Halloween Visitors

October 2011

Halloween was on a Monday this year, and the weekend before, we were lucky enough to get 2 visitors.  No, they weren't the spooky kind - Tommy's cousin Jen made the trip all the way from California and Nana came up from Houston to see her and hang out.  It was such a treat to get to spend some time with Jen and Jack absolutely loved her! 

We still hadn't gotten our fill of pumpkin patches, so after they arrived on Saturday, we headed out on our second, more rural pumpkin patch, the Big Orange Pumpkin Patch in Celina, Texas.  While both had pumpkins and were tons of fun, that was pretty much where the similarity to the Arbortum ended.  We were definitely in the country here.  We started out feeding the cows:

While the cows were OK, Jack was a much bigger fan of the goats, but only the baby ones.  Each time one of the bigger goats would try to eat his food, Jack would get really angry and try to shoo the big goat away!

 

He found this mini pumpkin by the entrance and carried it with him the whole afternoon!

We went on a hayride!

 

 

 Cousin Jen took Jack on a train ride around the pumpkin patch:

 

 And of course, there were pumpkins!  We picked out a few to take home to carve.

That evening, Nana was kind enough to stay home with Jack so we could head to a Halloween party that Greg's girlfriend Esther was throwing.  We even managed to scrounge up costumes.  Jen was a very cute Leslie Knope from the TV show Parks and Recreation, while Tommy and I went as Walter and Olivia from Fringe.  I will admit that only a few nerdy people knew who we were supposed to be, but we liked the costumes anyway!

Esther was the perfect party host.  Her apartment was fabulous and the Halloween themed food and drinks were wonderful.  We had a great time!

(Our wonderful hostess the leg lamp and her boyfriend the pink bunny!)

Fall at the Arboretum

October 2011

I'm a huge fan of the Dallas Arboretum. No matter the time of year, it is always such a beautiful place! Since the weather is still so beautiful in Texas in October, I was really excited about packing up a picnic lunch to eat on the Arbotetum lawn and checking out their fall flowers and Halloween displays.

We started out with the picnic, which involved a little eating and a lot of chasing Jack around one of the arboretum lawns.

He actually did sit and eat for a few minutes!

I managed to get a picture of Tommy, who almost always has the camera

A lot more running took place than eating...

After lunch, we walked around the grounds and checked out the pumpkin patch. There were hundreds of pumpkins scattered all around the grounds. Jack was very interested in touching each one...

There was one main pumpkin patch, with all sorts of houses built from pumpkins, a hay maze, and of course pumpkins to pick out and take home. Jack seemed to enjoy riding the pumpkins:

Mommy and Jack inside of one of the pumpkin houses:

My little boy looks lost in thought here. I wonder what he's thinking??

I never think we end up with enough family pictures - somehow, we always seem to forget to get a picture of the whole family. I'm so glad we got a good one this time!!

We had a wonderful afternoon!

P.S. I LOVE the State Fair of Texas and try to go every year.  This year, after one aborted attempt (poor sick Jack threw up in the car in the State Fair parking lot so we didn't even make it through the gate), we did manage to make it the following weekend.  I must say the fair isn't quite the same without eating a famous Fletcher's Corny Dog, but I did discover the delicious fried cheesecake to ease my pain :).  Tommy tried the Corny Dog for the first time ever and had to admit that it is one delicious corn dog!  Our time was probably cut a little short this year by a tired pregnant lady, but Jack really enjoyed petting the animals in the petting zoo and watching the horse show.  Sadly, this was the only picture we got:

And Baby Makes Four!

Late August 2011

As I aluded to in my last post, big changes were in store for the Mhire family.  Tommy and I had made the decision that we thought Jack needed a sibling.  I wouldn't say that we had started "trying" yet, but obviously not doing anything to stop nature from taking its course :)  It took 4 months for me to get pregnant with Jack, so we were expecting something similar this time around, but when we saw this, there was definitely no mistaking that Jack would be a big brother in a matter of months!!

We were a little stunned, but very excited.  I think one of the longest waits in the world has to be the from the time you find out you are pregnant (around 5 weeks) until the doctor wants you to come in for your first appointment (8 weeks).  Even though we'd done it all before, its still nerve-wracking waiting those three weeks, hoping everything will be OK. Our first appointment was on September 16, 2011.  We were elated to find that everything looked great at that first appointment.  Here is the first picture of Baby Mhire #2, who is about the size of a kidney bean at this point:

We were given an official due date of April 30th, 2012 and made the next appointment for about 11 weeks.  My first trimester was very similar to my first trimester with Jack - I was probably a little less sick this time around and a little more tired - I'm sure having a toddler and an extremely busy work schedule contributed a large part to the fatigue.  There was no ultrasound at the ~11 week appointment, but we were able to hear the heartbeat for the first time.  I always think of that as being one of the biggest milestones in the baby's development, so I was really nervous/excited for this appointment.  Given that the baby was only the size of lime, the heartbeat can sometimes be difficult to hear and Dr. Harn struggled to find the heartbeat at first.  He was just about to stop looking at send me for an ultrasound, and I had tears in my eyes, but then we finally heard the swish-swish of the heartbeat.  I've never heard a more wonderful sound!!

October 13th - 12 week genetic screenings - another milestone appointment.  For this appointment, we headed to the maternal fetal medicine specialist, Dr. Koster, to perform the screenings for genetic abnormalities.  We were very fotunate that everything came back perfectly normal in our tests and the risks for downs syndrome and other trisomies were extremely low.  Usually, 12 weeks is too early to make an accurate gender prediction and Dr. Koster told us she will only tell the parents a gender if she is 95% sure she is correct.  She followed that comment with "So do you want to know now?"  Of course, we did.  When she said "girl," I broke into tears.  I guess I wanted to have a girl more than I knew.  After seeing how excited I was, Dr. Koster began studying the ultrasound screen intently and then announced that she would have to take back her prediction.  Not that she thought we weren't having a girl, but she couldn't be 95% sure, so she didn't want to tell us one way or the other.  Of course, she felt horrible and told us to come back for a special ultrasound in 2 weeks when she could tell with more certainty.  At 14 weeks, she still said "girl," but I wasn't quite convinced until the 20 week anatomy screening.  Even after that, until I held her in my arms, I wouldn't quite let myself believe that it was a girl, even with a pink nursery and closet full of ruffles at home!

Here are the ultrasound photos from those appointments:

12 weeks - it's a girl??

14 weeks - still a girl...



An Afternoon in Fort Worth

One hot weekend in late August 2011, we decided to beat the heat by heading over to Fort Worth to the Fort Worth Museum of Science and History.  Tommy and Jack had been before, but I never had, so I was excited to go.  We hit terrible construction and traffic on the way, so we arrived much later than I would have liked.  We spent most of our brief trip in the Children's Museum and surrounding area.  Jack loved the huge dragon mouth at the entrance:

 

He played with all sorts of exhibits.  He looked at insects, made bubbles, and spent lots of time playing with the wooden train and block set:

In the area outside of the Children's Museum area, they had some hands on exhibits.  We played in the giant room of lite brites and black lights (including a giant wall of big lite brite pegs.  Both of my boys enjoyed the area in back of the museum best.  This area offered the opportunity to cut up paper cups and watch them fly in a tube of air, and also to make and fly your own paper airplanes.  While making paper airplanees is a little beyond the coordination of an almost-two year old, Daddy was more than happy to assist in the airplane design.  Jack got to try his hand at launching a paper airplane and loved throwing a paper cup into the wind tunnel and watching it fly in the air!

 There is so much more to see at the museum - I hope we'll be back soon!  After our brief visit, we headed out for an early Mexican dinner at Fort Worth's famous Joe T. Garcia's.  My chicken fajitas and margarita were yummy, and its a good thing I enjoyed the margarita - it was the last one I would have for many months to come.  Stay tuned for more information...!!