Yesterday was my ultrasound. Patrick worked from home in the morning and then took the rest of the day off to go with Brenden and I to the doctor.

We had the same tech that did my sonogram when I was pregnant with Brenden and I really like her. She is very friendly and patient with all our questions. We were both wavering a little on the way there about finding out the sex of the baby and the tech told us she was the perfect person to talk us back into not knowing, which she did.

Because of Brenden’s hand, my doctor had asked to have special attention paid to the upper limbs. The baby was very cooperative. It clearly flashed us all 10 finger and all 10 toes. The tech said it is very rare to see all the fingers stretched out and we got to see it. Patrick thought it was interesting that the hand the baby showed most closely was the right one (the one Brenden is missing). We also got to see both hands at the same time which is supposed to be rare too.

The baby seemed to want to show us everything we needed to see and nicely kept the legs crossed so we saw nothing we didn’t! So yet again, even if we’d wanted to know the gender, we wouldn’t! Looks like growth is fine and all the chambers of the heart are there. Brain looks good too.

Here are the picts:

We had a nice family day after the sonogram and Patrick and I took turns getting haircuts and getting things done. Brenden got a haircut today and below are some pictures.

The first time we went to Scottish Rite to talk to the doctor’s about Brenden’s hand they told us he’d be fine, he’d amaze us, come back in two years. Today was the day that we went back, and we had a pretty familiar message. He looks fine, he’s doing great, come back in two years. I really didn’t expect to hear anything other than that because I honestly can’t see one single way not having a hand is holding him back. But I did expect a little more observation. I thought they’d watch him play more. I think we met with the 4 doctors for about 10 minutes after waiting about an 1 hour and a half to get in. I’m not complaining though. I’m glad there wasn’t anything that stood out to them as a problem that we just weren’t seeing. So we’ll go back before he starts school and make sure he’s getting the hang of shoe laces and buttons and things like that.

Brenden did have a great time in the waiting room playing with a little boy named Gavin we happens to live very near us. He also liked the big train they have in the hallway. He was worn out by the time we left at 10. Of course that didn’t stop him from waiting until 3:30 to go down for his nap. But he did play very quietly until then.

Here are some more flowers and some bananas that popped out in our backyard over the weekend:

Well, this is a little belated, but we had such a good holiday weekend I wanted to write about it.

It all started Thursday when I ended up leaving Brenden at Grandma and Grandpa’s for the night. I made plans to go to dinner and a movie with Patrick and both were excellent. Then Patrick surprised me with the news that he had spotaniously taken Friday off. So 4 day weekend!

Friday we slept in. Went and got late donuts. And started to tackle our long to do list. We were expecting to need to pick Brenden up around 3, but got an even bigger break because he ended up being out until 5. So we got a ton of stuff done.

Saturday we had a little pool party in the afternoon and early evening. It was a come and go thing and we really didn’t know how long it would last. Since most of our friends that came had small children or weren’t participating in the swimming, it wrapped up around 6 which gave us plenty of time to clean up and rest. We had a great time hanging out with everyone. Sadly, I didn’t get any pictures because I’m paranoid about Brenden and the water and so I was watching him 99% of the time. But I think he had a great time having friends over and I know we did!

Sunday was spent tackling more of our to do list and we came pretty close to finishing it. I don’t even know what we did Monday.

It was really nice to have 4 days of our little family being all together, having fun and getting stuff done.

One of the things I accomplished was to take the ugly gold shower doors off of the tub/shower in Brenden’s bathroom. We are putting up a car theme in there since he loves them so much. Here he is admiring his new shower curtain.