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Yesterday, we went for a 19 week ultrasound and confirmed that baby Jake is definitely a boy.  We are so thankful that he appears to be healthy.  The ultrasound took around 30 minutes with the nurse and 10 more with the doctor while they carefully inspected things like the blood flow in his heart, kidneys, bladder and brain, the chambers and parts of his heart, the size of his cerebellum, the length of his femur, the location of his stomach, etc.  The end result is that he is 6 days ahead in size and everything looks good.

In other news, Ben was reading so well that I decided to test his reading level yesterday.  We did a very quick test where there was a list of around 10 words.  If he missed only 1 or 2 of the words, he would advance to the next test. If he missed 3 or more words, that would be his recommended reading level.  The kindergarten list consisted of just letters, so we obviously skipped that one.  He breezed through the first grade list without any mistakes.  On the second grade list, he only missed the word "owe" (I think that's a hard word for 2nd grade!).  On the third grade list, he missed chief (said "chif"), annoy (said something close), and outlaw (again super close).  Since he missed three words, they said he should start on 3rd grade reading curriculum.  I'd say this is pretty impressive since, if in school, he would be in 3 year preschool.  

Today we needed to make a new writing book for Ben and I asked him to write his name on the front in permanent marker.  After he wrote his name, he said, "I need to write 'writing' too!"  He immediately wrote "wri" and then asked me, "Do you say wriDing or wriTing?"  I answered him and he promptly spelled the entire word correctly on his notebook.  I am having such a great time teaching him and watching him learn - his attitude is great and his skills in reading a everything else are growing at an astonishing rate!

I've felt Jake kicking me for about 5 weeks now, but today, Kate was the first one to feel him kick from the outside.  She's very proud of this and being his big sister!