Lydia's birthday & other exciting things

Lydia's 3rd birthday was last Sunday (the 17th)! She says that she is now big. The night before her birthday I decided it was time to give Lydia her first haircut.

Here's the "before" picture:

And there goes that long baby hair!

The result:

I think it turned out pretty nice! On Lydia's birthday, we had a little celebration with some pancakes for breakfast (with a candle on Lydia's), and we shared some cake at church. In the evening we skyped with Grandma & Poppaw, and they watched her open her presents that they had sent. Her really big party was yesterday, shared with her friend who is also turning three on the 31st, but I'll put pictures of that up later. Here are the ones of opening presents with Grandma & Poppaw.

Thanks for the great gifts! They have been keeping Lydia busy the past week. We're looking forward to more fun things coming with Mimi & Poppi in June!

Now for the latest belly picture, taken on May 18. (After I thought I couldn't possibly get any bigger...)

And the last picture is from the ultrasound on May 7th. Someone said it looks like she's blowing a bubble :) It's actually her hand held up near her face.

The baby looked healthy and seemed to be growing fine (they said she was already 2 kg, or about 4.5 pounds), but apparently the blood vessels in the placenta were a little bit constricted. I've been on medication for that the past 2 weeks, and I'll have another ultrasound tomorrow to check that everything is OK.

I'll give a quick update on getting Lydia registered for preschool, too. I think we got all the paperwork figured out and taken care of this week, and Lydia and I got to tour the preschool. It looks really nice, with lots of fun stuff! Lydia is excited and asking when she gets to go. However (there always seems to be ONE more thing...), they now told us that we need to get Russian health insurance for her. So we have until sometime in August to get that figured out. They gave me the address of where to go for it, so hopefully it will be an easy (and not too expensive) process.