Early birthday present

Stella loves her new playset. Well new for us, I found this on Craigslist after a couple weeks worth of looking several times a day. I love it when diligence pays off. We are looking forward to her birthday party next week! It will be great this year to have all of her friends and Uncle Matt, Aunt Kandi, Maggie and Reagan there!

baby #2

Baby Kruse #2 is looking good. I am 12 weeks pregnant now and just had our first ultrasound today. Everything looks GREAT and we're so excited! All the measurements are right on and heart rate was 157. (normal is 120-180) The baby was moving around a lot during the ultrasound and Stella was very interested in what was going on.
If you need a little help...the head is on the right and you can see little arms and feet are on the left of the picture all tucked up.

This picture is hilarious!! He/she looks like a little frog! This is a picture of the baby's tummy and legs.

The due date is technically Oct. 3rd. However, we will be scheduling a repeat c-section and so at this time the proposed schedule date will be Monday, Sept. 27th.

1st trip to the dentist

So...we went to the dentist. Here is a picture of her playing before the appointment.

Here is a shot of her afterwards with a cool new mirror she got.

I could not take any pictures during because I was too busy holding her down! I thought Stella would do a good job at the dentist. She seems to always like new adventures and new people. But this apparently was NOT the day for her to visit the dentist. She didn't like the purple gloves or the tools or the flouride or the cool chair that moved up and down. We went to a pediatric dentist office. So the ladies were all so friendly and welcoming and tried really hard to get her to warm up and she just wasn't having it. She cried very loud while the hygentist was trying to do anything, even just look in her mouth.

We were told that we need to get her to stop sucking her thumb. This I knew. But so soon? Why does part of me not want her to stop sucking her thumb? I think it's because that'll be the last little bit of baby to go and that makes me sad. I know it's silly. So I'm going to start talking to her about it. We'll work on it.

Bed time stories

Getting ready for bed...we've had a bath, AFV is on, we read lots of books and lately we've liked to have a little late night snack.

We've been able to go on lots of walks outside lately and whenever a car drives by Stella just waves and waves to it! We get a lot of smiles this way. Stella has met a few new babies recently. 4 of our friends here have just recently had baby #2 and Stella really likes them. If I let her get close to them she's always very gentle and likes to give them their blankets.

Stella has a growing fondness for Mickey Mouse! She likes to watch Mickey Mouse Playhouse on t.v. (though she doesn't sit still for the whole show) She'll ask for it when it's not on even. It's been kind of neat for her to show some interest in something like that.

Tonight Stella and I went on a little dinner date to Moe's. There was a lady sitting at a table behind us who in a wheel chair. Once Stella and I got up to leave Stella went right over to her and grabbed a hold of the handle for the wheel chair and acted as if she was going to push her. Luckily the lady just laughed and was very nice. It was very funny, of course Stella believes everyone is her friend and what's theirs is hers.

Stella loves all things music and dress up these days. And we, of course, marvel at it all. What a princess! She's getting 3 of her 2nd year molars in right now. And I wouldn't have noticed at all; I just happened catch a glimpse of a little white fleck in the back of her mouth a couple days ago. She's been sleeping just fine and in a fine mood. I've heard all the horror stories of what happens when teeth come in and we've never really experienced any of it with her. We're lucky I suppose. Stella's been putting lots of words together lately. I think we are on the brink of small sentences perhaps. Maybe more like demands....as her second birthday is quickly approaching.

My Montage 2/10/10 at OneTrueMedia.com

Stella really enjoyed doing Mommy's hair one day. She even held the clip in her mouth just like I do when I'm putting her hair up. We were very excited to find that her hair now fits into a pony tail. I think it makes her look like a very big gir. She loved showing her new pony off to the camera. She kept turning so that I could get good shots of the back! :) Stella loves to color and has spent a lot of time recently doing so. It's only made better if she can use a pen. She will point up to the top of the comp. cabinet and say "Iwannapen". A friend of ours got us some 'Brain Noodles' for christmas and we have a lot of fun being creative with them. We made crowns one day for the whole family. Even Stella's baby got one.

Make photo slide shows at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Feelings

Stella has been developing over the course of the past several months a real ability to show empathy towards others. Especially when they are her age or younger. If she hears a baby cry in a store she seems genuinely concerned, when others around her are happy, she is happy. Tonight when a friend of hers got in a bit of trouble at a birthday party, Stella heard him crying from the other room and kept saying his name to me and pointed to where he was, this was upsetting her. I rented a book from the library about feelings, as she has started telling me 'happy' lately. In this book there are pictures of kids showing each feeling.. scared, hurt, happy, proud, shy etc. We've been experimenting with making these different faces and it has brought a lot of laughs!. Here are some of them...

Her HAPPY face

SAD face
(not too) ANGRY face

SUPRISED face