full term and some counting.

(on my way to the 37 week appointment)

saturday i will be officially "full term," which is a horrible thing created to tease a pregnant woman. it really gets all hopes up because it means that your baby could be born any minute and everything would be fine, but, at the same time, you could still have another month and a half of waiting. ugh.

everything is great. boo is constantly poking her bony little feet into my organs. i'm feeling exhausted and gigantic, which is to be expected. i hear "full term" and i want to give up on everything but relaxing and waiting for labor, same as last time. i don't want to spend another month half-heartedly doing menial tasks and hoping she doesn't decide pop up on the one day that my bathroom is more than disgusting. 

on the other hand, next week is my last week of babysitting until next year (crazy, right?! 2012? next year?) and i wouldn't mind having some time to hang out with my little ellie bean, just the two of us. it won't be the two of us anymore and that is exciting and strange. i can't even comprehend it.

point is, miss boo will show up when she's good and ready...

and hopefully before thanksgiving (because mommy can't take much longer than that). 

(get ready for a halloween post, because ellie went trunk-or-treating and loved it.)

in the meantime, i have a few little movies. 

ellie has been a counting machine.* for some reason, though, she skips straight to five and goes all the way to thirteen. don't ask me why. 

she was a little distracted with her animals, so i didn't get a very good run of all the numbers. i guess you get to see a little bit of her playing and that's always cute. she thinks her zebras and giraffes are one big family and they are always kissing each other. she also thinks that the tiger and the hippo are best friends... again, don't ask me why. 

*by the way, we're not really concerned, but daddy has started calling ellie our little ocd baby. she counts all the time and every thing, she is always lining all of her toys up and she gets a little upset if things aren't a certain way - for example, she has to (or she will freak out) buckle her booster seat immediately after she gets out of it and before she goes to play. just a weird phase?

it's gettin' crafty in here.

i haven't been doing much lately. just growing a baby. 

you may or may not have seen this before: 

via google images

 

 

but! i have actually been for real crafty, too. 

i have been going through boxes of magic erasers while scrubbing the walls, but in the meantime i have also been doing a little bit of sewing. 

first, i got my felt on and made a little halloween costume for ellie, although i am seriously doubting that she will wear it. 

 

 

(oh well, maybe next year i will have a ladybug and a bumblebee?)

 

and then i got a little candy corn crazy...

 

 

 

also, i got some really lovely fabric and made some pillows for my bed

(and had a spray paint party on some hobby lobby letters, too). 

 

 

 and, with the leftover fabric, i finally made one of those little grocery bag holders that i've been meaning to make forever. husband has (in)appropriately dubbed it "the bag anus," which immediately makes it so much less cool (thanks a lot). 

 

 

hey, at least the bags aren't under the sink anymore, right? 

 

next on the list is the quilt for baby. that should keep me busy for the next three-to-five weeks... right?

speaking of which, this is what i looked like on friday:

i feel like i have a pinhead in this picture. 

and a giant shoulder. 

 and giant hands. 

and don't get me started on the belly!

 

hair - the continuing saga.

so i have posted my hair growth at this time of year for a couple of years now and i just had to give another update - complete with a really crappy sepia photobooth picture. i know you're excited.

in the second picture and the last picture i am pregnant and you can definitely see the puff in my face. and you can see some real nice acne in the first one. embarrassing! 

me, 2008, right after i had it cut:

me, 2009:

me, 2010:

and this year's look, 2011:

that's what two pregnancies and almost three years of prenatal vitamins can do to a girl. i am planning on getting my hair trimmed very, very soon, though. it starts to split like crazy at the end of the pregnancy (and goes completely wild!) and i want to fix it before little boo comes.

p.s. - the haircut anniversary also coincides with the moving anniversary. we've officially been in georgia for three years. how about that?

happy.

i haven't really had much to blog about this past week. 

just the same old giant belly, the same old cooking and cleaning, the same old playing and laughing.

the tree in the front yard changed colors almost overnight, so i get to look out every day and see the most dazzling tree in the whole neighborhood (no exaggeration). it's wonderful.

today, during lunch, ellie told me that she is happy. 

she also told me that mama and dada are happy and baby sister is happy, too. 

tears! gosh, i am so pregnant. 

(i think i have been on the verge of sobbing all day. 

fair warning: if you see me out and about, my emotions are out of control.)

(and my brain is not exactly functioning properly.)

but she's right. we're all happy and healthy and that's all that really matters.

things to love on a thursday.

things i love today:

crisp apples.

toasted pumpkin seeds. 

cool, dry air. 

crunching around in the leaves.

baby tummies. 

clean walls and windows. 

juicy pears.

a couple of real contractions (eek!). 

piles of pumpkin chocolate chip cookies.

jacket weather, even if it is just for a few hours in the morning. 

candy corns.

magic erasers.

finding old pictures from high school.

project runway.

storytime.

roasted acorn squash. 

that thing where leaves just fall gently in the breeze and twirl around... you know?

playing at the park. 

white chicken chili with avocado.

new mustard-colored corduroy shoes. 

daydreaming. 

spray paint.

martinelli's sparkling cider.

and my gorgeous girl, even though she woke up sick in the middle of the night and would not stop talking and go back to sleep until i finally let her watch some tv. 

there sure are a lot of things to love about life right now.

looking forward (and last year vs. this year)

fall is here! at last! i'm pretty sure about it!


a few clues:

my alarm went off and i was confused as to why it was so dark.
ellie asked where the sun was when we went outside yesterday morning. it hadn't peeked over the trees yet.
i woke up ready for a hot shower. 
i'm wearing a sweater. i'm not sweating.
i wore socks all day yesterday.
i constantly have the urge to bake, probably because the oven is so warm. and the food smells so good.
there are new shows on tv every week. 
ellie quickly learned the word "pumpkin" because she sees them everywhere.
there are little spots of yellow on the tree out front.
our driveway crunches when we're getting in the car.
9:00 pm and i was ready for bed, because it felt so late and dark.

(although, i will note that our air conditioning went out last week and we had to have it fixed. luckily it was a quick and inexpensive thing, but you would think that we could have just let it go by the end of september, right? nope.)

(last year vs. this year)

i was looking through some pictures from this time last year and i couldn't believe how bald our little baby was.
i can't believe she's been walking for almost a year.
and i am so excited that she is old enough to really have fun these holidays.
first, she is going to get to dress up and people will give her candy. it will blow her little mind.
then she is going to (maybe) get a huge, delicious dinner (depending on little boo's arrival date). 
and then she is going to wake up one morning and all sorts of presents will have magically appeared during the night.

oh, and above all she is going to get a sister.
pretty eventful and exciting life for a girl who is not quite two.

(last year vs. this year)

 

the great goat mystery.

you may remember back in january, during the days of the snowpocalypse, that my parents came to visit.

while they were here, they gave ellie a little farm. the set of animals included a horse, a cow, a pig, a sheep, and a goat.

after we opened it up, set up the toys and started playing, we realized that someone was missing.

where was the goat?

i remembered seeing it, because at first i thought it was the funniest looking horse i had ever seen. then i realized it was a goat.

so the goat had made it inside the house.

after looking and looking, i finally decided that the goat had either been accidentally thrown out with the box or he had fallen down the heater vent with the broken cover.

we weren't ever going to see that goat again.

nine months later (really!), it is five in the morning and i'm getting ready to drive husband to work.

i decide to put on my $2-clearance-fake-uggs since it is finally sixty-ish degrees outside.

as i put my right foot in the boot, i feel something hard.

guess who i found peeking back at me?

the missing goat! 

even better for my story, ellie had left her entire herd of farm friends together in her room before bed the night before.

when i woke her up to get ready to get in the car, she groggily scooped them all into her arms and began to stumble around with them.

"ellie," i said, "come see what i found!"

she brought all the friends into my room and saw the goat sitting on the bed.

she was puzzled for a minute, then smiled, laughed and started lining them all up.

she spent the rest of the morning lining them up in different places around the house and counting them.

she even said "goat!" when i told her what it was.

like it was never missing at all.

so ends the goat mystery of 2011.

i'll never quite know how it got in the boot.

although ellie is notorious for stuffing toys in boots, a tiny part of me thinks that maybe grampa brad thought it might be a funny little surprise (he just didn't know how long it would take for us to find it!).

who knows? but we're happy to have him back.