"Cherry-Arms"

I have never been much of a cereal person. I will eat it every now and then, but it can take me months to get through a box. T likes Oatmeal Squares to snack on and I try to remember to buy them, but for the most part we have strictly been a Cheerios-only family since K started eating solids. But apparently Baby Girl is a huge cereal fan b/c that is the one thing I have been craving this pregnancy.

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I am loving cereal! Walking down the cereal isle makes my mouth water. We have nine (not exaggerating!) different kinds of cereal in the pantry at the moment. I don't know what it is, but I eat cereal at least twice a day right now. It sounds way better than anything else! My in-laws were over the other weekend and I made an apple crisp. It smelled great and looked delicious, especially hot from the oven when I put a big scoop of vanilla ice cream on it, but while everyone else was eating the all-American gooey goodness, I was feasting on a big bowl of Kix. And it was great. Yum. Pregnancy is so weird, but at least this is a fairly healthy thing and I'm not craving chocolate cake or something. :)

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This has also been interesting for K as she has now discovered the world beyond Cheerios. She saw me eating Lucky Charms one day and asked for some. And her world has never been the same. She still likes Cheerios but Lucky Charms are way better! The only problem is that she can not get over the fact that "Cheerios" is a type of cereal and not the word for cereal so even though I have had her practice saying, "Luh-cky Charms!" over and over she still calls them "Cheery-arms!"

Oh that marshmallow-charmy goodness.

28 Weeks

My "What to Expect" book says that at 28 weeks the uterus is the size of a basketball...looks pretty comparable to me! It sure feels like there is a basketball in there - a squirmy, kicking, rolling, somersaulting basketball that is. :)

I am definitely starting to get uncomfortable already, but I am cherishing every little kick...okay maybe not EVERY kick. Not the one that feels like a direct hit to the kidneys, or the ones that keep me awake at her self-appointed happy hour...about 3:30 to 4:30a.m. When I get up to go the bathroom I wake her up and she thinks it's time to party. :)

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But my book also says that it's now the third trimester! It feels like we got here fast! The time has slowed down considerably since we found out she was a girl...I guess because we spent a lot of time thinking about/debating about a name. We are 99% sure of a name for her, but are still thinking about it.

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For now I'm just going to try to enjoy the next twelve weeks, because as loud as our 2 (and a half!) year old is I'm sure it is significantly quieter than a 2 1/2 year old AND a newborn. :)

Itchy Girl

I took K to the doctor yesterday. I think being a doctor for Halloween definitely helped with her anxiety over going there. I think she just remembers all the shots she's had there...thankfully she didn't have to get one this time, and she did really well when the PA was checking her out.

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The reason I took her in is b/c she has had hives for the past three weeks. She also had a bad cold and since that happened once before (hives due to a cold) I figured it was the same thing, but the cold went away and the hives aren't. So I called and they said to bring her in. The tested her for strep (I guess it's a common cause of hives) but she was negative so they just said it's "invirul" whatever that means.

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If they last for eight weeks we are going to have to take her to an allergist...which would not be fun, but for now we just have to live with them. The weird thing is how quickly they come and go. She constantly has a handful on various parts of her body but they will pop up and then disappear within 15 to 20 min. They don't seem to bother her that much...she will scratch them at them but they disappear so fast that it seems silly to give her the Benadryl.

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Anyway, she weighed a whopping 29 pounds, but is steadily gaining so the doctor isn't worried, and she measured at 36 1/2 inches - a yardstick! :)

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The hives definitely don't bother her enough that she gives up her favorite past time: terrorize Webby. Poor thing. She just chases him around the house constantly wanting to "give hugs and pets". I love his expression in this picture. I can just imagine what is going through his head. :)

Grandpa will be over tonight to help us get the rest of the siding up! Hope you all have a great weekend!

Two and a Half!

K is 2 1/2 today! I cannot believe how quickly the time goes. It seems like her birthday was just last month, and here we are halfway through the "year" already. I think my favorite thing about this age is definitely the talking. She can say pretty much anything and comes up with the funniest stuff! Some of her favorite phrases right now are "No way!" and "What in here?" and "How about...?"

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This was our conversation yesterday morning:

K: "What you making, Mommy?"

Me: "Eggs with ham."

K: "Oh, no way!"

Me: "Yep, I am!"

K: "O-tay, I so es-cited!" (jumping up and down with her hands clasped together)

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And lately we spend the entire time at the grocery store going over the same question:

I put a box in the cart and she says: "What in here, Mommy?"

I try to tell her to look at the pictures but she just wants me to tell her what every single box or container holds. :)

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Her other favorite is to ask "How about?" It is used most often when we are praying but also comes out at other times. When we pray it usually goes something like this:

Us: "Dear God, thank you for this day."

K: "How about Mommy?"

Us: "Thank you for Mommy."

K: "How about Daddy?"

Us: "Thank you for Daddy."

And on an on it goes. It can last quite a while when she gets in the mood. She asks about the baby, herself, Noni, Popi, Grandma, Grandpa, her cousins, her aunts and uncles, Pawpaw and Nana, her friends, the dogs, and anything else she can think of. It takes quite a while to get through our bedtime prayers! But we love that she loves to "Tank Dod" for things. Often times we put her down and we can hear her in bed saying, "Tank you Dod for dis day. Tank you for Mommy and Daddy...." She can keep going for quite a while and I think she does it b/c she knows we won't come in and tell her to go to sleep if she is praying. :) She's quite clever!

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She makes us laugh out loud every single day and is such a joy in our lives. I literally thank God every day for the blessing that she is. Don't get me wrong...she is also a little pill sometimes. :) But for the most part she is a wonderful little girl! She loves to play games, read books, and sing, sing, sing. As I type she is singing "Head and Shoulders, Knees and Toes" at the top of her lungs. She's not the most quiet child in the world...but we are working on when to use an inside voice. :)

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We are loving life with our 2 1/2 year old and I can't wait to see what the next one is going to be like. If she has half the personality as K we are in for some funny times!

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Here's a little video of K singing a song she learned at church. It's hard to understand the words, but she is singing, "My God is big, big, big, His love is wide, wide, wide, and in my heart, heart, heart, He lives in-side, side, side."

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This is her current favorite and can be heard throughout the house at all times of the day. I bought the "karaoke" tape player at a garage sale for a quarter and it didn't work so we cut the microphones off for her and she loves it! She also found her hiking backpack and set it up on the ground so she could climb in...I guess she wants to go somewhere after her songfest. :)

Now, I'm off to tell my sweet, hilarious 2 1/2 year old to take it down a few decibels before she shatters the windows. :)

Trick or Treat

Since Halloween was on Saturday we decided we had better take advantage of it for one more year and head down to the cousins' house for the weekend. K was so excited to see her cousins and talked about them for days beforehand.

Halloween is always a fun time b/c it is also Grandma's birthday. The guys spent the morning golfing, so us girls took the kiddos and went shopping. We all met up for lunch before heading back to the house for the kids' naps. Then it was time for presents and getting dressed up! (We gave Grandma a picture calendar that I made on snapfish...that's what everyone is looking at in this picture.)

If you remember, K did NOT want to pick a costume, but fortunately I remembered that Auntie Katherine had sent her this adorable set of scrubs last year for Christmas. They were huge back then, but when I got them out a few weeks ago they fit her perfectly! She talked for weeks about how she was going to be a "dot-tor like Auntie Kaffrine". :) We bought her a little doctor play set and she has been doctoring her animals: taking temperatures, giving shorts, and doleing out medicine. :)

We also had a hot pink cheetah and Thomas the Train!

K really got into trick-or-treating this year. She was having SO much fun running after her cousins and getting candy. If she got behind she would run to catch up saying, "I comin' guys!"

I think she got a little mixed up b/c she was calling any candy trick-or-treat. "Where my trick-or-treat?" she said when she set her bag down and couldn't find it. And upon seeing the bowl of candy for us to hand out back at the house she excitedly yelled, "More trick-or-treat!"

Auntie Nae borrowed a pair of scrubs from a friend for me so I could be K's nurse, and Daddy decided to just wear his pumpkin shirt instead of dressing up this year. We took turns going out with her and staying back at the house to hand out candy.

We had nearly three hundred trick-or-treaters, and we had to turn off the lights at 7:45 b/c we ran out of candy! It was crazy, but so fun to see all the cute little kids in their costumes.

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Next year we will stay home since it will be a work day the next day, but it will be fun to see how many trick-or-treaters we get at our new house...I'm sure it won't be anywhere near three hundred b/c that would probably be every single kid in town, but it should still be fun. Hope you all had a fun and delicious night!

Happy Halloween!

I've been trying to upload a video all day but for some reason it won't respond. We are leaving for a weekend of fun at the cousin's house so I guess I have to give up. Hope you all have a safe and Happy Halloween!

Siding!

Okay, I'm finally ready to post some pics! The siding weekend went wonderfully! Grandma, Grandpa, Noni, Papa, and Uncle "Bo-Bo" all came and helped us SO much! Thank you, thank you, thank you! The phone lines had to be disconnected to put up the siding, and T just got them fixed last night so we haven't had Internet for a few days.

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They did such a great job and the house is 70% finished. We had to order some windows for the garage so it didn't quite get done and the upstairs areas aren't done, but all the ground level stuff is on and looks great!

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I don't really want to post any identifiable pics of the outside of our house so these are all really close up. When everything is finished I will e-mail some before and afters.

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So here is a close up before...not too bad actually. When I look at this I wonder why we started this project!

But then I keep looking through my pics and remember that this is also what it looked like!

And this! Yikes. The house was sided with metal: a taupe that was fading to pink with missing pieces on the ground floor, and a vertical metal siding painted red on the upstairs areas. The garage had wood siding on the front and didn't look too bad but this is what the side of it looked like. A square hole...maybe a doggie door at one point? and a missing board.

This is what our house has been wearing since last spring. A beautiful plywood number. But underneath the plywood an extra two inches of insulation was also added and we are definitely noticing big heating results already!

And this was the final costume change before it's debut. A lovely pinstripe tar-paper.

And now for the main event...ta da! I love it! It's hard to really see the color but it is called Clay and it's exactly what I wanted! Thank you everybody!

We are going to be re-doing the roof next summer, which includes some restructuring, so unfortunately we can't actually finish everything (we would just have to tear it down next summer). So some of the plywood is still showing near the roof. I am debating whether or not to paint it just for the aesthetic value, but unless it warms up a bit I won't be able to. Oh well, it looks a million times better than it did and we're very happy with it!