February 2017

On February 2nd I had an ultrasound because I had been measuring small as usual. The technician got a 3D pictures of his face:

Ellie's class did some Groundhog's Day activities and Mrs. Barbano sent this picture. Ellie is in the middle:

Ellie went to Ellie S.'s birthday party at Dimple Dell and Alta got to go hang out with Ruby.

Olive was pretty sad she couldn't go to the party so after we dropped the girls off she got in her swimming stuff and played in the tub:

Whenever we had warm days Alta and Ellie would beg to get their bows and arrows out. One day Dan stuck a dollar bill on the target and whoever shot it first got to keep it. Ellie was so close but Alta won:

Emmie had given me a gift certificate to Sundance for Dan and I to do a full moon snowshoeing thing and we were supposed to use it one weekend in February. Unfortunately pregnancy was making my hip so bad that there was no way I'd be able to snowshoe. Instead we had a family night out and went to get sushi:

Valentine's Day is always pretty uneventful around our house. Olive opened up her chocolate maze and dug in first thing in the morning:

A boy in Ellie's class gave everyone normal-sized Valentines but gave Ellie this. He's had a crush on her all year. She's smiling in the picture but she was really embarrassed about it!

 I picked out my own Valentine's/anniversary necklace and ordered it for myself. When it came I told Dan it was from him to me.

 A typical day with Olive:

There was no school on the Friday of President's Day Weekend so Anna and I went on a walk with the girls riding their bikes. We hadn't stopped to see the zebra for a long time but he was still there:

 That night my sweet friends threw me a baby shower! I'd never had a real baby shower so I felt pretty loved. We met at Blue Lemon for dinner and it was a perfect way to celebrate this baby boy.

On Saturday night Dan and I celebrated our 11th anniversary a few days late. We drove downtown and had dinner at the Copper Onion (finally! It was delicious) and walked around City Creek. Now that I'm writing this 9 months later with a little baby I'm kicking myself for not going on more dates before he was born!

When I downloaded Dan's pictures off his phone I found this one from February and laughed. He spent far too much time than a 30-something-year-old should playing Mario so he could finally beat it:

(The funny thing is my dad tells a similar story of when he became obsessed with beating Mario when Brian was little. Once he beat it he never touched the Nintendo again.)

A lazy Sunday morning.

That ladder was in our room for way too long; we (meaning Dan) painted our bedroom little bits at a time and it took weeks. But we finally got rid of the pale green accent wall! We also painted the extra room in the basement and the room on the main floor. With the baby coming we had to shuffle everyone around. We completely cleared out the main floor room and moved it all to the basement, which meant we finally had to really organize our storage. Alta and Ellie moved to the main floor and Olive got to take over their old room upstairs. We had to move a lot of toys upstairs in order to fit everything in the basement so Olive went from having zero toys in her room to an entire closet full. She would make a huge mess every day during "nap" time and then cry when I told her to clean it up:

I sat on our computer chair and broke it. It had been cracking a little bit along the back and I guess it couldn't handle my 9-months-pregnant belly:

 Dan went to St. George with his friends the last weekend in February. I was 99% sure I wasn't going to go into labor since it was still two weeks before my due date and I hadn't been progressing as much as I had when I'd been pregnant with Olive. So off he went while I enjoyed having the entire bed to myself to make my pillow nest. Oh the joys of pregnancy:

My friend Tess had extra tickets to the Hale Center Theater production of Seven Brides for Seven Brothers and she invited Alta and I to come with her and Emmy. I thought it was a perfect activity to distract me from the last days of pregnancy and I knew I wouldn't have a chance to do something like this with a nursing baby so I asked Lorna to watch the other girls (since Dan was in St. George). I've watched that movie countless times and it was fun to see it as a play and introduce it to Alta.

Alta had been asking and begging to get her ears pierced for a long time. I told her when she finished her set of piano books she was working on she could get them pierced. She worked hard to pass off all her songs and we finally got to go to Claire's at the end of February! She was nervous but too excited to be really scared. In the chair with one done (and a captivated audience) -

 I never got a good picture but here she is with newly pierced ears! She chose studs with her birthstone:

They ended up getting infected a lot those first couple of months and it was kind of a pain, but they look adorable and she loves them. Now she likes the responsibility of being able to choose her earrings and change them when she wants. And of course Ellie is impatient for the day when she is old enough to get hers pierced!

I also spent a lot of time the last week of February trying to decorate a baby boy nursery. I'm not sure why, but I kept putting this off my entire pregnancy. Having a boy seemed a little daunting and unreal (I laugh now to think how worried I was about him being a boy!). But with a scheduled induction date coming up very quickly I wanted to have at least something in his room. I made a plan and ordered some stuff, which of course didn't get there until after he was born and then didn't get set up for weeks (or months) later. But it was a good distraction to work on something those last few days when I was so uncomfortable and done being pregnant.

So next up, March and the birth of Palmer!