New Baby

Well, we finally got to see the new baby!  My husband met me at the doctor's office yesterday morning, and we all got to see little Baby #4 kicking around on the ultrasound machine.  Technology can be scary at times, but so amazing nonetheless.  Anyway, everything checked out great, and Natalie was beyond giddy with excitement.  I'm not sure if Andrew really gets what is going on, but I think he'll catch on when we come home with another sibling for him to play pirates with =)  After we left the ultrasound room he said "Mom, what do you have in your tummy?"  I told him a baby and then he asked if he could see it O_o  Rachel was not keen on the ultrasound at all...she was not happy about the nurse messing with me, or with the fact that she had to stay with Dad instead of Mom.  She'll be in for a rude awakening when the new baby takes its place as youngest of the family!  On the plus side, she is finally starting to make progress with the walking!!  The girl is a few weeks shy of 18 months old...it's time!  Anyway, here are a few pics of the new baby and my pregnant self; I am trying to keep up a pregnancy photo journal (we'll see if it lasts), and my goal is to take a picture every time I have a doctor's appointment....I've actually not done this for any previous pregnancies, but seeing as I am the youngest of 4 kids, and I completely got the shaft when it came to photo albums, I refuse to do that to kids that show up later in our family.  My oldest brother and my two older sisters all have these big, thick photo albums bursting to the seams with pictures...mine is easily a quarter of the size of theirs, and it is only half full.  Feel the love!  Anyway...not the point of this post...

this was on the day of my first doctor's appointment, about a week ago:

this is the afternoon of my ultrasound, yesterday (a week after the first visit)

(and, I'm going to have to make sure I stand the same direction for future pictures!  I have this weird symmetry thing...it bothers me that I'm not facing the same direction in both pictures!!!....):

The Baby!!

This one is just for good measure...I take the kids to weekly story time at our small town library.  If you've never been to a small town library, go now!  They are the best!  The librarians are the sweetest ladies you'll ever meet, and they are always taking pictures of my kids, and then printing them out for me...how sweet is that?!  The sad part is that it is a library rule that they can't accept gifts from library patrons...what is that about???  How am I suppose to show my gratitude.  Anyway, they gave me this one a few days ago, and I just LOVE it...I sent it with Phil to work, so I had to get a copy of it before I parted with it.  Unfortunately my scanner is not working (because my color ink cartridge is out...did I ask the thing to print?!  no, I don't think so!), so I just took a picture of it with my camera =) 

And, finally, here is a video of little Miss Rachel learning to walk!  She's only been doing this for the last couple of days (note:  I don't have videos of the other kids walking...see??  no shafting the younger kids on memories like my family did to me - no bitterness, though ;):

Oh, and please excuse all the tangents...you can blame it on the pregnancy brain =)