Half Way

Check out that belly! I am a good bit bigger than I was when I was pregnant with Keziah - I wasn't even really showing at this point last time. I am officially 20 weeks pregnant today. Which is supposedly the half way point, but I doubt I am really halfway as I fully expect to go past my due date. I have actually been feeling great and those wonderful nesting instincts have kicked in full swing. I just finished unpacking my last box of baby stuff today and putting things away.

Speaking of unpacking baby stuff, I am pleasantly surprised with how much gender neutral stuff I have. I somehow remembered having mostly girl stuff, even though we didn't find out the gender. In actuality I did receive a lot of gender neutral stuff as shower gifts and hand-me-downs before little Keziah came. But as soon as she popped out, I was flooded with more hand-me-downs and gifts of girl stuff and I had so many clothes that I really just kept her in the girl stuff. I found a ton of gender neutral stuff that had never even been worn! So I think I am pretty much set. And in case you are wondering , no we are not finding out the gender this time either. I expect to start getting that question a lot. I don't really mind the question though. In fact, I love it when people ask, "what are you having?" because then I can answer, "a human." hahaha!

Michael Paul is preparing in his own way. He bought another umbilical cord knife. Keziah has a special knife that he bought to cut the cord with and he is going to give it to her when she is older. So he is going to do the same thing this time around as well. Michael Paul is also really hoping to catch this baby. He didn't get to last time because Keziah had two nuchal arms so my midwife had to give a little help in order for Keziah to be born safely. He expressed his desire to catch this baby at my last appointment and my new midwife is totally supportive. So we are hopeful for that.

Keziah seems to be grasping the concept rather quickly. I talk to her a lot about what's going on with mommy and why my belly is getting bigger. She points to my belly and says "baby" and has even done the same to other pregnant women. So she does seem to get that a big belly means a baby is growing inside. She has been extra interested in her baby dolls lately and we've been practicing 'gentle touches' and 'being sweet' on her baby dolls. I'm hoping all our practice will pay off. Yesterday Keziah had lifted my shirt and was patting my belly when Michael Paul said, "do you want to hug the baby?" and she put her cheek on my belly and her arms around me. It was so cute.

I'm not really having any inklings or gut feelings about the gender of this baby. We are pretty decided on a girl name but have yet to find a boy name we agree on. I wouldn't be surprised if we still didn't have a boy name when the baby came. Hopefully if that is the case, we will have a girl! Well, we are going to have the guess the birthdate, weight, and gender game again. Last time we played this at all my baby showers and some of my students at the time joined in as well. I had close to 100 entries and would you believe the winner was Michael Paul's mom! Seeing as how I probably won't have showers this time around I thought I'd let the fun happen on the blog here. So all you have to do is leave a comment here or you can email me your guess. Guess gender, weight, and birthdate. Children are welcome to play to, so if my nieces, nephew, cousins want to guess, go ahead. Just list off each person in your family's guess. And just in case you think past history is a good predictor, Keziah was at least a week late and weighed 7 lbs, 10 oz. Oh and my due date is supposedly February 17. Michael Paul is pulling for February 29th because he thinks a leap year baby would be awesome. OK, have fun guessing!

Back Home

We are officially back home from our road trip and it is good to be back. I did want to post a few more pictures from our fabulous time at my folks' house. Keziah did end up learning to fish. The look on her face when she pulled up a fish was priceless. She wasn't afraid at all and even reached right out to touch the fish. Grandaddy was so proud!

In other news, it's really starting to feel like fall here in the mountains. A cold front is coming through tomorrow and I am planning to make chili. I am really ready for winter food. We tend to eat a lot of salads and sandwiches in the summer taking advantage of all the fresh produce. And then we eat a lot of crock pot soups, stews and chili in the winter. I've been craving winter food for some reason lately. I am really excited about the 50+ pounds of tomatoes I bought today (for only $9) at the farmers' market. I plan to freeze them and use in soups and chili this winter rather than buying canned diced tomatoes every time I make chili or soup. I feel so frugal! And that makes me happy.

And as for a pregnancy update, everything is progressing normally. I feel great actually! Hopefully I will get a picture of my lovely belly and post more about that soon. And I plan to do the 'guess the birth date, gender, and weight' game again. So stay tuned for that. I'm trying to think of a good prize to give the winner. Well, that's about all I have time to write today. Keziah is keeping me super busy and I only get computer time during naps so my blogging has gotten pretty sporadic. Still, I do hope to start posting more regularly soon. I actually have several posts in my head at the moment and just no time to get them written down.

And lastly, I did want to do a little promotion. My sister has decided to join the blog world. She writes about her three passions: God, running, and biology. It's really interesting, even for a non-runner like me. And I love when she talks about biology and genetics since these topics fascinate me as well. You can check her out here: God Runs DNA

Mother-Daughter Road Trip

Several weeks ago, I got the idea that I wanted to take a mother-daughter road trip to west TN where my family lives. It's been quite some time since we visited there. My parents make the trip to see us every 5-6 weeks. But my sister rarely has time to travel and we wanted to see her as well.

In addition to wanting to see my family, Michael Paul was really needing some alone time. And I really wanted to give him some extended solitude before the new baby comes along. It is really hard being an extreme introvert when your wife is a stay-at-home-mom who hates to leave the house. It means you rarely get the recharging alone time introverts desperately need. He's also one of these guys who is generous to a fault. So if he is off work, he feels like he needs to be spending quality time with us. Which of course I love. But I know the only way he is going to get some peace and quiet (have I mentioned that both Keziah and I talk nonstop?) is for us to get out of the house for a while.

And then I was thinking of how Keziah only has a few more months of being an only child. We never took a vacation this year. And I thought it would be nice for us to make some memories just the two of us. So despite her absolute hatred of long car trips, I was determined to make this work. It took quite a bit of creativity to figure out how we could make the trip easy on Keziah. Traveling form western NC all the way to western TN is a pretty long drive. I didn't want to do it at night without Michael Paul. Plus I was scared I would fall asleep at the wheel. So we had to figure out a way to do in the day and not have Keziah scream nonstop for 4 of the 7 hours.

So a week ago Saturday morning, we loaded up the van and headed west. Keziah still had a rash from having Roseola the week before, but she wasn't contagious and was in much better spirits. This was the first time she had ever really been sick, and 3 days of 103 fever had worn her out. So I was hoping for her getting some extra sleep in the car. Which of course would make the trip easier on us as well. She never takes a morning nap but she did fall asleep after an hour in the car and between that and the morning snacks I had packed for her, we made it to Knoxville with only 20 minutes of screaming. Knoxville was our first stop where Naomi, my friend and roommate from college lives. Naomi and I have always had parallel lives. We're both teachers, we got married the same weekend, we each had our first child, both girls, three months apart, and when she called a couple of months ago to tell me she was pregnant again, she guessed that I was too before I told her. She is due in January just a few weeks before my baby is due. Needless to say we were anxious to hang out and let our girls play together.

Ariana had lots of fun toys Keziah had never seen before. They played really well together, even if they did fight over the slide a bit.



After lunch that included a chocolate desert,

the girls played outside in the water.

After Keziah was good and tired, we got back in the car and continued westward. Keziah quickly fell asleep. About 45 minutes down the road I stopped at a little airport where my Dad had flown with my Mom. The plan was for my mom to ride the rest of the way with me to help entertain Keziah. She brought presents including a magna-doodle. How did I not know that those things are magic for car trips? Having my mom ride with us is what made the trip possible. There is no way I could have driven all the way there with no one to help with Keziah. Having a Dad who flies has major major perks! Of course all the perks go away if the weather doesn't cooperate. I'll come back to that in a moment.

So when Keziah woke from her nap, there was a surprise visitor in the car and we were less than an hour from Nashville, our next stop. This was the hardest part of the trip for Keziah. And we did have to suffer through some major screaming. But soon we were at the Titan stadium, where we got to change into our Titan gear and head in to see the pre-season game against the Bears. I'm a little disappointed I wont be getting to watch my TN Titans much this year as I doubt the NC stations are going to carry many if any of their games. So I was glad it worked out there just happened to be a home game last Saturday and we got to go. And it provided another great break from the car.

Keziah loves to cheer and had an absolute blast!

Unfortunately we had to leave at halftime because Keziah was getting super tired. It was past her bedtime already. But this meant she would sleep all the way to my parents' house. And sleep she did! Plus, my mom drove and I got a break from driving and even dozed off a bit. So that's how you take a 7 hour drive with a toddler who hates the car and make it doable. Our trip took 14 hours total when you add in the visit with Naomi and the Titan game. But they were necessary long breaks from driving.

After arriving in Jackson the fun continued. Unfortunately my mom still had to work every day. But we did go up to school and have lunch with her. Keziah loved drawing on the white erase boards and getting stickers. My mom's class thought she was adorable. But with my Dad being retired, we still had lots of fun during the days. We went to parks but found the 105 heat index made it impossible to play outside. I have been spoiled living in the mountains. I forgot how miserable the west TN heat is! So we played in the sprinkler at home instead.

Keziah loves to water plants and play in my parents' huge back yard. She desperately wanted to get in the pond the first day. She has settled for helping Grandaddy feed the huge catfish and koi that live in the pond. He's still hoping to teach her how to fish soon. We've also been blowing a lot of bubbles.

And of course we had to play with Maynard, my sister's Great Dane. Keziah LOVES dogs with a passion. She is never afraid of them no matter how big or how loud. She giggled like crazy as Maynard licked her face. And his tongue is the size of her face. Even after he knocked her down twice, she still gave him hugs and kisses and squealed with glee as they ran through the house together.

And she was really interested in helping him eat, shouting "uh-oh" whenever he spilled kibble out of his bowl.

You can really see just how big he is compared to her in that last picture.

It was a wonderful week and exactly what I was hoping for. Lots of memories. Lots of time with my family. Lots of delighting in watching my daughter enjoy playing in and around the house I grew up in. But we were really starting to miss home. Every time my phone rings, Keziah jumps up and asks, "Daddy?" She loves talking to him on the phone and hearing his voice. Then on Friday after my mom's phone rang and I had to tell Keziah, "no that's not Daddy", her bottom lip started to quiver and tears welled up in her eyes. "You miss Daddy don't you?" I asked and she shook her head yes. A week is definitely our limit on being away from home. It was a great week but I was glad to be going home ... or so I thought! And then stupid hurricane Lee hit and the whole state of TN is covered in heavy rain all weekend. We were really planning on doing some sort of repeat of the creative travel plans where my mom was going to ride with me a lot of the trip and then my Dad could fly over and meet us and take her back home. But he can't fly in this weather and my mom can't miss school this week because she really wants to save her personal days for when the baby comes in February. So my options were to try and make the trip alone with Keziah in the pouring rains, or wait until next weekend. So we are stuck here for another week and really missing Michael Paul. And that's really the reason for this super long post with lots of pictures. Michael Paul really wanted to see some new pictures of his baby girl. So this post is for him. But I hope the rest of you enjoyed it as well!

On the up side, Keziah is definitely enjoying the cooler wetter weather. She loves to play in the rain and has been out on the deck getting wet a lot lately.