It's beginning to look a lot ...

...LIKE CHRISTMAS!!!!!

Our tree is officially up and our house is decorated.

Thanks to all the 'help' from a certain eager little girl.

We have been enjoying the advent season, lighting candles in our advent wreath, reading our favorite Christmas books and watching our favorite Christmas movies. Keziah is old enough to really get into it this year. She loves our nativity scene and often reminds me "shhhhhh, baby sleeping." But my favorite part so far was her bringing me the baby Jesus yesterday and putting him under my shirt while informing me, "baby need nummies." This is looking to be the best Christmas ever! I can't wait to see her reaction Christmas morning.

Michael Paul and I have jumped the gun a bit and gotten him an early Christmas gift.

Look closely at his hand. That's not an ordinary wedding band. Yep, that's a tattoo.

So there are three tattoos in particular that Michael Paul has always wanted, but for one reason or another has never gotten around to getting. And one of them was to have his wedding band tattooed on his finger. He figured since that one was partially a gift to me, he should have it done first. And so he did. A little early Christmas present for himself!

There's some back story here if you don't know Michael Paul that well. Since he is a nurse, he is constantly washing his hands at work and his sensitive skin and allergy to all types of gloves make the skin under his ring really irritated. So he really can't wear his ring at work. Even at home, most of the things he found himself doing in his spare time, from chopping wood, to working on our cars, to woodworking on his lathe, were things he'd rather not do with his ring on. Even playing guitar sometimes it would get in the way. So basically he was constantly taking it off, setting it somewhere and losing it. Thankfully it has always turned up. But we would go many days sometimes wondering where his ring had disappeared to. Not to mention, now we have a little raccoon -um I mean toddler in the house who likes to take off with shiny objects and hide them places. Suffice it to say, it was annoying always trying to keep up with his ring. So he decided to just make it permanent in the form of a tattoo so he wouldn't have to worry about it as much. He does still plan to wear his wedding band when he can. But it's nice that there is always a 'ring' on his finger when he can't.

It's mostly a gift for himself, but it is partially a gift for me too. Symbols are really important to me. Maybe it is because I am a concrete sequential type personality or maybe it is because I find it difficult to articulate the things that are most important to me. But to me the ring is a beautiful symbol of all the mysteries of marriage I could never describe in words. So it always kinda bugged me that Michael Paul spent so much of his life without wearing his ring. It's not that I felt we were somehow less married. It's just that I really like seeing that ring on his finger every time I glance at his hand. And now I always will.

So that is our fun Christmas gift this year. We have a few small things for each other, but mostly we are excited about Christmas with Keziah this year. Kids really do make Christmas so much more fun!

Happy Advent Everybody!

Six Months and My Predictions

Well, I am officially six months along and into the third trimester now. I have to say I am a bit bigger than I was with Keziah at this time. That's a good thing. I actually had trouble gaining weight with Keziah. And I'm trying to maintain some kind of milk supply since Keziah is showing absolutely no signs of weaning anytime soon. But she is getting rather frustrated with my short supply. Whereas a short supply during pregnancy encourages many children to wean, Keziah simply sees it as a challenge to take on. She seems to be certain that she can bring in more milk by nursing constantly. So it definitely looks like we will be tandem nursing come February.

Speaking of February, I thought it would be fun to make some predictions just to see if mama's intuition is in any way accurate. I could be completely wrong, but it's still fun to guess. So here are my guesses and the somewhat weird reasons behind them. First of all, my birthdate guess is February 26. Partly because I have a feeling I will go past my 17th due date. But my main reason is this: So we have this little antique calendar thing where you have to flip the card everyday. Michael Paul got it at an antique store several years ago and we were actually very good at keeping up with changing it.

Anyway, when Keziah came along, it didn't get changed for a few weeks and then it just felt wrong to change it. December 28 was the day that changed our lives forever. In a sense, time stood still on that day. Neither of us could bring ourselves to change it. So it stayed at December 28 for a full year. We even packed it away like that and moved it to NC with us and then set it back out still saying December 28. Finally on her first birthday, we decided it was time to start changing the calendar again. And so we did. The only problem was that in our new house the calendar was on a desk in the hallway where we didn't always see it and so sometimes we would forget to change it. Then we both just forgot about it all together. Fast-forward to early June when I find out we are pregnant again. Of course one of the first things I did was get online to figure out what my due date would be, and we found out we were expecting a February 17th baby. Of course I immediately thought to myself, well it will be a February twenty-something baby. Several weeks later, Michael Paul happened to notice our little calendar sitting in the hallway. We hadn't changed it since Feb 26. Coincidence? Maybe. Or maybe something deep down in us knew that that date would be another "time stands still" date and so we couldn't change it. So now our calendar sits at February 26. Thus my somewhat hokey reason for predicting that day.

As for gender, my prediction is a girl. For one, I've always felt like a 'girl's mom' and would be perfectly delighted to have a house full of only girls. Secondly, Michael Paul had a pretty vivid dream a while back in which he found out I was having a girl. Michael Paul is not one to have prophetic dreams or to have pregnancy dreams. I for one have pregnancy dreams all the time. Both with Keziah's pregnancy and this one, I've had several dreams and sometimes it's a boy and sometimes it's a girl. So I don't trust my dreams. But I'm going to bank on Michael Paul's since he has only had one and it was pretty vivid. And thirdly, my sister is predicting a girl, so maybe there is some twin intuition there as well.

And finally, my weight prediction is 8 pounds. I don't really have anything to go on other than the fact that Keziah was 7 pounds 10 ounces and I think this baby will be a little bigger.

So there are my predictions. I could be completely wrong on all of them. But it will certainly be fun to see how it all turns out.

Halloween Fun

Keziah really got into Halloween this year. She's really into giraffes and ballerinas at the moment, so naturally she went as a giraffe ballerina!

I just love the way her little giraffe tail flopped around on top of her tu-tu.

And I'm pretty confident she was the only giraffe ballerina this Halloween as I basically combined two costumes for her.

We enjoyed Halloween at the huge Fall Festival that our First Baptist Church puts on for the community. We don't actually attend FBC. A huge church isn't really a good fit for our family. (We really love the intimate feel of our small church.) But you got to hand it to the mega churches for their family events. They have the budgets and space to really put on a spectacular event. This festival had EVERYTHING! Keziah had a blast. So many firsts all in one evening!

Her first bouncy castle:

Her first Hay-Ride:

Her First Pony Ride:

This was especially a huge hit with her. She LOVES all animals. She's never met an animal she's afraid of. She just squeals with joy over the sight of any animal. When she saw the ponies, she went crazy. The hardest part of the entire evening was waiting in line for the pony ride. Check out how she is only hanging on with one hand because she had to pet the pony as she rode.

And it was over way too quickly. Michael Paul had to pry her off the horse, which resulted in quite the tantrum until we ran to the next bouncy thingy which was this huge slide. Then it was all smiles and squeals of glee again.

She would have happily done the slide by herself if she could have gotten up the ladder. But Michael Paul went down with her anyway. He actually had to hold her back when they got to the top or she would have just dove right off by herself. This child is not afraid of anything!

We went on to do some more bouncy thingys including an obstacle course that she got stuck in. So Mommy went in after her. Then Mommy got stuck. Let's just say those things were not meant for pregnant ladies in heavy winter coats. Then I was laughing at myself so much, I just couldn't get over the four foot wall and all these eight year olds are passing me. Don't you wish I had a picture of that. I eventually got out.

Inside the gym was a special pre-school area including this roller coaster thing: Another huge hit for her!

And a little ball pit:

We even got an official family photo. It's really bad. Next time we'll do the official photo first! But I'll post it anyway

And as we left we got a bag of candy. To finish off the evening, Keziah got her very first dum-dum sucker. A fun time was had by all!

Craggy Gardens

Michael Paul's parents have been visiting us the last couple of days. The highlight of the visit was a trip to Craggy Gardens where we captured these adorable pictures of Keziah on top of the world. It might look like she's about to fall off a mountain, but I assure you she was perfectly safe! I've been really wanting a new banner picture for this blog and I got the perfect one yesterday. Here are a couple more photos:

Keziah just loved walking around on this rock wall and feeling the breeze. It was a gorgeous day. I love that pensive look on her face.

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.