Well, I am officially 14 weeks pregnant today and really just excited to be out of that horrid first trimester!  I have to admit that some days are still kind of sickly but I am slowly starting to have some days where I feel decent.  At 14 weeks the baby is roughly the size of a lemon….

I have to admit that I’ve been pertty relaxed through this pregnancy but I’m very very eager to have our ultrasound and doctor’s appointment next week - I can’t put my finger on it but I’m still kind of shocked at a February Due Date when we know the last time we “did the deed”…it astounds me that the “little swimmers” could last 6-7 days to catch ovulation for the February 2nd due date.  I have spent a lot of time thinking about this and wondering how it is even possible but I guess I just can’t understand it and will have to just accept that everything is as it should be.  We have our ultrasound next Tuesday at 9am followed by an OB appointment at 11am and then right afterwards Mike and I will have lunch before I am off to work.  I am excited and really nervous as always because when you are a mother who always worry about your children and want everything to be ok even when they are not born yet.

Over a week a go you might recall that I went in for the First Trimester Screening tests for Down Syndrome and the Trisomy Disorders and I’m happy to report that on Friday we got word that we screened negative for all of those issues….I was very relieved!  I know that technically we very well could still have a baby with one of those difficulties but it’s a good feeling to know that the chance is very low that we would.  The next ultrasound that I previously mentionned is part one of our anatomical scan that we are doing in 2 parts at 15 weeks and 19 weeks which is not normal protocol but I have a difficult shaped uterus so they want to make sure they can get optimal views.

In other news, I am already ready for another vacation!  Just three more weeks of work and I am off for 2 weeks!  By the time those two weeks are over I should be around 19 weeks pregnant!  I am eager to hit that 20 week mark for some reason….maybe because I am just excited to meet this little bean growing inside of me!  Soon enough…..soon enough…26 weeks left to go!

It’s a pretty quiet morning around this house today and I cant’ decide if I like it or not.  i just finished off a bowl of multigrain cheerios with three strawberries chopped up and there was no little blonde boy on my lap saying “just one bite Mama, just one”.  Jacob is gone with my mom to the cottage for 2 days and despite all my big talk about sleeping in while he was gone…my internal clock went off this morning and I was up at 7am.  You know, I never thought there would come a day when I would be able to leave Jacob in someone else’s care for even an hour and now that he is 2 years old I’ve let him go for 2 whole nights!  I miss him terribly when he’s gone but I also know that my mother and her husband love and care for him and protect him the same way that Mike and I do.  It’s a wonderful feeling when you have people in your lives that you can trust so much that you are willing to allow them to take your child away from  you for a few days.  The truth is, I know that good seperations, healthy seperations like this one are great for his personality and wonderful for his development.  I still firmly believe that we’ve done a good job with this child in helping him to feel secure, loved and appreciated by us - so much so that we can let him go away with family and he knows very surely that we’ll be right there waiting for him when he gets back.

My mom and Danny took Jacob to Wasaga Beach which is really exciting for him on many levels!  First, he gets to ride in Papa’s big shiny red truck which he adores and loves because it’s so high up that he can see right out the window with a clear view of everything.  Second, he loves the beach with all its sand and water and fun things to do that he’ll probably just talk and talk about it for a week or two when he comes back.  Third, and most importantly, he loves his Nana and Papa so much and just gets tickled pink when he gets to go spend time with them.  Last night I got to talk to him over msn on video chat and he was just so excited about the good time that he was having and equally as excited to see Mama and Dada waving at him and blowing kisses from the computer; He’s a special kid that boy I tell you.

After Jacob left yesterday, Mike and I spent some time cleaning some of the places in the house that needed a good deep cleaning like the kitchen and the bathroom.  It’s such a relief to get both of those rooms knocked off our list of things to do because I’ve been so stressed out about it since I got pregnant and so sick that housework was the last thing on my mind!  Hooray for the second trimester!  After all the cleaning we rewarded ourselves with some pizza dinner and a movie (Sweeny Todd) which was not exactly such an appetizing idea since the movie had a lot of blood in it; it was still fun regardless! Afterwards, Mike was tidying our bedroom while I spent some time reading the new Stephanie Meyer books “Breaking Dawn”…of course it didn’t take long before I was passed out in bed!

As I type this, Mike is still sleeping as he should be!  I am trying to decide between throwing a load of laundry in or going for a long hot shower!  Hmmm.  Maybe I’ll do both….it’s not too often you an squeeze a shower in without a little blonde head sticking into the shower curtain to say “BOO MAMA!  BOO!”….

It’s time to go public with our litle family secret!  I am pregnant!!!  Mike and I are expecting our second child on or around February 2nd 2009 and we couldn’t be more thrilled!  Family life is just who we are and we are both excited to add a fourth person to our clan!  Jacob will be a big brother!!  I will be 14 weeks pregnant on Monday and so we felt it was time spilled the beans to our family and friends!  We’ve spent much of the past week trying to update people and now I’m making it all the more public by announcing it on my blog!  I won’t go on and on about it here in this post but you can go back through my blog posts and you will find a TON (18 to be exact) of posts that were hidden up until this very moment!  I’ve been journaling about this pregnancy since the moment we found out and have titled all of those threads “Super Secret Bloggy Threads”….I guess now my updates dont’ need to be private!  I’m excited to go through this pregnancy journey with all of you bloggy stalkers friends!

Here’s all the pregnancy related posts so you can all easily find them!

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Today is August 1st and i am so stinking happy that the summer is nearly half way done!  Have I mentionned how much I hate the humidity in this city?  Honestly, the humidity is just getting worse and worse as the years go on which I know is because of Global Climate Change and the pollution in this city.  Every year it seems that the summer drags on and on as I wait for my most favorite time of the year - autumn!  Truthfully for super secret reasons I can barely wait for this summer to be long gone and for the cool colorful days of the fall to be in our midst!

I am really looking forward to a lot of activities that come during the fall!  This year we are planning a trip to both Chudleighs Apple Farm and Whittamore Farms!  Last year we did Chudleighs as an alternative to Whittamore Farms and while I loved Chudleighs for what it had to offer….I missed the pumpkin focused portions of Whittamore Farms.  I am guessing we’ll do Chudleighs with Lisa, Jim, Sofia, Melanie and Suzanne again but I’m not sure about Whittamore Farms…perhaps we’ll do that one with Nana and Papa this year or maybe just the three of us will go!  We have lots of time to plan so obviously I am not too concerned!  After those fall outings we’re really looking forward to Jacob’s third trick or treat!  I really think this year he’s going to understand it way more then he did last year!  I’m thrilled!

Once halloween passes we’ll start gearing up for Christmas with our usual holiday preparations including the annual Toronto Santa Claus Parade!  Maybe Jim, Lisa and Sofia will join us this year!

Anyway, the point of this celebratory blog post is to say that I am rejoicing that the summer is nearing its end and my favorite time of year is approaching!  September can’t come fast enough!

Well the reason I didn’t post this on Monday is because I wanted to wait until I was exactly 13 weeks and 3 days to say out loud….

I’m in the SECOND TRIMESTER!!!!  Woot!  Partay!  The pregnancy is now officially 1/3rd over!  Sweet deal if you ask me!  I’m thrilled about that and hoping that the second trimester will bring good health and NO morning sickness! ? Truthfully, I continue to have some good days and some not so good days and I’m looknig forward to more good days then bad days in the near future….afterall that’s what the second trimester promises right?  I’m still not complaining much because like i’ve always maintained I believe that the aches and agonys of pregnancy are all part of growing a healthy little baby.

This week the baby is roughly the size of a peach….Yum I love peaches!

Last Thursday we had our first trimester screening which is a screening test for trisomy disorders and down syndrome. We were quite happy an anxious to get to see the baby again on ultrasound and it was a great appointment there at the ultrasond clinic.  The baby had a heartbeat of 150 and was moving around so much that our ultrasound pictures are just horrible!  Silly baby!  We watched the little bean kick its legs and wave its arms all around as if to tell us all hello!  So we of course said hello right back to the little sweetpea!  During the testing portion the scan looks at the fluid at the back of the baby’s neck and gives a measurement in millimetres…our baby’s fluid measured 1.7 - dont’ ask me what a normal measurement is but if it helps at all Jacob’s was 1.3.  Ater the ultrasound we were off to Mount Sinai hospital to get the blood work portion of the screening done and let me tell you….we waited nearly 2.5 hours to get our turn for that blood work!!!  The place was PACKED!  When it was all said and done we met up with my mother and had a nice lunch out together.

In other pregnancy related news we have started to slowly let the news leak out to the various important people in our lives.  After Sofia’s party we were able to tell Lisa and Jim finally along with some other friends that were there at the time!  Everyone seemed really surprised and it was really fun to have Jacob wear his big bro t-shirt to surprise everyone!  Look how darn cute he looked in it…

Mike told his father an some of his trivia buddies on Monday and this past Wednesday I told some of my colleagues at work; tomorrow I’m hoping to drive over to my dad’s and surprise him.  I think by the end of the week I’ll be able to make all my Super Secret Bloggy Posts all public!  Sweet deal once again!

So that’s basically it for this week..

Here’s some new important dates:

August 12th - Ultrasound and First OB appointment.

September 11th - Anatomical Ultrasound

Well the time finally came about a week ago for us to put a safety lock on our refridgerator…

I always suspected that the time would come when Jacob would be able to open the fridge door and help himself to a snack or two or three but I didn’t think it would happen until he was 3 years old.  Sometimes I have to remind myself that this creative child of mine is at the 100th percentile for height and probably does have the strength of an actual three year old.  I knew that it was time for the lock when Jacob came out from the kitchen dragging the milk jug and proclaiming “Jacob wants milk!” with the long trail of milk along the floor behind him into the living room!  At first I suspected it might be a one day lucky thing that he was able to get the door open but the following day he brought out the defrosting chicken I had in the fridge and declared “Want Some!” - oh it was time indeed for a fridge safety lock.

I’m sure that some people would have absolutely no problem with their children going into the refridgerator and helping themselves to some food…truth be told I wouldn’t have a problem with it either.  What is most frightening for me is the stories of children playing hide and seek in refridgerators only to die when nobody realizes that the fridge is where they were “hiding” - so the safety lock was the only way for us to go.  You can scream paranoid mom all you want these are real stories that happened to real people who least suspect it.  Just a few months ago a mom on one of my boards had her 2 year old son die when a dresser he was climbing toppled over on him…so yeah - I’m completely 100% cool with being labelled a paranoid mom.  I’ll do what it takes to make sure that rare “accidents” don’t become common accidents in our home!

Jacob seems to have not even noticed the fridge lock….every now and then he’ll go by and tug on the handle hoping that one of us might have forgotten to lock the door; no such luck kiddo!  Keep trying though…we admire your perseverance!!!

I’m sure I’ve mentionned this before in my bloggy world stories but Jacob had been attending guardian swim classes with either Mike or myself since he was 6 months old and while he loved being in the water we really felt that we were paying and he just wasn’t learning anything.  When registering Jacob for swim classes this summer we decided to put him in the tiny tots program which is basically preschool level 1, preschool level 2, and preschool level 3 - Jacob was at the very bottom of the age category for these levels (ages 2-5) and technically he could have continued to stay in guardian swim until he was 3 years old but we decided our money would be better spent trying to see how tiny tot’s went.

Jacob was registered in preschool level one and we did suspect that Jacob would be at this level for at least 2-3 sessions since he had never been swimming with a teacher only and no parent.  Much to or surprise at Jacob’s last class for this session the teacher provided us with his report card and Jacob has passed preschool level 1 and is moving on to preschool level 2!!!!  I am so proud of him!  What a great accomplishment in just one session without his parents!  Some of the skills he was able to master I would have never guessed he’d be able to learn so quickly! I know its not like he just won a nobel college scholarship or something but still it’s an accomplishment that Mike and I are very very proud of!  So when summer session 2 starts this week Jacob will be in Preschool Level 2!  I was browsing the list of things to learn in level 2 and it looks like a lot of the skills are much much harder then level 1 so I know he’ll have to really focus and probably be in that class for a few sessions!  Private lessons are really worth the money!  I am a huge advocate now for parents to pay the extra 40 bucks a session to get their child in a one on one class with a swim instructor!

Way to go little man!  You get a gold star from Mama!

Jacob is really loving to climb things in the park these days!  Today he finally mastered the wood and chain ladder at the closest park to our house.  It’s neat to see him learning new things every day and I can only imagine what he’ll be climbing next!

My niece Sofia turns one on Wednesday and today was her very first ever birthday party!  It was a great day despite the rain and thundar storms!  Sofia looked beautiful and really enjoyed her first taste of cake…so did her face apparently!

Well we were back a couple days ago from our camping trip in PA, U.S.A and it was really fun!  Jacob loved every single moment of it and I’m sure he could have stayed another 2 weeks if we would have allowed it.  The park was right in front of our campsite and he could just run over and play while we sat in camping chairs and watched him from the campsite.  He was in toddler heaven…no doubt.  The KOA campground also had a pool and that was another hit with Jacob!  He loved going swimming with his nana, papa, mama, and dada!  His favorite part was his new life jacket that allowed him to swim in the deep end!  He could make it all the way across the pool and back several times on his own!  How fun!  The drive there and back was 4 hours each way but Jacob did fantastic in the car, didn’t cry once and we didn’t even need to use the DVD player on the way home at all!  Here’s a couple pics from the weekend!