Things I Will Not Do During This Pregnancy

1. I will not eat Chic-fil-a for breakfast. My baby does not need three tiny chicken biscuits for breakfast, even if those tiny chicken biscuits are the cutest things ever.

2.  I will not "research" (aka google) all of the terrible things that can go wrong during a pregnancy and birth. 

3.  Similar to item 2, I will not lay awake in the middle of the night, wide-eyed, clutching my belly, convincing myself that my child is going to be born with a full set of teeth. That only happens to like 1 in 100 women. I am definitely woman number 99.

4.  I will not watch Steel Magnolias, Beaches, The Notebook, or Hope Floats, and DEFINITELY NOT PRECIOUS during the course of my pregnancy and for at least six months afterward. Why? Because the only thing worse than a hormonal pregnant woman is a hormonal pregnant woman who is sobbing on the couch and singing along with Bette Midler to the "Wind Beneath My Wings."

5.  I will not start shopping for baby girl clothes before I know the sex of my child. Well, maybe just some light online shopping is okay. And if I see an amazing item on sale and it's the last one. And if it's just so cute that I need to buy it because even if I don't have a girl, at some point, ONE of my friends will definitely give birth to a girl and I will give it to them. Those circumstances are okay, but no others.

6.  I will not use being pregnant as an excuse not to do laundry, cook dinner, make whoopee, or help friends with moving.

6. I will not wait until I am already in labor to pack my hospital bag because I was a professional traveler and could pack a carry-on in ten minutes. Being in labor is not the same thing as being late for a flight.

7.  I will not sneak Diet Cokes when my husband/friends/parents/in-laws aren't around. 

8. I will not roll my eyes at my mother when she tells me I am in labor. I will not vehemently deny the fact that I am in labor if I suddenly have to tinkle 12 times in one hour, have shooting pains in my back, and feel the need to scrub the stove with a toothbrush.

9. I will not rush my pregnancy just because I can't wait to hold my new baby.

10. I will not forget who is in control, and that this is as close to assisting God with a miracle that I will ever come, hands down, in my whole life.

I Am Not Good at Keeping Secrets & Don Is Hot

Well, my OWN secrets anyway. I can keep other people's secrets forever, really and truly, but my own secrets...it's hard for me to contain them.

And I have a secret right now. And I wasn't going to even mention it on here, but you know, this is our family blog and this secret is part of our family. Literally.

Don't you just hate how faint they make the pregnancy lines? It's positive, trust me.

We're having a baby. A second baby. Another precious child. I guess this short, sweet season just got a little bit longer.

We weren't going to tell many people at first, only because we didn't want others' shocked reactions to dampen our fun. But, you know what? The couple of unkind comments we got didn't dampen anything. People saying things like, "This was obviously not planned." Maybe we're the only ones out there, but we love having a baby and we love teaching him and watching him grow and we intentionally got pregnant.

In case you are wondering: yes, we were trying. This baby is wanted and prayed for. He or she is an answered prayer! Yes, we have a ten month old son already. No, we aren't crazy.

Why? Because God decided it was the perfect time for our family to have another baby. And because I am madly in love with my husband. He's hot. He's incredibly smart. He helps people learn to walk again, or use their bodies in a whole new way after an injury. He makes me laugh hard on a daily basis. He is a wonderful husband. He plays with his son even when he is exhausted after work. He can make some mean pancakes. Did I mention that I think he's irresistible? He and I love our family and we have been planning on trying to have more children for a long time.

So, anyway, we are kind of ecstatic around here. There's my secret...which isn't really a secret any more. And now, I am off to my yoga class so that I don't gain 8 million pounds this time around.

Pictures of Monday

Laundry, errands, shopping, quick phone calls, swinging under the live oak up the street. Trying to take b&w pictures on my camera.

We hung a coat rack low on the wall so that William will have a place to hang his back pack in four years, when he starts kindergarten. Why did I have to hang this coat rack today, when he is only ten months old? Because that's how I roll. His baby friends can use it to hang their baby bags in the meantime.

Some day, he may actually succeed in wrestling my camera from my hands. Zooming in to his cute face is a risk I am willing to take.

When I am too tired to really cook, I make breakfast for dinner. The salad is a buzz-kill, according to Don. Migas and evening beans and fresh tortillas.

Attack of the Baby Bunny

I had grand plans of taking pictures of William dressed in a white onesie, with whiskers drawn on his chubby cheeks, wearing these bunny ears, and then printing Easter cards that said "Somebunny loves you" or "Hoppy Easter" or something equally ridiculous/adorable. But who am I kidding? Tomorrow is Friday, I have to bake for the weekend, and I am operating on less than five hours of sleep since William wakes screaming in pain (three teeth coming in at once on the top...lovely). He is a little piranha. Instead, here are the only pictures of bunny ears I managed to snap yesterday.

A Story in Pictures: William Vs. Spoon

William refused to let me feed him yesterday. He wanted to do it himself. The only problem is that he doesn't quite know how to do it himself.

He's got the right idea.

Definitely knows how to put the spoon in his mouth, but upside down and without food on it.

"Maybe if I grab it with both hands?"

"Or chew it like a bone?"

Final strategy: Start flinging the banana/oatmeal/yogurt/prunes mixture on the walls.

I think maybe he just wanted me to bathe him in the kitchen sink. He was literally too messy to carry across the house to bathe.

Baby Shoes

Dear William, my baby boy,

You are napping right now, asleep in your crib. Your crib, which used to be a beautiful display of carpentry, an investment in a piece of furniture, is now covered in thick strips of quilt and velcro so that you won't continue to gnaw away at the side of the crib and wake up with paint chips on your mouth.

And the tiny kitchen table is even more crowded with the addition of your high chair seat and your endless sprays of pureed fruit and veggies that you love to fling high and low with your baby spoon. I am forever scrubbing the floor and the table around you. 

And I am supposed to be rushing around our house like a madwoman, disinfecting and picking up as best I can while you nap. We have a busy week, with visitors every day, and the house should at least be somewhat straight less hazardous. But on my way to mop the floors after I put you down for your nap, maybe 5 minutes earlier than I should have, I saw your baby shoes on the dining room table.

Baby shoes. My baby's shoes. If ever there is a reminder of how little you are, it's these shoes. You know, little son, most days I am cheering you on, teaching you to swing, holding your hands as you try to walk a few steps, feeding you bigger and bigger chunks of food, repeating one-syllable words in a clear, slow voice so that you understand how to say them yourself. 

But these shoes. 

I will happily pass on your baby clothes as you outgrow them, and your toys will be donated, but I will keep these shoes forever and a day. I will watch as we replace these baby shoes with walking shoes, lace-up shoes, ridiculously expensive tennis shoes, prom shoes, work shoes, you-don't-need-me-anymore because-you-can-drive-yourself-to-the-mall-and-buy-your-own-shoes shoes. But when you are all grown, and you live far away in a house with a child of your own, and I am an old woman in a house that is always clean, always quiet, where no babies cry out for me in the middle of the night, I will pick up these shoes and hold them to my heart and think of your precious baby face and your sweet baby feet and remember that I had a baby once, too.

**********************************************************************************

On a much lighter note, here is a picture I took of you and your new best friend playing this morning. Because if there's anything cuter than a baby in footed jammies, it's two babies in footed jammies.

Evening Beans

I wish beans had a prettier name. I can't think of one right now, but I know that the flat sound of "beans" doesn't do justice to these creamy (when cooked right) morsels of brothy goodness. I have been on a Mexican food kick lately, and I made plain old beans tonight. They were pretty dang delicious. And beautiful. 

The trick to hearty beans that don't break apart but have a creamy interior is to simmer, not soak, them. That's right: I said DON'T SOAK THEM. You should just trust me on this one.

Evening Beans (As in, if it's 4 p.m. and you're having people over at 6:30 and you don't know what to serve them, you would have just enough time to throw these beans together and send your husband/partner/best friend out to buy queso fresco, fresh tortillas, and limes for margaritas while you stay at home, spend five minutes in front of the stove, and then feel like a domestic goddess.)

Ingredients:

2 and 1/2 cups of dried pinto beans

10 cups of water

3 teaspoons of Kosher salt

2 tablespoons of olive oil

2 teaspoons of sugar in the raw (use less sugar if you have only refined sugar)

1 -15 oz. can of Rotel diced tomatoes and green chilies

Sort beans and rinse. Pour them into a heavy saucepan. Add the water and oil to the beans. Bring to a fast boil, cover, and then let simmer (a medium simmer with bubbles around the edge of the liquid) for two and half to three hours. Once the beans are tender, add the tomatoes and chilies, sugar, and salt. 

Serve with crumbled queso fresco and warm corn tortillas.

Dead Serious About Spinach

This kid means business when it comes to eating. He was dead serious about that spinach. He made this very serious face at me and I started laughing. He looked at me very calmly, opened his mouth, and said, "Bite." At this point I proceeded to jump up, run to the front door, throw it open, and yell to my husband, who was mowing the lawn, "Don! Don! He said BITE! He said BITE!" I then ran back to William, who refused to repeat his new word, but who thought his excited parents were pretty entertaining.

William turned ten months old on Saturday, which means that we are planning his first birthday party, and I already bought the pinata. Don and I took him to the little park near our house on Saturday morning to celebrate.

This child loves to swing with his Daddy. He can swing for hours, but I have to stop pushing him after 10 minutes. It makes me sick to my stomach just watching him go back and forth like that.

 Is it just me, or does he look a little bit like Chucky (Chuckie?) in the picture above? Oh, Chucky/ie. My sister and I had to hide our Kid Sister and My Buddy dolls in the back of her closet after seeing the previews for the first movie.

There's his sweet face again. What a relief.

The Weekend Looked Like This

Waiting for GM and Grandpa to come and get him. I am overstimulated just looking at this photo of the world's most awesome exercauser.

Primer. (Please excuse grainy and dark photos as I attempt to go full manual on my camera.)

Goodbye, yellow wall!

I love taking pictures of lunch. 

Full manual is hard for me.

If your husband helps you repaint the entire house for the third time in less than 2 years, you should at least get him a bag of peanut M&Ms and leave them on his computer with a note telling him how awesome he is.

I felt so energetic and refreshed after painting for a good solid ten hours. Refreshed! Painting 10 and 13 foot walls all day is not as physically demanding as keeping up with a 10 month old. Can I get an amen?

We still have to finish cutting in the kitchen walls and some of the baseboards, but things look a lot better around here. If, in a moment of sheer frustration and annoyance with f-stops, I don't throw my camera across the room and smash it into a very expensive pile of broken glass and plastic, I will take pictures of the newly painted rooms. The good news is that the color is a keeper! For five years, anyway (Don made me promise).

True Confessions

Is that an empty container of Nutella with a baby spoon sticking out of it? Did you think the true confession was that I used my son's spoon to eat Nutella straight out of the jar? If so, you probably don't know me in real life. Don't judge! At least it's made with real hazelnuts...I think. Right?

Reclaiming Sanity: Meeting with a Designer

Would you believe me if I said that the bold, saturated colors in our living room and the multitude of paint samples on each wall in our home was slowly driving me insane? You should.

After much deliberation with Don and a growing feeling that our home would never get to the place we need it to be, I invited an interior designer to our home after meeting her at this sip-n-see. Here's what I gleaned from our two hour meeting:

1) Painting a multitude of similar colors on the same wall = bad idea. You will start to see the colors only in relation to one another.
2) Paying her hourly consultation rate saved us the expense of another bad paint choice, not to mention the hours and hours of painting. Consulting with her truly did save us money.
3) Use less saturated color, but still use COLOR. I love beige and cream walls in other people's homes, but it's not our style. We chose a paint color that is variegated, just like colors are in nature. A tree isn't one shade of green, it's a dozen shades.
4) Don't get paralyzed when painting. Keep going!
5) Work with what you've got. Spending a lot of money on art or furniture is not on our list of priorities. 

You can see the full crazy effect of our current paint situation in this picture. White baseboards, beige crown molding and trim from the previous owners, and saturated green living room walls that abruptly meet boring beige walls in the dining room.

This little family blog is certainly not a design blog, but I wanted to share all of this today in case you think working with a designer is WHACK. It's not! And there are a few little changes we made that we can chat about later. For now, I'm off to start patching the 150 nail holes in our walls before we repaint this weekend.

Goodbye, avocado walls, goodbye!

One last note: we bought this indoor/outdoor rug on sale from Pottery Barn and we LOVE it. It's made to look like sisal, but it's soft. It's also child-proof, meaning that when it gets dirty, you just wipe it off. When it gets REALLY dirty, you can hose it down outside. This is the same cleaning schedule we use for William and it works just fine.

And Baby Makes Four

I've finally decided on a design for the nursery. Not William's nursery...a new one!

That's right. We're having another baby! Woo to the hoo!

Are you surprised? Good! Check your calendar and have a good weekend.