Since my last blog post we have...

 ... announced the upcoming arrival of our 4th little one (a boy!) when he was about 17 weeks along...

 ... trick-or-treated as a giraffe, chicken, and a butterfly...

 ... said what we were thankful for...

 ... ate "macky-cheese" dressed as a chicken...

 ... and celebrated Christmas.

 Amelia had her first piggy tails

 and her first "morning after sleeping with piggy tails" hair soon followed.

 We rang in the new year with a low key family game night with my parents and some tasty snacks 

(that Claire and Amelia are helping themselves to).

 We transitioned Amelia to a toddler bed for a short time to get her used to the idea of not being in the crib anymore (since there would soon be a baby in need of the crib)

and celebrated her birthday with a Very Hungry Caterpillar cake.

 Claire had her first trip to the dentist,

 helped decorate birthday cookies to share with her classmates at preschool,

 enjoyed unseasonably warm weather in February with an al fresco birthday lunch,

 and celebrated her 4th birthday with a Rapunzel cake.

 We then had several days of intense snow that coincided with mommy getting an awful bout of the stomach flu, so dad took time off to care for the kids so mom could sleep like a dead person.

The snowmen the girls built with Matt after the second snowfall covered them up.

And of course we had to make snow ice cream for the first time .

The spare room was painted to become Amelia's new room, and she got her own "big girl" bed

 so the nursery could be decorated in a more boy-friendly fashion.

 Claire got her first haircut, which consisted of about two 1-inch curls that were longer than the rest of her hair.

 I finished crocheting the blue baby blanket...

 ... so we could have our baby boy, Blaise Anthony, on March 10th.

 The girls were immediately in love

 and we thoroughly enjoy being a family of six!

We came home from the hospital, only to go back the next day for a 2 1/2 day stay in the NICU due to what turned out to just be some very tricky boogers that caused some breathing problems for our little man.  Armed with some saline solution and a bulb syringe, we headed home for "Take 2" of  life as a family of six.

 The second trip home was successful, and the girls dote on their baby brother to no end

 He's still not too sure what he thinks about that, but I'm sure he'll get used to it.

 We celebrated Blaise's baptism on Palm Sunday

 and Easter the following Sunday.

 We took the first trip to the ranch of the year to plant potatoes.

 Blaise gave us his first smiles the day before he turned one-month-old.

 Melanie celebrated her 6th birthday with a Rapunzel cake.

 Matt had facial hair

 and then he didn't.

 Spring finally came to stay (but not without a final dusting of snow)

 Claire had her final day of 3-year-old preschool

 Melanie had her first dance recital and loved every minute of it!

 And finally there was Mother's Day.

Now you're all caught up with the Stockemer family and I can resume my irregularly scheduled blogging program.

Baby #3 4-D Sonogram

On Monday we had our 4-D sonogram for Stockemer baby #3.  We got a definite confirmation that this is indeed a girl, which was my main concern since our last sonogram they were taking the "it's a girl because we don't see anything to indicate otherwise" approach, which isn't a good enough answer for me.  Everything looks good, she was very active for us.  Melanie was very excited about getting to see the baby and every time she moved on the screen Melanie would gleefully say the baby was waving at her.  Claire fell asleep on the way to the appointment and slept through it, which was probably for the best so that Matt could talk to Melanie more about what she was seeing on the screen. 

Size-wise they're estimating baby is around 3 pounds right now and her foot is just over 2 inches long based on the measurements they took, which is pretty big for how far along we are.  Seeing as Claire was over a pound heavier than Melanie was at birth it should be interesting to see how big baby #3 is!  Here are some of the pictures from the sonogram

I think she looks a lot like Claire in this picture

I may try and load some of the video later on because this part was pretty neat to watch.  We actually saw her open her mouth and stick her tongue out at us!  It's amazing to see what all they do while they're in there!