It's a...BOY!

Time to update our blog! Have not been so good about it lately...I have to justify, so here are my excuses:

I read all of the Twilight series and LOVED it. I have been missing out! I thought of it as some silly love books, that everyone was too overly obsessed with...and now I am in the club :) I loved the Harry Potter books, so I guess I should have guessed I would love these as well. I am glad to have started reading when all four books are aleardy published, so I could enjoy the whole story. It is a total chick flick, love story, teenage drama, but sooo intriguing, addicting, clean, and exciting! I spend about two weeks spending all my free time reading those books, thus the blog was on hold.

Our laptop broke...and it hasn't even been 6 months since we bought it! I had to ship it to the Lenovo support people twice, because they didn't fix the problem the first time. Turned out to be a faulty hard drive...Glad that we had all of our files and pictures backed up. It has been working fine since then, but without it for two weeks, I had limited internet access, so no blogging either.

I have been putting together photo books from our vacations to Ireland, 3 years ago, and the one this summer. And also I have been trying to work on Ophelia's baby book. I am so behind on it and the new baby is on the way and will need a baby book too! Once again, the blog was on hold.

Now that I am finally back in blogging business, I am happily announcing that we are having a little BOY! And are so excited about it! Here is face:

Side view:

And the "manhood"! See the arrow pointing at it?

Crazy and exciting! Camille is having a boy as well. So come next year our family will have two little additions on the boy side!

The scary part was that we had to have an emergency ultrasound to make sure the baby was OK, and that's how we found out that it's a boy. I was looking for my knitting stuff (nesting issues), that was buried under some pretty heavy boxes in the closet...of course, I can do anything, right? Well, not so much, being 18 weeks pregnant. I started bleeding and had to go to the doctor's ASAP. Everything checked out normal (more answers to prayers!) and we got to peek in the womb!

We prayed about the name just like we prayed for Ophelia's name. We were flipping through a hymn book one Sunday and stopped at the page of the names of authors. One name immediatly jumped out at us: Emerson! We loved it! It was confirmed first to PJ when he was reading something else, and Emerson (Ralph Waldo) was mentioned there and then I was reading a book about Lamaze birthing and they randomly quoted Emerson as well. Anyways, we feel really good about it and are moving forward with faith!

Big Two!

We had such a great time for Ophelia's b-day this year. Grandma and Grandpa came to stay with us as they journeyed back from their trip up north. Ophelia loves to have extra playmates around. She constantly would say "Hey, Grandma!"  or "Hey, Grandpa!" and then "C'mon, Grandma! Let's play!" Grandpa's German rhyme with lap bouncing was a huge hit, not only with Ophelia but with her baby doll and bear :) Here is Grandpa (baby doll and bear) all worn out:

Here is Ophelia's first time eating corn on the cob. Grandma and Grandpa brought a bunch of freshly picked corn from North Dakota and it was so juicy, soft and delicious:



Here is our birthday girl. Apart from Grandma and Grandpa, auntie Cami and uncie Mark came to stay with us for the labor day weekend, and the Mojicas came for the party.

She got a hang of opening presents really quickly! 

Grandma's special fruit pizza was amazingly tasty and looked so good it was sad to ruin it:

More b-day pictures were taken by Auntie Cami and are to appear on the blog soon. Meanwhile, these are some quick shots that I took in between serving food.

We got a doggie-shaped cake again this year, making it a tradition now :) She blew the candle in the middle of her happy birthday song (and I was worried that she won't know what to do since we didn't practice this year...silly me) and dove into the cake...with a spoon! Yes, a year after her last birthday she matured enough to realize that she does not want to get dirty with cake anymore!

It is just crazy for me to look at pictures from just a year ago and see how my little girl has grown! Her talking skills surprise me daily. When we had grandparents here, Ophelia would sit at the kitchen table between me and Grandma. Instead of stretching her dirty hands towards me with her usual "Ooo, dirty!", she stretched the right hand for Grandma and the left hand for me to wipe :) very efficient indeed :) One time papa was sitting there instead of me and Ophelia was eating yogurt. She announced that her hands were dirty and stretched one to Grandma, who wiped it with a napkin, and one to papa, who told her that the hand was clean and did not need wiping. She then dipped that clean hand into yogurt and stretched it for papa to wipe: "Ooo, dirty!" We cracked up for a while at her solution to the problem...not dirty? oh, well, here it is dirty now! 

A couple of weeks ago Ophelia and I were playing with her little baby crib, she was inside, so couldn't get out. She dropped the paci far enough not to be able to reach it and turned to me to say: "Mama, quick, sosa! (meaning paci in Russian)". She wanted me to go get it, which was fine with me, except that we've been working on "please" and "thank you", so I turned to look at her, waiting for a "please", instead she looks at me seriously and says: "Mama, do you want time-out?" :) :) :) My mouth dropped! Bossy girl, I could not believe it! One, this means she totally realizes that not listening has consequences of time-out. And two, she knows there are times when mama needs to go to time out too (I was hoping she will not find out about that until after she is at least a little bit older)!

Ophelia is my sweet little girl and is ready to give a kiss and a hug anytime of the day. She brings so much joy into my life and I am so grateful to have her sweet little spirit join our family two years ago. I love to listen to her talk, I love to see when she discovers new things (the excitement in her eyes), I love that she always asks "What are you dooni, mama?" (meaning "doing"), and I think it's the cutest thing that her normal pace is running everywhere! At her 2 year doctor's visit, she measured at 50% for height (33 inches) and 7% for weight (she is just 23 lbs). She continues to grow, even though it is at her own pace. Her head is in the 75% percentile (big head!) for circumference. No doubt, a smart girl sign :)