Hallelujah!...Nana Connie, Grandma Pam, Grandpa Lou, Grandpa Larry

This is a little tribute to my funny Maddix. He was at his Grandma Pam and Grandpa Larry's house one day. Larry likes to watch old westerns and had one on the television. On the show, the people were sitting around a fire and singing a song that said "Hallelujah" a lot. Grandma and Grandpa started singing it and clapping their hands over their heads like on the movie, they told Maddix to do it too. So, he did and it has really caught on. At first he was a little shy about doing it, but now not so much. One day we were out working in the yard and Maddix was just off by himself not talking to either of us and out of the blue I heard him singing "hal-lou-la!" And that's how he says it. I thought it was so funny! I just wonder what's going this his little mind?!? Which brings me to the next little thing he's picked up. He now knows the first names of all his Grandma's and Grandpa's and Mom and Dad. And just out of the blue, he'll start rattling them off. He'll say Nana Connie, Grandma Pam, Grandpa Lou, and then he sometimes gets a little confused with the other Grandpa's name probably because they both are called grandpa and their names both start with L's. But he does know who his Grandpa Larry is. Well, then he used to call Ben, Ben...except he'd always shout it. Then one day, he started calling Ben the nickname he had when he was a kid, Benji. No one really calls him this, except for me and maybe his mom every once in a while. So, now he always calls him Benji. One day in nursery they gave the kids a little booklet about their bodies. There is a picture of a boys face and they are wanting the children to realize that it is the head. Well, I was reading it to him and asked him what this was called and he says, "Benji." Well, as you can see in the picture above, there is certainly a resemblance. For a while he would never say my name. When asked what my name was, he'd say Mama or Mommy. Well, now he's knows my name and is not afraid to use it. If he's trying to get my attention he'll say Mama and if I don't respond right away, he'll start saying Lisa over and over again. And then, in the middle of the night he wakes up often and he'll call out for me. He'll usually say mom for a while, which I can try to ignore and then if that doesn't work he'll call Lisa which I can't resist any longer and I'll usually go get him...he really knows how to tug on my heartstrings.

New Baby

As I stated in my previous entry, I am pregnant. I am due on September 15th. I am currently 21 weeks along. I was not able to find out what I was having until I was 19 weeks. I was very impatient and wanted to know right then because friends that I know who are pregnant and due around the same time as me already knew what they were having. Well, I found this website that claimed they could predict the gender of your baby with nearly 100% accuracy based off the husband and wife's birth dates and the due date. Well, since they were only charging $18 and they claim they'll reimburse you if they are incorrect, I thought what the heck? So I gave it a try. You can imagine my excitement when the results said it was a girl! Well, upon further review of the information I put in, I realized that I had put Ben's birth year in wrong. He was born in '78 and I put it down as '79. Well, I emailed them immediately and asked if this would change the results. They didn't respond right away, in fact I had to email them three times and finally about 2 weeks later, they finally responded saying that now my results were that I was having a boy! Well, a week later, sure enough the big hospital ultrasound revealed it was in fact a boy! I am fine with the fact that it's a boy. I hope he and Maddix will be good little buddies and they'll always have a friend to play with. So, although it does put a dampener on my decorating plans, we will save a lot of money on clothes, bedding, etc. So, we are excited to have another boy in the family. I just hope that I will get one girl, that's all I ask. All our friends that have little girls say that boys are much easier and that we're lucky! So far, we've been really lucky with Maddix since he's been a very mild tempered child. We couldn't ask for a better kid, he's all boy, but not too wild and crazy (yet, at least)! Another plus to having a boy is that it will probably be easier to find a name. He will probably be named Cooper, which is my maiden name. I do like that name for a boy, but I'm just a little worried that I could get tired of it easily since it was attached to my name for 23 years. We'll see what happens. Unless we find another name that...

A. we absolutely love and

B. that we both agree upon

it will be most likely Cooper. The rest of the good news from the ultrasound was that everything looks healthy and that's what matters most. And although I'm not sure Maddix quite understands the whole thing, I'll tell him to talk to the baby, and he says, "Hi brother". But sometimes he thinks that he has a baby in his tummy!