Splash Park

I decided that I needed to do a post all about Max before this baby comes which is any day now. Max will be 18 months this Saturday which I cannot believe. He is too little to be a big brother, but he will be a great one. These last couple of weeks, I have been trying to spend a lot more time with him because once this baby comes it won't be just him and me anymore. I love spending time with him. He makes me laugh at all the things he says and does. Here is a list all about him:
-he carries around not one blanket, but 3
-he says "ball" to everything that is round like a watermelon and my pregnant belly
-he loves loves the movie Shrek 2
- he loves ketchup. He will eat anything if it has ketchup on it
-he doesn't sleep in his toddler bed, but instead he sleeps on the floor right next to the door on top of toys and books
-he loves the water
-he gives my tummy a kiss when we say "kiss the baby"
-loves to jump, dance, and spin in circles
-loves his juice cup and hates any kind of milk. Trust me I have tried to give him every kind of milk and in every kind of way and he still hates milk.-whenever he sees a dog, he will chase after it.
-loves bubbles, but what kid doesn't
-he is just a happy little boy. The only time he really cries is when he is hungry, thirsty, tired or in pain from his teeth. We are very lucky parents to have him as our child. Now I am a little scared that his sister will be completely opposite from him because I don't know if it is possible to have two angels right in a row.

One little fun thing we did the other day is that we went to the splash park. Let me just say that Max had a lot of fun and was very sad to leave. He has been before, but this was really the first time that he played in the water and got very wet.

He tried to step on the water coming out and now he does the same thing with the water in the tub.

Max loves these things. I don't know what they are called maybe "the spring rocker," but anyways he loves them.

He loved swinging with his daddy

Summer in Az

So summers in Arizona are not that much fun especially when you are pregnant. I feel like if you live in Arizona, you have a pool. I don't know why we never put a pool in our backyard or why we didn't buy a house that already had a pool. Anyways, we do make do. We play in our little plastic pool or even the sprinklers when they turn on. Max has lots of fun running through the sprinklers. Here are some of the latest pictures of him playing in the backyard.

I have discovered that Max loves bubbles, but what kid doesn't like bubbles

I still can't believe that my little boy is going to be a big brother soon. He is going to be a great brother. Every day he comes up to my belly and lifts up my shirt and gives the baby a kiss. It is so sweet. I am a little scared having a newborn and a 18 month old, but I know everything will be fine. But I am going to miss spending all day just the two of us.

Farewell in Rancho

This past weekend, we drove to Rancho for Paul's parent's mission farewell. It was a good weekend, but also a sad weekend because it was probably the last time we will see them before they take off at the end on June. It will be weird not to have his parents around for 3 years, but I can't wait to see them in Honduras. They are going to be great mission presidents.

On Friday, someone in their stake had a little going away party for them and 2 other couple missionaries leaving from their stake. It was a lot of fun and the kids had fun playing and eating all the food.
Then on Saturday, we all decided to go down to Laguna and spend the day at the beach. We thought that it would be a little cold, but we just wanted to spend some family time together. It actually turned out to be a perfect day and I am so glad that we decided to go. Max had so much fun. I thought that he would hate the sand, but he loved it including the water. This boy was not afraid of that water at all. Now that I know that Max loves the beach so much, we are for sure going to make some more beach trips in the future.

At least Max was good about holding our hand when he wanted to go in the water.

Every single time he saw a dog on the beach, he would chase after it and Paul would have to go run after him.

We really need a dog. Max loves dogs.

He watched daddy play volleyball and try to catch the ball as well.

He had lots of fun playing with his cousins

He had lots of fun destroying someone's sandcastle that they made.

A little scare

So i just wanted to post what has been going on with me these last past couple of weeks. Paul and I did have a little scare with the baby, but everything is fine now. A couple of weeks ago, I did have some bleeding. I called the doctors and they had me go to the hospital to get it checked out. When I got there the nurse checked everything out and said that I might have this baby tonight at 29 weeks. She told me there were 3 possibilities for the blood. First, my water broke. Second, the placenta tore away from the wall or third, my body thought I was in labor. Either possibility was not good. They hooked me up to an IV machine with 4 different medicines/fluids. I got a shot to stop my contractions because apparently I was having contractions even though I could not feel them. Then they gave me a steroid shot to help develop the baby's lungs.
Long story short, I was in the hospital for 4 nights and no baby which is very good. They gave me 3 ultrasounds to make sure everything was fine and everything was. My water did not brake and my placenta was still in place. They have no idea why I started to bleed. Their only guess is that my placenta broke away from the wall just a little bit and that caused the bleeding. The good news is that I am fine, but more importantly the baby girl is doing great. She is kicking like crazy and she is also very low in my tummy.
I do have to be on moderate bed rest until I at least hit 32 weeks and then from there I guess we will see what happens. I am at 31 weeks now, so next week I have a doctors appointment, so I will see what is going to happen from there.
I just want to thank all my family and friends for all there thoughts and prayers. Thank you so much for all the help that everyone has given us. We are so blessed to have so many people that love us and that will help us in a minutes notices.

Easter

For this Easter, we decided to spend it right here in Arizona. My mom actually decided to come for a visit and help us celebrate Easter. It was a lot of fun to have her visit. Max of course had lots of fun with his Grammy. One thing that he loved to do was to have his Grammy read to him. It is so funny because whenever people come to visit, all he wants to do with them is read. He just loves his books.

This was the first Easter the Max was able to help color Easter eggs. We decided to decorate outside because it was such a great day and. We put him in his chair and let him go to town. Of course, at first he had no idea what to do, but then he caught on and had lots of fun. After we were all done, Max looked like an Easter egg himself. His arms, hands, stomach and legs were covered in food coloring.

Max loved his Easter basket that the Easter bunny brought him. He got some toys for the backyard and some stuff animals.

Helping mommy and Grammy cook breakfast before Conference.

Max's first Easter egg hunt!
He had so much fun finding all the eggs. At first, he didn't know what to do. We would try to help him, but he kept getting distracted by his toys that were in the backyard. I guess for next year, I will have to put all his toys away before the Easter egg hunt. Finally, he did catch on and then he had a blast trying to find all the eggs. Paul did a great job hiding the eggs.

After Max found all his eggs, we sat down and let him see what was inside. I filled the eggs with fruit snakes and Trix cereal and he loved the cereal. It was a great Easter. It was perfect weather, maybe even a little to hot, but it was so much fun seeing Max so excited whenever he found an egg. Hope everyone a great Easter.

Rancho Visitors

A week before Easter, Paul's parents and grandma came for a visit. It was really good to see them and Max had a lot of fun with them. On Friday we were able to attend a Dodger's spring training baseball game. It was Max's first baseball game ever and he did pretty well. Of course we had to take many walks around the field, but for the most part he was great.
Then on Saturday, we went out to this farm place in Phoenix which is rated one of the best places to eat. Max was able to run around and look at all the chickens that were there.

The gang

I am trying to teach Max to smell the flowers with his noise, but instead of smelling with his noise he smells with his mouth.

Grandma and Grandpa bought him some Easter eggs and we decided to let Max play with them a couple of days early and it was very funny to watch him. He would take all the eggs out of the container and then put them all back into their places. He would do this over and over again. I think he was entertained for a couple of hours with those eggs. Thanks Grandma and Grandpa!

Busy, Busy, Busy

It has been a while since I have posted last. Life just got in the way I guess, but we are all doing great. Max is doing great and the baby girl is growing on track. This last past month we have been pretty busy. When we found out that I was pregnant, I told Paul that we need to get everything done around the house now because once this second baby comes we won't have all the time in the world. So I made a list and we are slowly getting stuff done.

In the middle of February, we had my dad and my sister, Dana, come for a visit. That was a lot of fun to see them and Max had so much fun spending time with them. We did a lot of fun things while they were here, but my favorite part was when we went to the Worldlife Zoo. We have never been there before, but it was a lot of fun.

Max going down the slide at the Zoo for really the first time and he loved it.

Eating lunch at the Zoo with a great view.

One of the big things that was on my to do list was to get the backyard done For about 7 months, we have lived with dirt in the backyard and it was driving me crazy. We were going to do the backyard ourselves, but with Paul's crazy work schedule and the weather getting warmer, we just decided to hire someone to do it. We got a fabulous deal and they finished in about 3 days. There is really nothing special about it. We just got grass, rocks, and some plants. It is a typical Arizona backyard, but its a finished backyard and Max loves it.

He can now go down the slide all by himself.

He can play with balls all day long. He kicks, throws and chases them.

This water thing is the best especially when it's warm outside. He is entertained by it for hours.

I put the bouncer that I used for Max in is closet to get it out of the way, but Max has recently discovered it and loves it. I think he loves it more now then we he was a baby. He is going to have a real hard time letting is baby sister use it.

Another big project that we are doing is painting. I am so sick of having white walls. We have spent months trying to pick out colors. I can tell that this is our first place that we have ever painted because we had the hardest time deciding what we wanted and what we liked. The most frustrating thing about picking out a color is that we would like a color on the paper, but when we bought a tester and put it on the wall, we hated it. The color on the paper and the color on the wall were so different. But after many different color testers, we finally decided on a color. We first painted the base color that is all throughout our house and that color is a light tan and then in the living room and kitchen/family room we are doing accent walls. We haven't painted those walls yet, but in the next week or two those walls will be done. So that means I only have to paint the laundry room, 4 bedrooms, and 2 bathrooms. This is never going to end.

Max helping us paint

The only time we can paint is on the weekend, during Max's nap, and at night when Max is a sleep. So this is a very slow process, but it is getting done and its getting done before the baby comes.