White Cat

White cat, who lives at the barn, soaking up the sunshine.

White cat patiently endures relentless petting from Ella Grace.

This Seems Familiar...

Two things noticed yesterday that confirm a blossoming pregnancy:

* Closing the refrigerator door and hitting my belly (must stand progressively farther back from now on)!

* Hunger appears instantaneously. I have started stashing snacks everywhere (even in the car) because I when I want food, I want it NOW.

Garden Update #3

I have had these pictures for a week now, so I apologize for my tardiness in updating you on our garden's progress! Of course now everything is bigger and producing more/bigger fruit. We are beginning to feel that it is, in fact, garden season and starting to enjoy the fruits of our labor! Saturday night we had a wonderful meal of grilled pork chops, squash casserole made from garden squash, corn on the cob (not ours) and sliced cucumber and tomato from the garden. Oh, man, was it good!

I know that eventually we will come to dispise the sight of cucumbers and squash but for now we are thoroughly enjoying it!

Ella with her new Little Mermaid phone and our staked tomatoes.

L to R: Row of peppers, giant squash, okra, row of cukes, row of carrots with two little celery plants at the bottom, row of onions .

Onion giving the 'all done' signal (top laid over) and a chili pepper plant

One of the squash plants with lots of babies

A bell pepper coming on and one of the carrots we pulled to thin them out

The haul from yesterday (tomato not pictured). Those are japalenos!

Water Play

Yesterday was a pretty hot one in big KS. Ella put on her bathing suit and we went out for some good clean fun in the sun with the water hose. She had such a good time! Ella would run up to David, ask to be sprayed and then book it away as fast as she could. The camera doesn't do it justice, but I made a fine attempt at capturing the essence! Just imagine a really high pitched squeal with each shot of water.

What a pose! and Oh boy that's cold!

Ella sprayed David so this was retaliation and then a little hiney shaking!

Ashley's Birthday!

A most Happy Birthday goes out to dear Miss Ashley from Kudzu Jungle!

She is a fan of cats and perhaps some drinks to drink so I thought that this picture is appropriate for birthday celebration wishes! (She's also one of the biggest Potterholics I know, with some great theories btw, but I refuse to look for a picture of Harry throwing some back.)

Have a great 28th!

4th Celebration

I hope that everyone had a good 4th yesterday and is recovering nicely from any festivities. We went over to Angie and Scott's again this year for supper and their big fireworks blowout. It is just unreal to me what can happen when fireworks are legal!

Ella did really well, although in hindsight we should have gotten her some ear plugs! Angie bought some glow necklaces for the girls and seeing them reminded me of going to Stone Mountain and just begging to get one. (I wore Ella's for a little bit, just for fun!)

Little Miss with her Pops and some snazzy sunglasses

Both Little Misses

The arsenal

Yep, that would be a watermelon full of fire crackers

Not for long!

Four boxes of these 'ammo style' fire crackers going off at once almost made my ears bleed!

Kitchen View

This is the view from my kitchen sink. It's a good thing that I my sill is wide since I seem to pile up all kinds of stuff on it! Most of the garden pickin's end up there for a little bit of ripening or drying out. My Mother's Day pansies from Ella are in the yogurt cup and that's good ol' coon keeping a watchful eye out.

Like the privacy hedge made by the corn?!

I looked at this cup for days before I realized it was SOY YOGURT. Ick!

Faithful watcher outer.

Garden Color

Ah, summer is here! What a gorgeous variety of color coming from the garden.

Monday Funny

Half way!

Yesterday I officially reached 20 weeks along. Yippee! In trying to keep up with the Joneses (Andria, ha!) I will do a Half Way Through My Pregnancy Post. Andria and Pen both did them and in that spirit, here I go!

At 20 weeks, the State of the Blessed Union:

Belly pooch: Yes ma'am. Last week was the first time a stranger asked me if I was 'with child'


Hormonal rollercoaster: The wildest ride in town

Effort to stay off the rollercoaster: large. huge. enormous. massive.


Cravings: None really. The closest thing to one would be bacon. Yum! With Ella it was sausage. (Which somebody so politely pointed out was how I got into the situation to begin with!)

Pounds gained: -1. Seriously. Don't worry, the baby is large for her age so she's not suffering any by my lack of poundage. Also, as soon as I publicly announce no weight gain I will pack it on quickly.

Movement: Lots, and they are getting stronger by the day!

Gender: Sweet little baby girl

Stretch marks: None, thank goodness. I didn't have any with E so I'm crossing my fingers and hoping hoping that I won't get any now. I have put aside my usual cheapness and went for Curel lotion (the best! as introduced to me by Nikkers) to combat the immense amount of stretching that my skin is about to undertake.

Ability to bend over without groaning: fading quickly

Depth of belly button cave: shortening at an alarming rate

Shooting sciatic pain: I have adopted a new hobble/walk/limp

Pro to having a C-section: baby girl's head measured at the 97th percentile for her age

Name: Currently in negotiations

Daddy David's take on my pregnancy: He now has 10 different wives who all share one short fuse. (Is that supposed to be funny? I DO NOT have split personalities. Jerk. But maybe he's right, I mean I am a little weepy at times...*sob*. Poor guy! But it's OK because I have a wonderful little baby kicking around and making my belly grow and showcasing that I am a woman, doing what comes most natural :). Making me FAT, that's what this pregnancy is doing. I saw the cutest pants the other day that I won't be able to fit into for how long?)

E Fix

E has been a little absent from the blog lately so here is a quick fix. She wanted pig tails sooo bad this morning and I just had to oblige!

Pegged

Poor Miss Maggie got her foot smashed yesterday and had to be professionally stitched and bandaged. They did such a fine job wrapping her up that we thought she looked a bit like a peg leg! With a little help from Google images, I made up this picture of Cap'n Mags.

Look it up, dear

David and I always do our best to use the 'right' word for things with Ella. As a result, we are often asked the definition of certain words that we use. This past weekend we found ourselves acting as an open dictionary with Miss E and having to define the following words:

membrane
co-operate
trail
appropriate
acceptable
negligent

Whew! Surely she's destined to score perfect on the verbal SAT if we keep this business up!

Let's Talk About Sex

Updated!

Sometimes a girl just knows. She feels it deep down in her bones that she is 100% accurate and only hard evidence could change her mind.

Weeeell, that's what happened. The hard evidence proves that I was, in fact, wrong and we are having a baby girl!! Yippee!

Here are two of the best pictures from the visit. I know that even though these are the best ones of the lot, some people may not be able to 'see' but I will try my best to describe them!

Profile with a little hand up by the face

Baby girl has her hand on the back of her head (can't see the head), taken from the back. What you see is the left part of her back, left arm bent and hand.

Cast Your Vote

Alright, kids! Tomorrow is the big ultrasound day!

Cast your vote for the sex of the baby in the comments section. (I am officially guessing that it's a boy!)

What say you?!

Chap Stick Fiends

I have found my peeps.

Lip Balm Anonymous

This guy is killing me! I think I need to sign up, though... There would be no going cold turkey for me!

Garden Update #2

The weeds have been taking over the garden plot as of late and I have been letting them. Like turn a blind eye and hope that they go away, ignoring. It has been a bad combination of lots of rain and sheer laziness on our part and now we are dearly paying the price!

I have postponed any previous updates because of the shame that I would feel if you knew what the garden had come to! But, I have mustered up my courage and am prepared to share the highlights and lowlights of our current garden scene. (This is after several hours of weeding, hoping that I could get it cleaned up before the picture session but I only made a slight dent!)

Row of carrot tops and the beginning of celery.

Cucumbers and squash.

One of the tomato plants (with fruit!) hiding amongst the weeds and a pepper plant.

Baby squash and an onion blossoming!

A row that is partially weeded. Yikes!

E working in the yet to be weeded part.

It's a family affair!

Pick Your Battles

It just wasn't worth the fight this morning!

Who thinks she's adorable no matter what shoes?

Hokey Pokey

Yesterday Ella came home singing the Hokey Pokey. I was surprised at myself since I had not even thought about teaching it to her! Then I was immediately taken back to Skate-A-Round USA in Athens where we used to do the dance on skates. Ah, the good ol' days....

I got all into doing the Hokey Pokey with her and was having a good time 'shaking it all about'! But, I'm afraid I may have gone a little too far when I said "Hey Ella! Put your backside in!" and we started shaking that all about. It became very clear that they hadn't done the backside bit at preschool because she was super excited about it. Didn't want to stop shaking her backside, really. Oops! Maybe Mommy will get put in time out when Ella goes to preschool and shows them what she learned!

E shakin' it ALL about

(This picture reminds me of Mom, Marisa and me dancing in the living room to 'Doin' Da Butt... sex-ay, sex-ay'!)