Okay, sorry for the long silence. I have no excuse except that I don't feel well much of the time and have gotten out of the habit. I will now buy you off with a Halloween photo. :)

Afternoon in the Park

Lila and I had a fun time hanging out with our friends this afternoon. We went to Central Market, which is one of my favorite places to play. The girls played on the playground while us mommies sat on a bench and talked. The playground there is shaded by huge trees so that it's nearly always cool and comfortable. After that, we walked down to the water to feed the ducks.

Unfortunately, there were no ducks to be seen today, so we ended up feeding the little fish and the turtles. And then, just as we were getting up to leave, a couple of ducks showed up. By that time, however, we were out of bread and VERY hot (there's no shade by the water) so we left the ducks to pick up scraps left by the fish and turtles. Maybe next time...

Then we did our other favorite thing there - we actually went into the grocery store. They have a huge selection of bulk items, such as trail mix and animal crackers and all sorts of goodies. We usually get a little bucket of some sort of treat and that is Lila's 'special treat' for the day. It was an all around fun time and we were both happy and tired by the time we got home.

Funny story: We were at Double Dave's for dinner this evening and they had the music blaring, as usual. It was oldies today, which is my preference (over the hard rock or sports they have blaring at other times). The song 'Barbra-Ann' came on - "A Bar bar bar bar Barbar Ann..." Lila decided to sing along and her interpretation was "Blah blah blah!" I was laughing over that one for five minutes!

Prego (not the pasta sauce)

I'm 8 weeks pregnant now - 222 days to go! (Well, actually, it's more like 215 days because they will schedule my c-section for one week before my due date, but let's not worry about things like math.) The baby is now about 5/8 of an inch long, which is roughly the size of a kidney bean. Last week they said it was the size of a blueberry, which honestly sounds bigger than a kidney bean to me...

Smells of all kinds continue to disgust me. I tried emptying out some old leftovers from their tupperware last night (just a little old - they weren't growing anything) and I was so disgusted that I had to stop and ask Doug to finish because I was gagging! I'm not sure if I ever made it clear, but I did have an ultrasound at my first appointment and we saw a tiny blob with a tiny flicker of a heartbeat. I have a picture, but there's really no point in scanning it because it doesn't look like anything but a little blob.

I'm kind of disturbed by the fact that my clothes are already starting to get a bit snug. I was so ill during my first trimester with Lila that I actually lost weight, so to be gaining weight so early this time seems odd. What does not seem odd is that I could sleep about 18 hours a day if I wanted to. I've considered going to bed at 8 or 9 o'clock so that I can sleep more during the night, but I enjoy those two hours of evening child-free time too much to give them up!

Odd Couple

Lila and Hurley get along amazingly well. She is much more gentle with him than I would have thought her capable of. And he is much more tolerant of her touching him than I ever expected. He even lets her pick him up and rarely, if ever, gets all huffy and pointy with her. In fact, I think he's more friendly and patient with Lila than he is with Doug or I!

Doug and I were also discussing this evening how Lila does not seem really to understand the meaning of the word 'scary'. She's started saying it, but in odd ways. Like this morning, she was talking about seeing Elmer the puppet at church and she said, with a big grin on her face, "Yeah and he was a little bit scary!" Or this evening, when I put Hurley back in his cage and she was watching him poke around in there, and she said, "He's bein' kinda scary!" Again with a smile on her face.

"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

On an unrelated note, I'm happy to report that I resisted the urge to eat my body weight in fresh homemade chocolate chip cookies this evening.

Say it Loud (I'm Fuzzy and I'm Proud)

When I was pregnant with Lila, we waited until about one month before she was due and evicted the kitties from our bedroom (at night). We didn't want them in there while the baby was sleeping, but we didn't want them to associate their eviction with the baby. Anyway, we were both expecting them to put up a major fight and drive us crazy, but they acted like they didn't even care!

Well, we've had to kick them out of our room (at night) again, this time for the sake of my allergies. And again they are putting up no fight. True, if I take too long between feeding them and closing us into our room, they'll come wandering in and then they give us very withering looks when we have to send them out. And then there was that one night when I, apparently, did not shut the door all the way and they just waited until we were asleep and let themselves in.

But overall, they aren't putting up any kind of fight. It's a little disturbing, really. Every night, for years, they sleep in our bed - Charlie by my face (sometimes this seems like a passive-aggressive attempt to smother me) and Cordy by Doug's feet. And when we suddenly put them out of the room... they don't care?!? I can't even go to the bathroom and shut the door without at least one cat and a toddler trying to slither under the door or beat it down! It just doesn't make sense.

Peeler 2.0 Update

I'm 7.5 weeks pregnant now, which means that I have approximately 225 days to go! (not that i'm counting.) The big news in my uterus this week is that little hands and feet are emerging from the developing arms and legs. They look more like paddles than hands and feet, but still... Technically, I have gained two pounds since I found out that I was pregnant, but my weight can fluctuate that much when there's not another person growing inside me.

Sadly, the morning sickness has caught up with me (with a lot of help from my allergies). I was livin' large for a couple of weeks, thinking I'd get off easy this time, but the baby had other plans. The really sad part is that I tend to be ravenous in the evenings (usually for meatloaf or something equally hearty), but I feel horribly full after just a few bites. I've had to learn the hard way to listen to my stomach and not my mouth.

And I'm now back in Cracker Land, which is a lot less exciting than Candy Land. I eat crackers before bed, every time I wake up in the middle of the night, and as soon as I open my eyes in the morning - all in an attempt to ward off the early morning nausea. I'm also still paranoid that I'm having twins. You'd think that my ultrasound would have dispelled that fear, but Dr. G had a hard enough time finding one little baby blob - there could easily have been another one hiding in there!

Pretty Woman (or Baby)

This is a photo of Lila in part of her Halloween costume. We (Lila, Mammaw, and I) went shopping this past weekend and had a much harder time than I expected. We went to Babies R Us first and found their selection to be abysmal. I think I just waited too long and they were already picked clean (though i did find some really cute jammies). From there we went to my favorite place for clothes - Once Upon a Child.

They had quite a selection, but most things were the wrong size or not very cute. I finally found a couple of options that seemed right (a dog and a clown) and we showed them to Lila. Her first choice was the dog costume, so we tried it on. She quickly decided that she didn't like the way the hood/dog head felt, so that one had to go. She was objecting to the clown outfit before it was all the way on her body.

My mom had already spotted this (pseudo) leather jacket and one of us had the idea to make that part of her costume. So we did! I got her the jacket, a shirt, jeans, and those cute little boots and she's all set to be a (very fashionable) little biker chick! And I don't have to worry about her deciding she hates it 10 minutes into the evening because it will just feel like clothes to her.

Um Um Um Um Um Um

Hurley has had another bath. For those of you who were concerned last time about Lila getting some kind of strange hedgehog germs from him, you may rest assured - he went in after Lila came out this time. And he hated it just as much as before. In fact, he probably hated it even more because I used soap on him this time! I tried to perk him up afterward by telling him what clean and soft toes and belly he had, but it didn't work. He pouted for two days. Literally. And it's not difficult to tell when a hedgie is pouting.

We kind of saw another hedgehog today. We had to go pick up a new bag of food for Hurley (that's a story in itself) and the pet store had another young hedgie. It was asleep, of course, so we didn't disturb it. Lila did get to hold a snake though. Actually, we both did. We held a couple of small corn snakes... and even wore them like necklaces! Lila was a little nervous at first, but quickly got over it. She loves going to the pet store and I knew this place was pretty good about letting you hold things that you don't intend to buy, so I just asked. I got a couple of photos, but they're on my phone and I don't think I have a cable to transfer them to the computer.