Eyes of My Heart

It's a Girl!!

The verdict is in from Intelligender! We are having another baby girl!
That's all for now!

It's a Boy!

It's a girl! It's Intelligender!

I had my first obgyn visit the other day and she told me about a product that several of her clients have used and found accurate. Intelligender boasts a 90% accuracy rate at predicting the gender of fetuses between the ages of eight and thirty-five weeks. It measures the amount of testosterone in your morning urine. So, within minutes of waking up tomorrow morning, we will know with 90% certainty what the sex of our baby will be!! WHEEEE!!!

Creeping back in...

It's been nearly a MONTH since I've blogged anything! How you must have suffered in my absence. :)

Well, the long and short of it is I've been busy - very busy and very, very tired to boot. Our little joy is crawling like crazy and pulling herself up on everything that will hold her weight and some things that won't. Speaking of weight, she's a whopping 22 pounds and 29 inches now. She loves to talk talk talk and has the best smile and laugh I've ever witnessed. She is going through a phase right now of resisting any nap at all. She just plays in her crib, pulling herself up and scooting around and reading her books.

I've been busy as ever at church, leading worship, producing and choreographing. Elsewhere, I am gearing up to direct a touring show called Journey to Topaz next week and have been giving voice lessons. Our band made a rough recording for our demo and we got the tracks back last week and we'll go back soon to finish. I'm singing for a benefit this Sunday with our guitarist as well. The film company is up and running - we're incorporated and working on acquiring a hot new documentary for distribution.

All seems well with the pregnancy. Funny, I'm just not as excited about all the symptoms this year. Last year I found it all so fascinating. Now, I think, insomnia again!? whoopdedoo. Still, while I'm nonplussed about being pregnant, I can't wait to have another child. I have my first appt. on Friday. I'll be 12 weeks then.

So, there it is - a quick and simple update. Hopefully, I'll be in a bloggy mood again sometime soon.

Oh! I almost forgot! I won SHOES!! Jules at Everyday Mommy had a giveaway and I won!

Thanks, Everyday Mommy!!

P.S. Any of you Christian women have any thoughts about women speaking in church? It has been on my heart since I led worship about the context of 1 Corinth. 14:34-35 and 1 Timothy 2: 11-15.

Favorite products that "work for me"

Like Shannon at Rocks in my Dryer, there are very few name brands that I simply must have. My shower and vanity are littered with the pale blue and white plastic bottles of Equate products (no hate mail from hairdressers, please). But the following are the items I will purchase no matter what sales/coupons/pleasing endcaps, etc. are stacked in the competitors favor. These are MY brands and I am loyal as a lapdog to them.

1. Viva paper towels. Seriously, these are important to me and I will go without before buying another brand. They're thick as cloth, absorbent as a sponge, and soft as the inside of your forearm - important because I am forever running out of tissues and they double as a rather nice hankie!

2. Milton's bread. The restaurant that started it all is Milton's Deli in Del Mar and oy vey, is their food delicious. I always have to get their chopped liver sandwich and then take bites from everyone else's plates. Love it! So when they marketed their soft, thick, packed with yumminess, whole grain bread, it became a semi-staple. I bake my own bread with the bread-maker but I keep a loaf of Milton's in the freezer for emergencies. I love emergencies. (Incidentally, I just checked their website and their 24 oz. loaves are going for 12 bucks each - I DO NOT pay 12 dollars for a loaf of bread, even with poppyseeds and flax! As their lapdog, I should bite them for charging folks that much!)

3. Calbee snapea crisps, original Mmmm..salty, crispy, flavorful, lowfat...they satisfy even a craving for french fries, with no guilt, because hey, it's a VEGETABLE!

4. Progresso soup - This is a little bit of a stretch. I mean, I will buy other soups if they are on sale, but I won't be as happy about it. When Progresso goes on sale, I load up. Even my husband will eat this soup and he hates most things out of a can. My favorites are chicken corn chowder, chicken and sausage gumbo and Italian-style wedding. NO other brand comes close in my opinion. Well, maybe Wolfgang Puck. And I like Amy's Kitchen veggie soups. And Shelton's spicy chicken and rice. Oh, and all the cartons of soup by Imagine...butternut squash, portabello mushroom, sweet corn. Oh so good! And I love that you can pour out as much as you need and store the rest in it's container. What was I talking about earlier? Oh, Progresso. Yeah, those soups are okay, I guess.

Well, that's all I have for now. I'm turning in after I rub some fake Oil of Olay on my face and apply some phony Nivea hand lotion. G'night.

Allergy, ya think?

These pictures are a little old as this happened during my blogging slump. I fed baby girl a wee bit of cottage cheese and almost instantly this happened (that's a mutilated teething biscuit):

But then, an hour later she looked like this:

Bottom line: No more dairy for a few months!

Look what I can do!

Today I walked into her room to discover something like this. She STANDS!! She's been pulling herself up to a kneeling position for awhile and standing on her toes briefly before crashing. But this? This is a new milestone. She's growing up, I tell you! She laughed hysterically when I walked in on her, just beaming with pride. And yes, I'm a wee bit proud myself.

By the way, do you like her leg warmers?  I was going to wait until a Works for Me Wednesday to talk about these, but I may as well tell you now - these are one of my all-time favorite baby purchases. When she was really wee, I could put her in a one-sie for easy changes but still keep her legs cozy.

Now, that she's crawling, they save her knees from getting scraped and red on our hardwood floors. They are called Baby Legs and you can buy them online here in a variety of colors and patterns for 12 dollars a pair.

 

Flash of the future...

So, I was in the church nursery today visiting with my girl after my meeting and as usual, many of the other babies were having meltdowns. I asked if mine was good while I was away and the lead worker shoots me   a look like "of COURSE". Apparently, she never cries while I am away. She cries a bit when I leave  just to get me nice and guilty and then she plays contentedly until I return. Little booger.

Well, this other baby, started WAILING when I came back. She (I thought it was a he - her name is Hayden) looked me square in the eye and yelled MAMA!!! She crawls over to me as I was nursing my own and grabs at my leg, pleading with me, Ma...Ma..Ma...Ma... Another nursery worker diverted her attention for awhile but then when I'd finished nursing, she came back with, Ma..Ma, imploring me to pick her up. I did. Just then Pumpkin spins around and catches me with another baby. She uncharacteristically shrieks at me to put. that. intruder. baby. down. this-instant! So I went to her, Hayden in tow and scooped her up and then she was just fine. I walked around the room with a baby in each arm, pointing out goldfish and flowers and bears. What a relief to have pacified my daughter's rival feelings before her real competition comes. I'm so proud of her temperament.

And holding two babies at once...Heaven.

Her first swim...

I just received these pictures from Pumpkin's first swim on Memorial Day.  She absolutely loves the water. The one thing you can't see which just split my sides that day is what happened to her diaper. I didn't have any "swimmer" dipes and so I used two disposables on her which rapidly grew into five pound weights, spreading her legs wide and making her look like she was going to explode - very funny.

Update...

Well, look who's back on her blog! Er, me. I just haven't been in the mood to blog for weeks. Even now, I'm still not. But I thought I should at least update with my excuse reason. I'm pregnant again! Yep, we're expecting number two in late April. We are very excited and I am very tired - make that exhausted. So far, this pregnancy is very similar to the last one: fatigue, frequent trips to the bathroom and an aversion to certain smells. The other day, I was at a church creative arts meeting and there was a jug of red vines on  the table about three feet from me making me sick. That's just weird.

Let's see...there's been so many things that I've thought of blogging about but I've just been too pooped. So I'll list a few missed topics:

1. Our baby is crawling now. It's an adorable and time consuming new hobby.
2. I made homemade tortillas for the first time. Delicious!
3. Our band has started making our first demo. We still need a name!
4. I've become a worship leader at our church in addition to being on the creative arts team.
5. I was cast as Annie Sullivan in The Miracle Worker. Dream role!
6. I was cast as the nurse in Romeo and Juliet. Fabulous part. I LOVE performing Shakespeare.
7. I had to say no to number 6 as I will be very pregnant at that time. Not a huge sacrifice for a baby!
8. Our film company is forging ahead- our first short will be filmed in November (starring a rounder me).
9. I can't remember much else. I'm too tired.
10. Oh yeah - Our 9 1/2 month old daughter is getting four teeth in at once, poor dear.
11. And...our dear sister-friend, Mish, went away to college again. We miss her!

Who needs doors?

In our house, we had those black, mirrored, sliding closet doors that keep getting off track, causing you to shove and grunt and lift them into submission.  We also had a rather small guest room to convert into the nursery and those doors would. not. do. Life in a baby's room is so much nicer without doors! When I'm changing her and need a dress from the closet, I just have to put my right foot on her belly and reeeeeach......And not having doors means I can park my chair in front of the closet and still have easy access.

We liked this so much we did it in our office and bedroom as well. And we learned something very important. When you take the door off, be sure to place it somewhere SAFE. We placed ours behind the door in our bedroom (I still wanted a full length mirror) and the other day I closed the door a little too hard and KABLAM! Door down in front of the door so we couldn't get in! Luckily, we had another entrance from outside the house but this is what became of the closet door:

Check out more tips at Rocks in my Dryer!