Really terrible at this blogging thing

Hopefully I can do a little better with Christmas updates.

First, we found out on Wednesday that Baby #2 is a girl!  We actually became pretty suspicious over Thanksgiving break, when Janna gave me an ultrasound, but we waited to confirm before announcing to everyone.  I'm already at 21 weeks, and she looked very healthy at her ultrasound, measuring right on track.  I feel bigger this time, but I did a terrible job of taking pictures last time, so who knows?  This picture was at 18 weeks:

 I already look A LOT bigger than that!

We had family pictures done with our photographer that we use for everything, and she did a great job of capturing Colin's personality.

I'll work my way backward in time here.  For Thanksgiving, we traveled to Wisconsin to visit Peter's sister and her family, as well as Peter's mom.  We took Penny with us for the 7.5 hour drive, and both she and Colin were great in the car.  Colin was tired of being in the car by the time we got close to home, and when we arrived to our final destination both times, he ran around like a crazy man for about an hour.  A few highlights from that trip:

Colin dressed up as Batman for Halloween, and he still occasionally surprises us by growing, "I'm Batman!!"  He had a great cape from Grandmom, and he tolerated the mask at times.  We tried trick-or-treating at the University in the dorms, as well as at a few choice houses in the neighborhood.  However, it was snowing here on Halloween so we limited that!

He got to spend time with our friends' boys Luke and Logan at the Children's Museum.  Logan's parents are having another baby just a few weeks after us, so our kids will continue to all be close in age!  We went to the apple orchard to get a pumpkin, and he enjoyed climbing on the hay bales.

 Their train table is always better than ours.

Enjoyed some craft time with WikiSticks

 Showed off his no handed drinking skills

 Dug for dinosaur bones with Logan

 Was very goofy at dinner

A picture of all three little guys!

 At the top of the hay bales at the orchard

 Much like his mother, he seemed anxious of the heights, and wouldn't fully stand up.

Not so sure about the pumpkin picking business.

And all the way back to the beginning of October, my little sister got married.  Everyone was involved with the wedding with me as the maid of honor, Colin as the ring bearer, and Peter sang at the ceremony (and did about 100 other little things).

 He was pretty much the cutest kid ever.  I carried him down the aisle to avoid moments like the following that we saw at the rehearsal.

He also enjoyed dancing/throwing himself on the floor/running in circles at the reception.

Pups continue to enjoy each others' company.  They play together very well, and Ella has been a little better with Colin as well, likely due to the fact that he is much less interested in her when Penny will gladly wrestle with him and slurp him to death.  Penny and I continue to have a tumultuous relationship.

She prefers to be as close to my face as possible at all moments of the day.  I have struggled with this as she was one of my biggest nausea triggers in early pregnancy (I could smell her the second she walked in the house and often started gagging at the smell of her.)  Things are better, but I'm still adjusting to having an almost 60-pound dog who is not done growing.  She is very sweet to us and wonderful with Colin though.

We have really enjoyed Colin at 2 so far.  He shows interest in potty training, and I think we're about to the point of pushing it a little more.  I'd really like to avoid 2 in diapers, so we've got about 4 months.  He has all of his teeth in, weighs about 32 pounds, and we haven't measured him lately, but he went through a big growth spurt a little while ago.  He was firmly in 18 month pants, and then suddenly he wasn't.  He's starting to use his imagination and play pretend and is very goofy.  He's super social and kind-hearted.  He knows almost all of his capital letters on sight, knows his colors in English and Spanish, as well as counts to ten in English and Spanish (minus seven in English, which has recently dropped from his vocabulary).  His memory is what is most surprising to me.  I went on a trip to New Orleans in mid-October, but I'm usually here every night.  When I had to work late two nights this week, he asked Peter in the morning, "Mommy in New Orleans?"  He tells us about the time he bonked his head at the Children's Museum over a month ago.  He knows how to direct us from the nursery at church to the parlor (where the donuts are).  He's just a huge joy to us, and we're excited for him to become a big brother.

Merry Christmas everyone; I hope the holidays aren't too stressful!