We finished them before she came!

I've been working on a table and chairs for Spencer over the last couple weeks.  It all started when we stopped at IKEA one night and he absolutely loved the kids tables and chairs there.  I figured that gave me an excuse to build something again, which is always something I look forward to.  I built two chairs and a table during my mad nesting rush, but my desire to pain them pretty much died the other day when I started having contractions and thought this little girl would be making her arrival soon.

 Well, she isn't here yet, so Bill was ever so nice to help me paint them this afternoon.  The second chair is not quite finished.  Spencer woke up from his nap before we could finish it, but we'll take care of it tonight after he goes to bed.  Also, Bill is going to use the green paint to paint a chessboard on the top of the table, which is going to be awesome.  And as hoped and expected, Spencer loves them, as is quite obvious from these pictures, minus the fact that I couldn't manage to get him smiling in an actual picture.

In other news, I have officially made it to all the important events this weekend, particularly my dad's birthday party, the funeral, and the baptism.  It is now okay for this little girl to come.  She has dropped since yesterday.  That's always a good sign.  Send good vibes my way that she'll come soon. We're ready to meet her!

Cute Spencer Moment

My niece Shae is 3 months old.  Spencer thinks she's pretty great when he notices her existence, though most of the time he kind of just ignores her.  Last night we were at my parent's house celebrating my dad's birthday.  We were getting ready to head out, so Shae was strapped into her carseat, but sitting on the floor.  Spencer got all interested in interacting with her.  He came over and started rocking her carseat.  When she started to cry a little bit, Bill gave him her pacifier and asked if he would give it to her.  Mind you, half the time these days he decides he wants to suck on it himself even though he hasn't wanted a pacifier since he was like six months old.  But he was so cute and put it in her mouth for her not once but twice after she'd pulled it out.  So cute!  We're just prepping him early for ours to show up.  Which, by the way, is hopefully any day.  She's being tricksy.  I had a bunch of contractions over the last couple of days and thought things were happening, but nothing yet.  Soon enough though, I'm sure.

This and That

I feel like I should blog because so many things have been happening and I'd like to record them. To be perfectly honest though, most of my life these days revolves around how close I am to having this baby and how much I'll be happy to have my back stop aching and my stomach not doing weird alien maneuvers outside of my control.  If the amount this little girl moves around is any indication of her personality, she is not going to be a low key child.  I thought Spencer moved a lot.  He was nothing compared to her.  And for those of you who know how busy he is all the time, I think I have cause to be worried. :)  Oh well. As hyper a child as I was, I can't expect anything less.  I'd still rather have her out than in.  And here's hoping that we will not have to wait the full three weeks left to meet her.

So August has been a fun month.  July was too, for that matter.  We got to go to a family reunion on Bill's side in Cedar City and stay at a cute little cabin.  Spencer loved the place, particularly sitting on the front steps throwing rocks.

We had lots of fun at the actual reunion too. Towards the end of the day, right as we were leaving, there was an epic rainstorm.  Apparently it even made the papers.  It was a little crazy driving through it on the freeway, but we made it just fine.

August for me has been about doing a lot of projects to satiate my nesting instinct and getting ready for Bill's graduation.  That's right, he walked in BYU's graduation last week!  He doesn't officially finish until December and we very well may stay to do his master's degree here, but our entire marriage he's been working on his bachelor's degree, so this is a big deal.  We had lots of family come and celebrate with us and we had a sweet bbq on Saturday at a park by our house to celebrate both his birthday and graduation.  It was so fun.  

And now Bill is rocking out with the Boy Scouts from our ward up in the high Uintahs for five days.  Lucky them.  I'm doing my best not to have this baby while he's gone, but would love to have her as soon as he gets back. :)  Here's hoping.  My dad was kind enough to mention how much bigger I am this pregnancy than last. Good thing it's true and that doesn't bother me at all. :)  I'm carrying this baby all in my stomach, nowhere else, so she's seriously sticking out people. I'm ready for her to come, that's for sure!  Like I said at the beginning of this long post, all I'm really thinking about is how soon I won't be pregnant anymore. lol.  Good times.

Oh, and for good measure, here's a couple of things Spencer's doing lately that make us laugh.  Or not. Blogger doesn't seem to want to upload them.  That will have to wait for another day.

Have we turned a corner?

I may be getting excited way too soon, but it appears we had a major food breakthrough last night.  Spencer ate some of the pieces of chicken cacciotore I made AND some pasta.  He also consumed an entire banana before going to bed last night. This may not sound like a big deal to most people, but this is from the kid that hit one year-old and stopped eating all but like four things.  He hasn't eaten more than two bites of banana since then.  And even before he turned one he would slurp the sauce off of pasta and then spit it back out.  After he turned one he just stopped eating it altogether.

Everything is a phase, right?  That was my parenting mantra pretty much the entire first year of his life. This particular lack of eating phase just happens to have lasted for six months!  That is one long phase for a little kid.  So here's hoping.  Maybe he'll realize just how great food is and that he's totally been missing out. :)

Baby Afghan

I used to crochet a lot when I was in high school and college, but what that means is we own a ton of afghans and don't have enough people around here to use them, so I haven't done any crocheting in recent years. :) I didn't make an afghan for Spencer when he was born either, but I decided a week or two ago I wanted to make one for this baby, so I did!

This went really fast.  I essentially made it over the weekend when we went down to Cedar City for a family reunion.  It's made out of granny squares, which are apparently really common, but not something I've ever run across.  I like how it turned out.  I'm not a huge fan of pastels for little girls, so I went brighter, though nothing crazy.  Spencer loves it, so I imagine our little girl will too. :)

Another project finished

I haven't so much been nesting this pregnancy as wanting to do tons of craft projects.  I just finished another one today.  I had a couple cross stitches I did in high school that were Precious Moments themed.  They were super cute and a few months ago I found patterns for four more.  I felt a little goofy cross stitching, but I found a surprising amount of enjoyment out of finishing them.

I've never really had a place to put them, but I've hung on to the originals since I first made them and I decided to finish the other four so I could put them up in the kids' bedroom.  I picked up some cheap frames the other day and spray painted them different colors.  Don't look too close.  Some of them really didn't turn out very smooth, but as a whole I like the look.

Dogs

Smoothie Cup Love

He loves this cup.  He totes it around by that little loop pretty much all day long.

Computing & Sewing

No real words needed.

I made a new carseat cover in a girl version.  Just finished.  It's adorable.  Bill picked the fabric. He has fantastic taste.

Newest Spencer-isms

Spencer has finally discovered that holding our hands is a good thing.  I think it clicked when he realized he could direct us places if he was holding our hand. Now he grabs them all the time and pulls us where he wants to go.  It's adorable.

Grandma Suzanne got Spencer a crazy straw cup when we were in Henderson a few weeks ago.  It has become Spencer's go to cup for smoothies.  It has a little loop in the straw on the top that he sticks his finger through and then sips the straw that wraps around the cup and comes up the side.  I'm going to get a picture of it. It makes me laugh every time I see him do it.

Spencer thinks diapers are called poopy.  He knows what being poopy is too, but he absolutely refuses to say diaper.  The first thing he says when I go into get him from his nap or in the morning is "poopy!" and then proceeds to point to his diaper.  Except usually he's not poopy.  It's amusing.

The only animal sound he knows right now is for a dog.  Dogs say "rawr rawr." Every other animal does too apparently.  And every other animal is a dog.  We're working on that.

He's finally able to climb up on chairs and he absolutely loves it.  Sometimes he climbs up on my computer chair and fiddles around with the computer as long as I'll let him.

He loves Bill's bell kit we brought back from Henderson.  I'm really impressed with his precision in playing it too.  This kid definitely has music in his genes.

Spencer thinks eating with silverware is by and far the best and only way to eat these days, which is totally fine with me.  Sometimes he'll let me feed him still, but he seriously loves to eat on his own.  Here he's enjoying some peanut butter sitting on the kitchen floor.  That's another favorite of his, eating while sitting on the floor.

Finished!

I'm quite proud of this little project I just finished.  I've never thought I was all that creative, particularly in comparison to several of my siblings, but over time I've discovered it's more that my creativity just comes out in different ways than theirs.  I'm not so good at original thoughts, but I can copy and modify like a champ. :)  The middle stocking is what I had to start with.  My mom made it for Spencer last year and I love it.  She made similar ones for me and all my siblings when we were kids, and it's one of those memories I love and wanted to pass on.  I decided to make matching stockings for Bill and I and our new little girl, but I came up with one additional idea too and just decided to go for it.  If we have a girl for our third child instead of a boy I guess I'll just have to make another. :)

I crocheted the snowflakes and did the rest out of felt.  I also added a snowflake to Spencer's stocking to help it go more with the general theme.  These things seriously cost me like $10 to make including everything.  Okay, maybe $15 because I had to buy the liner I used twice since I cut it out too small to begin with.  Oops.  You can see the red polka dots just peeking out of the stocking on the far left.  The lining isn't sewed in on that one because I don't have a name on it yet.

I wanted to get our names embroidered on them, but it is seriously expensive to do that, like $10 a piece or something crazy, so I ventured into the world of hand embroidering.  I wouldn't say it's my favorite thing to do.  Well, that's an understatement.  I really didn't like doing it and it took forever, but it turned out so well.  I'm quite pleased with the finished product and am just super happy I'm done embroidering. The penguin one is for our new little girl, but I'm not ready to post her name on my blog, so you'll just have to wait a couple months if you don't know it already. :)

So I really like how they turned out.  We haven't had stockings since we got married, so I'm glad we do now and I just love them.  Hopefully the kids will appreciate them when they're older.

Funny Sleep Story

I woke up one of many times last night apparently acting upon a dream that I was having.  I don't remember what the dream was about, but I pulled my pillow off my bed, took the pillowcase off, and put the pillow outside our bedroom door, then got back in bed. At this point I woke up sufficiently to decide I needed to use the bathroom and then wondered what had happened to my pillow and vaguely remembered doing something with it.  I found it at the door, sans pillowcase, and was so confused as to why I had done that.  I still have no idea, but I just put the pillowcase back on and went back to bed.  It was so random and really funny when I told Bill about it this afternoon. :)

10 weeks left!

So I only have 10 weeks left of this pregnancy as of today.  Seeing that I am nearly as big as I'm going to get already, that makes me very happy.  I definitely don't love that I get big so fast, as it makes for so many aches and pains for a long time, but Spencer's pregnancy was exactly the same, so I guess that's just how it's going to be for me every time I get pregnant.  The end result is worth it. :)  I took a picture a week or two ago of what I looked like starting my third trimester and compared it to last pregnancy.  I think I'm a tad bigger this time, but honestly, I can't really tell.  I was big then, I'm big now, so who really cares?  I just look at pictures of myself after I had Spencer to feel better about that. Ha ha! So for comparison's sake, here we go.

Pregnancy #1:

 Pregnancy #2:

Last visit to H-Town

I've been meaning to blog about our trip to Henderson since we got home a week ago, but just haven't seemed to get to it.  I see why my friends with more kids blog less and less. Just getting closer to having my second makes me feel less able to spend much time on my computer doing personal stuff like blogging.

Anyway, we haven't been down to Bill's house since probably last summer.  I can't even remember when we last went.  With his parents in transit moving up here, we just haven't had a reason.  But last week we got to go down to celebrate Hillary's mission homecoming, Miriam's graduation, and also help a little with packing to move, i.e. Bill got up in the attic to get his drumset down. :)  It was an awesome trip!  Sleeping wasn't so great with no crib for Spencer, but otherwise we had a really great time.  We're pretty sure it's our last time going there since they move up here next month, so it was nice to go for one last hurrah.

Hillary's homecoming was lovely.  She gave a great talk at church and we had a fun family party.  Miriam's graduation was also awesome.  I don't know it is about graduation ceremonies, but they always make me get all emotional.  I can't imagine what it will be like when it's my own kids.

Spencer had the time of his life.  He didn't have a slow moment the entire weekend with so many aunts and grandmas fawning over him.  That kid knows how to work it already. :)

All I can say about our sleeping arrangements are that Bill and I slept much better once we got home.  We were in Miriam's room, which has a full-size bed and we rolled a foam mat in there too.  One of us would share the bed with Spencer and the other take the mat. We traded each night.  Spencer is definitely still a crib lover.  He needs his boundaries still.  I wasn't a huge fan of being used as a boundary.  He seemed to do a bit better when I shared with him, but both of us had a rough night at least once over the four days. It was pretty hilarious the last morning when I woke up to find Spencer sleeping in Bill's pillow space and Bill taking up approximately 1/8th of the same side of the bed, trying to keep Spencer from falling off, but mostly just falling off himself.  I would have gotten a picture, but the lens on our camera at the time didn't allow it.  It was a long distance lens.  Oh well. It's an adventure every day, right?

Anyway, so that's not the most exciting post ever, but I wanted to get it recorded.  I can't wait for everyone to get moved up here.  It'll be so nice to to have Bill's side up here for the rest of the time we are in Utah. 

Camping at Great Basin National Park

We went on a camping trip this weekend to Great Basin National Park with Bill's dad and another friend.  It's been on our bucket list for years and we figured since there's a very good chance this is our last summer in Utah, we better get the heck out there and see it or it wasn't going to happen.  We had such a great time!

Highlights include:

-The instant we set up the chairs, Spencer started filling them with dirt and rocks.  We never even got to use them.  I tried to clean them off, but every time I put them back up he just started filling them again. We eventually got him diverted to filling up the wood box, but he still got sidetracked putting dirt on top of the gas tanks.  Silly kid.  I guess it kept him away from the fire though, so no real complaints.

-Spencer's nose was seriously booger cement the entire time.  He had a cold last week, so he's developed a pretty incredible avoidance reflex the instant I go near his nose.  Therefore, he didn't truly get clean until Sunday afternoon when we gave him his first bath since Thursday.  And since his nose is still running even today, he still has it a bit. :)

-Spencer was covered with dirt from head to toe the entire time.  He loved it.  We swabbed him off at night, but that's about it.

-We were pretty unsure of how sleeping arrangements would go.  We have a new tent that we were excited to try out, and we brought the pack'n'play even though Spencer has hated it for months.  Well, turns out he still hates it but now he can climb out.  After using it as a pseudo boxing ring for a while, bouncing off all four sides, he decided he'd had enough the first night and climbed out, falling onto Bill's legs.  So there went the pack'n'play, probably not to be opened again for at least several months until we need it for child numero dos. He instead slept in an improvised little box with Bill and I on either side and some bags on the other two sides.  Apparently he still likes the boundaries because he spent half the night wedged against Bill's legs and the other half with his head in my knee.  I wouldn't say anyone but Spencer got a good night's sleep.  There were also gale force winds coming down off the mountain, which didn't help our sleep, but did show us that we indeed purchased an awesome tent and if any of you are ever in the market for a high end backpacking tent, Nemo is a good brand to look at.

-We toured Lehman Caves Saturday morning.  That place is cool!  Spencer wasn't the biggest fan since he was tired and got really frustrated that we wouldn't put him down and let him go break off the stalagmites, but we had a great time.

-After Lehman Caves we headed off towards Ely, NV to visit Garnet Hill.  It's exactly what it sounds like, a place where you can prospect for garnets.  They just happen to be both Spencer's and my birthstone, so that made it even cooler.  Basically it's a big mountainside of rocks that you go in with hammers, pick axes, etc and hammer away to see if you can uncover garnets in the rocks.  We came away with a tidy little bundle after a couple hours there, plus Spencer having finally learned that we're trying to help him when we hold his hand to keep him from falling down.  That may be worth way more than the garnets!  They're all rough cut and still stuck somewhat in the rocks, but Bill is super excited to see what he can do with them.

-Food in general was amazing the whole trip.  It always is when Doug is involved.  We had some delightful tinfoil dinners the first time on a one-match fire I started even in the gale force winds.  Not that I'm bragging.  Oh wait, yes I am.  That never happens to me.  The fire pit helped a lot, but I was pretty proud of myself. :)  We had some a pancake/breakfast meats breakfast that somehow tasted about a million times better because we ate it outside.  The evening stew Saturday night was great and I haven't had a better cobbler in a long time.  Sunday morning we finished it off with breakfast burritos that were so stinkin' good, especially since it was about 33 degrees outside.  Who knew it was going to be that cold?!?!

-The second night I got perhaps the best night's sleep I have ever gotten camping.  Bill got the worst.  The temperature completely dropped out from under us, and his sleeping bag was not up to the task, poor guy.  It got to below freezing, which is just about perfect for my bag, and conditions that I rarely see when I'm sleeping in it.  I have no idea why I slept so well, since I'm so very, very pregnant, but it made for a fantastic surprise to wake up wel rested in the morning.  Takeaway from the night?  Bill and Spencer both need new sleeping bags.  The pile of blankets for Spencer worked, but were not ideal.  He's finally getting to the point where I think he might actually sleep in one, which is fantastic.

-We took a drive up Wheeler Peak, which is in the park and has a road up to 10,000 feet where the trailhead is.  It's the tallest peak that is fully in Nevada.  Boundary Peak is on the other side of the state, but it straddles the Nevada/California border, so there's disagreement as to whether it can be considered the tallest peak or not.  Anyway, there's a campsite at the end of the road that I would totally stay at.  It's at 10,000 feet, so I guess you wouldn't be doing a lot of running around, but dang, they were some of the prettiest campsites I've ever seen if you're going to be car camping.

-And one last thing.  Spencer LOVES his grandpa.  He's been a little standoffish of both Bill's dad and mine in recent months, but he has changed his tune.  He calls Doug "Pampa" and it's the cutest thing to see them together.  We'll have to get some face time with my dad so he can enjoy him as well, but the campout was so fun in that respect.