A New Baby.....

With Emily's blossoming verbal skills, she will almost always repeat the last word spoken in a sentence or question directed to her. So, when we asked her to predict if she would be having a baby brother or sister, here was her (consistent) response:


For the last couple of months, I've been feeling boy. I even had a dream we were picking out boy clothes, so I was feeling pretty confident the girls would be getting a little brother.

We had our 20 week ultrasound on Tuesday, and the night before, Chris and I made a bet. I was so sure of myself, I told him if it was a boy, he would have to finish my dresser project for me. I didn't even think I needed to come up with something I would need to do if it was a girl. He was so confident it was a girl, he said if he was right he wouldn't re-paint the nursery  (it's already pink) and he would bring the dresser upstairs as is.

We had a wonderful ultrasound technician, who got some great shots of baby, printed out 19 (!) pictures for us, and informed us with 99.9% confidence that the baby is a....

Girl!

She looks pretty cute to me!

Needless to say, I lost the bet, and Chris wasn't surprised at all. He had said before the ultrasound that he just knew he was going to be a dad of three girls. She's healthy and everything looks to be in its right place. We're absolutely thrilled, and now comes the hard part...picking a name!

Emily and Addison are pretty excited, too! :)

Dresser Project

When we found out we would be having another baby, we decided to keep the girls' current room as the nursery and move Emily and Addison into our guest room, which is a little bigger and will work well as their "big girl bedroom." Because we won't have to do much to the existing nursery, and I am in full-on nesting mode, I needed a project for the big girl room. Looking on some great home improvement blogs (my current favorite especially), I've found some ideas for bookshelves, reading nooks, and furniture. I've always wanted to re-finish an old piece of furniture, and doesn't this just seem like the perfect opportunity?

So I decided the girls will definitely be needing a new dresser, and I found this great idea for re-doing a dresser that I absolutely fell in love with. I found a dresser on Craigslist that will work wonderfully. It is only about 30 inches tall, so the girls will be able to access their own clothes, but it is still fairly large at 56 inches wide, so it will work well for two girls.

Here's the dresser I bought:

And here's my inspiration for it's future look:

And here are the girls with their soon-to-be new-and-improved dresser:

My first step was to remove all of the hardware and begin giving it a new look, following Centsational Girl's advice using Brasso. Unfortunately, some of the black tarnish stuck with the knobs, and after seeking additional advice, I went with some great stuff called Rub 'n Buff to give the knobs more of a silver luster.

1: original hardware 2: after Brasso 3: after Rub 'n Buff application 4: after a  good buffin'

Here's where my project hit a major road bump. Chris came home from work and realized I had been working with toxic chemicals emitting harsh fumes while pregnant. He put the kabosh on the whole thing. I'm a bit stuck right now, hence using my sure future win in our baby gender bet to get him to finish the project himself.

Now I've lost that bet, and am once again stuck. Recommendations? Non-pregnant hardware polishing volunteers?

November Resolution

Here we are, already at the ninth of November, and I've obviously been a bit behind in blogging. Three posts for October? Sorry about that, folks. It wasn't that we weren't having fun, it may have been just the opposite. There were several visits to the pumpkin patch, lots of fun in the fall leaves, and plenty of Halloween dress up fun. Don't worry, I'm on it! :) My November resolution is to post at least twice a week!

Fall Fun

The allusive Emily has been spotted peeking up over the hill...

Getting ready to pounce...

Nah, Mama! I'm just playing!

Now let's pose with Sis!

Hello October, and Hello Halloween Box!

Every year, I put out a very special Halloween quilt that was made by the mom of my best college roommate, Katie. The quilt, along with many other "Katie decorations" comes out to help make our house feel festive and to get us excited for the fall holidays. This year, the girls helped me out when the Halloween box came up from the basement. Of course, with their love of dress up these days, the things they went right for were the costumes!

Emily found a purple necklace to go with her purple shirt. With all that purple, I just couldn't resist the purple wig!

Addison found this hat that Chris used to wear in college and had tons of fun with it! This hat may just have to join our everyday dress up box!

Emily had fun with a headpiece she found

Chris's old lasik goggles were quite a hit!

Emily loves to walk around "blind" these days, and the cat ears made a great blindfold!

More fun with Dad's hat

We're getting pretty excited for Halloween around here! It should be a fun year for costumes and trick-or-treating!

Hair Stylists

A few weeks ago I scored some great "snap n style" dolls at a neighborhood garage sale. The dolls come with hard plastic outfits you can snap on and off, and they have "real" hair and hairbrushes. Soon after getting their new toys, Addison was doing some hairstyling and Emily found a real comb and decided to do her sister's hair.

Gymnastics Class and a Stop at the Park...A Fabulous Friday

We're in our third week of gymnastics class. It's called Tumbling Tots and it's designed for walkers through age 24 months. Parent participation is required, and luckily, my mom has been able to help so the girls get some one on one assistance, which is especially helpful during the obstacle course. The class starts out with some circle time songs like "Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes" and then the kids get 15 minutes of free time to explore the gym. Addison LOVES hanging on the bars. Emily doesn't seem to have a favorite, but loves that there are so many people around to smile at and flirt with. Then we go through an obstacle course that the instructors have set up all around the gym. Then the kids pick out an instrument and we do a marching lap around the gym. Then it's back to circle time for our favorite...the parachute! First the kids get on top of the parachute while the adults make it billow and flop and then they get to go under the parachute, which is just plain magical.

Yesterday, I took a few pictures during class, but it's hard cause we're always on the move.

By the end of "Under the Parachute" all the kids' hair is standing on end and everyone's super hyper

Our class is an early one, so we still have a lot of time between the end of class and lunchtime to kill. Yesterday, it was an absolutely gorgeous fall day, so we stopped at the playground to have our snack and a little playtime.

I'm loving these new sweaters on the girls

Contemplating what's next...more granola bar or time for swings?

There were lots of birds singing that we needed to look for in the trees

We still both fit in one bucket swing!

Joy!

And then, Emily noticed the big girl swing beside her, and decided it was time to exit the bucket swing and give this grown up swing a try. I was a little hesitant at first, but she did great, holding on tight just like I told her to, and concentrating hard on staying safe on the swing.

Soon after Emily got onto a big girl swing, Addie wanted to try, too. She was a little more adventurous and kept trying to jump off the swing, but she'd just sort of fall out into the woodchips and then immediately want back on the swing. We're going to have to practice the  "holding on tight" a little more.

A Very Loud Machine Visits Our Backyard

The stump grinder came to take out the last reminders of our aspen trees earlier this month. We were upstairs when we heard the machine turn on and the girls went straight to the window, where they stood, riveted, until the job was done.

Chew Toys Are Back

With all the biting that's been going on in our house lately, Chris had the ingenious idea to break the ol' chew toys back out of the "baby toy" box in the basement. Now when one of the girls (usually Addison) comes at you with that wide-mouthed, crazy-eyed look, you aren't completely defenseless, because you have a Sophie to offer as an alternative. The sister-biting-sister and daughter-biting-parent injuries have vastly decreased since the chew toys came back! Yay!

Hiking with Grandpa John

One of my dad's favorite hikes by his house goes up Pisgah. A couple of Fridays ago, we were hoping to make it to the top, but didn't get very far because I didn't know how to get Emily correctly buckled into her pack (it's usually the one Chris wears).

Something's not quite right, here.

She was sliding all over the place and kept saying the same thing over and over and over again in between wails of frustration, "guck, guck, guck." I think she was trying to tell me I'd done the buckle wrong. So we didn't make it as far as we'd hoped, but had a very nice picnic under a very nice pine tree and then the girls got to do some real mountain climbing on real mountain rocks. It was quite the adventure.

Before we started out for the hike, Grandpa showed off his bear horn. Here's Emily before and after the alarm was sounded:

Now that I know how the backpack works, I'm hoping we'll get another hike in before it gets too cold!