A Trio of Girls

I am so sorry that it has taken me 4 days to get this post up! I was having trouble getting the ultrasound photos to load and those are half the post!

We had our 20 week ultrasound for little peanut on Monday morning and found out we're having a girl! The ultrasound technician said there was no doubt in what she saw and there were definitely "girl parts" out and visible! We are so happy and excited! I absolutely adore my sister and the relationship I have with her and can't wait for Maddie and little peanut to experience that amazing sisterly bond. Maddie is going to be such an awesome big sister!

The ultrasound technician printed out a bunch of photos for us. She said the baby is growing right on track and is weighing 12 oz, the size of soda can. I have been able to feel peanut moving around for about 3-4 weeks (right around my 17th week) and it's so fun to feel those movements. While the ultrasound was being done, peanut kicked around and I was able to both see and feel the kicks - so weird but so neat too! We got to see peanut drinking too - her little tongue was moving back and forth a lot! I don't remember seeing Maddie's tongue moving, but it was really cool!

And here we go, on to the photo show!

A profile of our beautiful baby girl...

You can see peanut's arm reaching in front of her face her...

You can see her torso here...

And her early acrobatic skills! She is laying on her back with her legs lifted up over her (so her toes are near her face). Oh to be that flexible!

And a cute little foot...

We're now working on figuring out a name for our peanut and having fun looking into nursery design ideas. I still can't believe that we're already at the half way point for this little one! It has gone by so quickly!

Love you all!
Nile. David and Maddie

Halloween

As we all know, Maddie is an early to bed, early to rise little girl. So staying up for Halloween is tricky because it gets dark past her bedtime. Add to that the fact that Maddie woke up this morning at 4:30am instead of 6am - and did not fall back asleep - and keeping her awake for the festivities was a very long shot! We decided to dress her up tonight though as we still wanted her to be in her costume and we went outside and had a great time running around with her all dressed up! She hates having anything on her head so we knew that the hood on her costume wouldn't stay on for long, but David was able to catch a few shots of her in full gear! She missed going door-to-door, but she had a ton of fun in her giraffe costume! And she looked so darn cute too! Here are some of our favorite pictures from tonight...










Isn't she just the most beautiful giraffe you've ever seen?!


Happy Halloween!
Nile, David and Maddie the Giraffe

Our Peanut

We have shared our exciting news with everyone, but I realized we never officially announced it here! This April Maddie is going to be a big sister! We are so happy and feel so blessed! We are so incredibly thankful too that we didn't have to go back through the infertility clinic and routines in order to be blessed with this little peanut. Maddie was absolutely worth every appointment, pill, shot, poke and prick it took to get her, but I am very happy that we didn't have to do that all over again! We affectionately named Maddie our "bean" and this little one is known around the West household as our "peanut"!

It's still hard to believe it's real...and how close April is already feeling! Maddie is going to be such an amazing big sister though - I can't wait to see her interact with a little one! At Ms. K's right now too she recently went from being the only one there to having a little 2 month old there with her. So she's getting a lot of great experience being a big sister there too and learning how to softly touch babies, etc. She's also getting used to sharing Ms. K's attention - she really loved having that all to herself!

Maddie is doing really well and has recently learned how to nod her head "yes" and also figured out how to do a somersault all on her own about 2 weeks ago! We are looking into a local gymnastics club that offers classes for little ones. We think she would love having a place to tumble and jump around!

Here are our most recent photos of the little peanut that were taken at the end of my 12th week. I have a checkup appointment on November 4th and then the big gender-telling ultrasound is scheduled for November 29th - I cannot wait! It's so crazy to think that I'm almost to that half way marker!

I know ultrasound photos can be hard to decipher, so hopefully these descriptions will help orient you! In this one, the baby's head is on the left hand side of the picture and the baby is looking up. The white you see extending above it's belly is an arm.

The baby is in the same position in these next two photos too...


Here's a foot!

On this one, the baby's head is still on the left hand side, but it is now looking down instead of up - you can see the whole body though! The round circle underneath the baby's belly is an arm and you can see the legs and feet off on the right hand side. It's so amazing!

We love you!
Nile, David and Soon-To-Be Big Sister Maddie

Fall Festival

We have been having such a great time with Maddie and were excited to really get into the fall season with her! On the weekend of October 9th/10th, we took Maddie to a fall festival at Butler's Orchard, an orchard that's about 20-30 minutes away. The weather was amazing for an outdoor fall trip - I think it wound up being close to 80 degrees! The festival is set up with a huge area with games for the kids, animals and a big pumpkin patch. A lot of the games were geared for kids older than Maddie, but she had a great time seeing the animals, playing in this huge open barn with hay and at the pumpkin patch. Here are some of our favorite photos from that day! There are a lot, but I have such a hard time narrowing down photos of her - they are all so adorable to me!

Watching the chickens and roosters...

And the black pigs...these guys were cute, but there were stink bugs everywhere which mommy did not enjoy!

Having fun with a painted pumpkin...

Her favorite animals were the goats! They were very mellow and friendly and would walk up by the gate so you could easily pet them. So fun!


She had an absolute blast in the barn with hay! There were a lot of older kids running around and jumping off the hay bails (which I'm sure she'll be doing in no time!), but we were able to grab a quiet corner for her to play in and she had so much fun! I think we must've spent at least a half hour in there!






This one just cracks me up! Maddie's expression is so priceless! She was smiling all the way through and then we have someone take a family photo and the stern look is all she gave the camera! I guess we were taking away from the real fun and she wasn't very happy about it!

My sweet baby girl...

Here Maddie is in the pumpkin patch. She loved walking around and wanted to pick up all the pumpkins. She was surprised to find out how heavy they are!


And this is her winning pumpkin! Maddie's first pumpkin!

We love you all!
Nile, David and Maddie

Summer Updates

Boy, it has been way too long since I've posted! This post is packed with lots of goodies...an status report on the 18 month check-up Maddie had today, some pictures from the summer and an awesome video that David put together of Maddie. So, away we go!

We had Maddie's 18 month check-up today. Let me start off by saying that I cannot believe we have an 18 month old! Wow! All of her stats were great...she is up to 23 lbs, 10 oz which is awesome and she is now 32.75" tall. Her weight gain put her just beneath the 50th percentile and she's tracking at almost the 90th percentile for height! This little girl is one day going to tower over David and me if she keeps growing at this rate!! I asked about moving Maddie to 1/2 Pediasure and 1/2 milk since she is gaining weight, but the doctor would like us to stay on 100% Pediasure. I was hoping I could make the Pediasure stretch farther since that stuff is so darn expensive, but no luck there!! The doctor said that while she was really happy with the weight gain, there's still a big discrepancy between where she's tracking on height (90th) and where she is on weight (50th), so she wants us to keep giving her all those extra calories. If only I could get on a diet like that!! :) The bad part of the visit was when the shots came out. Maddie now knows - even before a needle is unwrapped - that something bad is going to happen. It breaks my heart having her cry and having to hold her still while they poke her. I know it's for her good, but heavens!! They really need to make all vaccines in liquid form!! She had a total of 4 shots today - 2 in each arm - and was such a great trooper! Since our last post was about 2 months ago, I haven't said this all that recently (well, at least I haven't posted it here!)...we have the best, sweetest, most wonderful daughter ever!!

For the wedding David performed at last weekend, he learned this beautiful song called "Little Hands" that they sang for the father daughter dance. The lyrics are so touching and ring so true with what we hope for Maddie. David put together an incredible video of Maddie - from ultrasound photos all the way through our most recent pics - and set it to this song. So turn up your speakers and enjoy the amazing song and video!


Now, on to the photos! We downloaded all the photos we had and I've included all my favorites below. Be forewarned, there are a lot of them! I am making up for lost time! I hope you enjoy these as much as I do!

Back in July I think, we had one of many hot days and decided to blow up an inflatable pool that we had bought for Maddie. Let me tell you, blowing up those things manually is a lot harder than it sounds! Oh, how I wished we had an air pump! Well, we finally had it inflated and brought it out front for Maddie, filled it with water and let it sit in the sun a while so the water would warm up. Then the comedy of errors began...we realized the pool was really sloping downwards and one end of the pool was completely dry while the other end had a foot of water! We tried to move the pool around to more even ground and quickly realized it would've been a lot better to do that before putting water in it! Needless to say we didn't make it too far, but Maddie had fun in it nevertheless!






Over the summer I tried to capture this great daddy daughter moment that David and Maddie had. David sat down on the floor and played the guitar while he sang for Maddie. She joined him and helped him along on the strings and got an up front seat to all the action. As luck would have it, all the photos I took turned out blurry...which is why I'm not normally the photographer for the family! I wanted to share these anyways because they make my heart smile!


Of course, with college football season starting, we wasted no time in making sure Maddie knows who she's rooting for! She loves taking David's baseball hats and putting them on our heads (especially David's!). We try them on her too...she normally pulls them off her head pretty quickly, but we were able to catch this cute photo. Geaux Tigers!

A couple weekends ago we had a beautiful spring like day and brought the camera with us to the park. David caught a ton of adorable photos of Maddie at home that day and at the park. There are a lot here, but I just couldn't narrow down my favorites any more than this!









Doesn't this expression just make you smile?! I love it!






We love you all!
Nile, David and Maddie