Another reason to own a house

You don't have to deal with parking enforcement towing your car for no good reason. Just because they want their $78. Just because it's sitting unlicensed while you are in the process of getting it ready to sell, and it's an easy target because it's not boxed in by other vehicles. The property manager is going to feel my very-pregnant-woman wrath in the morning. I seem to have a lot of it this pregnancy. Ugh. 

Since Christmas

Blogging guilt has finally caught up with me. It must seem like I live a really boring life, or am just plain busy. I like lists, so here is our life since Christmas. And the lack of pictures since the holidays is beyond pathetic. 

1. Nesting urge, creative urge, or whatever the heck it is has taken over my time in the last month. The sewing machine has almost constantly been on the dining table working overtime while I sew and sew some more. A lot of fun for myself, not so much for my children who freak out after being ignored for a while, or try to 'help.' I've made more stuff in the last few weeks than I have for 2 1/2 years. Kind of insane. I'm also de-junking like crazy, cleaning the house, the normal nesting stuff. The fact that we'll be moving in 5-6 months also has something to do with it. 

2. If you have carpet made out of recycled plastic bottles like we do, nothing does a better miracle on it than a good vacuum cleaner. Our Black and Decker was no longer cutting it. In comes the Dyson. Ben LOVES it. It's pretty hilarious. He's used it almost every day in the 10 days we've owned it. A remarkable piece of machinery in my opinion. 

3. We went to the Draper Temple open house last night with our friends, the Lanengas. Lots of fun, the kids were slightly crazy, but did as well as could be expected. It was pretty exciting for them, going inside a temple like they've always wanted, riding on a bus like Daddy rides to work, and getting cookies at the end. My kids liked the chandeliers and font the best. My biggest memory is the clear plastic flooring they had laid out on the carpet, because I was watching it while watching Jilly repeatedly try to run away from me. It is a very beautiful temple (aren't they all?).

4. I am ready for winter to be OVER. If I ran the universe, winter/snow would be from November 15 to February 1. Then weather suitable for children to be outside in (not dressed as the abominable snowman) would take over. No inversions, surprise freak snowstorms after tauntingly spring weather, etc. after this date. My children are suffering from incurable cabin fever at this point. 

5. Ben was accepted to a graduate program at Washington University in St. Louis. So as of now, we have two options for the fall. Ben was gone over President's Day weekend in Philadelphia interviewing for U Penn. He was smack in the middle of the big city, and said it was an interesting experience being treated like a VIP. He was the only married with kids (one other grad applicant was married) out of 17 students the University flew out. The other thing he really noticed is how comfortable he's become in Utah Mormon culture. It'll be a definite shift when we move out of here. He'll be going to Irvine and St. Louis next month to visit the faculty and campuses. As long as the traveling is done by the 20th of March, I won't fear going into labor while he's gone. 

6. Jilly's system of weights and measures. She grabs a measuring tape, walks up to my belly, measures it and says, "Hmmm. 39 pounds." Then she'll measure her belly, "Ohhhh, 39 pounds." Then she'll find Evelyn to measure. Everything is 39 pounds. And if we've been to your house recently, and you're missing an important piece of paper, it's probably because Jilly ate it. Any kind of paper is her new favorite snack. And she knows she's not supposed to eat it, she just gulps it down before I can pry it out of her mouth. Price tags (while we're shopping) are a favorite. She tried eating my Bath and Body works hand soap the other day. I don't think she'll repeat that one (hopefully). 

7. Evelyn has really started to get into the creative play mode. Jilly is a willing participant, and the princess dresses are the favorite "let's pretend" object. Evelyn will be saying something about being a princess and then very dramatically, "And all my dreams will come true!" Disney has their claws in my child's soul. 

8. New favorite kid music: Peter Tchaikovsky's 'The Nutcracker Suite,' because the letter T is for Tchaikovsky. I thought T was for turtle. But starfall.com says otherwise. I don't mind, it's better than listening to the "911 song" over and over. 

9. Baby Gordon is as active as his oldest sister was, and gets the hiccups all the time. I hope he's willing to make his entrance to the world closer to the due date than 10 days late, and I think I have a bigger shot at that this time around. I would really like to avoid being induced. 

So there is a sample of the smattering that is my life at this point. And it only seems to get more nuts. I'm slowly learning to find the small "treasures of time" in each day, and wish I could capture them all in a bottle, or etch them into my memory. The times when my kids are doing something funny together, or just want to snuggle on my lap, etc. I'm starting to feel the clock ticking down on the time I have with my kids while they are little and at home with me. It will be a time I will always remember. 

Get him out Mommy!

Tonight as I was relaxing on the couch with the girls, Evelyn plops over to me, yells a couple of times into my belly, and then tells me this really long sentence:

"Mommmy, I want you to go to the hospital now to get the baby out in the water and then I can put a diaper on him and watch a movie with him."

"You want him out right now?"

"Yeah, so I can hold him."

"YEAH!" yells Jilly. Anything remotely exciting is a cause to be yelled about with her. 

The whole "get the baby out in the water" thing comes from some video clips I showed Ev and Jilly on Babycenter.com. One was a water birth, very relaxed mom, no screaming, carnage, etc. So I figured I was safe showing it to them. I wanted them to know how this baby was going to get out into the world. They LOVED watching it. They thought it was so cool. Now one of their favorite pastimes is watching "baby movies" and movies of themselves as babies. Little kids are so cool. 

"It's called a Star Destroyer Mommy!"

Darth Sader!

If anyone has not figured it out by now, my husband is a huge Star Wars fan and is properly indoctrinating my children into Star Wars culture. We have an office for him in our apartment that is filled with his numerous books and collectibles from all over. Over the closet door hangs a beach towel with Darth Vader, the Emperor, and one of the large triangle-shaped star ships (he's gonna tease me later because I can't remember the name). Evelyn is sleeping in the office again because the sister-room-sharing fell apart last week (colds), and wakes up wailing at 10:30 pm last night.
"Evelyn, what's wrong?"
"Darth Sader's LOOKING at me! WAAAAAHHHH!"
We both started laughing. Darth Vader is now buried in the closet, to Evelyn's relief.

I think I've been talking too much about the baby lately. Jilly's turning back into one, or else her molars are coming in. She's gone back to having too many potty accidents, waking up at night, needing her bottle, and wanting to wear diapers. Um, no. This is not cool. She loves coming up to me with her blanket and binky in tow (yes, she still has a binky. It needs to say bye-bye, but I'm also afraid of a major reversion coming around when the bouncing baby boy arrives. Anyone experienced with this?) and snuggling up to make baby noises. She used to not do this. In Evelyn's conversation with Grandma Chicken the other day, "Drandma, sometimes I wish I was a baby. Then Mommy would snuggle me all day." Totally out of left field. Maybe they'll get their jealousy out before this kid gets here. And maybe that is complete wishful thinking.

As of yesterday, Ben is finally feeling some validation that what he's pursuing educationally has some merit. He heard back from University of California-Irvine announcing he was accepted to a Ph.D. program! So now we now for sure moving come the end of the summer, but where is still up in the air because there are six more colleges to hear back from. I asked the girls yesterday if they wanted to go to California. Evelyn says, "Yes!! Calithornia!" I asked her if she knew what was in 'Calithornia.' I told her about the beach and Disneyland. All very exciting to her of course. When Ben comes home Jilly yells, "Daddy! We're going to California!" We'll see.

The home stretch

29 weeks
I finally decided to put up a picture of what looks like a pregnant belly. For a long time it just looked like I hadn't really worked out in ages (and I really haven't been doing much), and needed to lose some weight around the middle. The belly has grown immensely in the last month, filling out my sides and pushing into my back. I don't know if it's because he's a boy, but I hurt in places I didn't think I would. It might be that I already have two kids to keep up with as well. He's pretty active, kicking and punching, and getting all out of sorts when I wake up to roll over at night or get up with one of the girls sometimes. And if I start talking during one of these noctural awakenings, the poor kid freaks out. I'm interested to see how his personality will play out in the next year or so, because looking back on my pregnancy with Jilly, she displayed a lot of tendencies in the womb that are evident in her personality. Not that it's surprising, I just didn't notice it nearly as much with Evelyn as I did with Jilly.
Besides the pregnancy, which is constantly in front of me physically and mentally, here are pictures from the week:
Ben's renewed passion for Legos. He took them from his parents over Christmas break, and over the last few days has completed about 6 models. The girls love them, especially the part about dumping the box all over the office floor.
Ev and Jill got Duplos for Christmas, and there are two Lego kitties. This is the cat getting its hair done. Jilly carts these things all over the place, one of her MANY security "blankets."

Adventures in Snowmen

The children and I built our first snowman ever in Idaho over Christmas. (Ben would have helped, but he was driving his Dad home from knee surgery, a worthy cause). It was a good first effort, but the snow just wasn't right for snowman building. Too powdery.
Only a 2/3 finished snowman. It was mostly me building it, and Evelyn posing for pictures or running around excitedly.
"Mommy, what are you doing?" All Jilly knew was that Frosty is a snowman on TV, and he has an awesome theme song that she can sing.
All finished, except for the face. Which we never got around to because it was dang cold outside and Jilly kept taking her gloves off to eat the snow. Which leads to cold hands, which leads to whining......
But back to Utah, where it SNOWED this week. At least in my terms it did. We ended up getting about 14". Plenty of snow for a snowman.
Here he is, with a scarf even. (Some kid left it on the playground a few feet away, where it had sat for a few days. I thought it was good snowman material). Pretty sizable and fun to put together. This time the snow was great. Evelyn even helped shape him.
The after-snowman party. For refreshments? Snow. A lot of it. Did you know that building snowmen will give you lots of Braxton-Hicks contractions? I didn't. Too bad this little boy isn't due until April. I doubt there will be enough snow to build one then. I'll have to scrub my floors instead.