6 months

"Your baby weighs approximately 2.4 pounds and is about 10 inches from crown to rump, or a little under 16 inches from head to toe. He or she has been gaining weight steadily during the past 27 weeks as its stem cells develop into organs, blood and immune systems, and bones. However, from this point forward, your baby's weight gain will be due to increasing amounts of body fat. A quick way to predict your baby's birth weight is to average your partner’s and your birth weights." Pregnancyweekly.com

3 months to go :

I am six months pregnant and surrounded by pregnant people. Pregnant friends: Lisa, Dana, Amy, Terry, Robin, Stephanie, Leslie, Robyn. It's a baby boom!

Scissors

Emma has discovered scissors. She can sit for about an hour at a time (and she sometimes does this twice a day) with paper, scissors and a basket. She cuts and cuts and puts all the little pieces in her basket. Chucky is terrified she is going to cut herself and I am just grateful for a quiet hour. OK I am a little worried she might cut herself but she really is good at cutting! She concentrates, and her attention span amazes me. She is a perfectionist, which drives me crazy and makes me proud all at the same time. She got a "My First LeapPad" for Christmas which we just opened this week. She has learned to use it quickly and calls it "my own computer." Except it really sounds like "my own pewter!"

More stuff about the furniture

The bed we are painting for Emma came from my grandfather's house. My aunt Emma gave it to me when I moved into my own place after college. I don't know where it came from, I should probably ask my mother. When Chucky took it apart to paint it, I saw this:



We are not painting this part, since these are the slats that go under the mattress. Miller & Rhoads. Does anyone else remember it? I am showing my age by remembering that department store and the Santa we used to visit there every year. It was a neat surprise to see that stamped on the bed. And maybe years from now it will be a neat surprise to someone else. Or maybe it will mean nothing to them at all!

She paints!

Thursday morning while getting ready to head out the door to go our seperate ways, Chucky told Emma when she got tonight she would help him paint. I'm thinking "whaaaaat?" But I just smile and say yeah yeah ok, now get in the car. As soon as I got her into daycare, she told her teachers she was going to paint tonight. Hehe, um yeah. That afternoon when I picked her up she said let's go home and paint! Ok daddy, you asked for this. After dinner, they went upstairs to paint and this what I found:


and this is what I did to fix it:



and after sticking her hand in the wet paint twice and getting paint on Chucky's hairy arm, he threw her out and I washed her up in the tub. She is fully aware that there is more painting to be done and is eager to try again.



On a Murphy's Law kind of note, the guy that said he couldn't paint this furniture for six weeks called back after just a week and half and is ready to start the job.

Let the painting begin

The furniture that will soon be in Emma's room is going through a makeover. After calling several people and asking everyone we know . . . we realized we are going to have to do this ourselves if we don't want to wait the 6 weeks it would take to get the one guy who says he can do it. Chucky is turning mismatched wood furniture into four peices of white furniture. We are not do-it-yourself, home-project-doing people, so I am a little nervous at the way he has just speedily tackled this project, without consulting how-to websites, making lists and going shopping like I would have done. If only I wasn't pregnant, I could sand! I could prime! I could paint! But I am pregnant - the whole reason we need the furniture! Anyway, he took the furniture off location and brought it back after spraying it all with primer. I don't think there was much sanding involved. He is now painting. Emma is quite intrigued and finding it very difficult to obey the "no touching" rule.

Here she gets her first instruction to BACK UP!


Ok, she backed up but now she's whining, "but I just want to watch!"


Now she's on the floor begging.

Stripey Socks

Emma is almost 3 years old and has opinions to go with her age. She has a favorite outfit these days that consits of a white t-shirt (there can be no bow on the shirt-it has to be plain), a pair of panties with one Dora on them (not the panties with lots of Doras all over), and a pair of pink and white striped socks that are too small but fit anyway. This of course is just an indoor outfit. To get her dressed to leave the house I have to tell her that as soon as we get home she can take her clothes off. She nods her head and says "ok" while fighting back tears. Trying to be so strong! And her memory is functioning well - as soon as we walk in the back door, she starts peeling her clothes off in the laundry room and they are strewn across the kitchen and into the den, where I soon find her "nakey." (2 year old word for naked that I don't correct because it's toooo cute!) Here is a picture of the "stripey socks":

Bless you

Emma: SNEEZE! SNEEZE!
Mommy: Bless you!
Emma: Thanks, mom. You da bess!
Mommy: No, you're the best.

Note that she is calling me "mom" more and more these days instead of "mommy." I'm not sure I like that!

The Paint

Here are the new paint colors:


The nursery is "Art Deco Pink." Chucky hates it. I think it is going to look great once we get the bedding and curtains up and a few things hung on the walls.



The den is "Broome." Chucky thinks it is too dark and it may be a little darker that what I was going for but I still like it!


Here is our model saying "cheeeese!" She was very interested in the painters and made friends with them quickly.

Pink

Pink: soon to be the color of the walls in the nursery for baby #2. I'm sorry, baby, you don't have a name yet so I keep calling you baby #2. Pink is also a color I have never really liked my entire life. The color doesn't look good on me, and most shades of it remind me of elderly ladies with too much perfume on. Then one day three years ago, the doctor told me my first baby was going to be a little girl. I bought a pink shirt! Even dressed her in pink a few times! Her room was decorated in purple in green, though, as I was still a bit of a pink-a-phobe. Now, with baby girl #2 on the way, I have fully embraced "girl stuff." It was never okay to be frilly, to like princesses and all things pink for my first daughter. Now that the house will be a "girls' house", I have accepted pink and all that comes with it.

Baby #2's room will have pink walls, with mostly baby blue bedding and a little pink thrown in. The painter arrives tomorrow morning to paint the nursery pink - I am very hopeful that it will be a delicate, but not washed out, very light shade of pink. The small color cards usually lead me astray - never have I picked out a paint that looks like I think it will. Here's hoping that when I see the nursery tomorrow afternoon, I don't fall back into "pink makes me puke" mode.

More Spanish

Mommy: on the way out of Emma's room after tucking her in bed for a nap

Emma: "You have to say 'abre'."

Mommy: "Abre!" Mommy then opens the door and leaves the room.

Thanks, Dora.

Potty Time

I am scared to say it out loud and really scared to type it - but I believe we have successfully potty trained Emma! Some days she seems like such a big girl to me and other days, just a baby. Big or baby, I am so proud of her. I feel like I've done something good with my life by raising her . . . so far!

January in Virginia

Don't be fooled by the boots (or the wonderful outfit picked out personally by the 2 year old model) - it's 75 degrees! January 5th, and it feels like spring! I love it (although it kind of worries me at the same time-you know, global warming and all that).

Emma and I were trying to take down all the Christmas decorations, but it was such a nice day we stopped to play outside. I make an effort to have time together and enjoy it. I don't want to look back and think, oh I wish we had played more . . . I'm so glad that on this day, we played.