The Plague

John was struck down last night. I had a post brewing about the differences between us when we are sick. But, the more I think about it, the less fair many of my generalizations were. Let's just say it is a lot more work being the more healthy one.

We Passed!

Although we have been suffering mightily here from some type of plague, the basement/office/babyroom/big boy room project continues to roll along. Today we were visited by both the city fire protection district and the city building officer to do our final inspection walk through in order to get our building permit finalized. Although the basement itself isn't completed, all of the structural pieces are in place for the inspection. Carpet and baseboard will make the space more finished, however doesn't have any safety bearing the city cares about.

The best news: both inspections passed and our permit is completed! Hurray!

How did we celebrate? We went out to eat and bought John's car 2 new tires. Wild!

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!

Announcement

The phone situation is now fixed. New phones arrived yesterday and they are beautiful and fun. As an added bonus, they actually work. I will now be at my regular number and John will [*not] be at his.

*John doesn't ever answer his phone during the day while he is at work. Unless you are calling his work number.

Words

William is talking more and more all the time. Currently I am very much enjoying getting to hear a portion of what goes on inside his head all day long.

Tonight after dinner we were relaxing in the living room making a halfhearted attempt to play blocks. My back has been hurting me for the last few days (I'll admit this is completely my own fault. I do not know the definition of time to stop) so I was stretching in such a way that made my petite belly bump look HUGE. William stopped his stacking and looked with amazement at my belly. John saw the look on his face and asked William "What do you think Mama has in her belly? Do you think it is a baby?"

William looked back at John like he was absolutely 100% crazy "NO!" he replied.

Obviously he really isn't understanding about what is really going on here.

Which really isn't a surprise because we really aren't pushing it either. William doesn't have any sense of time. If you ask him if he'd like to go to the park, you better be within sight of the swings or a meltdown will occur. If you ask him if he would like to eat, he will run to his chair in the kitchen expecting food immediately.

What I'm getting at is that we have some time and even if he understood there was a baby in there, he would be expecting it to arrive sometime before he eats his next meal. We're good with waiting.

My Boy

Last night, I walked by William's room on my way to do Something Important. It was also Very Late at night, so when I realized his light was still on, I opened the door to turn it off (he can reach the light switch from his crib). As it was an hour after bedtime, I was surprised William wasn't sleeping at all. No, he was laying on his belly cuddled up with his favorite blanket reading a book. He looked up at me when I opened the door and then went back to looking at the pictures in a book.

Anyone knew me growing up knows that if there was a way to sneak in extra reading time after lights out I was totally doing it. Reading by nightlight: check. Reading by flashlight: check. Reading with the door to the hallway open: check. Taking a book to the bathroom tucked inside my pajamas: check. Trying to read by light of the streetlight: check. Pretending to still have homework so I could read: check. All been done. I was a rebel of the worst kind. All out cheating and lying in order to read a book.

So, it was very sweet to see the possibility in William for similar rebelious acts at a very unexpected time. Don't worry people, I will keep my eyes on him and the dangerous reading in check.



PS I was ahuggin' (yes, I just made that word up) William tonight at bedtime and he was hanging on to the crib rail and bouncing. At one point he bounced enough that he was able to pull himself up on the crib rail to mid thigh level. This would mean roughly 3/4 of his body was hanging out over the top of the crib. It would then appear he is physcially capable of getting himself out of his crib. I am going to go ahead and say that it is just a matter of time before he actually goes ahead and climbs on out. The crib is probably on its way out. Baby coming or not...the crib will be done soon.

Veterans Day

We want to wish some of our favorite Veterans and active military family members a happy day and send them a big thank you!

Great Grandpa Budd
Great Grandpa Tom
Uncle Mike

Fall Time Take 2

Sunday, John wanted to mow up all of our leaves and I just wanted to get a few pictures with William IN the leaves. Here are our best shots - most of them are in motion, as you would expect.

William notes: I HATE the leaves touching my skin! Make it stop!

Peek!
William: Tree- bumpy. Wow.

Some Random Pictures from this week

Well, by request, here are some pictures of William. Enough with the stories and on with the pictures. These pictures are of one set - just ones we've taken this last week.

Helping Mama with laundry (more on this later - he actually does help with laundry. This day, not so much)

We pulled out the bouncy seat when my neighbor asked me to watch her 1 month old baby so she could run to the grocery store. Ummmm...well it did entertain William the whole time the baby was at our house. Think it will work in March?

Mr Cool in his chair. Can you believe how big he is? For more bouncy chair pictures, click here.

Brrrr...it got cold here at the end of the week. Temps in the 70's on Tues/Wed and then Thurs/Friday it turned to 40's. Where did fall go?

Mama and William warming up their tootsies together over the heat vent.
Finally, a picture tonight of building blocks with Daddy!

The next Time Around I will be buying colored socks

and here is why

I Could Probably Save you A lot of Money on Your Car Insurance Too

Last week while I was cleaning the bathroom, the vacuum cleaner didn't work. Which, was not a good thing because I am lazy and don't believe in actually washing the floors (shh...don't tell). I usually just vacuum quick to get the big pieces picked up and wipe down every...year or so. John looked at the vacuum and couldn't find anything wrong with it - but also couldn't make it work either. Big discussions were held and different possible solutions were evaluated by the team.

Later in the week, our electric toothbrush started to fade. Which is a bummer because...well it is how we brush our teeth. This also might make us lazy because we prefer to not actually do any work while maintaining our personal hygiene. However, we do brush. Most of the time. But! We were in danger of having to manually brush our teeth with our very own arms and locate manual toothbrushes in the cabinets under the sink which would have required: time and effort. So, it might have come to not brushing for the one of us who is very lazy (hint: it is me). So, again big discussions were held and different possible solutions were evaluated by the team.

This week, I was starting to pick up in the bathroom and I brought in our HUGE vacuum cleaner to try and get the bigger chunks of dust bunny up off of the floor. On the way into the bathroom, I got distracted by cat hair in the hallway and plugged in to take care of it right away. However, when I got to the bathroom, the vacuum no longer worked. At all. At this point I became suspicious and took the vacuum back to the hallway, where it still worked (but the cord wasn't long enough to reach the bathroom). Glowing with my own brilliance and problem solving skills, I took the smaller vaccum cleaner to the hallway to test it out and AHA! I fixed it!

I did a little dance in the hallway, celebrating the fact we wouldn't have to spend a lot of money replacing my favorite little vacuum cleaner. Until I realized that we probably had faulty wiring or bad outlets. Which was going to either burn our house down (expensive to replace), require 12123423345235324 hours of repair work by John (also expensive, time consuming), or 12 hours of repair work by an electrician (expensive). So, I called John at work with the good news/bad news scenario. John, was of course, amazed at my brilliance (even though he didn't say so at the time) and money saving capablitlies. After carefully analyzing the situation, he revealed his own brilliance by suggesting I press the black button on our bathroom outlet labeled "Reset". When I did, the whole world got a little happier.

The vacuum cleaners (both) work in the bathroom when plugged in. The charging light on the electric toothbrush is back on again and the toothbrush is at full power.

No money was spent fixing either the vacuum cleaner, the toothbrush or our wiring. I am so awesome - want me to come to your house and save you some money?

PS I know it is lame that we have 2 vacuums, but there is a reason for it. Long story, not very interesting though.

PPS The cell phone issue is being fixed. With all the money saved from the vacuum/toothbrush situation, we are replacing the phones. New cell phones will arrive within the week. Will let you know when the number reversal will take place again. Can't stand John's phone. The phone book makes no sense. How am I supposed to find my parents' numbers when they are under their given names, not Mom and Dad?

PSA

Here is a quick announcement.

My phone is not working well and slowly different parts of it are not working at all. John and I have traded phones so I can have a reliable phone during the day while he is at work. If you are trying to get ahold of me, please call John's number. If you don't have that number, you should e mail me. If you don't have my e mail address, you probably don't need my phone number either. However, if you feel strongly that I would like you to contact me, you may leave me a comment and I'll think about it.

20ish Week Appointment

We had our almost-20-week appointment this morning with our OB. Twenty weeks is somewhat significant because it does mark the halfway point of the pregnancy. She is happy with how we're doing and was even happier to hear that I am feeling lots of movement every day now. In fact, John was able to feel movement from the outside for the first time yesterday. This is about a month before he could feel anything with William, so we're all excited about that!

Everything continues to go well and there aren't any concerns on the doctors part. I had a largish weight gain this month which means the rest of the left over Halloween candy is now going with John to work. I have made it my mission to gain less weight with this one than with William's pregnancy. Although I was able to loose most of it, a 60 pound weight gain isn't pretty. Unfortunately, as with William's pregnancy, I have to some holidays make it through which will make it more challenging. Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year's, our 7th anniversary, Valentine's Day and my 30th birthday all will happen before this baby is born - and there is a lot of food in there that I'm going to want to eat.

So, on to the theories about the gender of this baby.

My Theory & Rational

I am fairly certain this baby is a boy. Very early on, I didn't really have any "feelings" about the baby's gender. At roughly 15 weeks, I started "feeling" like this baby was a boy. Now for the logical explanation. Hah! I fooled you! What are you thinking? Logical and rational? Not words you would find to describe me ever! However, for the record, I felt very strongly that William was a boy when I was pregnant with him. I was sure of it. When the ultrasound revealed that he was a "he", I wasn't even really surprised. I just knew he was a boy.

I am fairly certain this baby is another boy and out of all my pregancies so far my track record is 100%. I've been right about the gender 100% of the time. So there.

My Interpretation of John's Theory & Rational

Now, I have to warn you that John is not writing this. This is totally, 100% my interpretation of what I think he thinks. So, it really isn't that accurate. But, you can keep reading if you don't have anything better to do.

I knew you would keep reading.

In general, John has learned not to argue with my intuitions about things, because I am right about things a lot of the time. Random things like which lane is faster on the highway, which neighbor is experiencing marriage problems, and what he actually wants to eat for dinner. Oh, and that William was a boy. So, John is mostly going along with my "feeling" that it is a boy even though there is no basis in fact or scientific proof either way. He has come a long way.

However, John has always wanted a daughter. And at the ultrasound, John spied something that gave him hope that Daddy's Little Girl might be coming. When the technician performing the ultrasound was looking at the baby's feet, he noticed that the second toe on the baby's foot was longer than the big toe. My second toe is also longer than my big toe. William's big toe is his longest as is John's (this was pointed out during the ultrasound we had during William's pregnancy). So, John has also entered a guess into the pool based on the length of toes. John is again, hoping for his Little Girl.

**I feel the need to include this disclaimer. We are thrilled to be pregnant and will be thankful and happy about a healthy baby of either gender. In fact, the gender of this baby was so unimportant to the big picture of things here, we didn't even bother to find out which flavor it is.**

Some Comparisons

Here are two pictures I took a long time ago to show you, but just haven't yet. Because I am lame.

Because the last picture I took didn't show the new TV we purchased to scale...here is what we were watching TV on before compared to our new TV. It was a little scary at first, all the big faces in our bedroom.
And because I am nerd who gets excited about these kinds of things. William and Newbaby now have matching PJ's. I plan on dressing these kids identically until they start to complain regardless of gender. Maybe even if they complain - it is good to be in charge.

Election Day

John and I both voted. Did you?

PS I have our maps printed and colored pencils sharpened so we can track the states as they come in...weeeee fun times at the Heidt House tonight! Hopefully we don't need the erasable colored pencils this year. We used up all ours during the last election...

It's a......

Surprise! John and I were so excited this morning to go to our "big" ultrasound and really get a good look at NewBaby. We were not planning on finding out the gender of NewBaby during the appointment. However, we were not planning on finding out with William either and curiosity got the best of me that day. Today I held it together and managed very well through the appointment. The ultrasound tech even told me to look away while she examined an area that would have given the gender away....and I didn't peek. John says he didn't either.

While it was fun and exciting to actually get to see NewBaby for more than a minute at a time, the ultrasound technician made the experience totally different. This one was all business. She explained what she was doing and what she was looking at without stopping for any extras. Bummer.

We left William's ultrasound 2 years ago with roughly 15 pictures. Today we left with 2 - NewBaby is already neglected! Here are the only pictures we got:

Baby's head is on the right side of the screen, the spine and lower body is on the left.
The face is in the center of the picture and the body (with ribs) is on the left side of the frame.


PS Sometime this week I'll update you on our gender theories. You won't want to miss it!

There was a Farmer...

Who had a dog and Bingo was his name-o!

For some reason this year, we are super popular and have been invited to at least 6 different Halloween/Fall type parties over the last few weeks. We weren't able to go to all of them, but I think I am officially Halloweened out. This weekend was a party that were we able to attend schedule wise - although we considered staying home because the invite threatened if we didn't arrive in our own costume, one would be provided. So, here is what we came up with:

The farmer and his dog

Mama and her pumpkin - very unoriginal as I was a pumpkin when I was pregnant with William also. (PS If you tried out the link- WOW what a difference ten weeks and about twenty extra pounds makes!)

William was fascinated with the pumpkin on my belly. He could not be distracted away from the eyes, nose and mouth - followed by an exclamation "Mama pumpkin!"
When we got home, I finally let William have some fun with the pumpkin face. I think he would have sat here all night rearranging the nose, eyes and mouth.
And just because it is funny....running away from Daddy.

This Halloween party was worth the effort though. Very cool decorations and food. Marinara sauce in a fountain is very...red and bubbly. Quite the sight.

Ghosts from the Past

Ugh. John and I have spent close to 5 hours so far this weekend dealing with the Ghosts of our Past. We have now been working on finishing the basement for over 2 years and there are some boxes that have sat in our basement for a very long time. We've been so focused on the basement that dealing with the stuff piling up hasn't been a priority. Now we have so much stuff, we don't know what we have or even worse we can't find what we do have and buy the same thing over again because we can't find it. We both agree now time and I think both of us have a headache from it. Poor us. Here are a few things we have learned:


1. We never need to purchase file folders, hanging file folders or plastic page protectors again in our lifetime - even if we're careful.

2. The same thing is true of binders

3. It is way easier to tell John to go through his stuff and reduce it than to actually do it to my own stuff. My stuff is "special". (it isn't really - it is just hard to figure out what is really important to keep).

4. I need to start dealing with paper items right away in the future. I have SO many papers in boxes downstairs that I'm not sure why I'm keeping. Yet, many of them have been in boxes and moved from place to place across the country for the last 7 years (! Eeeee! 7 years!). I've kept them for this long - I guess they must be important?

5. Gift wrap is also not an item we should ever buy again. Same goes for bows.

Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween! Can you believe he has all parts of his costume on AND is smiling all at once? We had a pretty fun Halloween which kicked off on last weekend. We were invited to three different Halloween parties last weekend along with a big garage sale I've been working on and a work picnic for John. Busy! But fun! We carved pumpkins and ate lots of candy (I'm sure my Dr. appointment is not going to be good this year with all the candy I've eaten this week). We don't have any pictures because it really isn't safe to have one person working with a sharp knife and the other adult have their hands busy with a camera with the very curious two year old in between.

Tuesday night was the school district event called Safe Halloween. The bigger kids put together games and fun stuff inside for the littler ones to play with in a safe environment. We got their a little later than we would have liked and it was CRAZY. I think last year the attendance for the event was somewhere in the thousands and I would believe it. It is a lot of fun - but WAY too many people for us. It was fun to get William all dressed up and do a trial run with the costume - even if we were only there for about 12 minutes total.

Walking in with Daddy - what a cute puppy...even if he isn't house trained yet.
Playing Candyland with the Builders Club from West Middle School -Mama is trying to help and all William is tryin' to do is get to the pretty girl at the end with the piece of candy!
With Mama, but checking out all the other kids in crazy costumes.

Tonight was a GORGEOUS night for Halloween. The temperatures were in the 70's with a little breeze. Absolutely perfect! Time got away from us so we didn't get the afternoon pictures outside that I wanted with better light, but we still managed to get a few good ones of William.

William is in love with pumpkins. He got this one earlier in the week at the Child watch area at the gym and has been carrying it around ever since. I'm not sure how he is going to take it when the pumpkin has to go away...
Still carrying around the pumpkin

Look - another picture with a smile!
It is getting a little more challenging to be carrying William around now due to our other little pumpkin I'm carrying around (I know, I know. It is only going to get worse). I like to give John a hard time about this when we are out running errands: Why do I have to carry BOTH kids? Can't he carry one?


HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

PS I was going to paint his nose black to complete the costume - I think it would have been cuter. However, two important factors were holding me back. 1) He hates have stuff on his face and it would have been a huge mess. 2) I am L-A-Z-Y and didn't ever go to the store to pick up any face paint.