Happy Birthday to Andy

Andy had his third birthday on Friday and he proudly spent the entire day telling everyone, "I'm th-free" while trying to hold up only three fingers. We celebrated with pancakes in the morning, a few presents a 2 1/2 hour doctor's appointment for BGB while they tried to estimate how big she is/will be and with a trip to the burrito store.

Today we had his party, and by party I mean we invited his best friend Mia, her dad, my MIL, Bjorn, Mark and me. We had a Thomas cake from Giant that turned out pretty good even though I think the food coloring in the icing may have permanently stained my dining room table and teeth. I probably could have invited one more kid and his/her parents once we found out my niece had a school event preventing the rest of her family from coming to the party, but I think it turned out well anyway. Andy and Mia had fun together and the rest of us got to visit without the chaos of lots more kids.

With BGB on the way, Andy's birthday really got me thinking back to the day he was born. It's hard to believe it's been three years already. He has grown so much, physically and mentally over the past few years. I like to think I've grown a lot as a parent, too (not Bjorn, of course, he knew all this already and didn't need the refresher, he says.)

Now that we have successfully made it past Andy's birthday, BGB can officially be born now. I really wanted to get past the holidays and past Mark and Andy's birthdays. Now that those hurdles have been cleared, I am just about ready. The doctor estimates the baby is about 7-7.5 pounds now. If she gains half a pound a week until delivery roughly, that makes her 8.5-9 pounds. That seems quite big to me, but it's probably not so big I can't at least attempt a normal delivery. Not that a normal delivery is on my list of favorite things to do, but I hear the second one is usually much faster and somewhat easier than the first and having endured the longer version, I'll sign up for the shorter one in the hopes that it makes my recovery easier, too.

The detailed sonogram was very cool although the baby is big enough now that she doesn't fit on one screen so it's hard to really see that it looks like a baby because they could only focus on a few body parts at a time. The good news is the brain and heart as well as kidneys and bladder all look good, flowing the right ways and in the right places. The only reason it took so long as she was being modest with her hands on her chest so they couldn't get a good look at the heart.

Oddly, the best part of the whole visit was on our way out, an older lady who had been riding on the elevator with us stopped to talk. She asked Andy how old he was and then told me she'd never seen a three year old with such an extensive vocabulary. Sure, I have no idea who this nice, red-haired older woman is. She could have been escaping the dementia ward at the hospital for all I know, but who cares! She thinks my kid is a genius and you just don't get enough of that.