Remember this photo? The post I wrote to go with it a few days before Elliora was born, about why I don’t do belly shots, was cross-posted at my friend Bonnie‘s fabulous site The Shape of a Mother today. Please go check it out!

I’m grateful to have had two healthy pregnancies. I have seen too many friends and relatives struggle with infertility and grieve over ectopic pregnancies and miscarriages to ever take my relative ease in getting pregnant and carrying babies to term for granted. I think it’s amazing that my body is equipped, like all mothers’ bodies, to do such miraculous things as grow, birth, and nurse babies. I think a pregnant woman’s body can be beautiful, and I don’t mind other people’s weekly belly shots a bit.

That said, however, I will confess: I don’t take photos of my belly mostly because I don’t like being pregnant at all. It’s a means to an end for me. I don’t like feeling the baby moving around—it’s usually uncomfortable and sometimes downright painful. Maternity clothes annoy me beyond telling. It drives me crazy how absent-minded and butterfingered pregnancy makes me. And can we talk about how much I hate sleeping on my side? I hate it with the fire of a thousand suns.

Before Troy and I were parents and people asked how many kids we wanted, I always said, “We’ll have one and see how that goes.” When Annalie was born, I remember thinking just minutes after, Yeah, I could do that again someday. Giving birth wasn’t exactly the most fun thing I’ve ever done, but I did it and when I was done I was proud of myself.

Breastfeeding wasn’t exactly a picnic at first. Annalie being a tiny preemie made it a challenge from the start. Added on top of that, she had a not-quite-right latch that went uncorrected so long that it affected my milk supply and led to weeks of pumping and using a supplemental nursing system which was just as fun as you might imagine. (No fun at all. I should blog all about that someday.) But I was determined to succeed, partly from stubbornness and partly because I am lazy and breastfeeding is so much less work than bottles, whether they’re used for pumped breastmilk or formula.

Eventually, we realized we were going to have to supplement the nursing with a few ounces of formula per day. I gladly said good-bye to the SNS and we reluctantly added one bottle-feeding to our day. It affected how often Annalie nursed each day exactly zero. She still nursed every hour or two, night and day, till she started eating solids a couple of months later. Then she cut out maybe one nursing session per day. She didn’t sleep through the night till she was 13 months old, and she continued nursing till just past her second birthday.

I guess what I’m trying to convey is that although I don’t like being pregnant, I do appreciate other parts of having babies. Giving birth was painful but amazing. Breastfeeding was difficult at first but we stuck with it, found our groove, and I daresay we became experts at it. So although I have been grumping my way through this pregnancy and pointedly not taking weekly photos of my growing belly, I am looking forward to meeting our second daughter and enjoying her babyhood in a way I couldn’t with Annalie because this time I have experience under my belt.

Last night, as I passed by the mirror in our bedroom just before going to bed, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror and the cozy-looking room beyond me. The one thing I really like about the strange color of our bedroom walls is how warm it looks in lamplight. I remembered this photo of Jen’s and grabbed my camera. Here’s hoping I won’t have many more opportunities to take photos like this one before we meet our baby girl.

Brenda made a prediction on Facebook a week or so back that the baby would be born in the next couple of days. She bet anyone who wanted to take her up on it an Oreo. Alas, two days went by and the baby was not ready to make her debut. My good friend Erin, who had taken the bet, said she wanted her Oreo. So I crocheted her one just for fun. Brenda thought the crocheted Oreo was so cute, she asked if I would crochet two more for the other bet winners.

I’ve pretty much resigned myself to the fact that this kid isn’t in a hurry to be born. I’m still hoping Brenda and Bug will get to meet her before they have to leave, but I won’t be surprised if they don’t. Maybe if we talk a lot about all the Oreos there are out here in the world, she’ll decide she needs to see what all the fuss is about and come on out already.

Yesterday I had a doctor’s appointment. Because I have high blood pressure, my weekly appointments include a 20-minute non-stress test to make sure the baby’s activity level is normal. Usually it’s just a quick thing, not a big deal.

Yesterday, I think they were waiting for an exam room to open up, so they left me on the monitor for nearly an hour. Again, not a big deal, except that this baby likes to move away from the sensor so I usually end up holding it to my stomach just so in order to keep the heartbeat audible. After 20 minutes, that gets a little tiring. After more than twice that long, my hands were cramping up.

Also, Brenda and the girls came with me yesterday because I was having an ultrasound, which Bug had never seen before. We’d brought crayons and paper and other stuff to entertain the kids, but after 45 minutes stuck in a small room they were getting mighty squirrelly.

Finally they came and got us. The doctor came in (I love my new doctor, by the way; changing insurance plans and doctors at 34 weeks was so very worth it) and assured me that the baby’s heartbeat had looked great on the NST (at which I wanted to ask, then why did you keep me in there for nearly an hour?) and measured me. She did a quick ultrasound, which Bug found quite interesting and Annalie—who’s been at a half-dozen ultrasounds in the past couple of months—found totally boring. And then we left.

It wasn’t a traumatic experience or anything. Just a little annoying. But I guess the whole thing struck Brenda as a good example of how DONE I am with being pregnant. Or maybe it just struck her as funny. In any case, she illustrated it, as seen above.

And she’s right. I do feel very done with being pregnant. Annalie was born at 36 weeks, so with her I never had the chance to experience that last excruciating month of being pregnant. Not only that, due to a combination of factors, I didn’t find out I was pregnant with her till I was 16 weeks along, so my pregnancy with her was, to me, less than five months long. Compared to that, this pregnancy feels like it’s been going on for years.

Tonight I was supposed to be going to a fancy party with Troy at the National Archives. It was one fancy party I was actually looking forward to, which if you know me is pretty strange. Normally I tolerate things like that, at best. But this time not only was I excited about it, I actually had a dress that I loved months ahead of time, which I bought way back in July on super-clearance, thinking it might come in handy.

As recently as a week ago, I was still looking forward to tonight. Then a few days ago, the baby dropped. That never happened with Annalie, or at least not till I was already in labor, so I had no previous experience with how uncomfortable it can be. Now when the baby moves around I can feel it way down in my pelvis and it’s not fun. Also, if I stand or walk around or forget to drink water for more than 20 minutes, I experience some truly delightful Braxton Hicks contractions, which are (1) painful and (2) frustrating because they’re not real labor.

Last night, I got to thinking about getting dressed up and going out to a party full of people I don’t know at 7 o’clock in the evening, the time when I am normally capable of nothing more taxing than sitting on the couch in my jammies, staring at the TV. The more I thought about it, the less it seemed like a good idea. Last night, after talking to Troy about it, and a hormone- and tiredness-fueled crying jag, I decided I needed to admit that I wasn’t going to be going to the party, I wasn’t going to get to wear my cute maternity dress, and I wasn’t even going to have a brand-new baby to show for it.

That’s another thing that’s getting to me, too. I really, really want to have this baby before Brenda and Bug have to go home. I want them to have the chance to meet her! And of course I’d rather not be pregnant another two and a half weeks or so. Sigh.

I don’t really have much reason to complain. I’ve had such an easy pregnancy compared to others: no morning sickness, no heartburn, no horribly swollen feet, no back pain, etc. I was able to get pregnant without medical intervention, and I’ve never had a miscarriage. I’m healthy and my baby is healthy and I have every reason to expect a complication-free labor and delivery. I have many, many reasons to be thankful, and I am.

But I’m still so very done being pregnant.

Illo by Brenda Ponnay

Halloween seems like it was so long ago. But I feel I should blog about it for the grandmas. So!

On Halloween morning, we made pumpkin-shaped pancakes with chocolate chips for eyes. No actual pumpkin was in the pancakes, though. I should have used this recipe from Zakka Life but I was lazy and just used the store-brand pancake mix and food coloring.

But they were still mighty tasty.

Pumpkin-carving time! Annalie designed her own pumpkin, as she has done every year since she was 3 1/2.

This year, she asked if she could help carve it too. So she did! She carved the eyes and nose, with a little help from Troy, and she did a great job.

Gumball supervised.

Pumpkin braaaaaaaiiiiins!

Um, Troy? Perhaps it’s time for a short break from the pumpkin-carving.

After a refreshing Twizzler and a rest in the sun, we got back to work.

Troy and I worked at carving our pumpkins. I even carved a little one for the baby, at Annalie’s request.

Kristen commented on Flickr that she loved that the baby got a punkin too. I replied that to Annalie, this baby has been a real member of the family, included in all plans and stories and holiday traditions, since way back in May when we told her that she’d be getting a baby brother or sister around Thanksgiving. She’s got big plans for them to have sisters-only secret handshakes, sleepovers, and makeover parties.

Trick-or-treating time! Annalie was a Sock Hop Sweetie this year for Halloween.

She fell in love with this costume the minute she saw it at Target, which kind of surprised me. She oohed and aahed over the various princess ones, and seriously considered a Daphne (from Scooby Doo) costume, but the minute she saw the bobby soxer pictured on the label of this one with her hair in a high ponytail and a scarf tied jauntily around her neck, she forgot them all.

She went with the one high ponytail on Friday, when we went trunk-or-treating, but for some reason on Halloween she decided she wanted two low ponytails instead. After I finished curling her hair, she surveyed herself in the full-length mirror and declared, “I look CUTE!”

I sort of dressed up as Juno for Halloween. I found an orange-and-white striped shirt on clearance a few weeks before Halloween, and I had bought myself a cheap black hoodie jacket at Old Navy, hoping it would get me through whatever cold weather we had before I had the baby so I wouldn’t have to buy an expensive maternity coat, and the costume just sort of fell into place. I really should have been wearing a short skirt over my jeans and carrying around a blue Slushie. But eh. I’m eight months pregnant and I don’t even really like Halloween all that much. Half a costume was enough.

On the way home, we saw that one of our neighbors had set all this stuff out labeled “Purple Heart donations”. I so badly wanted to sneak off with the KitchenAid mixer for a friend who had just been talking about wanting one, but Troy wouldn’t let me, even after I told him I’d make a cash donation to the veterans. He’s an upstanding citizen like that. And honestly, I probably wouldn’t have really done it. I’m an upstanding citizen too, even when people leave expensive kitchen appliances sitting out on the curb. Sigh.

We didn’t really do a whole lot of trick-or-treating. Annalie was done after going up and down two streets, so we headed back home. We lit our jack-o-lanterns and a fire in the fireplace. We ate roasted pumpkin seeds and played a board game. Occasionally some trick-or-treaters would come to the door, and Annalie would hop up to answer it, offering them the bowl with a cheerful, “Take a few, there’s plenty!” Even with her generosity, we still had a ton of candy left over. Oh darn.

From Juno, the Sock Hop Sweetie, and Captain Awesome, a belated Happy Halloween! Hope yours was as good as ours.

Because today is Saturday, I was able to sleep in a bit, but by 9 o’clock I was awake. I needed to get up anyway. We have some cleaning and laundry to do so we’re ready for our long-anticipated guests when they arrive Tuesday.

Annalie and I also needed to do some school, since we didn’t quite finish yesterday, just reading and a spelling test. Unfortunately, even though she’s doing really well at reading, those are probably the two subjects Annalie likes the least right now. It’s funny to me, and hard to comprehend, since reading and spelling were always my two easiest and favorite subjects.

But it didn’t surprise me when I called for Annalie to come to the table, telling her we needed to get reading and spelling done, and she came stomping into the dining room in a snit. I remained calm and asked her to take off her Little Mermaid singing necklace and put down the cell phone that she was carrying, since we don’t allow toys at the table when we’re doing school. She yanked the necklace off her neck and threw it on the floor at the same time that she slammed the cell phone down hard on the counter.

I calmly told her that she needed to go sit on the top step for a time-out, because she knows better than to throw things. And…well, let’s just say the situation deteriorated from there. Over the next hour, there was some crying, some yelling, and some stomping around—and I’m not going to tell you who did what, but I will tell you that I did not remain calm. We managed to get part of the reading done, but then Annalie went to get herself a drink of water from the fridge dispenser and accidentally-on-purpose let the cup fill and overflow, soaking two photographs and a picture one of Annalie’s friends colored for her.

That was when I sort of lost it. I asked Annalie what on earth was wrong with her, and told her to just go, to get out of my sight. She ran out of the kitchen crying, knowing she had done something wrong but also hurt that her normally patient mother had told her to get lost. Frustrated with Annalie and myself, I tossed the ruined pictures, grabbed a bunch of paper towels and started sopping up the water.

Troy came into the kitchen to see what was going on. I explained what had happened and told him that I was not having a good day, that I just needed to go back to bed, that I didn’t think I was in any shape to meet a friend for pottery-painting that afternoon. Troy suggested I email and ask if we could reschedule, so I did. (Thanks again for being so understanding, Shayne!)

Troy went to talk to Annalie in her room while I went to our bedroom and, after putting away the folded laundry all over my side of the bed, curled up with my ridiculously huge pregnancy pillow pulled the covers up over my head, bracing myself for what I knew I needed to do: cry. Even though I know sometimes it’s necessary to make myself feel better, I really hate crying. And I knew I had a cry coming, so I just wanted to get it over with.

A few minutes later, I was wiping my face and debating whether I wanted to roll over and get a tissue or just sniff hard, when Annalie came quietly into the room and climbed up on the bed. She got under the covers and put her head next to mine on the pillow and said, “I’m sorry I spilled water all over the fridge, Mama. And I’m sorry you’re having a rough morning. Daddy explained it to me.”

I put my arm around her, gave her a kiss, and told her I loved her. I apologized for losing my temper; she said she forgave me. We laid there talking idly for a couple of minutes when I had an idea.

“Hey Annalie, can you tell me how to spell egg?”

“Sure! E-g-g.”

“Right. Do you think you could tell me how to spell, oh, the word pets?”

Quietly to herself, Annalie sounded it out, “Puh-eh-tuh-sss…” then spelled it for me. I told her she was right. She was silent for a second, then giggled and asked, “Is this my spelling test?”

My response was to ask her if she knew how to spell less. She giggled again and spelled it perfectly. We went through all the rest of her spelling words that way, and she got every single one right, even the trickiest one, give.

When we were finished, I asked if she would go get her reading book so she could read her story a second time. She groaned a bit, so I sighed theatrically and said, “You know what would really make me feel so much better right now? If only someone could read me a story about ducks and chicks.” Annalie laughed at that. I told her to go tell Daddy she’d gotten 100% on her spelling test, and then come back to me with her reading book.

Laughing, she leapt off the bed and went running down the hall, calling out excitedly, “Daddy, Daddy! I got one hundred percent right on my spelling test! Not on my dry-erase board, but with my mouth! I even got the hardest word right, wanna hear? G-i-v-e! That spells give!”

She came back to the bedroom with her book and read through her story again, this time without me pointing at the words as she read, with good expression, and with almost no faltering or errors. I thanked her and praised her improvement on the second reading. She smiled and batted her lashes in that I-know-I’m-smart-but-you-can-tell-me-again way she has. I told her we were done with school, that she could go play.

She kissed me on the cheek and said, “Thanks, Mom!”

A few minutes later I got up. I got a phone call from another friend and made plans to meet her and her kids later for dinner and frozen custard while Troy watches the Nebraska game in peace. Annalie got dressed all in black and stuck a scarf in the back of her pants and went outside to be a cat while Troy raked up some leaves. I poured myself a cup of coffee and took a deep breath.

Last week, my friend Rebekah threw a baby shower…for Annalie, who is expecting her first baby sister.

A couple of weeks ago, when we were painting pottery with my mom at our favorite studio’s Ladies’ Night, Bekah asked if I was interested in having a baby shower with our friends in Southern Maryland. I said I’d love that, but I didn’t see how there was time to plan that before it would be getting too close to the baby’s birth for me to be comfortable driving that far for a party. And then it would be December, when everyone is crazy busy anyway. I suggested maybe we could have one after the baby was born.

A couple of days later, I emailed Bekah to confirm that I’d be in her town in a few days for my last pre-baby haircut, and asked if she wanted to go out to dinner afterwards. She replied…and asked if it would be okay if she planned a baby shower for Annalie’s first baby sister for the afternoon after my haircut. She happened to know that most of the friends I’d want invited were free for that block of time, because they’d been talking about possibly getting together for something else on that day. I responded that it was a fantastic idea, that I was sure Annalie would absolutely love it, and I would too.

If you’ve been reading this blog long enough, you might remember that Bekah is the one who, a couple of years ago, invited me to my own surprise birthday party. She knows me well enough to know I don’t really appreciate surprises, and I don’t love being the center of attention. So she read between the lines of my reluctance to plan a shower before the baby arrives, and planned a fun party for Annalie and her friends. Not only that, she did it with about three days’ notice.

We were originally going to meet at a park, but there was rain in the forecast, so we decided to meet at a pizza place with a party room and a kids’ play area instead. That ended up working out just fine (except the light would have been much better for photos at the park, but probably no one cared about that except me), and the food there is delicious, which was a nice bonus.

Rebekah did a great job planning fun games for the kids. They seemed to enjoy themselves a lot, and all the grown-ups appreciated not being made to play corny shower games. There was a match-the-baby-socks game, and a memory game in which Bekah sneakily made everyone think they’d have to remember items under a blanket but asked questions about me instead—what I was wearing, what color were my eyes, etc.—while I hid in another part of the restaurant. There was another game too, where they were passing an item around a circle based on certain words said in a story Bekah was telling, but I missed most of that one because I was too busy talking.

(Yes, I crocheted that flower headband on Baby Ashley in the above photo. Bekah asked me to make a headband for her with a “big ol’ flower” on it, so I did. I’m going to make a few more that are a little bigger, because I underestimated the size of a 4-month-old’s head.)

Thanks again for whipping up one of the world’s fastest baby showers, Bek! It was a fun party for kids and grown-ups alike, and those orange-coconut cupcakes were delicious. I’m glad you know me so well, and I promise never, ever to underestimate your party-planning skillz again!

Troy’s mom and stepdad were here for a weekend, and they got a whole monster post all about their visit. My mom was here for a week, and I still have not written a word about it. Sorry, Mom.

Of course, if you know how we usually roll, you know that my mom’s visits are normally closer to a month long. Her being here for a week felt like a blip, like she was barely here before she was going home again.

We crammed a lot into the week, I guess. The first whole day my mom was in town, we spent about eight hours dealing with various routine pregnancy-related doctor’s appointments. That wasn’t a very fun day, but it was a lot easier since my mom was with us, helping entertain Annalie in waiting rooms.

The last appointment I had that day was my 32-week ultrasound. This was the first time I’d ever gotten an ultrasound at a military hospital, so I can’t say that every military-hospital ultrasound would be like this one, but I do know that it was a completely different experience from all the ultrasounds I’ve gotten from civilian facilities.

First of all, there was a big sign on the door stating that kids weren’t allowed in the ultrasound room unless they were patients. Troy had managed to get off work early so he could meet us for the ultrasound, and he charmed them into letting Annalie come into the room with us, which was nice because it meant my mom, Troy, and Annalie all got to come in and watch. But then we had the least chatty ultrasound tech I’ve ever met. She worked in silence, and seemed startled when we asked her questions. She spent an hour taking every single measurement she could take, telling us that even though I’d had every measurement already taken at my last ultrasound so she normally wouldn’t be taking so many, I’d had the previous ultrasound done at a civilian facility and that wasn’t good enough. Then she left the room, leaving us in the dark, to talk to the doctor. She came back ten minutes later and had to redo a bunch of the measurements because the doctor didn’t think they were clear enough. Despite the 90 minutes she spent taking all those measurements, she never once attempted to get a look at the baby’s face. Also, that was the only ultrasound I’ve had done where they didn’t print me a single picture.

Things are nuts at this base hospital right now. They’re closing a couple of other military health facilities in the area, and funneling all the patients to this base since they’re building a new hospital there…which will open in another year. In the next month they’re expecting to deliver twice as many babies as usual, with no increase in staff or beds. Things are so crazy there that in the past five months I’ve seen five different OBs and two different nurse-midwives for my appointments. I’ve been asking for two months now if there was any way for me to get a referral to a civilian OB so I didn’t have to drive so far to my appointments, and so I didn’t have to have my baby at a hospital that’s heavily overburdened. Everyone flatly told me there was no way, that it was the policy of the command not to refer patients except in cases of extreme need. I was on the verge of telling Troy I didn’t care, that we could pay out of pocket if we had to, but I did not want to keep going back to that base hospital.

And then Troy found out there was an easy way for me to switch to a civilian doctor and hospital to have this baby: switch to a slightly different insurance plan, one that has some minor co-pays and a very reasonable deductible. That’s it. THAT’S IT. I have decided to laugh rather than cry at the fact that not one single person I talked to in the past two months ever mentioned this option to me, and be grateful that we figured it out when we did.

So at 34 weeks pregnant, I’m switching doctors. Now I’ll only be driving 15 minutes to my appointments instead of an hour. The antepartum testing I’ll be doing twice a week is at a hospital two miles from my house, about a five-minute drive away—the same hospital where we’ll be having the baby, that happens to be one of the top-ranked hospitals in the country for a variety of services, including its wonderful childbirth facilities. Please pardon me while I do the dance of joy.

Oops. Did I trick you into thinking this would be a nice chatty post with photos of the fun stuff we did with my mom while she was here, and then I suckered you into reading a rant about my frustrations with the military medical insurance system? And now, like our neighbor’s cat Mazda, you are unamused? Sorry about that. Here, let me show you some more photos of fun stuff.

Although it looks like Annalie is performing some delicate operation here, all she’s doing is stirring plaster and water together to make a decorative stepping stone. The kit came with the mask and gloves and Annalie insisted on using them. Madge commented on Flickr that when she saw this photo her first thought was, “Wow, homeschooling is intense!” which cracked me right up.

Our homeschooling days aren’t always so intense, though. One of the days my mom was here we made God’s eyes after reading about how the Huichol people in Mexico make them for good luck and protection. Craft projects with Annalie can be hit or miss, and I wasn’t sure if she’d be able to do this one without getting frustrated, but she was so into the idea that I decided to give it a shot.

As it turned out, Annalie picked it right up and needed almost no help once she got going. She watched me wind the yarn around a few times as I explained it to her, and then she took over and did great. The only times I helped her were when she wanted to change colors.

My mom had more trouble with her God’s eye than Annalie did with hers. She kept forgetting which direction she was supposed to be winding the yarn. So Annalie stepped in and showed her the right way to do it. It was fairly hilarious.

I don’t even know what we did the rest of the time my mom was here. We went to gymnastics one night. We went out to eat a few times. I baked egg rolls. We spent another half-day on a doctor’s appointment (before we figured out that we could switch insurance plans). We did schoolwork. We met Bekah for pottery-painting one night. We went to church. We sorted through two bins full of baby clothes and got them washed (and now they’re sitting in a bin in the living room because the room which needs to become the office so that the current office can become the baby’s room is uninhabitable at the moment thanks to a leaky window and possible mold; we’re waiting for the contractor to come back and fix it). My mom let me sleep in on the few mornings we didn’t have a reason to get up and go somewhere. I made a postcard for my mom to send to the usual suspects. The time went by way too fast. But we’re glad the visit happened at all—one last visit with us as a family of three.

I’ve written about four posts in my head in the past few days and have one actually half-written and saved in my drafts folder. But somehow I have not been able to fully write even one post. I’m sure I can blame my inability to blog at least partly on being 32 weeks pregnant; I hit the wall around 7pm most days and can barely even speak coherent sentences after that, let alone write them. Also, we’ve been busy with visitors; we had a really fun visit with Troy’s mom and stepdad last weekend and now my mom is here for a quick visit and we’re all happy about that.

At the same time there are some not-so-fun things going on in the lives of some people I love right now. And I’m not great at dealing with emotional stuff at the best of times. When I’m hormonal all bets are off. I might look calm on the surface but underneath I’m paddling furiously—worrying, praying, trying to go about my days without letting the dread get the better of me or giving in to the urge to hide in my bedroom all day. Life goes on and I’m okay, honestly. I can and do talk to Troy, my mom, and my good friends when I’m feeling like this, and it helps a lot. But still, underneath, I’m paddling away.

Outside my window It’s raining hard. We have a tarp spread out on the deck because the window right under the deck was leaking when it rained hard the other day, and…to make a long story short, it was our stopgap solution to keep the window from leaking again before it gets fixed. So far it’s working, and as a bonus the rain sounds lovely hitting the tarp.

I am thinking about Veronica Mars. Troy and I have been working our way through all three seasons on Netflix Instant for the past few weeks, and we both find that when we watch a couple of episodes in an evening we spend the next day or two thinking about the characters and whatever the current mystery is. We’ve both even dreamed about the show a couple of times. I’ve developed a whole new respect for Kristen Bell, have fallen more in love with Enrico Colantoni (whom I already loved forever for his role as Mathesar in Galaxy Quest), and have decided I might watch the cancelled series Moonlight, even though it’s about vampires, just so I can see Jason Dohring act some more.

I am thankful for how well homeschooling is going. I didn’t expect it to go badly, but I was a bit apprehensive about our first year of sitting down and actually doing lessons from a curriculum. I wasn’t sure how Annalie would do with her first taste of formal schooling…which is really hilarious because if you were to watch us during a typical school day, we are anything but formal. Anyway, things have been going great. Of course there have been bumps in the road and some moments of frustration, but I can deal with those, no problem. I’ve found myself very thankful for my years of experience as a classroom aide, tutor, camp counselor, etc. And Annalie has told me almost every day how much she loves homeschooling.

I am wearing cropped jeans, because I have temporarily misplaced my regular maternity jeans, a turquoise t-shirt, and black flip-flops. I am not wearing my wedding ring these days, which makes me kind of sad. But only a couple more months and I’ll be able to wear it again.

I am remembering that today is my nephew Leo’s 5th birthday! Happy birthday, Leo!

I am going to the post office later today, to mail some thank-you notes and a couple of surprise packages. Also to the grocery store because we’re almost entirely out of cereal.

I am currently reading Naked Heat, which is a book ostensibly authored by a fictional character from the TV show Castle. So far it’s just as good as the first Nikki Heat book, Heat Wave. And both books are as good as or better than an episode of Castle. Love it.

I am hoping that this baby will be born between November 26th and December 3rd.

On my mind: uh…sudoku? I’ve been doing lots of sudokus lately.

Noticing that I seem to be incapable of drinking a whole cup of coffee without reheating it at least twice.

In the kitchen there is a full cookie jar and leftover homemade pizza in the fridge.

Around the house are lots of things that need cleaning up, organizing, straightening, or put away. I’ve sort of fallen off the housework bandwagon lately. I think it’s at least partly due to my newfound hobby of figuring out ways to pick things up off the floor without bending over. Mostly I just ask Annalie help me.

One of my favorite things is how recently, Annalie declares that almost every day is a pajama day. Right now she’s wearing flannel PJ pants with rainbows and monkeys on them.

From my photo archive: this photo of Annalie was taken in January 2007, when she was a little more than 2 1/2 years old. I love the look of concentration on her face.