Wednesday, March 20, 2013

Update on the newest addition


Not to worry, our next family addition is not being slighted, I'm keeping up with every other week belly shots just as I have with the other two kids.  The big difference with this baby was that we waited much longer before making our official announcement.  We found out about this unexpected bundle about 10 days before Christmas-things were incredibly hectic with the holidays, but life seemed to completely stop when we got that positive and did I already mention, unexpected pregnancy test?  We spent a weekend in shock that we were already adding to the family (Lucy was 9 months old at the time); although we really weren't too far off from our "plan" to add to the family.  I had wanted Lucy to be one, but really what's a few months in the grand scheme of life?  Hank and Lucy are just 2 years apart and these two will be 18 months apart-yes, life is about to get even crazier..but honestly I love having children close together in age.  Our lives are so hectic already, why not add to the madness?  I think it makes so many things easier, and we are of the mentality that we get em in and get em out on the back end.  Lucy and this baby will be just one year apart in school and Hank and this baby will be 3 years apart in school.  By the time high school rolls around the we will have a senior, sophomore, and freshman all at the same time-Ritger rules! 

So anyways, we decided to keep quiet to give us some time to process our new addition as a family-including getting started on the plans to add to the house, and I certainly needed that time.  Now I am 16 weeks with another bouncing baby GIRL!  Yes, estrogen will rule our roost now--Johnny's immediate reaction to having another daughter "oh great, another wedding to pay for!"  followed quickly by "wow, there's gonna be all kinds of emotional drama in our house now"  Don't worry, he's absolutely thrilled at the notion of having two daughters.  Lucy absolutely adores her dad-I just don't think he ever imagined his life with girls :)  Hank has been saying all along that he's having another baby sister, and this time around he's really enjoying going to my doctor's appointments with me to see the "xray of the baby".  He asks the doctor all sorts of questions like "whats the baby doing in there?", "can the baby see me?", "how's the baby getting out of there?".  He is really embracing his role as super big  brother now-he has become rather helpful lately and comes up to my belly and gives his "other baby sister" kisses all the time.  He just announced today that her name will be Baby Bertha-yikes.  We have a terrible time coming up with girl names that we like--so don't be expecting any name announcements before this little is born.

How am I feeling? This pregnancy has been very similar to my first-much easier than Lucy's, hence my gut feeling that this was another boy.  So much for that!  I am past the first trimester exhaustion and obnoxious food issues, and actually feel fantastic now.  I have more energy than I typically do when I'm not pregnant since the fog of fatigue cleared about 2 weeks ago.  I feel like I can run a marathon everyday-which is good cause I need all this energy to keep up with everything on my plate.  I don't ever recall having this kind of energy surge with the other two pregnancies.  I know it won't last, so I will enjoy while I can.  With the increased energy has come increased hunger-probably making up for the fact that in the first trimester I have exactly one thing each day that I felt like eating and then the next day the thought of that food made my stomach turn. For the first time I actually lost weight during the first trimester, not from sickness but probably due to the fact that I have two babies at home to chase around (one of whom I am still nursing).  No worries there-I've easily put all that weight back on in about 2 weeks plus some :)  My belly is growing, already starting to get the low back twinges and starting to feel the flutters of my sweet baby as we quickly approach the halfway point already!  

This weekend we are off to test drive minivans-can't say what I'm more excited about-the minivan idea or the car dealer...blech.
12 weeks


14 weeks

17 weeks

Thursday, March 14, 2013

Happy 1st Birthday Lucy

My sweet baby has officially turned one, and we all survived the festivities with minimal whining and crying.  We had our traditional family party on her actual birthday, followed by her official rainbow themed bash with all her favorites in attendance.  

How Lucy stacks up at 1 year:
  • Height: 29 inches 45th percentile up from 19.5 at birth
  • Weight: 19 lbs 29th percentile up from 6 lbs at birth. The doctor said her jumps on the weight chart have been "phenomenal" and I have to agree since we started out in the less than 3rd percentile.  What can I say? my girl likes to eat.  
  • She's got 6 teeth with two more top teeth trying to push through as we speak
  • She still crawls like a pegleg, pulling her right leg underneath her-but man she moves fast!
  • She cruises all over the house, and took a few independent steps after the cat the other day, but crawling is the preferred method of movement
  • She babbles up a storm and has a few true words already-mama, dada, meow, fish, uh oh, hi, and bye
  • She loves music, dancing, clapping, patty cake, "riding the horsie", swinging, being outside, playing "I'm gonna get you", wrestling with her brother, being upside down,  peek a boo, reading books, and basically any of her brother's toys
  • She eats like a chow hound-3 huge meals a day of basically whatever we're eating, she weaned herself from breastfeeding and is now almost completely on whole milk.  Blueberries are her absolute favorite.  

I'll let the photos tell the rest....

Her first set of wheels, and just one more hunk of plastic under the deck-but it makes her so very happy, so I suppose it's worth it :)

Bright and early on birthday morning
 Hank helping open presents, aka opening all of his sister's birthday presents
 Cake! She's like her dad, rather timid about sweets.
 Traditional birthday zoo trip with big bro-I just love seeing them standing together like this, checking out the bush dogs :)
                           Train ride on day 365 of life                                        First train ride on day 10 of life

Birthday photo shoot 



The main event-we got a beautiful 65 degree day for a party on our deck






What a joy our sweet Lucy Jane is!  It always amazes me how far they come in the first year of life, she has quite a personality developing and is into everything already keeping us very busy.  Onto year 2 little one!

Wednesday, March 6, 2013

Recent Happenings in 500 words and pictures or less?

I never do new year's resolutions, mostly because I think it just makes you feel like crap when you've already failed by January 15th..and let's face it, sticking with them is virtually impossible.  However, I am a big fan of the whole clean slate for the new year, and I typically try to set some goals for the year.  One of my big ones, was to spend more time blogging (read: posting once a week), expand the blog from more than just a family update blog etc--well you see why I don't do new year's resolutions?  I am clearly incapable of keeping them.

Well, I still have this goal in mind, if life ever slowed down enough to allow me to eat/drink/sleep etc.  I do feel compelled to keep up the family updates simply because I don't have baby books for the kids-another major mommy shortcoming on my part, I know. To be fair, I think baby books are outdated in the age of social media, digital photography, smart phones etc.  I mean I have thousands of photos and videos of my kids--I grew up in the age of film photography where I'd get a roll of 24 developed every few months.   At least the kids will have this blog to look back at someday, right?

Winter is hard with kids....this winter was miserable, it seemed like it was raining, cold, windy and grey 95% of the time.  To say we've got cabin fever would be an understatement-the kids fight, they drive me nuts, we're just all itching for the warm days of spring and sunshine that will break us out of these walls!  

Anyways--I haven't posted lately mostly because our life is moving at ten thousand miles a minute with lots of exciting updates and events despite the nasty weather.  I'll attempt to hit the high points to get caught back up to speed with a photo dump of the last 2 months...

The kids have really started playing together a lot-and fighting a lot, but it is so fun to watch them interact

Hank goes to art class every Monday morning--he's clearly a creative genius.  Soccer starts next week--this will go one of two ways..I'm slightly nervous :)

Dad had a birthday-and anyone who knows me knows that birthdays are all celebrated in our house--for those wondering, the viking hat is the official Ritger family birthday hat, if it's your birthday, you wear the hat-no exceptions to this rule.


 Lucy has become quite the little handful of late--into everything as you can see

Some loungin on the couch watching Daniel Tiger-I just love this picture, Lucy is so in love with her brother and has a hard time staying away from him despite his attempts to keep her away
 We love Valentine's Day-working on our crafting projects
 Helping dad at one of our rental properties
 Little stinker at 11 months old!

Finally able to share the tub together--one of the biggest decisions Hank makes everyday is what color bath he wants every night

An unseasonably warm day at the zoo with Dad
 Oh yeah....did we forget to mention this happened?  Baby Ritger #3 arriving mid to late August-not only is the car to small but so is the house--we're about to undertake our biggest project to date--well not us, but we will be adding on an upstairs to our house in the upcoming months!  All individuals under age 10 will be required to move upstairs along with their toys and belongings--I cannot tell you how excited I am about this!   Not as excited about the idea of my house being under construction for 2 months...but well worth it in the end.

We find out Monday if this little squirt is a boy or girl--I'm 99.9% certain boy so we'll see how those mommy instincts pan out this go-around, they haven't failed me yet!


So there's the news for now....I had to get caught up before our big event tomorrow--LUCY'S FIRST BIRTHDAY! So bittersweet for this mama watching her babes grow up so fast, but so much fun to celebrate them.  I'll be back soon enough with a birthday rundown!









Lilypie First Birthday tickers