rod/Mustang/V8 room.  The Mustang theme may have just taken the lead when I came across this in istockphoto:

I love the grunge/Mustang combination.  Although I like these colors, I would probably change them a bit, adding a bright accent color.  But I love the idea of a Mustang nursery and can totally see me using this as a starting point for this theme.

There are a few things Halle asks for over and over again and doesn’t always get.  Mostly these things are juice and peanut butter.  Not that I have any problem with her drinking juice or eating peanut butter, but if it was up to her she would consume these things all day long.  She learned early on that if she asks for these things in a creative, cute and sweet way, she’s much more likely to receive them.  This morning she woke up at 6 and as soon as we came downstairs she asked for some juice.  I said sure and poured her some juice, turned on the Snoopy movie for her, and fell asleep on the couch.  A little while later, she came to me and sweetly said, “Mommy, I’m hungry.  Can I have something that starts with P and goes on a spoon?”  So yes, I happily got up and got her some peanut butter on a spoon and then fell right back to sleep on the couch.  Around 7:30 I got up to get on with the day and she came bouncing over to me and said, “Mommy, it’s a pattern!!  Juice, food, … Juice!”  That was her creative and smart way of asking me for some more juice.  We’ve been talking about patterns lately with her counting bears and some worksheets, but I was so impressed that she was able to take that concept and apply it to her real world situation.  She’s such a smartie!  And of course, she got some more juice.  :)

We had another ultrasound yesterday for first trimester screening.  Since I’m already out of the first trimester, they fit me in to a cancelled appointment slot.  These ultrasounds are done at a perinatologist’s office, so different office from my original ultrasound last week.  At last week’s appointment you’ll recall (if you follow me on Facebook) that the tech told us, “It’s too early to say with confidence, but I saw a penis several times!”  I was definitely hoping the tech at this office would say something similar, but she just told us it was way too early to tell.  Then proceeded to show us that the baby still has a tail.  So in all likelihood, the tech at the first place was just too inexperienced to realize she was seeing a tail and not a penis.

Although.. I was just reading up on these things, and the tail should disappear in the 8th or 9th week, and the external genitalia begins to grow in the 10th week, although most sources state that the sex is evident at the 16th week.  So who knows.

What I do know is that the baby passed the ultrasound evaluation, which measures nuchal translucency (the fluid beneath the skin behind baby’s neck).  That’s just one part of the overall screening process, but so far so good.

And the baby’s looking good, right?  I’m pretty sure that’s a little hand up by the face and not a gargantuan nose (fingers crossed).  :)  Next ultrasound is scheduled for September 23 at 9:30 am.  I’ll be in the 18th week, so if the baby cooperates there should be no trouble determining gender then.  One thing I LOVE about opting for this first trimester screening is that I don’t have to wait for Dr. Foster to see me at 20 weeks to then start scheduling an ultrasound with University Center Imaging, which usually happens around 21 weeks.  I should hopefully know the gender about three weeks earlier by going through the perinatologist’s office.  Which, for someone as excited (impatient?) as me, makes a huge difference!

I can’t believe that ultrasound is only 6 weeks away.  This pregnancy is flying  by already!

Following along where I left off, after Arenal we drove to Monteverde. We drove around the Arenal Lake to get there, and some of the sights along the way were amazing.  Here’s a view of the Arenal Lake from the road.

The roads getting in to Monteverde are crazy, bumpy, rocky, unpaved roads, at least for the last stretch of it.  I was honestly surprised I didn’t get sick, because I do have a history of car sickness (from road trips as a kid) and first trimester sickness.  But I held up well.  Monteverde is a region known for its cloud forests.  It’s a little tiny town that borders these amazing lush cloud forests.  Highlights of our time in Monteverde include:

1. Ziplining (for Justin and Jason) over the canopy of the cloud forest.  They went through Sky Trek, which turned out to be one of the best companies to use for ziplining.  If you’re in Monteverde and plan to go ziplining, we highly recommend Sky Trek over Selvatura.  Here’s Justin zipping along…

And a cute pic of the guys after their first zip line…

They let me sit in the Sky Tram for a picture (but I didn’t actually get to go up the mountain with them)…

2. While the boys were on their canopy tour, I went on the Sky Walk, which was a hiking tour through the cloud forest that included walking over five large suspended bridges.  It was very beautiful, and I went with a guide and two other couples and it was a nice way to spend the time while the boys were gone.

3.  After our Sky Treks and Sky Walks we went to the Monteverde Cloud Forest National Park to go on our own unguided tour.  Unfortunately in this area, at least at this time of the year, there isn’t a lot of wildlife to see.  Mostly small (but beautiful) birds and lots of gorgeous trees.  It was a fun hike though.  Here’s a pic of the trail.  Love the atmosphere!

And here’s a pic of the Monteverde Monster!  Beware!

4. The food!  Some of the best food we had on the trip was in Monteverde.  Tramonti, an Italian restaurant, was superb.  Homemade pastas in fantastic sauces.  We loved it.  And Chimera, a Latin tapas restaurant, was absolutely sensational.

I think that about sums it up for Monteverde.  Next stop, Esparza and on to Manuel Antonio.

Some of my favorite pics from the waterfall…

More pics at the gallery!

So first off, in case you don’t have Facebook and haven’t seen the news yet… we’re pregnant! Twelve weeks pregnant tomorrow.  Unfortunately, I’m not the kind of girl that can just miss a period and know I’m pregnant so I have to rely on the other symptoms (mostly nausea and heightened sense of smell) to clue me in. And the nausea doesn’t come til like 8 weeks or so, so for all three pregnancies I’ve found out later than most people usually do. Anyway… I started getting that morning queasiness a week before our trip. I tested exactly six days before we left, and found out instantly that I was pregnant. So I had to cancel the white water rafting, the canyoning, and the zip lining adventures that I had just booked. That was the down side. But it’s amazing how fast maternal instinct kicks in because I honestly wasn’t upset at all. I was so excited to be pregnant and so protective of my unborn child, that doing those things seemed completely frivolous to me. I did end up getting a little jealous while Jason and Justin were ziplining, but other than that, I was pretty good. :) And still had a ton of fun!

So let me talk about the trip now. We flew in to San Jose just after midnight on the 22nd. Justin picked us up at the airport and we drove back to his uncle’s house. We stayed at his uncle’s that night and the next. Spent time with a lot of Justin’s family including his dad, brother, uncle, cousins, and other extended family members and its easy to see where Justin gets his warm, generous, thoughtful personality from. Everyone in his family was so incredibly nice to us. The highlights for me of our couple days in San Jose were:

1. The empanadas at Spoon. Soft, savory chicken empanadas. Inexpensive. Delicious.

2. Watching a very exciting Costa Rica vs. Mexico futbol game at his cousin’s house and watching the fans get a little crazy.

3. The delicious food that Gloria (the maid/cook) served while we were there.

4. Getting introduced to Refrescos. Refrescos are just fresh squeezed juice, but in Costa Rica, they’re more popular than soda. Every restaurant offers at least three or four or five different options, and you can get the fruit juice mixed with either water or milk. I fell in love with the pineapple, strawberry and blackberry juices in water, and banana with milk. All of them delicious and I felt like I was endulging in a drink, even though it was nonalcoholic and healthy.

5. My day of relaxation while Justin and Jason went rafting. I read an entire book, organized pictures on my computer, took several naps. It was nice. I was ready for them to get home about two hours before they actually did, but it was still a wonderful day for a pregnant lady with two kids.

After San Jose, we drove up to Arenal. The things we were looking forward to here were seeing the volcano (which we barely saw due to the insane cloud coverage), canyoning (which I had to cancel), and going to the hot springs (which is like the biggest no no for your first trimester). But I’ll tell you, I still had a blast.

Highlights from my time in Arenal:

1. The little chalet we stayed in. The room was nice. The grounds were awesome. There were two hyacinth macaws that flew all around the grounds of the hotel that I just loved to watch. They even flew in to the hotel restaurant while we were there and stayed around for awhile.

2. Hiking. This was the first place we went hiking, and I really enjoyed the jungle/rainforest atmosphere. I also enjoyed hiking with Justin to the base of the volcano while Jason was canyoning. We walked on dried up lava rocks and saw some beautiful views from up there.

3. The pastries. Justin and I also stumbled on some very tasty pastries while we were waiting for Jason and we enjoyed every bite of them.

4. The unexpected discovery of La Fortuna Waterfall. Justin decided to stop into the little Tourism shop to see if we could hike to a waterfall since we didn’t get to go canyoning (which is mostly rappelling down waterfalls). We had a lot of fun on this vacation, but I think our La Fortuna Waterfall experience was the absolute best time we had there. Gorgeous, gorgeous, gorgeous.

5. Coco balls and Cocanas. Coconut dessert balls and coconut cookies. Both fantastic. I love coconut.

6. The waterslide at the Hot Springs. I didn’t go on the slide because it was crazy fast, which was why it was enjoyed so much by the college-age kids (and those 30+ year old boys I went with). It was still fun to watch people go through this long tunnel slide and shoot out like 8 feet when they came out of the slide and watch their reactions.

Ok, I’m going to post this now and write more when I get a chance. :)

See pictures of San Jose in our gallery!

See pictures of Arenal in our gallery!