Preggo pics, Random thoughts, and a query.

I really appreciate everyone's requests for me to post preggo pics. I've put it off for a number of reasons, not the least of which being that I've grown less and less fond of pictures of myself as the months have passed. C'est la vie. So, from the beginning to last month's, are my pregnancy progression pics...


I think the difference from month 5 to month 6 is the most drastic. But just wait a few days for the month 7 pic...

I know I still need to post pics of the baby's room, but that's still a work in progress, and a messy one at that.

On a completely unrelated note, is anyone else a blog-stalker? I like to refer to it as "blog walking," actually, because somehow that seems a little less invasive. But at the same time, I feel that if people DON'T want just any random person reading their blogs, they should make them private. Someone who posts funny Twilight commentaries on a public blog is just begging to be followed. That's just a random thought for you. It's late, and I can't sleep.

And speaking of blog walking, I'm a little bit obsessed with crafty tutorial/how-to blogs. I've been inspired to try a few projects of my own. Some car trash bags, some pyramid door stops, a quilt (or two) for the baby, a harvest pumpkin, a pin-cushion, some bags for myself (hmm, I've been more productive in the last few months than I realized. yay, me! But I digress...). I'm thinking about trying to do a quilt block exchange. I'm not sure how they usually work, but what I'm picturing is something like this:

I get 12 (or maybe just 9) girls (or guys, I guess) to participate. Each month, whoever is "it" gets to pick a quilt block that they want the other participants to make. They email the pattern to everyone, and everyone has a month to make the block and send it on (using material they choose themselves (within given guidelines), unless the one who is it wants to send material to everyone?). By the end of the 9 (or 12?) months, each person would then have enough quilt blocks to make a nice little throw. I'm thinking quilt blocks that are a beginner's level (my level. if they have pre-beginner, that might even be better). Is anyone at all interested in this?

Skeletor

Well, it's been FAR TOO LONG since my last post. And a lot has happened, actually, which is frankly unusual. Generally if I haven't written in my journal for a while (which, incidentally, I haven't), it's because nothing of note has happened. In this case, though, I've neither blogged nor written in my journal because so MUCH has been happening that I've just gotten overwhelmed by the idea of playing catchup. And I still am, so rather than updating on everything, I'll just share the MAJOR news: I'm pregnant!! 21 weeks already, so I've REALLY put this entry off. We went in last week and found out it's a little boy! We're thrilled, of course, and stressed out trying to get everything in order. Mostly just giddy, though, I think.
Here are some pics from the ultrasound:




And for now, Tyler's dubbed the baby Skeletor. Why, you ask? Well, that's a reasonable question. It's because so far the baby's face hasn't fleshed out, so in the ultrasound his face looks, well, skeletal:


And I think I'll end this there. Next time maybe I'll share the monthly pics of my growing belly. And hopefully some pictures of the baby's room. :)

The Fat One and The Other One

I have two cats. I got the first one (she's all white and REALLY big) in high school and the second one (he's all black and a little skittish) the summer after I started college. So, while these are technically my cats, my mom has been taking care of them for me while I was in college apartments. Then when I bought a house a year ago, I was all set for her to bring me my cats, and she decided she didn't want to bring them with her when she came last July because she was worried the plane would be too hot. Valid? Perhaps. But I think she just didn't want to give up the cats. This actually turned out to be for the best because right about that time, I got engaged to my husband, and he loathes cats. I don't understand it, of course, but there you have it. So my parents kept the cats, and I married my husband, and all was well with the world.
Until my parents asked me to take the cats while they moved from Hawaii to Las Vegas. Don't get me wrong - they're my cats. Of course we'll take them for as long as my parents want (but remember, my mom secretly wants to keep them, so it shouldn't be for very long), so dad put them in their kennels and sent them to me via Delta Cargo. Now, Tyler has been great about the whole thing, but part of the reason he hates cats is because he's allergic. So his throat has been itching for the last two months, but he's a good sport. BUT he keeps me entertained as I watch him interact (directly and indirectly) with my cats.
It started when I noticed that he never referred to them by name. They have fabulous names. Both named for Shakespeare characters, they are Desdemona (the white one) and Puck (the black one). But Tyler wouldn't refer to them as "Desdemona" and "Puck." He called them "the fat one" and "the other one." This is partly because it was days before Puck would come out of the back room and sit with us for any extended period of time. For the first few days, I think Tyler would have thought I might be lying about there really being two of them except for the brief glimpses he saw of a black shape scurrying past the entryway to the living room. But one day I asked him about it, and said if he didn't want to call them by their names, it would at least make more sense to call them "the white one" and "the black one." To which he replied, "I think this is funnier. I use humor to diffuse stressful situations." And he's right; it is funnier.
And then there's the names he started calling them directly, when he became comfortable enough with them to talk to them in the second person. He calls Desdemona "Tubby" and Puck "Twitchy." He doesn't anticipate ever getting to a place with the cats where he calls them the names I picked for them. Oh well - at least he's making me laugh.
A few weeks ago, he started something he "learned" from a Will Ferrell Saturday Night Live sketch. Obviously it's a joke, but in the sketch Will Ferrell teaches how to train your animal using sarcasm. So now Tyler occasionally asks Desdemona, "Are you comfortable, Tubby? Can I get you anything? A glass of juice, perhaps?" Desdemona, of course, does not react in any notable way, which for some reason only makes this funnier to me.
Finally, there was the comment he made the other day. He said that he doesn't have to interact with them much, except occasionally "disciplining them with [his] acerbic wit." And it's true - where the cats are concerned, he certainly does have an acerbic wit.

Borrowing Children

We don't have children yet, which works for us at this point, but we like kids a lot, so until we have our own, we have a tendency to borrow other people's. Not in some illegal, psycho way or anything, but just in the sense that we share cute pictures and videos of kids that aren't our own with other people. For example, we're big fans of our nephews (James and Nathan) and niece (Gwen). I mean, look at these kids! They're adorable!


And we've come across some videos that are pretty much adorable. This one in particular, of some random child whose name we don't know, we've decided is a pretty fair preview of one of our children in a few years. Possibly in looks, brains, AND subject matter.

We also like this one a lot. It's just cute.

The other day at church I was looking at one of the many super-cute kids, and I leaned over to Tyler and whispered, "do you think her dad would notice or mind if we took her home? We'd take very good care of her." But Tyler assured me her dad would both notice and mind, so I didn't pursue it. I guess until we get one (or more) of our own, we'll continue to live vicariously through others...

Never Say Never

Growing up, I heard the oft-repeated phrase, "never say never" and in fact said it a time or three myself. The last year has been of year of those "nevers" coming back to bite us. Just a few of the things we made fun of people for doing (or at least vowed never to do ourselves) which we've done in the past 9 months:
1. Get engaged within a month of starting to date. That's right folks, we did it. And a month is pretty generous. You have to start counting from our first date, NOT our first kiss or any other signs of exclusivity, for it to approach a full month. We try to excuse this action with the fact that we'd been single and of dating age for over ten years, so we knew what we wanted. Yet the fact is, we knew it was right. Don't worry, you can mock, we won't take it personally; we laugh at ourselves. And we still laugh at others a little, too.
2. Get married over the Christmas break. It's true, our anniversary is December 21. I was horrified, but it's just the way the cookie crumbled. We're OUT of school, and yet our anniversary will forever mark a school break. That piece of humble pie was bitter, let me tell you.
3. We're watching American Idol this season. Oh, that's right. American Idol. We CARE who goes home. We CARE how they do. It all started with a girl from Huntsville, and then we found out there were two LDS contestants in the final 12. We decided to see how they did one night, and that, my friends, was the beginning of the end.
4. Beginning of the end, because, don't worry, we are watching not one but TWO reality shows this season. Here Come the Newlyweds is hilarious. We watch it on Sunday nights. I guarantee it would not be nearly as funny if we were still single. But here we are. Eating our words.