My Toothless Wonder

Today has been a very eventful day at the Stice house! Evan lost his first tooth!!!!! We have been wiggling two of his front lower teeth for the last several days, and tonight one of them was loose enough to actually pull. A few tears, some screams, and lots of laughs from Mommy and Daddy later, the tooth was out! WOW! My baby is growing up! The countdown for the tooth fairy has officially begun! :-)

Random Pictures

For some reason, my blog keeps shutting off when I try to add pictures to previous posts, so I decided I'd just make a new post with pictures about old posts! :-) Does that make sense?

Thi is our first family picture after finding out that we would

welcome another baby boy into the world!

This is me at Chatters after buying Elliott's first outfit!

Evan and me on Mother's Day!

Jen, Mom, and Me on Mother's Day

Okay, there are the pictures I promised. Sorry I couldn't put them with their post, but this beats no pictures at all! Have a great day!

Preschool Graduation

On Thursday, my baby officially graduated from preschool! I cried like a crazy person, but I'm hormonal, so I used that as my excuse. I can't believe that he has already gone through 2 years of preschool! As I sat there watching him recite the Pledge of Allegiance and singing those sweet songs, I couldn't help but go back to the first days of preschool when he cried every single day that I would drop him off! Now, his teachers tell me he's the most improved in his class! I am SO PROUD OF HIM!!!! He has come such a long way, and I can't wait to see what's in store for us in Kindergarten! Enjoy the pictures!

Evan and his best buddy, Jarrett.


Evan and his other best buddy, Noah!

Evan and our angel on Earth, Mrs. Janice! We COULDN'T have made it through preschool with out her! She was the one that held him in her lap every single morning when he would cry! I can't say enough wonderful things about her!

Evan's teacher, Mrs. Karen! She is also WONDERFUL! She has taught Evan so much over the past two years, and we're really going to miss her!

Evan and Mommy in my classroom before the graduation!

Evan with Grammy and Papaw!

Evan with Mamaw and Papaw!

Evan and Granna!

This is Jessica and me after a very emotional ceremony! :-)

**In case you're wondering, Shaun couldn't get off of work to come. I video taped the whole thing though, so he didn't miss a thing! **

It's a BOY!!!!

It's official! Peanut is a BOY! Not just any boy...he's a perfectly, wonderfully, healthy baby boy!

Evan, Mom, and Sandy accompanied us to the ultrasound. The minute we walked in the room Evan started asking, "What is it?" The ultrasound tech was WONDERFUL with him and answered his million questions. When she finally told Evan that he was having a brother, he jumped up and down and said, "Yes, I win. I was wight (right)!" It was priceless! The ultrasound was great! We got to see all of his parts, his organs, even his aorta pumping blood. WOW! God is great! It's amazing to me how intricately made we all are and how God planned it all out perfectly!

After the ultrasound, Shaun and I made a quick run to Chatter's so I could buy our baby boy his first outfit! I saw it instantly! It's a baby blue jon jon with a big white collar (perfect for monogramming). I got him a tiny pair of knee socks to match and a "Baby Brother" bib too!

We could not be happier to be welcoming a second baby boy into our family! Evan is such a blessing and he and I are the very best of friends. I can't imagine anything better than having two little boys running around and referring to me as MOMMY! What a great feeling!

By the way, I know you're wondering about his name. Baby #2 will be named Elliott Daniel! Elliott was one of our favorite names when we were expecting Evan, so we decided to use it if baby #2 was a boy. Daniel was my grandfather's name. I never got the chance to meet him, but I figure anyone who was responsible for helping to make my mom into the person she is today, is worthy of having his great grandson named after him, right? And, Shaun's best friend in the entire world has always been Adam Cassady, whose middle name just happens to be Daniel. So, it's a winning name either way! Doesn't it have a nice ring to it? Elliott Daniel Stice! I can almost see him now! :-)

Mother's Day 2009

I think that each Mother's Day that I celebrate gets more and more special! This year was just great! On Friday night, we took Sandy to Outback to celebrate. She had told us that she wanted to go to Mariah's, however, when we got in the car, Evan so sweetly said, "Gwanna, I was finking, and I would weally wike to eat at Ouback." So, guess what...we ended up at Outback! :-) We had a great time! After we left there, Shaun and Evan took me to the mall and bought me lots of maternity clothes. The best part...neither of them fussed the entire time we were shopping! Sunday, after church, my sister came up and we had lunch at Mom and Dad's. Shaun grilled steaks and they were absolutely delicious. Jen hadn't been up since Christmas, so we had a wonderful time just sitting around and catching up!

As you can see, we didn't have any "over the top" plans, but I just got to hang out with my family, and most importantly, my sweet angels, Evan and Baby #2. The baby didn't want to go unnoticed. Friday night was the beginnings of full-force kicks from this precious gift growing inside of me. Prior to that, I had felt quick flutters, but Friday night, Shaun could even feel those sweet little kicks! Life truly doesn't get any better than this. I am so thankful for my many blessings!

By the way, check back Thursday. Hopefully, we'll get to find out what our peanut is and I can finally quit calling it "it."

P.S. I just realized that I left my camera at Mom's. I'll post pics ASAP!

God Is Good...

This week, we got scare #1 with baby #2. When I went in for my last appointment, I had blood drawn for my triple screen test. This test screens for my likelihood of carrying a baby with Trisomy 18, Spina Bifida, and Down's Syndrome. Last Monday night, at 6:32 p.m. while standing in the cheese aisle of Wal-Mart, I got a call from Dr. Gass giving me the results. While my screens for Trisomy 18 and Spina Bifida came back fine, my screen for Down's came back abnormal. At that moment, everything got fuzzy, and even though he was trying to be reassuring, all I heard was that he wanted me to go to Vanderbilt for a level 2 ultrasound as soon as possible to follow up on these results. Now, keep in mind that I knew the odds of this were definitely in my favor, but to say that I was scared out of mind, doesn't quite sum it up. We decided that we wouldn't tell everyone, because we didn't want to scare our friends and family over nothing. What we did do, though, was pray, pray, pray that God would take care of our peanut. We've been through far too much, and I knew that after all of that, God wouldn't leave us now!

A week after praying, crying, googling, and worrying, our appointment at Vanderbilt was today. I am so thrilled to report that OUR BABY IS PERFECTLY HEALTHY!!!!!!!!! I couldn't help but cry during the entire ultrasound. All its parts are there, all the way down to ten fingers and ten toes. The ultrasound was very thorough, measuring every square inch of the baby's body. Our little peanut (though it was too stubborn to show us its gender) showed no sign of the normal markings for Down's Syndrome, and as the radiologist reported, "there is nothing outside of normal." THANK YOU GOD!

So, that's it in a nutshell! GOD IS GOOD!!!!!! I owe Him more today than I did yesterday, and intend to spend the rest of my life trying to repay Him! We have our "big" ultrasound in BG on May 14th, so hopefully Peanut will decide to reveal its gender to us then! I would've loved to have found out today, but as you can imagine, I was not disappointed with the news we were able to get!

Could This REALLY be Happening?

Okay, so I know that most of you probably don't want to hear all the ins and outs of this much-wanted pregnancy, but it's my blog, right? And, at this point in my life, this is about as big as it gets, so if you don't want to indulge me, now would be the time to stop reading. :-)

Yesterday was my 15 week check-up. Most of you know that we have really struggled with having a child over the past year, so to say that I've been nervous about all of this is an understatement. So, anyway, I went yesterday, silently begging God that things would be okay the entire way to Bowling Green. Thank you God...everything was, as Dr. Gass likes to say, "Perfect." The nurse found that sweet, sweet heartbeat after about 10 seconds (though it seemed like 10 minutes), I measured exactly on target, and apparently, this might actually happen!?!?! I'm sure to those of you who have never had "trials" in having a child, that seems crazy. But I think that I have been so guarded through all of this, that I have always secretly wondered in the back of my mind if this was really happening. Is God really giving me another child? Can I really let my heart and mind start to believe that we are going to get a second shot at this?

After telling all my fears and ailments (there seem to be a lot of them this go 'round) to Dr. Gass, he began reassuring me as only he can. I left there yesterday afternoon thinking that maybe, just maybe, this really IS happening! I guess God knew I needed a little bit more of a nudge, so to beat it all, I am 99.9% sure that I felt the baby for the first time today. It happened three times in a row and it was such a WONDERFUL feeling. I had almost forgotten how special it is to feel that.

So, I'm not exactly sure why I felt compelled to get all that off my chest, but you guys are my friends, and I just wanted to share my rollercoaster of emotions with you. Tomorrow, I'm going to unpack maternity clothes and actually hang them in the closet because it appears that I'm going to need them for a while! :-) Thanks for all your prayers. Please keep them coming!

OOH....I almost forgot! We scheduled our ultrasound for May 14th at 3:30! Only 3 weeks and 6 days until we can start calling "it" by a real name! YAY!