General

Since we replaced the sidewalk, we now have a large gaping hole in our foundation plantings – we had them tear out the old, extremely overgrown juniper bushes in that section. (The plan is to get rid of the rest of them next year.) I’ve been trying to learn how to be a landscape designer for the past week – it’s not easy! It’s really hard to visualize circles on a piece of paper as a three-dimensional, colorful, living, breathing garden. I think I might finally have a workable plan that won’t cost a fortune, though…we’re going to break ground this weekend.

(Really, there isn’t anything more exciting going on in my life right now besides home improvements. Sorry.)

Someone stole our driveway this morning! They were kind enough to come back later, though, and put down a layer of gravel. Immediately after that, the sky opened up. We’re talking ark-building-inspiring rain here.

We now have a large lake on top of a gravel driveway.

I don’t imagine they’ll be paving it anytime soon.

Is it possible to OD on garlic? We were both too tired to cook last night, and tired of eating leftovers, so we broke out a soup mix someone gave us for Christmas…I swear, there must have been the equivalent of 6 heads of garlic in there in the form of dried flakes. Despite having brushed my teeth several times and eaten many non-garlicky things since then, I still feel like I’m oozing garlic.

At least I won’t have to worry about vampires for a while. ;)

We ordered the crib and dresser yesterday. I’m slightly worried, because the crib could take anywhere from 10-16 weeks to come in, and the baby’s due to arrive in about 14 1/2 weeks. We have a cradle for the first several weeks anyway, but still…I’d feel a little better if the room was completely set up before the baby comes home. Oh, well. We fell in love (or at least I did, and Denis didn’t argue) with the shape, size and color of the crib, and I think it will be worth the wait in the end.

…I’m off to go brush my teeth again before work. It’s probably just my pregnancy-enhanced sense of smell, but still…

No, not about the baby – she’s still a girl, according to the ultrasound technician. I asked if she (the technician) were me, if she would go out and buy pink dresses and purple paint, and she said yes. So, I guess we’d better go pick up some lavender paint chips!

Anyway, what I’ve been corrected about is that the walkway got done all in one day! It looks fantastic (if you ignore the fact that there’s no landscaping around it anymore and we need to plant some new grass). I just realized that I didn’t take any before pictures, although I do have some that show the walk when we moved in five years ago. I’ll have to take some after pictures, scan in the old pictures and post them one of these days. (Although maybe I’ll wait until we’ve planted that grass!)

The landscaping guy we hired to do our front walk and our fence is coming today to start the front walk. I’m sure it’s going to be longer than a one-day job, so our front entranceway (which we use multiple times a day to take the dogs out) is going to be somewhat out of commission (or at least muddy) over the weekend. Should be fun!

The fence, much to the dogs’ disappointment, won’t be going in until sometime in mid-to-late August. We’re also getting the driveway dug up and redone in August. So…for the next 6 weeks or so, something around here is going to be under construction at any given moment.

And then there’s the baby’s room, which we’d really better start soon if we’re going to move out the existing furniture, strip the wallpaper, paint, put up a chair rail (and crown moulding?), install a closet organizer, replace the mini-blinds, and move in new furniture all in the next 15 weeks! (Well, I suppose if the Trading Spaces people can do all that in a weekend, it might not really take that long…)

Big ultrasound #3 is this afternoon (psst, baby, I really don’t mind if you don’t let them get all the pictures again, it’s fun to get to see you every few weeks). I’m going to ask them to double check that the little girl is still a little girl. I would feel silly bringing a little boy home to a flowery lavender room, especially when there are such cute little boy bedding sets out there.

Update, 10:47 AM: It’s going to be a loooong day. Molly has decided that her mission is to bark as loudly as possible until the noisy digging machine and scary work crew go away…

For such tiny little people, babies sure need a lot of stuff! We started registering last night…I say started, because despite the fact that I “prepared”, the number of choices we had to make was overwhelming! We’re going to go back and work on it over the weekend. Hopefully no one will find the registry before then, because there are things that we’ll probably change.

We did manage to pick out a bedding set, though. (The colors aren’t all that accurate in those pictures.) The room is essentially going to be sage green, lilac, and white, with a little pink and yellow, too. I really like this one, because most of the girly-pink sets are really, really pink. Blindingly so. Of course, we’re hoping that the ultrasound technician was right, because it’s definitely going to be a feminine room!

Tomorrow I will be 24 weeks pregnant – 6 months. Technically, you’re pregnant for 10 months, or 40 weeks. I guess the third trimester starts around 25-28 weeks, depending on who you talk to. Confused yet? Just don’t think about it too much. Anyway, the baby has been pretty active for the past two weeks – she just had to get big enough so I could feel all the little somersaults going on in there. It’s the neatest feeling, and it totally distracts me from whatever I’m doing at the time. According to various sources, the baby should be around 12 inches long and 1 1/2 pounds. Boy, does she have a lot of growing left to do in the next 16 weeks!

Oh, and I’ve been knitting, and I’ve finished some things. I really need to update the craft pages soon…

Another busy, busy weekend. We had several out-of-town family members staying with us for the weekend. I finally broke down and bought a maternity swimsuit (I was really hoping I could squeeze into my regular one a bit longer – no such luck) so I could jump (well, ok, walk) into the pool with everyone else. We had a cookout for the 4th. Amazingly enough, the weather held out until 9 – right when the fireworks would have started – but at least we got in some good swimming and Denis didn’t have to grill in the rain!

My two little nieces who visited are just as adorable as ever. Lizzy was all prepared with her patriotic dress. The dogs were actually pretty good with the girls, and I’m feeling like we all might survive the arrival of the baby in October. Plus, I got a sneak preview of how Denis will interact with our daughter when he took a little nap with Michelle… (Isn’t it the mom who’s supposed to nap while the baby naps?)

As people who have been to my house can tell from that picture, we did get our new furniture in time. That’s a long, not-so-pleasant story, which I may or may not ever tell. But the furniture is great! And I think Murphy has forgiven us for taking away “his” couch, what do you think?

Oh, and we finally made it to Harry Potter. (If we’re this busy now, what’s it going to be like when the next movie comes out?!?) I liked it. I do think I’m never going to like the movies as well as the books, but it’s always interesting to see how my vision of how certain characters look or act compares with the director’s and author’s vision. I was disappointed in some of the things they left out – like who Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs were, and any sort of emphasis about the prophecy. Overall, though, I definitely enjoyed it.

Now it’s Tuesday (although it feels like Monday) and I’m soooo sleepy. But it’s time to go get ready for work…

OK, so, I know I haven’t blogged in a while. It’s really a long (boring) story, mostly involving the fact that my house was (still is) a disaster and it needed to not be. To give you an idea, we haven’t had furniture in our family room for the past 5 days…but that’s a story for tomorrow…

To start with, Lisa had her baby on Saturday. I was originally the designated baby sitter for Henry, but then I became the designated driver-to-the-hospital for Lisa. Which was cool, because I got a sneak preview of the whole admissions process (boy, do they ask a lot of questions!) and where to go – and how to get to the hospital in the first place – for my turn in October.

Jenny had a second wedding reception Saturday evening at a local art gallery, which was a fun little party. (Mmm. Candy sushi…) Unfortunately, by that time of the evening, my feet hurt too much to take advantage of the art gallery tour.

We also bought a car on Saturday. In honor of Sammy’s birthday, we got a blue car. Actually, it’s a 2005 Subaru Outback wagon, and it’s atlantic blue. (And it’s my very first new car!) We just picked it up tonight, and if I hadn’t been so busy driving it around, I may have gotten home enough before dark to take a picture. Oh, well. You can go here to see it on Subaru’s site. This car is replacing our old Ford Escort wagon, which we’ve only had for 2 1/2 years. It needed lots of work, and it’s a ’97, and, well, we figured we needed a larger family car that we could trust for long haul trips. (Hear that, baby? We bought you a car already!) Anyway. Bye, little blue (green) wagon, we’ll miss you. Sort of. Well, the new car is much nicer, so we probably won’t miss you too long…

Good.

That means that the DNS switch between my old hosting provider and my new one worked. If things are broken for a couple of days, you’ll all forgive me, right?

There are lots of things to blog about from this weekend, but they’ll have to wait for now…

This afternoon, we found out that we’re going to have a little girl!

The very first dream I had about this baby was right:

When I was a little less than a year old, my mom, my grandmother, my great-grandmother and I all had our picture taken together. It’s one of my most treasured photos, despite the fact that it has turned pink over time. About two or three weeks after I found out I was pregnant, I had a dream that the picture was framed next to a similar one – one of me, my mom, my grandmother…and my daughter. She had a mop of curly auburn hair, and was the same age as I was in the original picture. Now we’ll have to see if she turns out having those auburn curls…

Denis has been predicting that it’s a girl since Valentine’s Day. Note that we didn’t even know I was pregnant until a whole week after that day – so he was right on both counts! (Mark this day on the calendar!)

This puts Anouk on the top of my list of things to knit for the baby. Oh, and what do you think of this little sweater?