My poll strangely became some other random poll, so I took it down. Before that, though, I am proud to say that my spider pumpkin was winning, 8-6. That'll show Steve for calling my pumpkin "elementary"!

Last night, for the second time in a week, some loser came and knocked on our door after dark. Both times Steve wasn't home, and it freaked me out. I realize that someone who is intending to rob us or worse probably isn't going to ring the doorbell to try to get in, but still. Last time Steve was almost home, and I flung the door open, thinking it would be him (and for some reason not wondering why he would be ringing the bell). It was some creepy guy trying to sell me some oil changes. Gah! Go away! So last night, Emma and I were sitting in the living room and at almost 9:00, the doorbell rings. Almost 9:00! The dogs went crazy, and Emma started to get scared while whoever was on our porch rang the bell, then knocked, then rang again. I want to get a No Solicitors sign, but Steve said probably no one would pay attention to that anyway. For awhile, after Emma being woken from her nap twice in one week, I had a sign that said, IF YOU FEAR FOR YOUR LIFE DO NOT RING THIS BELL, but that one mysteriously disappeared. Someone needs to start a "no-housecall list" like the no-call list. Seriously.

There's a saying that goes something like, "Picking up your house when you have kids is a lot like shoveling your driveway when it's still snowing." This is so true. Emma can take a completely spotless room, and trash it in under five minutes. Then, getting her to clean up after herself is like pulling teeth. Whenever I ask her to help me pick up, she'll sigh heavily, then sit on the floor and say, "Makes me very tired. I'll just watch you do it." Um, no. The only way she'll ever clean anything is if there is something else she wants to do, and I say we can't do it until we pick up first. Then, she'll pick up a toy, take it in her room, apparently get distracted in there, and come out with three different toys! Most of the time it's easier just to pick everything up myself, but I'm trying to get away from that because I don't want her to just expect that I will.

Happy Halloween!

Last night Steve and I were supposed to go to a work thingey of his, but it was cancelled. A friend of mine had already agreed to watch Emma, so we originally planned on going on a date by ourselves instead. After thinking about it some more, we couldn't really think of anything to do - going out to dinner seemed silly because we do that all the time, and there weren't any movies we were dying to see - so we ended up just staying home and having a lovely evening together, all three of us. We drank lots of hot apple cider and carved our pumpkins. Steve wants me to post a contest here and have you vote on which pumpkin is the best. You can probably tell which one is his if you know how weird he is anything about him, but just humor us. Here are the pumpkins. If you so desire, you can cast your vote over on the right sidebar.

Emma is obsessed with being four. She talks about it all the time. Whenever she wants to do something, but can't, she tells me it's okay because she'll just do it when she's four. Wishful thinking is starting to get the best of her because now when people ask her how old she is, she usually tells them she's four.

I have been drinking tea regularly for a couple years, and loving it. Now, however, for some reason I can't even stand the thought of it. Not even my pregnancy tea, which was so soothing for me when I was sick. Now all day long I am craving coffee. I've been running to Starbucks nearly every day for a Decaf Latte, but today I finally broke down and bought some decaf coffee so I can actually make it in my own house and have it available for me all day long. Mmmmm. If only coffee weren't so delicious when it is filled with tons of cream and sugar.

This morning at story time we had a little Halloween party, and my poor kid was the only one not wearing her costume. She didn't seem to care too much, but I felt guilty for forgetting. At the "party", everyone - keep in mind this story time is for ages birth-3 - received a Tootsie Pop wrapped in tissue to look like a ghost, and one of those huge, nasty sugar cookies with like an inch of icing and lots of sprinkles on the top. Ugh! I let Emma have the Tootsie Pop, but took the cookie and told her we'd have it after lunch. She was fine with that, and luckily forgot all about it anyway, but what were those people thinking? Giving out candy and a monster size cookie to a bunch of one and two-year-olds? Ridiculous.

I finished knitting one of the Christmas presents, but I've decided not to post pictures until after Christmas. Pretty much everyone who will be getting a present from me reads this blog, but I was going to just link to a picture and warn my family not to look so they wouldn't spoil the surprise. That was until one of my brothers informed me that he would look anyway, so now there will be no pictures. Way to go, David.

This morning after Emma and I woke up, but were still cuddling in bed, she put her hand on my cheek and said, "I wove you, Mommy. You're my best girl." How can I not have a great day when it starts like that?

This cold weather is making me hungry for soup. Right now I have two big pots of it cooking on the stove - Ham & Bean and Ham & Potato. Yum!

I suddenly have the urge to catch up on my scrapbooking. I'm going to try to get all my albums current before the baby comes. That and the Christmas knitting are my main projects these days. I will have Christmas knitting pictures soon!

Well, The Emma's New Bedtime in her Own Bed Plan failed miserably - all because of my hopeless addiction to Scrabble. Emma usually naps at around 1:00, so she was way past her regular nap time when she fell asleep in the car at 4:30. I was going to wake her as soon as we got home, but Steve enticed me with a game of Scrabble. I decided we could wait another day to start The Plan, and I carried her inside and laid her down without waking her up. I did lay her in her own bed...does that count for anything? She woke up at 6:30, we hung out for awhile, then went out for a late dinner. We got back at 9:30, and I was all set to do the bedtime part of the plan, but that darn Steve wanted to play Scrabble again. Instead of taking the time to put her to bed/get her to sleep, I made her a snack and put on a movie to keep her busy (Bad mommy!) while Steve completely creamed me at a game of Scrabble. I think 93 points on ONE word must be some kind of Scrabble record! In the end, we all went to bed together at 11:30. Maybe tonight will be the night.

This year I wasn't going to put up our Halloween decorations because I thought they would just add to the never-ending clutter that surrounds us. Yesterday I decided to stop being such a Halloween Scrooge and we got everything out. Emma was so excited that she insisted on putting on her costume and wearing it for the rest of the night. She looked so adorable that I really wanted to take a picture of her and post it here, but then it wouldn't be as fun to post pictures on Halloween, so I managed to restrain myself.

I've had enough of our bedtime arrangements. More specifically, our going-to-sleep arrangements. We've all been going to bed earlier for the past few months, and Emma usually just isn't ready to sleep then, so she drives us nuts until she is. Pulling on covers, kicking, rolling around, jumping on the bed, singing, and constant jabbering are tough to take when you're tired and past being ready to go to sleep. At least for me. So, I have decided to cut out her naps in hopes that she will go to bed more easily at night. I'm also really truly going to start moving her into her own bed. I am very reluctant to see the naps go, but I think this is for the best. Today we are implementing the new plan: no nap, read books in her bed at 8:00, then after that I will sit with her until she falls asleep. Which, hopefully, doesn't take hours and hours.

Lately it is kind of hard for me to get a cute, regular picture of Emma. When she smiles normally, she looks so cute, even with a kiwi seed stuck to her face.













However, it's difficult to get those pictures because as soon as she sees the camera, she emphatically exclaims, "CHEEEEEEEEEEEESE!", which results in pictures like this.

My needles came! Thank goodness!

This morning Steve's car broke down before he even left the neighborhood. It's weird because just two days ago I was telling a friend that I will never buy an American car because I think they're crap, and I used Steve's car as an example. His car (a Chevy) is six years newer than mine and has way fewer miles, yet way more issues. We're always throwing money into that car. Anyway, apparently I jinxed us because today we had to get it towed into the automotive shop. Steve ended up staying home all day and we had a great time, so that was cool. We played two games of Scrabble and I lost by an extremely narrow margin both times. I was hoping to play again tonight after Emma is in bed to redeem myself, but she is not cooperating so that game will probably never be. The stupid car ended up costing us $670, but it is fixed now, so there is no hope for a Scrabble rematch tomorrow.

Here are some videos I took tonight of Steve and Emma "performing".


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Photo Sharing - Upload Video - Video Sharing - Share Photos

Steve and I are complete failures at taking out the trash in time for the trash pickup. Our outside trash cans are useless because the lids don't stay on so as soon as anything is in there, our lovely neighborhood raccoon knocks them over and the trash is strewn everywhere. My irrational fear of snakes means I am never the one to pick up the trash, which is good for me, but not so much for Steve. Anyway, we just put the trash bags in our garage when we empty the trash, and Steve is supposed to bring them to the curb every Tuesday morning. For some reason or another, this almost never gets done, and we always have trash piling up in our garage. Monday night we were lamenting the fact that we had FIVE weeks worth of trash in our garage, and it absolutely HAD to go out the next morning. Unfortunately, Tuesday morning we woke up just in time to hear the garbage truck pull past our house and on to the neighbor's house. Gah! Luckily, there are two companies that pick up the trash in our neighborhood, and the one we don't use comes every Wednesday between 10:00 and noon. Genius me, I called and signed up with them yesterday and cancelled with the other guys. It will cost us $3.50 more each month, but will be well worth it. Getting the trash out by 10:00 is much more manageable than having it out before 6:30. This morning I dragged all that trash outside, and watched with sweet relief when the guys rolled up and took it away. That is my major excitement for the day - knowing that, from now on, we will never have more than one week's worth of garbage sitting in our garage.

Steve got a speeding ticket awhile ago, so we found a lawyer and assumed he was taking care of everything. We sat back and waited to get our notice about paying court costs. Today we got a letter in the mail stating that Steve had failed to appear for court, and we owe blah blah blah, plus $98 more for not showing up, and if we don't pay asap, his license is revoked and a warrant will be issued. Yikes! My task this afternoon is calling the lawyer and the court and whoever else I might need to in order to get this resolved. Yuck. I hate dealing with all this stuff.

I realize I haven't posted many pictures lately and I know that at least one of you (ahem, Abbie) is probably wanting me to. I'm making a mental note to take some pictures of the kid tonight or tomorrow so this blog will hopefully be a little more visually appealing tomorrow.

I spent yesterday cleaning, organizing, doing laundry, and more cleaning. Today is the first day in months that I woke up and didn't feel completely overwhelmed by the state of my house. This morning I cleaned more, and by now I feel like this huge weight has been lifted off me. Also, I made Potato and Kale Quiche for lunch today so hopefully the reintroduction of kale means that our eating habits are starting to get back on track. It's so wonderful to finally be getting back to normal!

Awhile ago, I mentioned ordering some needles that hadn't come. It's been over three weeks now and they still haven't arrived. I've ordered from this guy (through ebay) before and the needles have always arrived within days. I'm not sure what to do. I emailed him last week and he asked me to wait a little longer. I emailed him again yesterday, but I haven't heard back yet. This has never happened to me before. Am I just out the money? Should I go ahead and order another set? I'm not sure, but I better figure it out soon because I am losing out on serious Christmas knitting time!

Tonight I get to go to Mom's Night Out. Woo hoo - freedom!

My AP group is going crazy lately scheduling fun Mom's Night Out type of stuff, and I am feeling sad that I can't attend many of them because Steve usually works too late to come home and stay with Emma. It's also Reason Number 1,000,000,001 that I'm sad we don't live by my family. Having them close by would make it so much easier because I know they would love to watch her if I wanted to go do something by myself.

On the other hand, Steve, Emma, and I really have such an amazing time when we're together. The three of us are really in a good place right now. I often feel like we enjoy each other's company so much when we're together because we appreciate it more. Last weekend, for example, was the first weekend in ages that Steve didn't work at all and it was wonderful! If he didn't ever work on the weekends, would we really appreciate them as much? Or...am I just trying to make myself feel better about his obnoxious work habits? Not sure.

Ever since Emma started eating solid foods, I have really been a stickler about nutrition. I devoured many books about nutrition and health and I would always get so excited about all the nutrients I was able to squeeze in at each meal. Sadly, I have lost that. I am hoping one of these days my desire to cook good, healthy meals will return, but in truth I don't even have the desire to cook crappy meals. We have been eating out more than eating at home. Today Emma said to me, "Where are we eating lunch today?" :( After that I really had good intentions for dinner so I got pork chops all ready, but by the time Steve got home the thought of cooking and eating them was making me nauseous. Chipotle, however, sounded fabulous. I really hope this ends soon because I am suffering some serious guilt because of it. And, by the way, the Chipotle was fabulous.

Brrr, it's cold - and I love it! I am feeling wonderfully content and cozy in the house these days. Emma and I have been doing a lot of baking and drinking a lot of tea, both of which make this chilly weather even better.

Steve has been without a cell phone for a few days due to changing providers, and it is terrible! I don't know how we ever survived without cell phones. He was flying in from Houston last night and he was supposed to be home by 10:00pm. By 2:00am, he still wasn't here and I was completely freaked out, already anticipating some cop knocking on the door in the middle of the night to deliver some terrible awful news. He did finally get safely home, but if only he'd had a cell phone he could have called me to tell me that his flight was delayed. (Of course, he was traveling with eight other people - all of whom I'm sure had cell phones - and I'm sure any one of them would have let him borrow theirs to call me. When I pointed that out to him, he was just like, "Oh, yeah." Argh!) Then today Emma and I were out shopping and we had a great opportunity to meet Steve for lunch but we missed it, all because I had no way to get ahold of him. His new phone is supposed to arrive tomorrow, thankfully.

I was planning on knitting some booties to match the soaker I recently finished, and I found a pattern that I thought looked cute. As I was knitting, I thought the pattern seemed a little weird, but I kept on. Now that I've finished one, it's clear that I made some horrible mistake because there is no way to seam this into anything that anyone will ever actually be able to wear. I'm almost embarassed to post a picture of it. Perhaps booties aren't my thing.

My pet peeve for the day: Why on earth do prenatal vitamins have to be so ridiculously gigantic? When I first found out I was pregnant, I researched prenatals and chose to buy a really good food-based one. I only took them for about a week before I started getting sick, and there was no way I could get them down. I still can't. I tried again this morning, and although I haven't puked in two days, it was so big and terrible tasting that my breakfast (and the pill) came right up. Ugh. Why doesn't someone get a clue and make those things a little smaller?

I got an iPod this weekend! I am so excited! Emma is very excited about the "ipond" too, and keeps asking to listen to it. It was supposed to be my Christmas present, but I was too excited and impatient to wait until then. However, the process of going through my 2500+ songs and tagging them all was beyond tedious. I am glad to have that part out of the way, and am looking forward to not having to mess with making new CDs for the car ride every time we make a trip to my mom's house.

Here are some pictures from the weekend, and one from today of Emma with her favorite toy lately, that little Halloween ghost.

See this?



















I don't think I have ever enjoyed eating something so much in my entire life. It was fabulous!

Last night I took Emma to a dance class. She heard me talking about it with a friend earlier in the day and spent the rest of the day begging/whining to go to dance class. Finally I asked her if she even knew what dance class was, and she shook her head and sadly said, "Nope." Anyway, I called around and one lady invited us to attend a class that night. It was "watch night", which is a once a month thing where the parents can sit in on the class and watch. Emma LOVED it! She did really well, despite being the youngest little girl in the class. She was shorter and had considerably less hair than everyone else there! You're supposed to wear your hair in a single ponytail or a bun, which is pretty comical when you think about Emma's hair. So we liked it, BUT I think I'm going to keep looking for a place that will let me sit in and watch all the time. I'm worried she wouldn't want to stay if I wasn't in there. She ran over to me many times during the class to give me hugs or share excitement, which is probably why parents aren't usually allowed in, but I want to be there for those things. Plus we'd have to buy her tap shoes and ballet shoes and "proper dance attire" and I don't want to do all that stuff only to have her decide she is too nervous to go in the room by herself anyway.

I got new shoes today! I've been wearing the same pair of tennis shoes for about four years now. I've bought a couple other pairs since then, but I never like them as much as my regular ones so I usually just go back to the same old ones. Suddenly this week I decided I'm so sick of the old ones that I can't stand to wear them another day. I wanted something really comfortable and that I could preferably just slip on - basically I wanted slippers that are aceptable to wear in public. Today I found what I was looking for and they are WAY comfortable! They go perfectly with my new stretchy black pants that I've pretty much been wearing every day for the past week (and will likely continue to wear just about every day for the rest of this pregnancy). What more could I ask for?

Emma loves to dance and loves frilly, girly things, so yesterday I bought her a little dance leotard at the thrift store. She LOVES it and hasn't taken it off or stopped dancing since we brought it home. She is a dancing fool. Steve and I think she would love to take a dance class of some sort, but I'm not sure they have those for two year olds. I'm going to look into it.

I am feeling whiny today. I've been feeling lots better, but still throwing up once or twice every day. Yesterday, however, was pretty bad, and so far today has been bad too. I can't stop puking. I am SO tired of this! I had to cancel my chiro appointment this afternoon because I don't even feel up to taking a shower, let alone leaving the house. Ugh. When is this going to stop????

Edited to add: I just talked to Steve and not only is he going to come home early, he is going to stop off at the store and bring me some vanilla ice cream and root beer! I've been craving a root beer float for weeks now, but have held off because I don't want to be eating that crap. Today, though, I don't care and I just want to eat something that will stay down. Yay for sweet husbands!

As anyone who has ever been to my house knows, my dogs are extremely friendly - friendly to the point of being annoying whenever anyone new comes over. They really like to meet people up close and sit on laps and they pretty much have no concept of personal space. I am always embarassed when people come over, especially our Parents as Teachers lady, because she sits on the floor and the dogs just cannot hold themselves back. Last month when the PAT mailing came out, there was a paragraph specifically devoted to asking people to restrain their pets for the visits, as they can be distracting to the children, parents, and educators. Now I'm really embarassed, because I'm sure they were talking about us. We have a PAT appointment this afternoon at 3:00, and I decided to be smart and take the dogs to the groomer today so they'll conveniently miss PAT. They don't really need haircuts yet, but there's nothing else I can do with them because they'll freak out if they're locked up anywhere. Unfortunately, my clever plan was foiled when the groomer told me she was closing today at 3:00. Now I have to go get them, and they're still going to be here for PAT. I hope we don't get fired as PAT customers.

And if you promise not to look at the trash can overflowing onto the floor, here is a picture of me at 13 weeks.

I've been working on knitting this sweater, and I almost had the back piece finished. It was annoying me, because I didn't really like the way the yarn was knitting up, and I was getting tired of working on it. Two days ago I decided to rip it out and knit something else. The something else turned out to be this itty bitty soaker. Newborn soakers are super fast to knit! The colorway is a little girly, but if we have a boy, I'm sure he won't mind. Since most of my yarn stash consists of girly stuff, the poor guy will probably be wearing plenty of not-so-manly knitted items. What I really need to be working on is Christmas knitting, but I'm still waiting on the needles for that stuff. I ordered them over a week ago and they are still not here. I've been seriously stalking my mail carrier to no avail.

In case anyone cares, Emma did not use her potty today. What is up with that kid?

We had a little excitement at our house tonight. Keep in mind that Emma has only peed in the potty one fluke time, about eight long months ago. Tonight she had watched Bambi twice, and was wearing her underwear the whole time. This actually isn't all that long, because I fast forward through the part where his poor mom gets killed, and skip the entire last 45 minutes because a lot of that is scary anyway. I was getting a little nervous about Emma having an accident on the couch, so I asked her a couple of times if she needed to sit on the potty. "Nope!" she said. When Bambi was over the second time, it was time to go to bed, and she cried because she wanted to watch it again. She was really overreacting and wouldn't let it go, so I (against my better judgement, which does not approve of bribes) told her if she peed in the potty then we could watch Bambi again. I was positive she wouldn't do it, but she walked over to the potty, sat down, and in less than two seconds, I heard a much-anticipated little tinkling noise! After a minute, she stood up, pulled up her little underwear, and matter-of-factly said, "All done! Let's watch Bambi!" Can you believe that? It was like she had been doing it all her life. So now I hope she'll do it again tomorrow, without my having to promise to let her watch Bambi. Hopefully we did enough cheering and clapping and high-fiving to make her want to.