a stolen picture

papa has been in the hospital with the flu since yesterday afternoon.  my granny is by his side 24/7 taking care of him but could you please send a little prayer their way?  it would be much appreciated.

Story time friends

Maybe my favorite part of story time is when we arrive and I tell baby girl to go up and sit with her friends. Not like she's ever met any of those kids before but it doesn't stop her from nestling herself right in with them. It's a good thing she's so small.

36 weeks

How far along:   36 weeks  (11.29.12) -  compared to 36 weeks with abigail

Total weight gain/loss: + 23 lbs  

Maternity clothes:  totally just depends on the day...

Sleep:  it's going alright.  i haven't been waking up during the night anymore to go to the bathroom but i have been waking up at 7 am every day or whenever my christopher leaves for work.  not that great because my baby sleeps in and i don't have any motivation to be productive that early in the morning so it's just wasted time.  and when i don't wake up naturally, it's almost always with a headache.  i hate that part.  this morning i actually fell back asleep after my honey left for work and although it was nice to sleep for an extra hour, my dream was me in the bathroom of a university library or something, pleading and crying with a girl that was wanting an abortion.  maybe i would just rather stay awake after all...

Best moment this week:  that's probably gotta be monday night ice skating at the pepsi center with my christopher and abigail.

Movement:  movement has been absolutely crazy this week.  like what you do when you walk through a spider web and turn into a ninja kung fu fighter.  also, he's giving me some elbow rolls that are ummm, i don't know the word to describe it but they make me gasp out loud when it happens.  he's getting stuck under my ribs more and more often (still favoring my left side), and some nights it's hard to go to sleep because it's not gentle and soothing like it was with abigail, it's disturbing and i have to focus and brace myself for it!

Food cravings:  i still gotta say that eating is really enjoyable when i don't have to prepare or cleanup any part of it!  i'm still lacking motivation to cook.  the only thing that makes me really really want to eat is that i get insanely hungry.  but when i'm that hungry, i don't have the patience to wait an hour or two while i thaw meat or make a meal.  i need to force myself to cook when i'm not hungry so i'll have leftovers when i need something to go to.  i eat my usual eggs on toasted french bread for breakfast... sometime between 9 and 11.  and then maybe i'll eat something small to average around 4 and then when i'm hungry again before bed i usually just blow it off and go to sleep instead.  because it's easier to go to sleep than to eat.  not the healthiest and i'm really going to try to step up my game and be better this last month.  on a happier note... egg nog tastes awesome and requires no prep or cleanup.  

Gender:  BOY!  i should let christopher know that i think i might have the name picked out... but it won't be for sure and settled until we're in the hospital and we see him.  so for that reason, we've got some backups.  it's still beyond me how i'm going to love a new kid as much as abigail, so i'm trying to bring back my memories from being freshly pregnant in april when i kept thinking about a little baby boy.  it's not working that well.

What I miss:  being emotionally stable.  this week, and the past few days especially, have been rough.  when it's good then it's really good and i'm super happy and life is grand.  when it's not good then it's constantly on the verge of tears and my whole life is terrible and doomed and i experience ummm... very unpleasant anxiety.  i keep telling myself... only one more month... and then i can be happy again!  that's assuming i get post partum manic euphoria like i did last time... and not the post partum depression that's usually the case with new moms...

Milestones:   i'm less than a month away!

Theme: the week of too many tears because my life is perfect and my life sucks.

Extra:  i still feel good.  my body is nice to me if i am nice to it.  i went bowling on friday and by the end my back was getting stiff and would "catch" sometimes... i don't know how to describe it.  tuesday i spent the first half of the day cleaning and organizing.  vacuuming and cleaning the kitchen floor and some bending and lifting and... same thing as friday... my back was stiff and catching and would just get stuck and it made me feel like i was eighty years old.  now i just have to keep reminding myself of that before i get to that point.
also, i could whine for a really long time about pregnancy anxiety and depression and the sorts but i'll pass, at least for the moment, while i enjoy a moment of peace.

Come again?!

i am constantly amazed every day at the stuff that is coming out of baby girl's mouth.  and i don't just mean when she sneezes.  she is saying the most hilarious stuff and her commentary is awesome.  my short term memory doesn't work so this will all be very poorly documented but here are just a few things i want to remember.

last night honey and baby girl got in some quality father daughter bonding while i was gone at a presidency meeting.  when i came home both of them were in bed and when i woke up, honey had already left for work.  so as baby and i were walking from the playground to the car this morning i asked her about what she did last night playing with daddy and she couldn't stop talking about pooh bear.  somehow she explained that she watched pooh bear on the big tv last night with daddy.  i didn't even know this was an option but apparently he'd dvr'd a piglet/pooh bear movie of some sort and she couldn't stop smiling and laughing through it all (this was all confirmed through text this afternoon).  yeay sweet girl!  your record for telling me true stories is improving!

baby girl was in the kitchen with me today before nap and she pulled her dirty bib off the counter.  so i said "hey, would you go put that in the washing machine?" to which she immediately said "pllleeeaseee!"  and i about died laughing.  my child just called me out on not saying please.  i wish words could accurately portray the tone in her voice but she was correcting my manners!  so i said please and she was laughing because i was laughing and she happily put that thing in the washer.  then made several requests about needing help with the buttons and how it wasn't getting wet and that it was still dry.

i know i've mentioned it before but one of her favorite things to do these days is grab a chair from our kitchen table and then pull it over to stand on so she can check out what's going on on the kitchen counters.  this is called "standing" and the most frequent phrase is "i want abigail stand."

also, i'm sure it's probably been going on a while and i just haven't been observant enough but this afternoon i also noticed her putting everything in the past tense (well, everything that actually should be placed in past tense) and including "ed" on the end of words that don't follow that conjugation.  like if she fell down it was "i fall down" or "abigail fall down" and now it's "i felled down."  i can't remember the other examples.

also pertaining to time, she's appropriately using "today" and "tonight" when telling me when things happened or when she wants to do things.  she'll tell us that she wants to watch thomas today but that she wants to watch elmo tonight.  ha, she's got it all mapped out.

for a child that rarely says "no" (it's always a different way to phrase that thought), she says "don't" quite a bit, especially in combination with "like."  like today when i got her out of her carseat she'd taken off her socks and shoes.  "abigail don't wear socks right now" and "i don't like socks" were part of her side of the conversation and then she could agree with me when i said "you wouldn't like to wear socks right now?"  also, if one of her friends is bullying her (don't ask why but she prefers those friends above the more polite ones) she'll be whining/backing away from them saying "i don't!  i don't!"  which i can only assume is short for i don't like that or i don't want to share yet or something.  like when lucy was trying to talk her into wearing a dressup skirt and abigail kept repeating "i doooonnnn'tttt!"  so she's transitioned (at least partly) from stuff like "all done wearing socks" to stuff like "i don't like socks" and it's honestly the cutest thing.  i'm loving the "don't."

i'm also just loving the growing vocabulary.  what she says on a regular basis is still not too widespread but i'm coming to learn that she has the ability to say anything she wants.  today she brought me a book and said "i want mommy read thomas and the great discovery" and i about fell over because i've never heard her call that book by it's full name before.  it's also fun to hear her say stuff like "egg nog" because toddler talk is the cutest thing ever.

so is toddler singing.  she's got a variety of songs on her repertoire... the newest being "head shoulders knees and toes" which i've never heard her sing before and today she was singing it on repeat.  and very accurately!  and with motions!  ummm where did that come from?!  took me by surprise.

today when we were at the playground abigail wanted a snack but i literally had nothing at all in my purse that was edible.  so then abigail kept saying "i wanna have a treat at home.  mommy don't have treats in abigail's purse."  ha, yup.

this afternoon after lunch abigail came running downstairs from her room saying "i'm naked!!!  i got elmo!!!!"  it was hilarious.  my friend sarah, aka baby's santa, sent her these christmas elmo jammies (and those pink skinnies in our ice skating pictures) and to say abigail is obsessed would be the understatement of the century.  this kid cracks me up.

"i'm naked!  i got elmo!!!"

reading thomas and the great discovery

dropped it.

and of course there's a million and one things i don't have time to mention and another million things i'm forgetting.  but man, this kid is so cute i can hardly stand it.

Living with a boy

I haven't been cooking or eating much for the last few months. And as of the last few weeks I've barely even gone shopping. So today I was wondering why my fridge seemed so cramped. Here are a few things I found.

a can of rootbeer with half a sip of flat soda left, an empty mug that used to contain egg nog, and a mug of tap water

a taco bell bag full of wads of napkins, a few hot sauce packets, and another plastic bag... tied in a knot.

sooo glad we're using our valuable fridge space to store these gems.

ps- these things were all evicted after my enormous costco trip this afternoon.  only the strong survive.

anxiety

i've got a lot of it right now.  here's hoping i can sleep it off a little and have a better day tomorrow!

Ice skating

for those of you unaware of what's going on in the NHL (that's hockey), i'll have you know that they're currently experiencing a lockout so there have been no hockey games this season.  so to make us, fans feel better, they offered a pizza and hot chocolate open skate family night for season ticket holders.  that's us!  well... honey's company actually but whatever... details details.  it was sooo much fun though.  baby girl had a blast and any time she wasn't on the ice or wasn't in motion it was incessant "i want daddy!  i want to skate!" so i'm pretty sure she's gonna be a child prodigy ice skating champ or something.

so here are pictures from tonight.  not sure why they're out of order... but i'm guessing it's my lack of technology skills.  i'm new to this phone blogging thing.  anyone want to help me out?  why're my pictures completely out of order?

ps- baby girl spent most of the time skating in her regular shoes.  we put real skates on her at the end for like ten minutes or something and she really liked it but soon requested her shoes again.  i'm with you baby girl... those skates are not comfortable in the least!

This is how we sleep

I went to get baby up from her nap and oh my heavens she was so cute that if we weren't already running ten mins late I would have just let her sleep like that as long as she wanted! Melts my heart. And she was oh so snugly too!

Sound of music

Saturday date night. Few and far between but oh so wonderful every time.

ps- to emmy.  yes, the special recognition was just because she bought so many tickets.  i think there were at least eleven of us...

birthday celebration - part 2

sorry... i just realized this is just a million pictures of me.  feel free to pass!

after dinner it was time to open presents!

sitting in the special birthday chair

tons of nu skin stuff including body butter, mascara, and lip gloss!

everyone even made it a point to include pink in their wrapping because they know it's my favorite!

apparently this is the face i make when i see cash in a card.  how embarrassing.

if you're in my immediate family, you should appreciate this picture.  my child is my daughter... my birthday was shared between the two of us.

creme brulee set!!!

ever since i was in high school, cheese cake has always been my birthday cake of choice.  i'm really not much of a fan of regular cake so i've always been a bit of a needy daughter in law, requesting birthday cake that no one else really eats.  anyways, i remember making and eating creme brulee at my in laws sometime in the past several years and since i've been craving it my whole pregnancy, i thought i wouldn't be too extra needy of a daughter in law to request that as my birthday dessert.  my mother in law said she'd been planning chocolate fondue with everyone in town but that we could do creme brulee as well.  well, turns out, the set we'd used before was borrowed so it wasn't even an option, especially with so many people in town visiting.  so the solution?  she said she ran out the next day and got me a creme brulee set so i could make my own whenever i want!  i'm so excited!  and about to be fat.  ;-)

my mother in law made one of these for each of the married couples. it's so cute!

this was my birthday cake since we had chocolate fondue for dessert!

baby girl thought it was precious.

because, how could you not?!

eating fondue and talking on her hand phone

and then we were stuffed.  after cheese fondue with bread and assorted veggies, entree fondue with mushrooms, shrimp, steak, and chicken, and chocolate fondue with angel food cake, candy bars, marshmallows, and fruit, i was wondering if i'd ever recover.

my birthday this year was definitely above average.  it was so fun to have everyone in town to celebrate friday night!

hillier birthday celebration - part 1

black friday night, we had an awesome fondue dinner to celebrate my birthday.  enjoy a few videos, lots of pictures, and plenty of awkward outtakes.