Before + Sneak Peek!

Before:

(All those boxes on the counter? Our dinner that night. SUSHI! YUM!)

Sneak Peek:

The After is being completed as I type. We painted that little pantry door, and Paul is at the moment drilling back in. Yay! A project that got completed in the time we alloted! This is a first for our house! I'll get some good pictures of it tomorrow when we get some good light.

In other news, I thought I would share this. Alex has taken a liking to dressing up (already), and whatever clothes she find around the house usually get draped on and layered in pretty awesome combinations. Alot of the time I am running after her as she is attempting to wear my bra as a necklace or my underwear as a hat, but this time she kind of got it right. She found a sweater of mine and threw it on, and found a hat of Paul's to finish the look off. She look so darned good that she couldn't help but stop and check herself out in the oven every time she passed it. Which was once every 45 seconds or so. This child is mine, there is no doubt. (If having her pass through my birth canal left any room for doubt in the first place...)

Awkward In-between stage...

Are you getting overwhelmed with my influx of posts lately? I am not going to apologize. I will remember this and point it out to you when I don't post for 6 months after this baby is born. 'See? Remember when I used to post alot? It was to hold you over.'

I find myself in a very awkward stage right now. It's that stage of being very pregnant and on the verge of popping, overwhelmed with the instinct to make my house nice and neat for this new child that's about to join us. But also, being a mother of a fifteen-month old. That right there should show you the tug and pull that's going on. I am sitting in my dining room right now, and behind me is my kitchen. It's spotless. For the past few weeks, I haven't been able to tolerate things on the counter, dishes in the sink. So I've been a little neurotic about keeping it tidy. But on my right, my living room is staring at me laughing, because in only a half hour, THIS is what my daughter does to it:

Didn't I mention in one of the lasts posts about how rare it is for her to sit still and play with just one toy? I wasn't exaggerating. So now, in the amount of time it took me to clean the kitchen, Crazy Toddler ripped apart my living room, and upon seeing it, I got all twitchy and spazzy, and was thrown down on to my knees involuntarily by this blasted nesting instinct until I managed to get control of it (read: throw all of her toys into that big boat thing that you see at the bottom left there...). Honestly. It's sick. Paul will vacuum for me, and I want (and maybe HAVE on one or two occasions) to throw myself down and make out with the vacuum lines on the carpet. Paul can barely get me in the mood to do anything these days (tmi? sorry.), but those vacuum lines? WATCH. OUT. I'm getting all fired up just thinking about them.

Opinions wanted: Out-of-the-ordinary Nice? Or Out-of-the-ordinary Creepy?

I had a run-in with a fellow today, and I am stumped as to how to feel about it. So I am asking you, internet.

I had to run up to the grocery store right before we put Alex to bed because both Paul and I had forgotten that we were out of milk. Paul was on the phone and happened to be more exhausted than I was at this point (which NEVER happens anymore), so I grabbed my keys and ran up there. On my way out, I passed a younger gentleman who was coming into the store with a few other people (not sure if they were in the same group or not). Right when I passed him, I heard him say, 'CONGRATS!' I turned, and saw that he was still walking, but glancing back at me. Now, I can only assume that he meant 'Congrats on that enormous belly of yours!' But it just seemed so random. And it was made a wee bit more uncomfortable because there was another young man walking extremely close behind me (because, well, I walk slowly, no, excuse me, I waddle slowly these days. And people seem to think that by walking really closely behind me when there is not enough room to pass will make me go faster. I just want to turn and hit them and remind them that I would walk faster if I COULD.) Anyway- I am pretty sure that creepy/nice man thought that close-walker dude was my baby-daddy.

So. Out of the ordinary nice? Was he just telling me congrats in a situation when our culture usually has us walking by each other with our heads down? Or out of the ordinary creepy? Was he just being an ass while in front of a few people who could have been his buddies that know him as the guy that will say anything to anybody?

Doctor's Update: Week 38

Dilated 2 cm (!!!)
Everything else the same.

Progress is progress, right?! I'll take it. It took me hours and hours of actual labor to hit 2 cm with Alex.

In other news, Paul and I are silly. Silly silly silly. And maybe you could substitute 'silly' for 'STUPID STUPID FOOLS'. Either one is acceptable.

We've decided that NOW would be the perfect time to finally get some of these silly little house projects done that we've been putting off, oh I don't know, since we've moved in. Maybe he is trying to make me go into overdrive so my head finally spins and pops off and he won't have to listen to me whine anymore. Or perhaps it's sympathy nesting. (Because he certainly isn't gaining sympathy weight. The jerk has been LOSING weight and looking great. I hate him. SO insensitive.) Either way, hubby went out at butt-crack early yesterday morning and came home with buckets of paint and various items needed to apply that paint. I am not as concerned as I probably should be. I understand that my only role in this will be to take Alex somewhere for a day to escape the fumes. But still... as much as I am going to enjoy having my kitchen painted (FINALLY!!!), I can't help but wonder what it's going to look like when I call Paul after he's done half of a wall and tell him that my water broke and I need him to DROP EVERYTHING and come pick my wet butt up. I have a feeling that that half a wall will be all that's painted for quite some time. But... it's all hypothetical, right? Sure.

We also have this big list written on our dry-erase board. List of things to do to the house to put it up for SALE. AFTER THE BABY IS BORN. BECAUSE WE WANT TO MOVE. AND WE LIKE PUTTING OURSELVES THROUGH AS MUCH UNNECESSARY PAIN AS POSSIBLE. Things like, hang curtains, weed, clean the pool (which... HUGE undertaking, that one. Our pool has a colony of tadpoles living in the water that's gathered on the cover. And thanks to our brainy dog who decided to take a dip one day and jumped right on top of the cover, causing Paul to have a mild heart attack while screaming at her to get out, and then tearing several holes with her nails in her attempt to escape the furry of said husband... most of those tadpoles are now living in the actual pool. High five, Violet.). I don't know. I think we'd get the same effect if we stood in front of our garage and let people fling rocks at us. But... whatever.

(Side note: I am watching my daughter sit and play with a toy. Like, SIT STILL. And play with just one toy. She's been there for about 3 minutes, which is a record. I don't want to take a picture, because I feel like the flash might throw her off and set her running again. I am not even looking directly at her for fear of distracting her. Oh... wait. It's done. She's up and running now. Up and down the hallway. I'm still impressed with how long that lasted.)

So, that's where we are at now. Lord help us.

My Apologies.

Sorry for that last post. It was a weak moment during which I had access to the internet. (Stupid accessible wireless technology.) Thanks for not coming back at me with totally justifiable comments that told me to suck it up. I appreciate it.

To make up for it, I have alot of random photos for you! Yay! (I am loading these while Alex is sitting on the kitchen floor reading a Reader's Digest. Gotta love pint-sized magazines!)

This one is just to prove that I do put pants on her occasionally. Well, I should say 'outfit'. But really, most of the time we are in the house, she is in a diaper and a t-shirt. And if that t-shirt happens to have buttons, it's never buttoned. Yay for lazy parenthood!

And this is an example of what happens when you use potato salad as hair product. Just in case you were ever tempted into trying it out.

This is what usually happens at night. It takes as many eyes as possible to watch Violet go retrieve her ball. Alex and daddy are a tag-team. They even share a beer or two. Now that's love.

CORN ON THE COB!!! BEST FOOD EVER!!!! (smothered in butter and parmesian cheese - if you haven't tried it, do it. Then understand that I am pregnant and I get to like whatever I want to like. Don't judge.)

And finally, this one needs some explanation. And perhaps this part could count as an actual 'update', so get ready. Paul and I are in a funny place right now. Our future is so jumbled and confused and changing on a daily and sometimes hourly basis, both of our heads are spinning. We don't know where we are going to be living, where Paul is going to be working. We could very well be here in this house doing the same job in ten years (please, Lord, NO!). But we don't know. We aren't very happy in this house, in this neighborhood. We've thought about moving out of state, and those choices include Colorado, maaaaaaaybe Michigan, Hawaii, overseas again... who knows. All of those are dependant on Paul getting certain jobs that he can apply for. Anyway, long story short, we are starting to look in to options that would keep up in St. Louis, but get us away from the area in which we currently reside. One of those options would be a community called New Town. It's almost a Stepford Wives kind of town, with it's own ammenities, shops, lakes, pretty much anything you can think of. And all of the houses/apartments/lofts look alike (for the most part). We had looked into it when we first arrived, and it did not take us long to cross it off the list. Buuuuutttttt.... Now, having seen just how hard it is to be sure you are getting into a nice neighborhood around here, the idea doesn't seem to bad. So we went there to check on some displays and kind of get the feel. We were both impressed with the houses, and were kind of impressed with everything that you have access to while living there. As we were leaving, I happened to ask if there was some type of list that had the bylaws on it, and the woman nodded and went to the back to retrieve this:

FOUR PACKETS OF RULES. I don't think Calvin had this many rules. I went through them last night and most of them are common sense, but some are pretty interesting. They definitely take it upon themselves to make sure that at least the fronts of the houses all look similar. No signs, a limit to how many garden accessories you can have, curtains must be white. All sorts of things. But there was one that mentioned that pets must be kept quiet so as not to disturb anyone that had Paul and I salavating at the mouth and ready to put a down payment on it. Although I don't know what I would do without a chorus of dogs to put me to sleep at night. Anywho, it might have stayed on the possibility list if it hadn't occurred to me last night that none of the houses we saw had backyards, which probably means that none of the houses COME with backyards, which would definitely mean that I would be dragging my sorry butt out with two kids every time Violet had to take a pee. Awesome.

Uh-well. We'll keep looking. Keep changing our minds every day. It will come to something eventually.

Hope this made up for the last post :)