Maternity Clothes make me Crabby

This is just a heads up for all of you lucky people who might be in the same room with me over Thanksgiving. Maternity clothes make me Crabby (with a capital C).

My specific issues include (but are not limited too):
-Bows. My belly is not a gift for you or anyone else. While I am thankful to be pregnant and for the child I am growing, I don't care to adorn any part of me with bows. Most certainly, I do not care to adorn the largest part of myself with a gigantic bow, regardless of color.
-Ruffles. I'm not 6 anymore. Enough said?
-Low cut-ness. I don't care to show a great deal of cleavage when I am not pregnant. Being pregnant has not changed this about me.
-The drape. Most of my maternity shirts have no shape. You are left wondering if I have a torso at all between my neck and my knees. While I don't need a form fitting shirt, I'd like to not have people eying me suspiciously: is she getting a beer belly or could she be pregnant?
-Elastic. While this is a necessary evil, it is not the most flattering of materials. Currently it is either way to small or way to big. Neither is a good look or comfortable. One has me too uncomfortable to get down on the floor and the other has me hanging onto my britches when I'm getting back up again.


All of these problems are compounded by several factors; not all of which are horomone driven:
1. When I was at this stage of pregnancy with William, I was roughly 20 pounds heavier. That means that most of the clothes I wore during this pregnancy are still too big for me at this point.

2. When I was pregnant with William, I was teaching full time. Teaching is a demanding job and I was on my feet all day. And hot. I had no more than 4 long sleeved shirts total because I was so hot while teaching all day (and the multiple layers I had to wear due to the cleavage problem, see above). Now that the weather is cooler and I sit at home eating bon-bons on my couch all day long, I'm finding myself wearing those same 4 oversized shirts over and over again.


So, in all fair warning to those of you spending more than several minutes with me over the holiday: watch out. Especially if I am wearing something other than sweatpants and sweatshirt. If I have gone through the trouble to put on something maternity related, you can bet that I will be working overtime to overcome the Crabbies.*

*I'm really so very excited to be able to spend the holidays with my family and some close friends. I just can't figure out how to deal with this wardrobe situation....

So lame I'm posting other people's vacation pictures

We're still under the weather here today. Eating isn't really happening, although plenty of other "stuff" is. Use your imagination. So, here are some pictures my parents sent me from their recent trip to San Diego. Posted without permission, of course.

Sea kayaking
More sea kayaking
Sailboating


PS You'll have to ask Grandma and Grandpa who got wet...

Look!

We had a rough night last day and a yucky day today with a stomach bug going through our house. I was just thinking the other day that William hasn't thrown up since his refluxy days in infancy. That is VERY much untrue now. I think we're on the mend (hope!) and I'll be feeling better soon. Also hoping John doesn't come down with it because it wasn't much fun.

In the meantime, how fun is this? I've been invited to an ugly sweater party!

Hard Working Weekend

The pressure is on! In addition to trying to get all of our holiday baking done by next week, we've also been working on getting that basement D-O-N-E! We have made a rough timeline of when things need to happen in the huge House Reorganization Project in order to avoid the inevitable hormonal meltdowns caused by stress. The rough project looks like this:

1. Move current office items to new office space in the basement
2. Move William into a Big Boy Room (old office space)
3. Turn William's old room into Newbaby's room

Short and sweet, right? I'm not going to tell you the actual dates because then I'll be doubly stressed when we don't meet them. Easy enough? Not so fast - remember that our office looks something like this:





This is what happens when you move everything that doesn't have a home into one space to deal with later. Unfortunately, later is NOW.


So, we worked and worked on it and it is starting to come together. It is still a mess- but I can see it coming together now.

Window sills are now halfway done

When Sunday afternoon was warmish and nonrainy, John went out and painted forever (baseboards, window sills, door frames)
The partially completed office. I think it is looking AWESOME - but my arms are tired from carrying stuff down the stairs from upstairs. We have WAY too much stuff!

And a few nonwork related pictures:
William will now [kind of] brush his own teeth! At least the brush is in his mouth now!
Big boy!

Snuggling with Mama on Saturday morning.

In Heaven

John and I have been working our behinds off this last weekend. I'll try to have pictures tomorrow of the progress, but I'm too tired (and it is too late) to find the camera and post the pictures. All in all a good thing.

However, I will leave you with this discovery of mine. A lot of the old school (and new stuff) from Sesame Street is now online. Here is a sample:

OLD SESAME STREET

NEW SESAME STREET

*For those of you with slower internet connections, there is not any of new video of William within these. Although William likes to watch these, it is NOT worth your time to wait for this to load.

Because it made me Laugh

I'm sharing this picture with you because it made me laugh. The picture quality is not great because it is a picture of an ad in the newspaper - which is not the finest quality to begin with. But still, enjoy!



PS If you can't tell what this is, it is a microwave on sale somewhere. To entice you to buy it, they've pictured a gigantic turkey with all the trimmings cooking away inside of the microwave...

William the Helper

William loves to be the helper. He is totally in love with the fact that he can do Things All By Himself. Sometimes these things are even helpful around here, which is great given that he isn't even 2. Find that hard to believe? Some things that he can do to that are actually helpful:

1. Opening doors for Mama and Daddy (only the ones that don't have the knob protector on them). William loves to open and close doors.

2. Empty dishes from the top rack of the dishwasher. The majority is plastic stuff that can't be broken. I call him over and he hands me the containers to be put into the drying rack on the counter. I am too lazy to towel dry them and too cheap to use the extra hot dry cycle on the dishwasher.

3. Puts dirty clothes in the washer when I hand them to him (when I tell him what to do, obviously since he doesn't understand the concept of dirty yet).

4. Puts wet clothes into the dryer when I hand them to him.

5. Puts the clean/dry clothes into a laundry basket from the dryer.

So proud!

6. Most recently, he has started helping me pick up his toys at night before bedtime. It took a few tries, for him to understand what I wanted from him. But, now that he gets it, he is usually pretty happy to help me pick up the toys - it helps when I have a Fun! Exciting! bath as a carrot.


We are so proud of how well he is listening [some] of the time now. It is so exciting for us now that when we ask/tell him to do something there is actually a 12-50% chance he will actually follow through with the request. Amazing!