The Waiting Game

If you are sick of hearing how I haven't had the baby yet, trust me, I couldn't agree more. While I was waiting and waiting all day for the hospital to deal with the 18 other women whose bodies went into labor like they were supposed to (can you tell I'm bitter?), I finished this quilt that I have been working on for the baby. It's my second patch-work quilt, and first rag quilt, so there was a steep learning curve involved, especially with my severe pregnancy brain. All in all though, I don't think it will fall apart, and I'm pretty happy with it. Things I'm not happy with now include: my stubborn womb, and unpredictable hospital induction schedules. Why did I ever predict this pregnancy would last into June?

In the meantime...

Mark has taken the kids to his brother's house for the day, so I thought I'd use the opportunity to catch up on a few things.

Mark's mom and stepdad have been here visiting this week from South Dakota, and just left yesterday (without getting to see the baby- yet another reason to be irritated at being overdue). We had a good visit anyway, and they were very helpful with all my errands and projects, not to mention their dog entertained the kids pretty much non-stop. Thanks Linda and Ron!

Here's a few pictures from the last few weeks:
Last weekend we had some of that amazing Seattle weather and pretty much dropped everything and went to a local beach on Lake Washington. These are about the only pictures of the kids looking at the camera.



This is from Mother's Day. Mia and Sam helped Mark pick some flowers from our yard. And speaking of our yard..

My version of nesting this pregnancy has been yardwork. I've been out there every spare moment, looking pretty ghetto with the belly and the kids running amok in the street, but it's been worth it. Here are some pictures of what's in bloom in our yard right now:

Our Dogwood Tree

Rhodies are everywhere right now. We have 2 plants in our yard.

This is our mammoth Rosemary bush on crack.

Clematis

Our Wisteria "tree" that is absolutely amazing.
One of the biggest reasons I love the month of May here.

And what would our blog be without pictures of the kids breaking major fashion rules?
I don't think it's legal to wear that much plaid.

Pregnancy Bipolar Disorder

Yep, still pregnant. 2 days overdue. It does things to you. About 50 times a day I find myself thinking, "I've got to get this baby out somehow!", which is followed by the always terrifying remembrance of what the "somehow" entails, and then I start thinking, "holy crap, just stay in there a little longer OK?" It's enough to drive you crazy- to really want to have the baby, but really not wanting to have the baby. At this point, I'll most likely be induced on Tuesday, so on the one hand I know it will be over soon. On the other hand, it will just be the beginning of a whole new set of body aches, and sleep disturbances. It's always fun when this starts to dawn on you after the baby is born and the euphoria has worn off, you start looking around for someone to put the baby back where it came from. It's a special kind of insanity, being this pregnant.

But the truth is, I really can't wait to hold this baby and see him face to face. That moment pretty much makes up for whatever suffering you go through, before or after. Things have a way of evening out.

Cirque

So we made it to Cirque. And from the results of my doctors appointment on Friday, it looks like I'll make it to June before I have this baby. I haven't reached the point of pregnancy-induced insanity (at least that I know of), but if nothing has happened by Thursday, expect a pregnancy rant for sure.

Back to Cirque du Soleil:
Theres' nothing like watching a bunch of super-fit and flexible acrobats perform seemingly death-defying stunts to make you feel like the laziest piece of lard there ever was. In short, it was amazing. I swear when I'm done with this pregnancy I'm going to run off and join the circus. Or at least I'm going to go to the gym.

And finally: Our 10 year anniversary!
Turning 30 a while back wasn't that big of a deal for me, but for some reason hitting year 10 of marriage, and having 2.95 children and a minivan, and being 30 is feeling a little strange. Seems like all I need now is a mid-life crisis. Did I mention running off to join the circus yet?
Anyway, since we'd already done so much celebrating, on the big day we cleaned the house and then caught the season finale of The Office online (did anyone else love it as much as me?). It doesn't get much better than that when you're as boring and middle-aged as us.

Here are some Then and Now pictures. We've been married so long that there are no digital photos of our wedding (I had to scan this one in- hence the poor quality). Our kids are going to think we're so OLD!



Stay tuned for baby news...

Worst Pregnancy Brain Ever!

Our 10 year anniversary is next Friday. Cirque du Soleil is in town. We were lucky enough to see a different Cirque show in San Francisco, and loved it. We splurged and bought some pretty expensive seats for last nights show, considering it was for our 10 year anniversary . Bought the tickets, wrote it on the calendar (8 PM, Saturday May 10th), lined up a babysitter, and yesterday went to print out our tickets...for the 4:00 show it turned out. I almost threw up. This was at 4:07. I'd had the confirmation email in my in-box for weeks, and had never once checked it, I was so sure I bought tickets for the 8:00 show. So after about 15 panicked minutes thinking we had just thrown away a nice chunk of money, we got through to some nice girl at the customer service line, who agreed to transfer our tickets to the another show for no extra charge. The only day we can go before the baby is due is next Thursday- the day before our anniversary, and a week before my due date (Mia was 9 days early, and Sam was 5, so we are crossing all our fingers, toes, shoe laces, etc). Seriously, it is a wonder that I am entrusted to raise children most days.

We did salvage the night though, since we had a babysitter and all. We ended up going to dinner and a movie. We saw Baby Mama, which I won't say much about except this: the funniest line was from some random lady in a park telling her kids that they had to go to their play date with Wingspan and Banjo. If you know how I feel about baby names, you'll know that I laughed my head off at that. And if you haven't ever checked out The Utah Baby Namer you should do so if you want to laugh your head off as well (check out the "best of" list- oh, and my apologies to anyone who finds their own name or their kids name on this site, but if that's the case, well... I'm sure I like you anyway).

But the redeeming moment of the night came when the projector went all askew and the film was off center, and even though they fixed if after a few moments, we still politely mentioned it to the management afterwards and they gave us free movie tickets. And we had used some Costco discount tickets in the first place, so basically we'll get 2 movies for less than the price of one. Not too bad, all in all. Stay tuned for an update after Thursday. You never know what pregnancy brain has in store for you.

Our New Pets

Mia has an obsession with snails. And worms, and pill bugs, and sometimes beetles. But not grubs ("grumps", as she calls them), and not spiders (so she is related to me after all). And luckily for her, our yard is filled with snails, since I'm too afraid to use pesticides. Luckily for me, "caring" for the snails and worms and assorted bugs occupies her and Sam for hours while I do yard work, which I have plenty of since I'm also too afraid to use herbicides.

One thing Mia is not afraid of is snail poop, which she dutifully checks for and cleans up on a regular basis. Did you know that snails produce an alarming quantity of poop? This is something we are learning from the near constant updates from our little "Snail Whisperer." We also learned from last summer that snail slime does not wash off little hands with soap and water, and that if you leave 10-15 snails in a sealed, unventilated Tupperware container in the sun for a few days or maybe weeks, they become a crusty, stinky, dried up mess. Lessons learned. Things are going much better this year, and besides a few escapees, which we posted snail sized "LOST" fliers for to no avail, all snails appear to be happy and healthy. I think Mia is trying to prove to us that she is capable of caring for a much bigger pet, like a dog, or an elephant. In the meantime, I just keep telling her go check for snail poop.

Technical Difficulties

OK, so what is going on with the header of my blog taking up residence in the middle of our picture? Help blogger pros! In the meantime, to me this has become the symbol of all the hundreds of little things that make me think "I should do something about that" every time I see it, and then as soon as it's out of sight, blissfully forget about it and do nothing instead. So I guess it's fitting to have this little glitch on my blog, since it pretty much sums up my life in one nice visual image. It's probably here to stay. For now, I'm going to go walk past my piano with the broken key, past the growing mound of Mia's artwork that needs to be relocated, while not looking at the folded laundry that should be put away, and get some ice cream. Yummmmm, ice cream...

2 Years Later

2 years ago today we moved into our house, and we've basically been keeping Home Depot in business ever since. And in due fashion, we marked the occasion this last weekend by picking up some things at said store for a few projects that we intended to start 2 years ago, and probably won't actually get around to for another 2 years.

Something about this house held such charm for us (actually, just for me- the housing market was so crazy back then we put an offer down after 3 days on the market, and Mark hadn't even seen it yet), and there are days I still try to figure out what that charm was. Really though, I love our little home, even if I do daydream constantly about knocking out a particular wall, or obsess over what idiot thought it was a good idea to put the laundry closet in the worst possible place. I remember the first night we stayed here and it felt so strange, like someone was going to walk in the next morning and ask us why we were in their house. Partly that was because the paint colors were so out of control crazy that even had I been on crack I still wouldn't have ever picked them. I also remember thinking that, despite having a 3 year old and 9 month old, that I could probably have the whole house painted by the end of the summer. Yeah....so 2 months ago we finally finished painting! While we are by no means done with all our projects (yes, I hear all you more seasoned home owners laughing your heads off), I thought it would be fun to post our before and after pictures. Enjoy!

Let's start with the kitchen and dining area:

OK, seriously- what were they thinking? Coral orange with those cupboards? This was the very first project we tackled. Here is the immediate result:

This was tolerable for about a year and a half, and then I think I really did smoke that crack, because somehow I decided that painting the cabinets would be a fun project (this was just a few months ago and I was getting to be very pregnant. My sister Kristy came up to help me and without her it would have been impossible- thanks Kristy!) The final product:
All in all, it is like getting a completely new kitchen and I do love it! Next project: do something about those awesome circa 1985 geometric archways...


Next comes the living room:
Yes, that is a peach accent wall (and Sam, who looks so tiny!).

We hired someone to paint the front door, inside and out. The other side of the door used to be purple! Did I mention the really hideous colors yet?
Yes, we went with tan walls in here. Something had to be neutral right? This room is still a work in progress, as you can tell by the stack of books waiting for a bookshelf to call home. Notice my favorite Ikea painting, oh, and our free piano from Craiglist.

The Family room:
Would you call that periwinkle?

This was phase 1, before I decided that we had way too much blue in the house, and the furniture all needed to be moved to the Living Room (yes, I have a very patient husband). So for my final painting project, I decided to repaint the fireplace wall.

Well, after almost 2 years of painting, I was a little cocky about my ability to choose paint and throw it on a wall in a jiffy. We'll just say that what I thought would be a 2 day, $15 project, took over 2 weeks, $50+, and 3 different colors of paint. And even now, I love the green during the day, but not so much at night when it kind of makes you start craving double mint gum. You win some, you lose some, I guess.

OK, are you ready for something truly insane? Here is the Master Bedroom:

Yikes. Do you see what I mean about feeling weird sleeping here that first night? This was the hardest color to choose. I think I tired about 7 different samples. And I don't think I've mentioned yet that I also had to repaint all the trim and doors and window frames in the whole house, since they used 2 different colors. We discovered that while working on this room. Here it is now:

Hall Bathroom:

Luckily no crazy colors, but the paint was 20+ years old, peeling badly and the walls needed to be re-textured. Mark also installed a ceiling fan where there had been a heat lamp. This was my first attempt at painting cabinets.

Mia's room:

This yellow was so much more hideous in person. I also haven't mentioned the quality of the paint jobs the previous owners preferred, which apparently was no quality. They got paint everywhere, so covering the old colors was usually a nightmare. In Mia's room, it seemed to be the worst. We went with yellow again, but a much more subdued version.

Sam's Room: For some reason this room was painted with flat ceiling paint, and of course was all over everything. None of the trim or doors were painted in here, so this tiny room took forever.

There is now a "race car" bed in here in addition to the crib. It leaves about 3 square feet of floor space. Still deciding what to put on the red wall...

And that's all folks! The only thing not yet touched is the supposed remodeled master bathroom that we still have to redo, but that's a story for a whole other post. I guess you've now seen just about every nook and cranny of our house, which is a little creepy to think about. And if you were thinking that things look kind of nice, keep in mind that we do have children, and none of the pictures show the cheap Target and Ikea furniture that the kids have trashed and stained up close. Just in case you were tempted to break in and steal something, you would be highly disappointed. Also, if you happen to have some of the colors I insulted in your house... well, I 'm sure they look great on your walls.

I think this turned out to be the world's longest post, and it's taken me so long that is now the next day and not even the anniversary of our move-in day. I'm learning that this is a little more time consuming than I thought it would be. Still beats scrapbooking though.

For the hard core fans

This video is about 3 minutes long. If you feel up to watching the whole thing, you'll be rewarded with a few little gems:

• Sam's attempt at cartwheeling, the main point of taking the video in the first place - notice the leg-up approach.
  
• A glimpse of "the belly."
  
• Sam copying everything Mia does (welcome to my daily life).
  
• At the very end, a little 10 second scene we are considering sending into AFV (I don't know, maybe we just think it's hilarious because we're dorky parents. You tell us).
• (Edit): I forgot to mention Sam's awesome Thomas the Train tank top that he insisted on wearing that day, after he found it in the drawer of clothes that are too big (I believe it's size 4T). I was just glad he found something he wanted to wear, since lately he is becoming a little too opinionated about his clothes.