Long overdue update

I realize now that it's going to be close to impossible for me to update this on a regular basis, so I think we'll go with once a month or so. :)

Julia is about 9 months old now and she's getting cuter everyday, especially as her little personality comes out. We have people tell us she looks like Ben, she looks like me...it's really hard to know, but I would say she has Ben's side of the family eyes, my side's nose and hair color.

She is currently doing the commando crawl across the floor and chasing after Stella. She loves Stella the dog...in fact, if Julia could talk, I'm pretty sure she would tell you that Stella is her best friend. In addition to crawling, she is pulling herself up on EVERYTHING and "walking" along tables, chairs, my legs, etc. I really don't know if I'm ready for a walking baby yet, but there's not much I can do to slow this girl down. She is a go-getter!!

This weekend we are going to Ocean Shores to visit with our good friends Karen and Emma. Emma is bringing her little Oliver, too, so there might be some baby races to look forward to.

Here are some latest photos of the little one...


More updates to come, I promise.

Drum roll please...

Well, looks like we're going to be seeing a lot of pink! (Although we're really not fans of pink, so we're hoping to stick to green and yellow!)

Little baby Lando is a little baby girl! We are very excited to add a little Schielke girl to the clan.

Our niece, Sarah, is very excited that she will get to play with another girl in the family, too.

And Ben said he is already cleaning his gun to get ready for boyfriends.

Attached are the latest ultrasound pictures. First one is Lando sucking her thumb. Second is Lando throwing her arms and hands around and you can really see the skeleton of her hand. And third picture is of her cute little foot.

During the ultrasound, they told us that she was very comfortable laying vertically with her feet up towards my chest with her head down like she is ready to be born right now! That's my little overachiever.

Our baby is perfect, I knew it

Today we got back our test results for trisomy 18/downs syndrome/neural tube defects. Drum roll please...

Baby Lando passed everything with flying colors!

In fact, for my age group, I would normally have a 1 in 760 chance of downs syndrome, but apparently we tested much better - our risk is 1 in 20,000. The nurse said, "you never see numbers like that. Can't get it any better." Awesome! Ben and I produce supreme beings!

So Lando just passed his/her first test. It will be the first of many, many more to come in Lando's life. :)

Stay tuned for the next exciting chapter in Lando's 9 month journey...mark your calendars for November 18, the day we find out if it's a little Ben or a little Katie!

Baby ultrasound, round 2

I know I haven't posted much here to date, but frankly we haven't had too much exciting news about baby yet...I think most of the fun is yet to come!

We recently had another baby appointment and ultrasound so attached is the latest picture (a few weeks old now, actually). The baby was moving around like a jumping bean during the ultrasound, it was pretty cute.

We're now at 15 weeks along and all is looking good! Both the baby and I did extremely well with the blood tests...no downs syndrome, no cystic fibrosis, etc... We find out the baby's sex in about a month, so Ben and I are so excited to find out if it's a little boy or girl.

The only thing about being pregnant that has been hard so far is the morning/all-day sickness. I've been really sick, so I'm hoping that will all subside soon. But Ben has been a super duper awesome husband and is helping me out all the time, so that has made things much easier. He's the best sweetie ever.

We'll report more as news comes in!

Ta ta for now!
Love, Katie and Baby Lando

Wow, there's a baby in there!

Today Ben and I went in to the doctor for our first baby appointment!

We were lucky and got to have an ultrasound, so we got a great picture of little baby Schielke (or "Lando" as Ben likes to call him/her).

When we saw the baby for the first time on the monitor, it was a very surreal moment - something that I've only ever seen on TV and once with Kimmy! There was actually a baby in there, who knew? All this time Ben had to take my word for it that I was pregnant. :) The baby was moving around, too, and we could see the little heart beating. Lando's first picture is attached to this post.

The doctor said that everything looks good so far and the baby will be born around April 20, 2009.