Crazily in Love

That hair!


Skyping with Grandma and Grandpa Curtis while in her bilibed (to treat her jaundice)

A common facial expression to see if her audience is worth opening both eyes

A little bit of jaundice

The Baby of Cuteness


Ella Mae 

October 29

5:58am 

7 lbs. 4 oz.

absolutely perfect

Michael Buble Christmas


I just bought this beautiful album and it is ridiculously wonderful! I plan to play it at least two hundred times before Christmas.

 Once again I am listening to Christmas music before Halloween.

But I have been having contractions for more than 24 hours now and they are just getting more awesomely body-wrenching every five minutes and so I've decided that that gives me permission to listen to whatever I feel like. And I am watching this movie to keep my mind off my screaming torso. 
Oh Sandra Bullock, I just think you are wonderful!

Time for Pumpkins




Adam is so careful and precise as he carves his pumpkin-- I was finished with my pumpkin and eating marionberry pie ice cream when he was only half way done carving his pumpkin.   



He looks like he just stepped on a cactus-- a confused mix of anger and pain.


Look at those perfectly carved teeth--this is promising for Adam's future dental career. Maybe he should include a picture of this pumpkin's teeth in his resume.

The awkwardness of life

A friend of mine has a weekly feature on her blog called “Awkward and Awesome Thursday,” where she makes a list of the awkward and awesome things that happened to her that past week. It’s one of my favorite parts of her whole blog and reading it makes me more aware of the awkward and awesome things that happen in my daily life. There were multiple awkward and awesome things that happened this past week and I kind of wanted to post them so I decided to steal Emily's wonderful awkward/awesome idea for today's post (thanks, Emily!)


Awkward
I was at the grocery store and I steered my cart so that it was up against the edge of the isle and out of the way while I selected the perfect head of green leaf lettuce. I suddenly hear this loud crash and then this grating noise, I turn around to see that an elderly man has run his cart head-on into mine and is now pushing my cart down the isle with his cart. I’m not quite sure what to think of this. “Oh, I’m sorry.” I say because I don’t know what else to say. The man, who is deceivingly sweet-looking, stops ramming his cart into mine and responds, “That’s okay. Can you pick out a good pineapple for me?” I suddenly decide that maybe the man is blind, which is why he accidentally ran into my cart and why he needs me to pick out a pineapple for him-- that would explain it. "Yes, of course,” I say and I hurry over to the pineapples to find a good one, when I pick up the one that looks best to me the man dashes my assumptions of him being blind by saying, “Oh yes, that one looks very good.” Completely confused now, I place the pineapple in his cart and he steers around my cart looking for other innocent bystanders' carts to ram into.  I don't really know how to conclude this story because I am still confused about what exactly happened.
There are a lot of awkward things about being pregnant. Like accidentally running into people with my protruding belly or getting stuck in a tight space because I underestimated my size. Or when I drop something while in a crowded location and it takes me approximately five minutes to get myself down to the ground to pick it up and I heave myself back up, positively wheezing and huffing and puffing the whole time. 


And little kids staring at my huge belly-- it happens all the time and it is awkward. I feel like I belong in one of the cages at the zoo. Adam told me that the next time that happens I should look at the kid and tell them in all seriousness, "I just ate a dog."


Also awkward: spending several minutes trying to open the mail box to no avail and then looking up to notice that I was at the wrong mail box, our mailbox was several more houses down
Holding up this adorable pencil skirt at an antique store (daydreaming about the day when I can maybe wear it) and having the lady tell me, “Oh, there is no way that you are going to fit into that, my dear.” Short-lived daydream.

Awesome

Adam and I went to a class about giving birth and when the class broke out for lunch I immediately hurried to the Little Girl's room. When I walked out I was greeted by the scene below, all of these husbands lined up against the wall, waiting for their pregnant wives who all had rushed to go pee. None of them seemed to be at all self-conscious about the fact that they each were holding the purse of their wife. It was ridiculously adorable.


And this scene that I walked by at Hobby Lobby (which has to be THE best craft store in this entire world). This little boy was positively glaring at everyone and everything as he unhappily trudged behind his mom and sisters around the craft store as they excitedly walked down the never-ending isles of countless craft supplies. Their Heaven. His Hell.


And one last awesome thing: the grocery store experience made me think of this video clip that I posted a long time ago about a fight at the grocery store over the last box of corn flakes. 
My brothers and I think we are so funny. 
Although completely nonsensical, this clip makes me laugh every time, and so it's awesome. 
Clip here.

How to make a bow tie


I really like bow ties. I made one for Christmas for a boy who I am fairly positive does not read this blog so I am posting a picture of it, assuming he won't see it. This boy is in high school and I don't think high school boys read blogs like mine.


Tutorial here.

I pulled out Baby Girl's clothes and started assembling potential outfits for her, just like what you do before the first day of school. This waiting for Ella to come thing is getting ridiculous.



I found this list that Adam had written. Do you see that first one? It made me so happy! And he did it too! They are bright yellow right now. I am incapable of reaching them on my own.


This is a picture of my make-up drawer. I love things like make-up drawers, all the little containers and pretty things. 


And the Baby of Cuteness had a growth spurt, I'm fairly positive. At least that's what the growing pile of clothes that don't fit me are saying. This makes me worried since all of Adam's younger siblings were over ten pounds, one of his siblings was 10 pounds, 9 ounces. As much as I love chubby-cheeked babies, let's just aim for under ten pounds, please, Miss Ella!

Another craft and some ducks


Expectant Mother Parking Only-- awesome!


Another baby craft: this is a changing pad for Baby Girl. Tutorial here.


We had a picnic at the park.
Pastrami, pepperjack cheese, and tomatoes fresh from the garden on wheat bread= incredible yumminess!


Adam feeds the ducks Ghardettos. Look at how hypnotized they are by the food.

Perhaps the ultrasound lady should not have told us that the Baby of Cuteness could come any day now. Wherever I am, I keep having thoughts like, "What if my water broke right now?" and "Maybe this is the last full night of sleep I will have for a long time." It's excruciating having to wait! So much worse than waiting for Christmas when you're little because at least you know the exact number of days until Christmas will come.

She has chubby cheeks!

So much for her measuring four weeks behind schedule-- she's already eight pounds and has a big head (which she had little chance of avoiding with her genetics). If she waits to come until her due date she could be ten pounds by then! The ultrasound lady said to be ready for her to come any day now. However, that does not mean she won't decide to come late. Knowing how big she is, I'm starting to think that October 27th would be a perfect birthday!

Her hands were playing with her toes and she was making funny faces at us throughout the whole ultrasound! Usually at this point the baby is so tightly packed in that it's hard to see the face but she not only let us see her cute face but she put on quite a show. And the ultrasound lady said that she has chubby cheeks!

Ready to see some ultrasound pictures?

Here is a picture of her little chubby-cheeked face straight-on:


This next picture is tricky to see but it's one of my favorites once you can figure out what everything is. So take the picture above and imagine that she tilted back her head a little bit so that her eyes are hiding and you can only see her nose and mouth, that's what you can see here:


She's making a face, scrunching up her little mouth. Maybe she is trying to look like Nigel, or blowing a kiss. (If you are still having trouble seeing it: the light-colored round umbrella shape near the middle is her nose and beneath it is a downward-curved little scrunched-up mouth).

Yet another picture of her making faces, this time a profile. She is scrunching her mouth all the way up to her nose and puckering our her lips. It looks like she might be one of those kids who has to be making a crazy face in every single picture ever taken of her, just like her dad (see picture of Adam immediately below and to the right of the blog title):


And a 3/4 view of her face. That thing that looks like an octopus swallowing her is the umbilical chord:

 

I guess she was just tucked far enough back in my torso and low enough down in my pelvis that she couldn't be fully measured by the doctor because she definitely is not lacking in size!

A dress for the Baby of Cuteness


The dress is done! Tutorial here.


And I made some pacifier clips. I like the chicken one. Tutorial here.


I find it pretty awesome that my sewing machine came in this zebra pattern. It's too bad that crafts always leave behind a big mess.

He even buckles my shoes for me


You know you are one lucky girl when your cute-faced husband buckles your shoes for you every single day because you can no longer reach them. And he doesn't even complain about it.

Baby Girl has been measuring a little bit big for her age for most of this pregnancy, but she's been slowing down in her growth these past few weeks. At todays doctor's appointment she was measuring four weeks behind schedule and I haven't been gaining much weight (despite the amount of food I've been positively inhaling recently) so tomorrow we are going in for an ultrasound to make sure she's okay. I feel like she's probably fine since she's been just as active as ever and her heart rate is good, so I'm more excited than nervous for this ultrasound. This will be the second time that we get to see her-- I hope she has chubby cheeks!

Free sewing patterns


Dicky's was celebrating 70 years of business and selling their pulled pork sandwiches that are usually $5 for only $1, so of course we had to go for lunch today! They were also giving away slices of cake, balloons and they had their usual free frozen yogurt-- yum! 


I found a website called Think Liz that has a huge list of FREE SEWING PATTERNS! Here is the link. 

I found the pattern for this easy-to-make baby dress on there and you better believe that it's on the list of things to make before baby girl comes!