Tessa's Pictures

Tessa's absolute favorite thing to do is color. She colors several pictures every day, and while most of them end up in the trash, (hi, unsentimental mother here) some of them are pretty cool.

At least they are cool to me, the fact that my four year old drew these. And I wanted to show them off.

Maybe I'm not as unsentimental as I pretend...

Like this drawing of an octopus cracks me up.

As does this guy.

She's also very into rainbow things. Everything has to be rainbow colored.

Or she'll write out lists of words or numbers.

She told me this was a dragon with blood coming from its eyes. I don't know how she can go from rainbows to blood, but she can. Plus some math about how daddy is in our family.

She's very talented.

Let's just not talk about how many boxes of crayons she's gone through.

Pregnancy Details

The original intro to this blog post was a big fat "I told you so" to Seth that it was past my due date (it was yesterday) and I was still pregnant in spite of all his warnings to the contrary.
Yes. I was so sure that the baby wasn't coming early I had already typed it up, ready to post today.
So a big, fat "I told you so" from Seth to me, as all his warnings came true and my six day old baby is asleep in her chair beside me.

Anyway, as I'm pretty sure this is my last baby, I wanted to document some of the things I experience while pregnant because I know I will absolutely not remember any of this in the coming years. I have slowly been adding to this for the past nine months so if the grammar seems weird in parts, that's why.

Food Cravings: Same as the previous two. POTATOES. Any kind. Mashed, baked, fried. Especially french fries. My lust for McDonald's french fries was particularly bad this time around. I don't think I ever buy McDonald's except for when I'm pregnant, and then I go crazy.
Second place was tortilla chips with melted cheese on top. Third place was pasta.
I also spent the first trimester being extremely picky. Dinner could only be ONE THING each night and it sometimes took me a long time to figure out what exactly to make that wouldn't make me feel like barfing, which sucked because I was always STARVING. Seth got quite a few panicked texts from me - "What should I make for dinner? Decide for me!" I usually hated all his suggestions.

Luckily I never actually got sick or threw up. Just nausea. Yay.

Tired: SO tired. I used to actually do things during the girls quiet times. Now I just hurry and eat my second lunch so I can go take a nap. The TV watching has increased at our house because I have no energy for anything else. I consider laying down a "to-do."

Maternity Clothes: I "popped" waaaaay earlier. Like after 2 months, instead of the usual 4-5. Also I'm pretty sure I'm larger with this one than with the other two because shirts that lasted me all the way through the last couple of times suddenly no longer cover my belly. Yikes.

Baby Tessa

I forgot: How skilled I get at using my toes to pick things up off the floor, so I can minimize how often I have to bend over.

How my hatred of scrubbing tubs and putting the sheets on the bed increases exponentially while pregnant.
How much my hips hate me.
How annoying it is to get clothes out of the top-loading washer with a baby bump in the way.

How crazy I get when the nesting phase starts, as documented here.

I didn't forget: How much fun it is to feel the baby move and kick.

The constant sinus issues. Yes, I AM using the humidifier in the middle of a southern summer when the humidity outside is already 75%.
How nice it is to have a built-in excuse for my laziness.
How annoying it is to come up with suitable baby names with Seth, the King of Ridiculous Baby Name Suggestions.

Baby Hailey

Unique this time: I have low iron with this one, which means I have suddenly become obsessed with chewing ice. I pour myself a big cup every day and if I'm ever out and about, you know I'll be stopping at Sonic for a cup of their pebble ice. Mmmmm. So good.
Cankles.
Round ligament pain, how I loathe thee. As if getting around when you're large and in charge wasn't bad enough, now I get stabbing pains in my hip/leg with every movement as well! It's been a constant source of frustration for the past two months. Boo.

How strong of a kicker this baby is. I never understood how women could say "Oh there's the foot. There's the elbow." when feeling the baby because it all seemed like indistinguishable lumps to me. But now I know. I know it painfully well. 

The girls reactions: They go through phases of not caring one bit or being completely obsessed. I like the not caring a little better actually. Then I don't have to answer "the end of October" to the million-times asked question of when the baby will be here.
Hailey does NOT appreciate the fact that I can't pick her up and carry her around as much as usual. They both miss sitting in my lap.
Sometimes they rub my belly. They've both technically felt the baby kick, but I don't think they quite understood what was happening.
They now think baby and belly are interchangeable words for everyone. We'll have to clarify this eventually.

They like to stick dolls up their shirt and talk about their own babies. Usually they are having a girl like me, but sometimes they decide they want a brother and it's a boy.

Baby Claire

So very happy I am not pregnant anymore.

Seth's Keepsakes

In my effort to clean and organize the entire house, I have been sorting through a bunch of Seth's old things, trying to consolidate them in one space. I had to rearrange his keepsake box in order to add a few things, so we went through all the stuff in it.
Would you like to know the important and meaningful and memorable things in his keepsake box? Besides the usual trophies and medals and journals, I mean. Here is a small sampling:

Old floppy disks. There is nothing worth saving on these (mostly old games or pictures he already has on the computer) but he insists on keeping them. I don't know why.

A copper pipe. When I asked him why this belonged in his keepsake box, he said "because it's cool." No other reason.

An old See-N-Say music motor . Again, "because it's cool." No plans to use the mechanism for any project (which is where most of his collecting habits stem from.) Just "because it's cool."

Leather strips he took off an old belt. And here is the story he told me as to why it's a keepsake: Just in case he's out exploring and he comes upon a sword (yes, a sword) or a knife that is missing it's handle. Then he'd be able to wrap the leather around it and wield it without hurting himself. 

Seriously. 

My response (besides incredulous laughter) was that while I was glad the realm of possible adventures to befall him was so wide, at the moment I didn't think old leather strips belonged with his keepsakes. 

He still wouldn't let me get rid of them, but at least they're with his other tinkering things now instead of taking up space in the box.

My personal favorite: the shriveled up chip bags. Seth and his friends microwaved these, causing them to shrivel up into miniature chip bags. He has had them since high school. He refuses to get rid of them.

Me: "Oh, someone's old pocket watch! That is a keepsake. Where'd you get it?"
Seth: "Walmart."

Not pictured: the can of soda he saved from a field trip because it was supposedly the most disgusting drink he'd ever had, an old-fashioned square nail, and a plastic cup filled with hardened epoxy. Among other things I managed to get him to throw away or donate.

I just have to remind myself that Seth's fascination with details is one of the reasons I love him.

And one of the reasons he loves me is that I will keep him from one day appearing on an episode of Hoarders.

Baby Names

Many of you know that Seth is very fond of coming up with ridiculous baby name suggestions. This time around he hasn't come up with nearly as many, and that's because the girls are doing all the work for him. Here are the ones they've suggested throughout the course of my pregnancy:

Pumpkin Head
Boxnapkin
Animal Guy
Gunther
Gumball
Binky
Punkus
Micole

Bunder
Bundernickel

Light Princess

We will be using none of these.
Actually, we still have yet to decide on a name and my due date is 10 days away. Hopefully we leave the hospital with a named child and not "Baby Girl Winsor" but we'll see....