Happy Father's Day

Thank you Daddy for:

• scruffy faced tickle kisses.


• sneaking me treats Mommy doesn't let me have.


• being my own personal jungle gym.


• fostering my appreciation for toots.


• teaching me how to be a magician's assistant...

Happy Father's Day from the little girl whose eyes you make twinkle!

Vocab

Sofie's been bursting with sentences lately. Ben and I have found ourselves catching each other's eyes with a shared, "Did she just say that?" expression quite often over the past few days.

Here are some recent doozies...

"I want the other rocket." (Playing with her rocket launching toy outside in the yard.)

"Feet! Daddy's feet! Feet in the water!" (Upon catching her daddy emerging from the shower.)

"I want a burger bite." (Apparently my burger looked more appealing than her chicken nuggets!)

We've also been singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and You Are My Sunshine together quite a bit lately. She knows almost every word to both songs and every time we sing them I get that duet-y feeling that you only get when you're singing along with someone else...gauging their timing, their tone. I have to admit it makes me choke up sometimes. Especially when we get to the, "You'll never know dear..." part. Her little voice combined with her facial expressions and the way she pronounces the words is just too cute to handle. Oh what a sappy mama!

Parade the Circle

Ben and I took Sofie to Parade the Circle on Saturday morning to watch the parade. Neither of us had ever been to it so we weren't quite sure what to expect. It ended up being really cool and something I'm sure will become a tradition for our family as long as we're in this area. The parade started 20 years ago with just 1000 spectators and although it has grown to include 2000 parade participants and 70,000 spectators it still has a very community-ish feel to it. Anyone can participate in the parade for the small sum of $5 and, as I'm sure you might imagine, that means there's quite a variety of very creative spectacles. I took about a million pictures. Here are some of my favorites...

The only proof that I was, indeed, present!

Some of the 100 Marilyn Monroe's that were dressed to imitate this famous Andy Warhol painting. They paraded through singing Happy Birthday Mr. President and blowing kisses to the audience.

This group included several Pez dispensers, my favorite of which was of course our Pez-ident Barack Obama.

An underwater adventurer pushing a machine that's creating enormous bubbles and a pretty neat squiddy-looking thing in the background.

There were many very cool, very tall, puppet-like contraptions, each manned by a single parade participant. I chose to share these ones with you for no other reason than I like how the picture turned out.

There were also many many participants walking on stilts. These ones were particularly cool because they included this giant see-saw type contraption in their performance. Every so often they would stop and hoist each other into the air to perform tricks.

Here are some very elaborate painted papier-mache creatures.

And of course, I had to include a picture of the ear. This was actually one of the most interesting displays. It was the beginning of a production of sorts that was several "floats" long. At the beginning, a few wadded up paper balls were tossed into the ear canal, followed by several floats demonstrating how the paper balls set up an extensive chain reaction, and ending with a few wadded paper balls shooting out of another ear on the other end. Very neat!

Sofie really enjoyed herself. Here she is dancing to one of the many bands that performed along the way.

Freezer Plans

Maybe you've noticed my plans for the freezer posted over there on my sidebar. They're listed there more for me than anything else, because paper has a way of getting scrunched, torn, and lost around this place :) Looks like a pretty ambitious list doesn't it?! I'm really anxious to get started...does anyone have any idea how long things will keep in the freezer?

Quickie

At my prenatal appointment this morning (they think I've only gained 30 pounds...ha...haha...hahaha!) my midwife had to step out for a moment. When she returned she apologized and explained that she had forgotten to write a prescription for her previous patient for a massage. Jokingly I said, "Where's my massage prescription?" and she replied, "I can write one for you if you want..." Without skipping a beat I said, "Oh no, no...that's ok!" Um, what the HECK was I thinking?! Do you think it's too late to call and say, "Now...about that whole prescription for a massage thing you mentioned this morning..." :)

Baby Grey is cooking just fine, working on getting nice and round and juicy over these next few weeks, and it won't be too much more waiting now. Which has got me thinking maybe it's about time for me to start considering planning and prepping some freezer meals for those first few crazy weeks. We don't have a ton of space, just the freezer in our refrigerator, so I won't be making a whole lot, but I'd love it if you'd all share some of your favorite things to freeze. I've also been thinking about mocking up a grocery list with quick prep meals that Ben can take to the store in the weeks that he is off and home to help out, so if you have any easy favorites I'd love it if you'd share those too!

America's Toddlers Got Talent

This is one of Sofie's favorite songs/books at the moment...

...do you think it's too early to tell if she's tone deaf!

And here's the peanut butter jelly dance that ensued during lunchtime this weekend after she requested some "muckick" (music)...

Definitely cute, but I'm pretty sure she wouldn't make it to Round 2 :)

Baby Grey 29 wks. 2 days

Someone is off visiting her Nana and giving me lots of time to catch up on the things that have been camped out on my "to-do" list...like scanning and posting pictures from Grey's latest ultrasound! Keep in mind that the pictures are kind of crummy due to his position at the time...

This is his profile (at a strange angle) with his arm resting above his head...

His arm and wee hand stretched out like he's about to catch something...

I'm just going to go ahead and assume that unless you are DeAnna (or maybe Kyle with DeAnna's help) you're not going to be able to discriminate that this is his mouth and nose hiding behind who knows what...

...and some confirmation that he is, indeed, still a boy!

Fancy Feet

Sponge's Spot 31 Weeks

My "photographer" with his wacky sense of humor suggested that I post this one too. The pair of us are about the most unamused photographer/subject you'll find. I basically stand around like a bump on a log while he randomly snaps pictures with no concern for composition. So we get a lot of mid-sentence treasures like this one... Sort of looks like I'm having a contraction or something doesn't it :)

I am officially 31 weeks pregnant today. I am hovering close to +38 pounds and I was really feeling like a heifer until I went back through the archives and read that I had gained about 38.5 pounds at 32 weeks pregnant with Sofie. So, although I still feel like a heifer and my 50 pound weight-gain with Sofie is certainly not something to be striving towards, at least I'm not any heavier than I was the first time around! My body has a strange way of distributing the weight and I can only explain it by saying that I'm pretty sure my bottom half hasn't yet received the memo that I'm pregnant. This past week I was shopping for an outfit to wear for some portraits we're going to have taken soon and I bought a size medium pants but needed an XL top. Go figure...

I've been feeling pretty good these past few weeks after enduring a pretty miserable second trimester and I'm hoping that the rest of this pregnancy continues on the upswing. I know that the second trimester is supposed to be when most women feel their best, but maybe I'll get lucky and feel best in my third. So far, at least, it's been much better. In my dream world, I'd go into labor naturally two weeks before my due date (that would be a whole month less of pregnancy for me!) I suppose it's more realistic for me to assume I'll be induced 2 weeks late once again, but a girl can hope right?

A couple of weeks ago we had another ultrasound done to check on the location of my placenta. As expected it has moved up and out of the way and Mr. Grey was in perfect position for birth, head down and facing my back, so there's no good reason that I shouldn't go into labor on my own this time. We have a couple of pictures from that appointment that I'll get around to scanning in eventually, but they're not really that great. I guess it's hard to take a picture of a kid who's upside down and not looking at you :) Grey moved and jiggled and stretched out his wee legs during the ultrasound and generally made the tech work hard to get all the information she was looking for during the scan. What can I say? I make wiggly babies! This go around I've been able to really feel a lot of the finer motor movements like little arms, hands and feet pressing taut against my belly. When I was pregnant with Sofie I was confused when other pregnant women would comment indicating that they knew where their baby's bum or feet or arms were resting in their abdomen. I could really only feel gross motor type movements and hiccups with her. I have no idea why it's been different this time around.

We've been reading a lot of There's a New Baby at Your House books to Sofie lately and I would love to know what she thinks of all this pregnancy stuff. She's taken to blowing raspberries on my belly which she, of course, thinks is hilariously funny. A couple of our friends have had newborns in the recent weeks and we were able to visit one to share a meal last week. Sofie was, as always, fascinated with the baby. She couldn't get close enough and kept asking for, "My baby!" I think she thought it was like some really fancy baby doll. If you've seen her handle her baby dolls that thought is just a little frightening! I'm glad that she's so interested in babies, but hopefully the novelty will wear off relatively quickly. I can't imagine it would be very fun trying to lovingly fend off an overly doting big sister 24 hours a day long-term!

Ben has (mostly) agreed that we can name the baby just plain Grey if we use the EY spelling. I'm not really clear on why exactly that makes a difference, but I'm happy with the outcome so I'm not questioning it!

We're pretty much ready for this little guy to make his appearance. We've been steadily checking off needed items from our list and have been so fortunate to receive many wonderful hand-me-down items. I've been diligently washing and organizing baby clothes as we receive them and Sofie and Grey's room has been rearranged to accommodate them both. We really only need to collect a few stored baby items from Nana's basement (baby swing, tub, misc.) and put the co-sleeper back together. As far as I'm concerned those are things that can be done while I'm at the hospital! So kiddo...spend a few more weeks fattening yourself up in there and then come on out and join us. We're ready!

Stroller Success

Excited to share that I just bit the bullet and ordered this Graco Quattro Tour Duo in Soho. Although I was really leaning towards a side-by-side, Ben and I agreed that it would probably be wise to buy a stroller that Grey's carseat will snap into, at least for the beginning months. Once the kiddos are a little bit older I have every intention of buying another, lightweight, easy to fold, side-by-side stroller.

Anyhow, I'm feeling quite pleased with myself for finding this gem for around $70 below retail ($30 less than I've seen it anywhere during all of my Internet scouring). Also, did you notice that it just happens to match my new diaper bag (which arrived in the mail last week and is PERFECT!)

Ok...I think you'll be happy to hear that this pretty much wraps up my baby product PSAs and we will be back to our regularly scheduled cute kid pictures and anecdotes shortly :)