And Just In Case...

You hadn't heard...

Yes, we are pregnant again. I hadn't had any symptoms yet, so I didn't think I was, but we decided to take a test just in case so if the answer was yes we could tell people on Christmas day. It was a very very quick yes with all three tests. Quicker than I'd ever seen before. which makes me curious as to whether or not it's really real or not. I don't have an OB yet, so we're in that process right now. More info to come once I have my first appointment.
I realized that I did have a tiny symptom - I do remember having hot flashes at some point. Maybe while we were on the cruise? It may seem like nothing, but that was the first symptom I had with both Will AND Kirstine, so it does mean something to me. Also I almost threw up while eating lunch today. But I didn't.

Info about this kid:
We will most likely not find out the sex. Reasons? The 9 months of pregnancy are truly the 9 longest months of your life for those of you who have not gone through it yet. And with child 1, you are occupied with all things shopping (picking out bedding, nursery decorating, buying clothes, picking out strollers and swings, registering...) and picking out names... so the time goes pretty quickly. with child 2 not so much. at least i had a kid of a different sex, so i got to focus my attentions on shopping for clothes. yay! now comes child 3... and there's nothing. so these next 8 months are going to take FOREVER!!! (Not to mention with Will and Kirstine I was pregnant over the holidays, so all of that fun helped the time pass). This time I will have the baby at the end of August, so that's no fun either. So I figure that by keeping the sex a secret, it will make the pregnancy much more fun. I plan on just taking a bag of boy and a bag of girl clothes to the hospital with me. so we'll be prepared for both. all of this will change when we find out we're having twins. not that we are, i'm just still hoping:)

Names? We don't have middle names picked out, but first names are definite. Benjamin for a boy, and Bethan for a girl (that is not a typo - it isn't Bethany, it's Bethan. and it's also not BethAnne, like some people are already pronouncing it). That's it for now. more info after my first doctor's appt.

Buggy's Crib

So from Santa Buggy got a stroller, crib, bouncy seat, activity mat, and diaper bag set for her baby dolls. She loves to put Tinkado in the stroller, and she loves to put herself in the crib.
Here's her reading her tinkerbell book in it 2 days ago:

And my favorite... Here's where she fell asleep last night. Scott insisted that I move her to her bed, but I took pictures first. (These pictures were taken in the pitch dark, but my flash makes it look like the light was on).

Making Breakfast

Here are the kids helping Nana make biscuits:

Santa Presents

We woke up on Christmas morning and like most families, opened Santa presents first. His main gift was a bike to Will, and a stroller and crib set for Kirstine. They also both got flashlights, and Will's coolest gift was a headlight. He LOVES it! And he also got a magnifying glass, and unfortunately it was glass and not plastic, and Kirstine dropped and broke it a few hours later.

Nashville

We got back to Birmingham on Wednesday evening, and left Thursday morning to go to Nashville. We stayed with Scott's aunt and uncle for the night. They babysat that evening so we could go to the Andrew Peterson Behold the Lamb concert at the Ryman Auditorium. Awesome. Then on Friday Aunt Sharon and I went to the outlet mall in Lebanon. then we left their house and visited Scott's grandma, Mama Mae. Then we went to Gaylord Opryland. We drove up to the hotel first because we thought Ice was there (it wasn't). But these are pictures from the front of the hotel.

Isn't it beautiful? I was just shocked to see such a huge display of what the holiday really means. In front of a hotel nonetheless. And look how beautiful the trees are. I think there were lights on every single branch all the way to the tip.

So then we found our way over to the other side of the hotel where ICE was. Scott and I went to ICE at Gaylord Palms the Christmas i was pregnant with Will, but we haven't been since. The one in Nashville does a theme, and this is the last year they were doing the Grinch, so we wanted to take the kids. They had a great time, but Will started getting really cold in the end and wanted to get out. Next time we'll remember gloves.

When we got to the last room Scott and I were talking about how we liked this one much better than Orlando, who just does a hodge podge of Christmas themes. But I said I was disappointed because the end of Orlando's is a huge lifesize nativity. And it's beautiful. And then we walked out of the room (with a big sign that said "The End") into another big room with the same nativity that Orlando has. It still just shocks me that the hotel would do this. (especially since it's sponsored by Coca Cola). But I'm so glad they do.

a Stratton Christmas

We opened presents the night we got back from the cruise at Gran and Papa's house. Here are just the few cutest pictures.

Cruise Pics

Here are the few pictures I took on the cruise. We did take more on our excursion, but we bought a waterproof camera for those. so when i finish taking those pictures i'll develop them and get them put on a cd and i can then post those. We had a wonderful time despite the semi cold weather. The boat was pretty rocky the entire time, but not many of us actually got sick. (scott and i didn't at all, thank goodness). This first is Faydra, me, and Valerie (cousin)
next is The 3 Stratton Girls (Faydra on the left is Kevin's wife, and Marissa on the right is Matt's wife as of 12.11.08)

Wedding pictures

Since I was in the wedding, I didn't get any pictures of it, but maybe I'll steal some from Faydra later. But for now, here are the few I got:
The 4 current grandchildren.

Kirstine holding Blue's hand.

And me and Scott.

Travels Home

Went well. We got here in 10 hours and 15 minutes. new record with the kids. We made: 2 drive-thru food stops, 2 pee rest stops, 1 gas stop, 2 stops on the side of the road (1 to pee, 1 to put kirstine back in her straps since she kind of squirmed her arms through the top hole), and 2 really quick pull throughs some place just to grab something that fell on the floor, or to pour some more apple juice.

cute sayings this trip:
at least 100 times: will: mom, i love you.
me: i love you, too, baby.
kirstine: i wuv you
me: i love you, too, honey.

and throw in an occasional "mom, you're so beautiful"

I'm asking him his chatechism (is that how you spell that?) questions. (by the way, he usually answers all of these perfectly)

Who made you? "God."
What else did God make? "The whole earth" (real answer is 'everything'). i'll take it.
What did He make "the whole earth" from? Sin. (AAH. Wrong answer. it's supposed to be 'nothing', so I correct him.)
Why did He make all things? (supposed to be 'for His glory'). He says, "because He's sooooo powerful." (I'll take it:) )

Picking out our tree

We went to Home Depot to get our tree this year. They were unfortunately all bundled up. Except for maybe one. We held it up and it was perfect so we bought it!
Here's Kirstine smelling the trees.

Preps for Thanksgiving Day.

Did I ever mention what our Thanksgiving was supposed to be and what it ended up to be?
Plans: Scott worked til about noon, then we would decorate for Christmas all day, eating lots of appetizers and christmas goodies and watching Christmas movies all day.
Instead:Will woke up at about 4am screaming. I went upstairs to check on him and he was sitting in the middle of the hallway complaining about it being so dark he couldn't find his way back to his bed. What?!? How many times has this kid made this trek in the middle of the night? My only thought is that he was asleep when he did it, and that's why he was freaking out. Anyway, I helped him back to bed and then realized I was sick. Scott got the kids up in the morning and got their milk and breakfast, and when he had to leave for work I came and layed on the couch and we watched the parade all morning. I didn't move. When Scott got home around 1 I went back to bed and didn't wake up til 4:30. I tried to help Scott decorate as much as possible, but I felt miserable. Most of the time I sat on the floor handing him stuff. So after all that cooking I did, and money I spent, I ate cheese and crackers on Thanksgiving and that's it! I woke up perfect on Friday.

Blue Ray

In case any of you are with Kirstine and I'm not around, and she asks for a Blue Ray...

At the beginning of Tinkerbell there is a commercial for the next Tinkerbell, and at the end a big voice says "Coming Soon on Disney DVD and Blue Ray." And Kirstine always yells "Blue Ray" out to it.
Later I had a container of orange and blue m&ms and we were giving some to the kids. I guess when we were asking her if she wanted an orange or a blue m&m she just heard blue. Well Kirstine now calls all m&ms Blue Rays.

Other cute Kirstine tidbit:
She hates for people to sing around her. The second Scott or I start singing she throws her hand up and yells "top! top!"

zebra potty trained before kirstine???

Zebra had to go potty, so Will took him. and then he flushed the toilet. Yay zebra!!! I wonder if he did the pee pee dance for Will - the same one that Kirstine does???

my nose

Will says to me in the car today,
"Mom, my nose is clean of all boogers..."
me: "Awesome!"


W: "...Because I ate them all!!!"

gross. and thanks for being so excited about it, too. Then later i was cleaning his nose and got one, and he tried to make me eat it. Boys.

Publix

Will just came in to me holding a little piece of paper and said, "Where'd this come from? Where'd this thing come from? It says Publix on it." Sure enough, it's a publix coupon. So i ask him where it says Publix, and he shows me the word. I aske him how he knows that, and he just says he does. I definitely didn't know he recognized that word! When we first moved here we were looking for a publix and i remember telling him to look for a big green sign with a big P on it. So i guess he's memorized that sign now, and he knows the word. Awesome!

Hair cuts

I have always cut Will's hair, with the exception of his first haircut at 11 months. He has never had a problem with it, and is in fact very great about it. He sits super still and positions his head exactly where i tell him. Until 2 months ago, that is. Last time I cut his hair he just freaked out and started screaming. He's super scared that I'll cut him, despite the fact that he knows that I have never even come close to cutting him. It was time to cut again yesterday (so if it looked bad it would have time to grow out before the wedding), and he started out great. He even said he wanted it super short like daddy's. and then all of a sudden he started flinching again and crying. It was not fun. I eventually (with a lot of coaxing and Scott distracting) got it mostly done (it took about an hour). but he just wouldn't let me do the line around it (like the forehead, and ears, and neck). so we gave up for a little while and let him dig with the shovel. then scott came outside with the electric hair clipper things to finish will's neck, but first he let will do scott's hair. (we eventually finished will's hair. it's absolutely not the best job i've ever done, but it'll do.)
His face is the cutest in all these pictures. He's concentrating so hard!

Halloween

We had a great day. We went to a friend's house (Misty) in the morning for a Halloween dress-up play date thing. Then we came home in time for naps. Then Nana and Granddad arrived. We went to Lakeside Baptist Church for their fall festival which was awesome. The kids had a BLAST! There were lots of inflatables and little carnival-y games for the kids. The preschool room had 2 bouncys small enough for the little ones. Will played in one the whole time and Kirstine played in the other. They also had a balloon animal maker (we got a sword and a butterfly), a popcorn machine (it was soo good), hotdogs, chips, and sodas. I got one picture taken and then the batteries died. Can you believe it? So I made Scott get some batteries on the way home so we could get some pictures that night. He was in charge of that camera, and I did video. We then went trick-or-treating around our neighborhood. This is really the first time in my life I have been trick-or-treating in my own neighborhood. Even though there weren't that many houses participating, it was still a lot of fun getting to meet more neighbors, and seeing some that we hadn't seen since we took everyone cookies. Always growing up (and even for the last few years with the kids) we always went to other people's neighborhoods and got to see them say hi to their neighbors, now it was our turn! (I don't know how correct this is, but in my memory we spent most of our halloweens growing up in aunt pat's neighborhood. the last 2 years we have gone to the Lynn's neighborhood to go with Giovanni and Adria, and we missed that little tradition this year!:( ) Anyways, here are the few pictures we got:

(you can see the gator in the background of this next picture. unfortunately he lost an eye some time during the process of carving tinkerbell on the side)

Pumpkins

I was looking at a website of pumpkin patterns, and I saw a cool one of Batman. i asked will who it was, he said batman, and i asked what he wanted on his pumpkin this year. Thinking that since there was a really cool batman right in front of him, and all the surrounding patterns were dumb, i figured he'd say batman - WRONG! He said, "a roly poly and a snake". are we really surprised? NO! So there's obviously no patterns out there for roly poly's, but we looked around to find one of a snake, and we couldn't. so we improvised. we found some clipart in Word, and blew it up to printout for the snake pattern. and for the roly poly, i copied a picture from wikipedia, put it in photoshop, and separated all the pieces. it turned out pretty cool. it looked like a big armadillo with lots of legs (which is exactly what roly poly's look like!)
For some crazy reason, we didn't get any pictures of our pumpkins this year! Well, not all of them. Here's the Cinderella we did for Kirstine:

K Laughing

Kirstine was sitting on the potty last night. I asked her some question and the answer was "nope". she made the p so hard that spit came out and got all over me. I wiped it off and she thought it was hilarious and couldn't stop laughing. so i got the camera to make you all smile today.

Big Girl Bed!

I don't know why, but for some reason I decided yesteday to turn the crib into the toddler bed. Will was a little younger than this when we put him in his big boy bed. I gave it a gamble and it worked! She stayed in bed all night and when she woke up she just cried sat up. What a perfect little baby!!!

Will's bedtime story

This is the 2nd bedtime story I got tonight. (word for word - i left immediately go come write it down.

‘Once upon a time there was a little baby boy, and his name was - There was a little baby girl, and her name was – and she was Will’s mama. And she was soo little. And Will was soo big. And Papa was sooo big. And Gran was soo little. And Uncle Matt came and said, “Look at those people. Some of them are so big and some of them are so little.”’

And then something about them floating up into the fan. but then it started getting just silly and weird and no longer interesting.

Story #1 was all about a little baby boy (they always start this way) who asked his mom if he could ride his hummer and she said, no! because he left his hummer out in the rain and it was broken. so his papa came and put it in the back of his truck and took it home and fixed it and brought it back. and on and on. his stories are usually a mix like this one between fiction and reality. but the top story was obviously pure fiction, and those are the most fun.

Cats and Dogs

This is a video of Will's thoughts on cats and dogs:


The first word of this one is "Aunt Pat", and listen for the "these people" part - it's my favorite!

Texas Trip

These are pictures from our trip to Texas. These first ones are from the playground on Saturday morning:
Here's the boys wrestling:
This last picture is in front of the neighbors' house.

update to sleeping bug

Another funny thing from the trip. Kirstine was asleep, and Will sang to her, "Sleeping Beauuuuuuty, Wake Uuuuuup"

funny stories

from the trip home from texas. as will said it, i quickly grabbed a marker and wrote it down on the cardboard box sitting next to me as i drove. i'm surprised at how legible it ended up being, seeing that i wasn't looking at all while i wrote.

"me: What do you want to eat at McDonald's?
W: I want flowers. I love flowers. They're so good I even like to eat them." and then that was it for about 10 minutes (he was listening to music and watchig movies), and then all of a sudden,
"Mom - I'm just teasing you, I don't want to eat that."
So RANDOM!!!


And here's the other one (this one made his dad VERY proud). And remember, i wrote this down word for word. Also know that absolutely nothing happened during our trip to prompt this, and he hasn't seen Star Wars in MONTHS!

"Luke's father is Darth Vader. Darth Vader is a bad guy. When Darth Vader threw the dempader down, he became a good guy. Darth Vader was dying when he threw the dempader down." (Me: you mean the emperor? W: yeah). "The emperor is a bad guy. He's sooooo bad."

And that was it. I was cracking up.

Question of the Day

"Why is heat hot?" (from Will, obviously)

sleeping bug?

when we got home today Kirstine was asleep in the car. i called scott and asked him to come help me carry a sleeping bug upstairs (i had other stuff to carry). will said, "she's not a sleeping bug, she's sleeping beauty!"

Old Baker Farm

Saturday we went to the Old Baker Farm, about 30 minutes southeast of us. It was awesome. I am such a city girl, so it was all so new to me. This is the kind of stuff you see on tv and movies, and people who live out in the middle of nowhere get to do, and now that's me! I have always been so jealous of people that got to do this kind of stuff. I am sooo happy that I live in an area where this is possible! Anyways, we went around 1:00 on saturday and stayed about 5 hours. There are tons of posts below this one with more pictures. This first one is from the cotton bounce. It was just a big trailer full of cotton. SO COOL! A little dirty, well maybe a lot dirty, but it was still really fun. Kirstine got in and out in less than 5 seconds. So i went in with her and she sat on my lap for about 10 minutes. She liked it if I held her and bounced her, but it took forever for her to venture off on her own. But she did, and she liked it.

Cotton Bounce Video

Cock a doodle doo

Tractor Time

This was our most fun of the day, for both of the kids. Will could have driven this thing for 24 hours straight.

Hay Maze and Hay Mountain

In the Fields

Cotton Fields

And in the corn maze. This was a lot of fun. It took us about an hour to finish. Will did not want to go in at all at the beginning, but after about 10 minutes he loved it and ran in front the whole way. He would yell, "DEAD END" and then run back to us so we could find another way. Kirstine enjoyed it very much, especially when she realized she could actually walk inside the corn rows where she wasn't supposed to go. She had fun in there. But she was very slow most of the time. She liked to just lolligag (sp?) and drink her sippy cup.