Ch-ch-ch-changes

There are so many changes going on in the Sandlin house right now. It seems like everytime I turn around Abby is doing something new! She has now outgrown all of her 6 and 9 month clothing and is officially in 12 month outfits. She has become so vocal and opinionated and a little more indepeendent in her play. AND...on top of it all... Abigail is starting to CRAWL! She's getting up on her little knees to pull up in her crib and making her way across the living room floor faster and faster each day. I anxiously awaited this day for the past several months, and now that it's here, I'm finding it a little nerve-wracking! Time to babyproof - quick!

Abby has been going through some other changes recently too. She's starting to stay with people other than mommy for short amounts of time - and it seems like she's gotten over most of her stranger anxiety (for now). This is great, since one of the BIG changes this fall will be me starting back to teaching high school European history part time, so she will be at a daycare nearby for about 4 hours a day. Honestly, I think she's going to love it. She adores going to Babytime at the library and seeing the other babies play, so I think it's going to be like one long Babytime for her! The good news is that my teaching schedule is from about noon to four, so we will still get to do fun things like Babytime in the morning.

Another change is that I will be teaching Western Civilization at Gordon College on Monday nights, so Abby will get some extra Daddy time in on those evenings. Matt has always been really involved in her bedtime routine and reading her book every night, but now he'll get to do the whole thing by himself one night a week.

In other news, Monkey has undergone a few changes too since we saw him/her last! Last Wednesday was my 12 week ob appointment and then my specialist appointment. I was a little concerned at the OB office when they couldn't find a hearbeat with the doppler, but when we went in for the ultrasound, there Monkey was - dancing away! This baby seems to be a lot more active in-utero than Abigail was - but maybe it just wanted to make sure we knew it was still there! Everything looked great. The legs were crossed, so the tech couldn't give us any early gender guesses, but I have the anatomy ultrasound scheduled for August 18th, so hopefully we'll know whether to start thinking pink or blue! The heartrate was 178, which still has me thinking girl, but I had a dream a few weeks ago that Monkey is a boy - so we'll just patiently wait until August.

And here's Monkey's latest close-up. S/he is looking much more baby-like these days! Sorry for the horrible quality of a picture of a picture.