Things and Stuff.

All is mostly quiet on our front, though moving along nicely. The kitchen is still not completely finished, but we've been enjoying it a lot. We're really working on having home cooked dinner as a family, which ends up with a lot of table manner lessons. Ellie does pretty okay sitting with us and eating what we give her, but she gets crabby when she isn't allowed to get down, or when she IS allowed to get down but neither of us move to immediately start playing with her. We're also working on having her clear her place and throw away her napkin. So many lessons to learn!

Thor is fattening himself right back up, and continues to be a very good boy about getting his shots. Tim showed Ellie how to make a "kitty tower" by putting blocks on Lulu, and that has resulted in a lot of biting. She prefers tea party, if she must interact with the people-kitten.

I am officially 30 weeks pregnant. Please to gaze upon my glorious belly (and my ham bone child. She cries if I ask to take a picture of her, but scrambles in the second we try to get a picture of me.)

I continue to feel really great. Walking every morning, going to the gym on weekends, keeping up with Ellie, for the most part. I do get winded at the end of the night, and picking up all 30 pounds of toddler and carrying her around nearly makes me keel over. I am also all full of hormones and all out of patience, but physically doing great, ha!

When I first started feeling the baby move, he was really low in my pelvis, and I thought that there might be something to the whole "you carry lower with a boy" wives tale. But since he's gotten bigger, he's spent most of his time up near my ribs, just like his sister did. But he's more on the right side of my body, and spends more time rolling, whereas Ellie was a kicker and a puncher and was solidly on the left. Perhaps this one will learn to roll over before he's a year old, instead of being the world's laziest baby.

Here is a video of him up to no good in my insides. This usually goes on nonstop for an hour around 10pm.

The rhythmic movement is me breathing, obviously. The sudden antics are all him.

Tomorrow I have a routine check up with my doctor, and then I have to start going every two weeks, eek! He's going to be here sooner than I realize.

This weekend we went and ordered Ellie's big girl bed for her new room. She's getting a trundle bed, twin sized. She was very excited about the whole production, especially when they brought out some Legos for her to play with. Let the sleepovers begin! That's getting delivered this week, and they're installing our new window treatments on Friday. Plus Grandma Rosie will be here later this week and promised to help me with curtains for Ellie's closet space, so we're right on track with my goal of having Ellie in her new room in early February.

We're also looking at preschools for her, so she can do two half days a week of fun time with some new friends, and so I get a sanity break when I transition to being a mom of two. We've toured a couple of facilities, and Ellie loves it - at the first place she ran in, sat down at a desk and started coloring. Every morning she asks to watch the episode of Daniel Tiger where he visits school, and asks when she gets to go again. Hopefully she'll continue to have a positive reaction when she's actually there for more than fifteen minutes, and when she's there without her mommy two steps behind. I've told the preschool directors that Ellie is a lucky girl in that I'm home with her, we do a lot of play dates with other kids, and she gets a lot of attention from all of her grandparents. Frankly, I'm looking for someplace where Ellie will NOT get one on one attention all the time. She needs to learn a lot about sharing and turn waiting!

She dressed herself. Her favorite tutu skirt (worn two days in a row) plus her kitty cat robe (made for 0-9 month olds) her purse around her neck (filled with Sesame Street friends) and her sweet sunglasses and an old binky she dug up. She had a good time cleaning out her toy bin tonight.

Well hello old friend!