26 weeks

Whoops, took a little bit of a hiatus the past few weeks, sorry about that! The bump pic below is 22 weeks, I definitely feel and look a lot more pregnant now! It's been a busy few weeks - we celebrated Kale's 4th birthday and Mother's Day, made two trips to IA to see family and friends and we've both been very busy with work. Derc has put over 2000 miles on his truck in the past two weeks with road trips to show properties, so needless to say, once the snow melts here people can't wait to get out of the house :) We had a lot of family come up to help celebrate Kale turning 4 years old. He LOVES getting to see his cousins, aunts/uncles and grandparents so he had a blast. You can see that he got a bow for his birthday from Derc and I. Like father, like son. It's bigger than him so he will grow into it but Derc couldn't be more excited to encourage Kale to follow in his footsteps with his passion for hunting. This week Kale got to go with Derc to take pictures of a listing and Kale got to wear some camo and ride around on the 4 wheeler with Derc, which he thought was the coolest thing ever. I'm doing my last round of travel for work in the next couple of weeks, so it's getting real that this baby is coming in 10 weeks! She is doing great, we have an appointment Wednesday afternoon for a growth ultrasound and they will do another check on her heart. It's looked good so far and week 26 marks the week that our chances of her developing Kale's heart condition go down significantly, so we are keeping our fingers crossed!! We found out that we will be closing on the house we are building on 7/21 so we will be moving the week following, it will be a busy few weeks with baby A coming shortly after!! I'll try to do a better job of keeping this updated from now on :) Have a great week!

21 Weeks

Hello! We had our 20 week appointment and ultrasound last week and all went well! Took lots of pictures of Baby A and she was a total squirm worm for the ultrasound tech....it's becoming a trend so I'm envisioning a little girl jumping off couches and following closely in her brother's footsteps :) She measured about 12 ounces which was a bit big, but they seemed happy with it. Everything else checked out great, and we had a follow up today and her heart still looks good! If we make it to 26 weeks with no signs of the heart issue Kale has then the percentage of it developing outside of that window goes way down, so we hold our breath each week hoping she stays strong and she's proven she can do it so far. Next week marks our last weekly appointment, then we go to bi-weekly until we hit 26 weeks. I'm counting backwards now so 15 weeks left until Baby A makes her arrival! Kale on the other hand has come down with a nasty cold so poor kiddo has been home from school the past few days, which I'm pretty sure he doesn't mind since he got to spend yesterday with nana and papa (Derc's parents). My parents came up for Easter a couple of weekends ago and we had a blast! Derc's brother, Cory, also came for a night so it was great to see everyone! They helped us re-upholster our dining room chairs as they were driving me nuts so check that project off the list! We got to go to church with my extended family and Kale got to see a baby lamb (mom took him up front and said he was laughing at the noises), and after church got to spend the day with the family for a nice meal and caught up with everyone. I think in my last post I mentioned that we are building a house in Blaine, MN and it will be ready in July. We have been checking in on the progress which has been exciting to see it go up (they move quick!). They are getting insulation in this week and all the electrical and plumbing is done which is impressive considering at the beginning of April they had just poured the foundation. Turns out they will be battling MN weather though which has consisted of more snow this week and a ton of rain, so hopefully that stops soon. I have the next couple of days off so we're looking forward to spending some time together around the house and getting some stuff done! We will do a little relaxing as well :)

We're back in action!

Hello! After a 3 year hiatus from blogging, we decided to get the Albrecht Family Blog spot back up and running :) We've had a lot of fun changes in the past 8 months. In September of last year, we moved to MN for a promotion with Target which also allowed Derc to pursue his dream job of becoming an agent for Whitetail Properties selling hunting, farming and recreational land. Most recently, as you can see below, is we're expecting baby number TWO! We're 18 weeks along, which for us, is the half way mark. Baby A's due date is 8/10/14 pending a healthy, no surprises pregnancy which we're praying for :) We have been highly monitored this prengancy with weekly appointments start a few weeks ago. Baby A has a 20% chance of developing the same heart condition Kale has, but it most often develops between 16-22 weeks, so we go for weekly ultrasounds during this time period to monitor it closely. So far, the first 3 appointments have gone well and they are not detecting anything, so we're keeping our fingers crossed that this continues. The only upside to the weekly appointments is we get to see our little one very frequently, and we also got to find out what we're having a bit earlier than normal. Kale's wish came true, and we're having a GIRL this time around, and she's proven to be a little acrobat for the ultrasound techs! They have to get very specific readings for the heart so a squiggly baby doesn't help that, but at our last appointment the tech stood up and did the 'Rocky' song after because she was proud of herself for getting the reading. The pregnancy has been smooth so far for the most part, so we're hoping that also continues. You can see some pics below of how we told Kale he is having a baby sister, we let him open his box of cupcakes which had pink frosting, and he was confident he was having a sister the whole time so we think he's pretty excited! You'll also see that we've been able to get outside a couple of times so far this spring to enjoy the weather, last weekend we did some grilling, went for a wagon ride and played some T-Ball in the backyard. We'll be moving into a house that we're building in Blaine in July or August, so this will prove to be a busy summer/fall for us! We'll keep the site updated with pictures of the progress with that as well. That's it for now, more to come after our appointment this week!

Hello! It's been quite a while since our last post - hope everyone had a fun summer!! It went by way too fast for the Albrecht Family. Kale enjoyed his first summer outside of the NICU though. We got to spend days playing outside at the park, playing with our water toys, going for walks and we even snuck a trip to Okoboji in so Kale got to go on his first boat ride! What's new..... Kale is just a ball of energy these days! This summer we celebrated his first birthday which he enjoyed thoroughly. He is really close to walking, he walks around furniture, moves from toy to toy but hasn't quite gotten enough courage to actually take the leap of faith and let go of hands or furniture. He loves pushing his walker around so I'm sure it will be any day now that he takes his first solo steps and Derc and I are in for a rude awakening I'm sure! The biggest news with Kale recently is that he underwent eye surgery on 9/2 to correct his crossed eyes. The surgery went really well, it was incredibly nervewracking waiting for the surgery to be completed but luckily our parents came to keep us company while we waited anxiously. His eyes have been very red and bloodshot on the inner part of his eyes. You may be able to see some of the redness in the pictures below. It is going down quite a bit but is still there. They said to expect that for up to 6 weeks...at least they aren't bright red anymore. His eyes look great, it's crazy to see him look at you with both eyes straight, he seems like he has a new outlook on life! As far as other health updates, he had his last cardiologist appointment in May and they didn't want to see him back until December, so that is very promising that they are only wanting to see him every 6 months now. At his latest physical he was tipping the scales :) at 18 lbs. 10 oz. He was 29 inches long, so he is keeping up with his corrected age with height but he is still a few pounds underweight. He is getting there though! He is eating all sorts of food now, but he is still on bottles for calories. He has meals and snacks throughout the day and still takes a bottle in the morning, evening and he wakes up for one every night at 3am......we're hoping that is something we can stop soon!! Any weening tricks would be much appreciated. We're pretty sure when the day comes to sleep through the night he is going to throw a pretty big fit and I'm picturing projectile vomitting. Kale is going to daycare full time and he seems to love it. Derc spent a lot of time down at his friend's land in Southern Iowa this summer. They are developing it for hunting land so there were countless hours spent with his friends mowing, spraying, burning grass, tilling, planting, etc. to get the land ready for hunting season. He's very excited that fall has arrived, he is in full UNI gear every Saturday for football and he is buying hunting gear to get ready for turkey/deer/pheasant seasons. If Kale were able to walk he would probably try and convince me he's ready to get his hunting license, he's pretty excited for that day to come! I have thoroughly enjoyed not working weekends this summer with my job. I have been traveling quite a bit with work and Derc is usually flyin' solo with Kale anywhere between 1-3 nights/week. He is definitely a trooper! We have a busy few months coming up - one of the coolest things is on September 24th we will be headed to the UNI football game where they will be doing a dedication to my dad before the game. After he passed away one of his great friends, Pat, helped get a flagpole installed at the new UNI track. They hadn't ever had a permanent flagpole so before every track meet they would wheel a small flag out for the National Anthem. Pretty cool that the flag pole is a dedication to him and there is a plaque with his name on it!! Well, that's about it for now, hopefully you enjoy the pictures below from the summer!