It's a ....

My super good friend, Karen, known as Auntie Karen to Noah, sent Noah a package of belated Christmas gifts!  She is so super duper and Noah loves his new cup...

 and especially his new light up Francesco and "Bean" cars!

YIPPPPEEEE

 My other good friend Sam, who lives in Vermont now, :(, came to visit.  We went for a walk in the snow at the Bellevue Botanical Gardens... in the rain.  My mom and Noah were there too.  It was so nice to be able to spend time with her!  And she finally got to meet Noah!

 While we were there, my mom looked to see if there were any geocaches in the area.  Of course there were!  Noah found more treasures!  :)

these rocks are neat! 

 This past weekend we had two birthday parties to go to!  This is our little buddy Oscar at his one year old birthday party.  Such a sweetie!  His is Evan and Jessica's little boy.  So cute!  He was very non-messy with his cake too, such a good little boy :)

 Noah had fun helping Oscar open his presents too!

 We went to another birthday party at Pump It Up and Noah and I had a blast!  He ran and bounced around and even played some air hockey!  He got this pirate patch in the goodie bag.  Totally cool.   Last weekend we went to Gabriel's birthday too but sadly I didn't get any pics of that party.  It was so great to be able to spend birthdays with these special boys!

 And the BIG news of this week!!!  We had our 20 week ultrasound!  I am half way there and we found out we are having a ..... GIRL!!!!!  WE ARE SOO EXCITED!  Chris was immediately worried about protecting her from boys as she gets older and I was immediately excited to buy baby bows and ribbons and headbands!  :)  :)  If you happen to have an baby or infant girl stuff, we would be happy to take it off your hands! :)  We also learned that our little girl is doing well in there and everything looks a-okay!  I am consistently feeling her move around, and apparently she is an active little baby, according to the ultrasound tech anyway.  :)  Also, I am feeling good!  I feel huge already and am starting to get some heartburn and am often tired, but those a pretty minor complaints I think :)  No cravings lately... oh wait, I needed a brownie sundae earlier this week.  I've gained about 15 pounds and am starting to do some prenatal yoga.

Here is her profile. She was moving all around the entire ultrasound so we didn't get  the best profile pic.  Here she is mid somersault... she kicked herself in the face right after this.  Doh!

That's her cute little foot!

There're the 3 lines telling us "with 99% certainty" that she is indeed a girl!

In other news, Noah has developed an odd fear of the sound of a clock... tick tock!  He was afraid of the tick tocking clock at my mom's house on Friday night (she was babysitting because Chris and I actually went out on a date, and had a blast by the way!).  Poor guy.  Every night since he has woken up upset that he saw a clock in his room.  I am trying to convince him Baxter, his teddy bear, has magical powers that can protect Noah.  You know, just like my Grover has magical powers that protected me and made me feel better when I was sad or sick!  True story!  :)  I think Noah had a bad dream about the clock though and his little mind invented that I threw it outside in the trash.  So cool I get to be his hero! :)  Hopefully this will be a short-lived fear as the poor guy shouldn't be afraid of a clock!