Waiting for Baby M

I'm so fortunate this time around to be able to exercise my full maternity benefits, and take 2 weeks off prior to delivery.  (With Avery I was in labor my last day of work and only had 4 weeks off).  These last 2 weeks off have been great.  Not only have I been able to get baby's room in order and get a little more prepared, but I've also been able to spend quality time with my first munchkin before she has to share Mommy with a new baby.  Here's what we've been up to:

Taking relaxing baths with Mommy.

Got to hang out with Oma.  She got us our new very cool stroller that accomodates both kiddos.  Avery thinks it's pretty cool and Opie and I had way too much fun playing with all the features.

Walks with Daddy around the Ridge.  They are serious walkers, regardless of temperature.

 We got pedicures with Nana. Avery thought this was sooo cool and keeps complimenting Mommy on her "pretty toes" and showing people the flowers on her toes.

We baked cookies. 

I decided to try the 3 day potty training method as a last minute attempt for 1 kid in diapers.  And the results, after 3 days of a pantless Avery and messes all over the floor, my munchkin peed in the potty!!!  We are SOOO proud of her. 

Playing dollhouse with Daddy.  (pantless)

We did an art project.  She has decorated our whole frige with her paintings. 

 Morning cuddles with Mommy and baby sister, who kept kicking her in the ear.

 Playdough! 

To my sweet Avery: thank you so much for being such an amazing, loving, funny, smart, spunky addition to my life.  You have consumed my whole heart.  I can only imagine having enough love left to share with your little sister too.  I know you're going to be the best big sister, for you truly care about others and have been pretend playing with Baby for months.  I'm so blessed to have gotten to spend the last couple weeks giving you 100% of me.  I love you Stinker, I can't wait to see you as a big sister!   

Week in Whistler with the Hunts

The morning after Christmas we packed up the truck and headed up North to meet the rest of the Hunt gang and head up to Whistler for the week!  We had a great time in the snow, even though big ol' pregnant Mommy couldn't join Daddy on the mountain for some fabulous skiing. 

Avery had a great time eating snow...

The kids loved playing in the hot tub with Papa.  (Mommy forgot to pack Avery's swimsuit, oops).

The kids did some major sledding in the back yard.

We played in the village.

We did a photo shoot with our little Swiss Miss and Mommy's pregnant belly.

The Hunt family, all 3.5 of us!

We went on a sleigh ride in the mountains.  Avery finally got to sing Jingle Bells.

We had lots of fun cousin time inside.

We had a beautiful view of Whistler and Blackcomb Mountains from the back yard.

The kids had a great time playing in the massive amount of snow.

Avery and Nolan cousin photo shoot!

Thank you to Papa, Grandma and the Ruhls for a very fun week away! 

Christmas at the Hunt's

We had our very first Christmas in our new house, just 4 weeks after we moved in.  We were so excited to have a space to share the holiday with the whole family.

Christmas Eve Andy had to work (boo!).  Avery, Nana, Auntie Nan, Oma and I checked out the Church on the Ridge mass.  (Apparently Avery had some demons to work out at church).  Then we came home and had Christmas Eve dinner with our friends and fellow new residents to the Ridge, the Jaliwala's.  Their daughter Sienna is the cutest thing ever - a year younger than Avery with the best laugh!  Both girls thought Auntie Nan was fun to play with.

Avery and I wrote her letter to Santa and set him out a few cookies, before the whole crew went to bed.  And Santa left a couple sleighs worth of presents under the tree while we were sleeping.

We had to wake Avery up Christmas morning at 9am (she was up late Christmas Eve).  But she was sooo excited to run downstairs to the tree and see what Santa had brought her.  To her delight, he left her a dollhouse that she is absolutely loving.  It was such a joy to see how excited she was and how thankful to Santa she's been.  She plays with her dollhouse every day, and this week she even said out loud while playing "Thank you Santa for my dollhouse!"

We spent the next couple hours getting through all the presents under the tree.  Avery was particularly spoiled this year.  New room to fill up!  We got to spend all of Christmas with the Hermans family, including Oma!

Avery helped me make dinner.  She also has a new favorite pose... the Greg.  For those of you who have seen the Klisser Christmas card, you'll understand. :)  Cracks me up!

Christmas night we packed up to get ready for a week in Whistler with the Hunts.  Pictures to come! 

Thank you to Mom, Dad, Oma and Krissy for making our Christmas in our new house a great one!  We hope you all had a very Merry Christmas with your loved ones as well.

Getting Ready for Christmas

During our last week in Bellevue, we hit Snowflake Lane - the last time as residents.  And we saw Santa, or as Avery calls him, the "BoogeyMan." 





Avery didn't want anything to do with the BoogeyMan and had a death grip on me.  The result?  A family photo with Santa. 

We finally got Lola the Elf out and she was up to all kinds of chananigans every night.


Partying with Cinderella.

Sneaking cookies

We got a great Christmas tree from the boyscouts at a tree lot just down the street from us, our normal Frasier Fur.

According to Avery she's been a good girl this year so Santa should be coming to our house with a dollhouse and not coal... we'll see!


New House!



We finally moved into our new house in Snoqualmie Ridge the end of November.  And it's been a crazy whirl-wind of moving, unpacking, painting, hanging and organizing.  We're exhausted!  We had the help of our friends Margaret & Scott, and Amy & Jay along with our parents, which was GREATLY appreciated.  Who knew we had so much stuff crammed in our condo?  We're slowly getting through projects but as we've found, home ownership means never ending house projects.  So far we have gotten rid of the horrible red walls and huge holes and replaced them with grey ones.  We painted Avery's room from light yellow (including ceilings) to what was supposed to be tan but turned out a little mauvish.  Next room: Baby girl's - right now it is a baby blue with a horrible Hawaii wallpaper mural on one wall...

Avery has enjoyed having Opie around helping out with projects.  Oma even came one day and Avery got to cuddle with her.   She loves giving people tours of her new house.

Avery has adjusted really well to her new home, I'm so proud of her.  She loves it.  She has her own bathroom now and thought her tub looked like Grandma's tub.  She loves going outside in the yard whenever she wants.

Unfortunately, during our move Avery got pinkeye (a parting gift from daycare) that knocked her out.  Washcloths seemed to help.

Daddy even mowed the lawn already.  He did perfect stripes in the backyard, what a pro!

We got our first visit from a wood-land neighbor.  (Our yard backs up to a greenbelt).  Avery tried to feed & pet the bunny but he wasn't too sure about that.

And, living in the mountains now, we had our first snow, and boy did it snow!  Avery thought it was great, though she's more of a snowbunny than anything.

We're so glad to finally be in a house in a great community with lots of room for both of our girls to play and grow.  We have so much to be thankful for this year.

Hunt Girls Update

Phew, it's been a crazy couple of weeks for us with more to come.  In the midst of our packing up and moving, I volunteered to be an ultrasound model at Siemens in Issaquah.  This was my 2nd time doing this with baby #2 and Andy came along to check out the 3D/4D images.  So far, this little girl is proving to be as stubborn as big sis: she has feet, legs, arms all in front of her face for every scan!  But it looks like she has Daddy's cheeks, Mommy's nose and Mommy & Avery's monkey toes!  (The sonographer was astonished by the big gap between toes 1&2 - they look just like Avery's!)
During this 2nd scan, the tech saw something and out of moral obligation had to tell us that she found something but couldn't diagnose or tell us what she thought it was - just that it was a cystic structure next to her bladder.  Of course that sent us into panick mode.  Since KK is a high-risk sonographer she was the 1st person I called.  She thought it sounded like an ovarian cyst.  We finally had a follow-up ultrasound yesterday at a high-rick clinic and they are 90% certain that KK is right: baby has an ovarian cyst.  It's something that should go away shortly after birth, but they will monitor it with ultrasounds.  It shouldn't cause her or me any pain.  Doctor said only 2 cases in her career have ever needed to be surgically removed.  So it looks like our little girl is a fighter!  Thanks to everyone who said extra prayers for us, they seem to have worked for now.

Baby Hunt, 28 weeks, the first model ultrasound in 3D:

Baby Hunt, 31.5 weeks:

Meanwhile, big sister Avery is busy entertaining us.  Her last day of daycare was last week, and her teachers were very sad to see her go.  She's learned alot socially and educationally in her 6 months there.  And her Avery antics never fail to keep us laughing.  I don't know where she gets some of this stuff but it sure makes life fun!  Here are a couple highlights in the world of Avery-isms.  Some of them are pretty hilarious but also pretty inappropriate.

"I go pottty."  She's a fibber.  She'll pull her pants down and shut the door, only to sit on the toilet with a diaper, wipe, flush and then "all done."  We're working on this...

If you ask her if she wants something (usually food), she'll respond "No, I good now."

My little potty mouth.  With the chaos and stress in our lives right now, Mommy's had a bit of a loose tongue lately.  Somehow, Avery found herself a new favorite phrase, and not only does she use it appropriately (when she's frustrated, things go wrong...) she says it clear as a bell.  My favorite instance was this: her pants kept falling off one day (no draw string & skinny girl) so as she bends down to pull them up again, she says "Son of a Bitch!"  Mom and I had to compose ourselves before telling her how naughty that is.  We're trying very hard to work this out of her vocabulary but I can't help but chuckle when she says it.

Singing.  Avery is very much a creature of habit.  She has created a bed time routine that consists strictly of jammies, brush teeth, kiss Daddy and lead him into her room for rocking/lullibies before kisses & hugs and to bed.  Her favorite songs are: twinkle little star, you are my sunshine, monkeys jumping on the bed, abc's, old macdonald and wheels on the bus.  Too cute to hear her rendition of the classics.

Giving Thanks

Andy and I have so much to be thankful for this year.  We have a beautiful, spunky little 2 1/2 year old that fills our life with laughter, love and keeps us on our toes.  After a hard day, sometimes all you need is a sweet hug & kiss from our little stinker to make it all better.  We have each other, 12 years and counting!  We have another sweet baby girl on the way who we get to meet and snuggle in 2 months.  God has blessed us with the easy ability to make little girls. :)  And though it comes with additional stress, we were able to purchase a house for our family in Snoqualmie Ridge!  We are so excited to be able to provide our girls with a safe, stable community to grow up in and a yard to play in.  We have loved living in Bellevue/Kirkland for the last 6 1/2 years and will surely miss having everything at our finger tips but are looking forward to our next adventure in the suburbs.

Here's what we've been up to:

Avery had a week or 2 of rough sleep - didn't want to be in her crib.  She ended up taking a few naps in Mommy's arms.  (Can't lie, I love to snuggle with my sleeping beauty)

Avery is a die-hard park fan, even if it's dark and cold outside. 

She has to take her own clothes off before bathtime.  This night she was striking poses for Daddy.

Mommy has been fighting a nasty cold for 2 weeks, and one of those days Avery was a sick baby too.  Luckily Nana was there to snuggle with.

We went to the first official Husky basketball home opener.

We spent Thanksgiving with the Hunt family.  Avery loves going to Papa & Grandma's house and playing with her cousins.  Avery and Braden are good buddies, chasing each other around getting quite a kick out of one another.  They even shared a dance.  And they thought Cousin Brian was pretty cool wrestling with them.

More pics to come from the Hunt Cousin Ping-Pong Championship...

And finally and most significantly, we are thankful to have such loving and supportinve family and friends!