Me and Gabe took our cat Harpo to the vet today because he had an ear hematoma. Basically his ear had bubbled up into a huge blood-filled blister (it looked like a sopapilla). :)

Anyhow, the vet had me carry him back and Gabe was so good and just stood quietly by me as I carried Harpo and placed him on the scale and then into the cage. As we were going to leave him for the day so they could do a minor operation to fix his ear, Gabe stood in the lobby and said, "Harpo." (I should interject here and say that anytime Gabe is asking whether he will be able to go do something he puts his hand over his heart and sort of grunts). For example if he points to a plane he'll say, "pane" and I'll repeat it and say, "yes that's a plane." And he'll put his hand over his heart and say, "uhh?" And I'll say, "Does Gabe want to go on a plane?" "Jes."

So we are in the lobby at the Vet's office and I said let's go, Gabe. He said, "Harpo?" I said, "Yes, Harpo is going to stay here and we are going to leave to go to bible study." He put his hand over his heart and said, "uhhh?" "No, sweetie, Gabe is not going to stay. We are going to bible study and Harpo is staying here. We'll come back in a little bit to pick him up." Tears welled up in his eyes and he started to cry, "Harpo." It was so sweet. He did not want to leave his kitty there. He was really upset. I had to get down and talk to him for about a minute before we could leave. He's so tender-hearted.

Picture of beautiful baby

We went to the doctor this morning and the baby is PERFECT! When I saw the perfectly round head, tears streamed down my cheeks. Thank you, Lord for such a miracle!! 12 week sonogram.

Tomorrow is the day we've been waiting for.

We are 12 weeks pregnant and visiting the Doctor at 9:30 tomorrow morning. I've felt an immense amount of peace and feel good about everything, but am anxious to see the baby tomorrow. Somehow I just feel prepared no matter what happens. I will post more tomorrow once we've seen the doctor. Thank you to my sweet friend that called to check on me today. I appreciate you so much!

Music has always been a big part of my life. Casey laughs at me because I can sing words to songs from the 70s that he's never heard. When I was growing up my parents would have their radio alarm wake them up to 103.7 KVIL. This was the easy listening station in DFW at the time.
But I am a recorder. Once I hear a song I start to sing it over and over again, and most the time I don't even realize I'm doing this. Casey likes to play tricks on me sometimes and will start singing a song ON PURPOSE...and he'll wait to see if I start singing it. I fall for it everytime! :)
It's really cruel because he always seems to choose one of my least favorite wiggles songs or he'll start singing the theme to Bob the Builder.

Anyhow I said all that to sort of explain how music effects me. This is proably the same for everyone, but when I listen to music I make very stron associations with memories and stages of my life. I can hear a song that I listened to back in Highschool and it will illicit all sorts of memories from that time. "Nothing Compares to You" by Sinead O'Connor takes me back to highschool and me and my 2 bf Tam and Jen belting it out as we drove around. "Life means So Much" by Chris Rice takes me to a specific time of running on Lake Michigan in 2003 right after we found out about Casey's cancer. I ran and cried the whole way listening to that song and felt so alone. At the time that we found out Casey told me he didn't want us to tell anyone. (Of course that only lasted about a day after I later confessed to him that I had told my parents).
The same thing happened to me the other day. A sweet friend from Chicago sent me a Lullaby CD as a pregnancy congrats present. We decided to play it at bedtime to see if we could get Gabe to go to bed easier. "Brahm's lullaby" came on and I began to sob. It took me back to April of 2006 when I would rock Gabe in our room as we lsitened to a similar CD with this same song on it. I would rock him and cry, grieving for Nate. It's so amazing to me how our brains work. It has probably been at least a year and a half since I heard that song. And it immediately took me back.

Gabe loves music too and it's so precious to see him enjoy it at his age. A lot of the time, I listen to The Word or other Christian talk radio. But occassionally I'll put a CD in of Chris Rice or The Beatles. He starts to clap everytime!

The struggle with food

I do not want to make it a struggle, but sometimes he won't eat anything. So tonight we had chicken pot pie and he actually took a couple of bites but that was it. So he kept asking for a "cook" and we said no cookie until you have this last bite of chicken. He was coloring at the table because that was the only way we could keep him seated. I said, "Gabe, you cannot have a cookie unless you eat this one bite, do you understand?" He looked at me and took a bite of his crayon. I could not help but laugh. He of course proceeded to spit it out immediately.
He really is a pretty good eater. He just won't try certain things. Some foods he loves:
Guacamole from pretty much anywhere but began eating guac from Chipotle.
apples (not the peel)
oranges (but sucks on them and spits out the fleshy part)
loves mixed nuts (go figure...this seems strange to me)
raisins
grapes
pudding snacks
any kind of juice...apple, mixed Dole juices etc.
Silk soy milk
cookies (but who doesn't)
mashed potatoes
steak sometimes
chicken sometimes
any kind of bread
goldfish crackers
fruit abu snacks
any kind of snacks
there's probably more but now I'm tired. :)

It's funny how he has selective hearing. All in the same sitting he had gotten up from the table and was climbing on the couch, pulling a clean comforter off the couch...etc... Casey and I were snickering at the fact that we knew he could hear us but chose to ignore us. "Gabriel, come and sit down and have one more bite. Come and sit down, please." I whispered to Case that if we said "do you want to watch the wiggles?" he would acknowledge we were speaking to him. Casey decided to test this theory. Of course, Gabe said, "jes." hee hee. That was cruel on our part because we were not turning the wiggles on.
He's just so darn cute!
He's saying so many words. He can count to four but he skips number one. "too, tee, poh" So adorable. Being pregnant gives me a very short-term memory so I need to start jotting the words down when he says them. I can't think of them now.

This picture is after Gabe ate a ring pop. :)

Must see this Video

I don't watch Oprah but my friend sent me the link to this video. Amazing! You must watch this. A very good reminder of what is really important in life.

http://video.stumbleupon.com/?s=ithct48cqw&i=ufcchmyxqsuj9vwsemax

Gabe is learning more words

Well I've posted a lot lately without pictures because our still camera is not working. We've instead taken lots of video and I intend on posting some footage soon. (Don't hold your breath, though cause it might be a while). :)
Gabe has learned the word obey. I was putting him to bed, which is out of the norm. Casey had gone to meet some of our friends from Colorado for dinner and I was putting Gabe to bed tonight. I'm not a bad mother I promise. We got into this routine a long time ago as a way for Casey to be able to spend time with Gabe in the evening. And now we've figured out that towards the end of the "night, night" routine I cannot be in his room or it is MUCH harder to get him to sleep without a lot of crying. He just will not let me leave. But when Casey puts him down, he goes to sleep peacefully right after he says "Ameen." He obviously has learned to manipulate me. But tonight I had no choice. We went through the whole routine and he said "Ameen" at the end of our prayer. By the way I want to jump in here and mention something so sweet! When we are about to pray we ask Gabe who he wants to pray for. It's always Mama and Dada first and then "Ab" and "Em", his 2 cousins. Abby is his favorite right now. She is 4 so they play together very well. Anyhow, he said "Ameen" and I said "night, night. Go to sleep." Well to make a long story short, he did not let me leave and was in and out of his bed." Finally I said, "You are going to time out if you get out of your bed again." SO to time-out we went. And I asked at the end if he was going to obey mommy and stay in his bed. He said "bey, bed" and kept repeating it. He would start to get out of his bed and I'd say, "You are not obeying mommy." And he would jump back in and lay his head down and say, "bey." It took everything I had to not laugh out loud. Well after being up there for an hour I finally laid in his toddler bed to keep him from getting out and we both fell asleep. Ahh, the joys of motherhood. I love being a mommy!

Missing Nate

I've been very weepy and missing Nathaniel a lot in the last several weeks. To be honest since we found out we were pregnant. Why does that make me miss him? I haven't thought about that question a lot and maybe I'd come up with a good explanation, but right now I just miss him and cry often about it. I'm amazed at this miracle God has given us, but then question why he couldn't have given us the miracle of healing for Nate. Why do I even go there? Questioning God's sovereignty is really getting old for me.

Politics

Here's an interesting web site where you can see how your political views compare with the candidates. Pretty interesting! http://www.electoralcompass.com/