My new favorite

I mean the photo. But also, Rob surprised me with a new lens. It came on Monday and I started snapping away. Good thing that last week I deleted about 10 gig of photos off our computer. Need more room. This new lens is a portrait lens and it was pretty inexpensive. I'm really enjoy benefiting from all the research that Rob does on camera equipment (especially from this surprise buy). Isn't he great? :)

Some Catch Up

I love these guys. Because Rob works so hard (and so late T-Th), we don't get much daylight playtime outside all together. But when we do, Guy really wears Rob out. I'm not sure who sleeps best on those nights. Here he's wresting with Dad (as Dad's multi-tasking-taking the photo)

Running around, just happy.

Shooting hoops--and he even makes some of them. But this one is up cause it looks like he's hanging from the net.Guy loves to come up from behind and give me a hug. He sometimes does it a few times a day. It's one of my favorite things that he does.He loves being thrown in the air, too. It seems like more and more often there are games/activities that are classified as "Daddy things." It seems that Guy is starting to understand that, and taking full advantage of the time he gets to play these games.A couple of weekends ago Rob and I spent Friday night downtown in a hotel. My parents watched Guy Friday night, and Eden had him Saturday until we came home (thanks, again). It was nice to relax and spend some time together. Ironically, I went to bed and woke up earlier than usual, but it was still refreshing. Walking around downtown (after getting caught in some rain), we saw these rainbows. The second one, to the right, is faint, but it's there.

And this last one is for Rob's mom--this little red jacket was one that Rob wore growing up. Also, though, it's his current usual pose when I ask him to smile. Not so much a smile, but a cute head tilt. At least I caught him this time before he closed his eyes.

Oh . . . and the latest good news--though I'm still getting a little morning sickness almost daily (sad at 17 weeks), it IS getting better, not lasting most of the day. Hopefully it'll be gone soon enough. . .

Lately I've learned that . . .

Magazines are best kept out of reach of the pack n' play.

Even some good treats take convincing to try.

Dry erase marker comes off the wall with the dry erase marker spray (more effectively than hairspray, rubbing alcohol, and a few other attempted remedies), thankfully!

And, sometimes when you tell a kid to smile it's just awkwardly funny.

Maybe this one is a girl . . .

????

I've pretty much been struggling since June--lots and lots of headaches, and well, an upset stomach for weeks now. Last pregnancy it just wasn't this bad. I know I had my moments, but it just wasn't this bad.

Food never sounds good, I just have to eat sometimes or I feel worse. I've discovered the comfort of shaved ice with juice concentrate as a topping in the past few days and that's been a treat I treasure.

I'm 12 or 13 weeks along, so at least I know the discomfort will surely end in February (within a week of Guy's second birthday-Feb 7), and that I get one more live in camera subject out of the deal. :)

And really, I AM excited--it'd be fun to have another boy so he can pal around with Guy, and the fact that we have all boy stuff already makes that idea very appealing, as well. If it's a girl, I'll be excited to do ribbons and bows, and all the lacy stuff I've really never even looked at much in stores. I'll even pull my sewing machine out for that stuff, and I'd love it.

Rob's a great dad, and Guy will be a loving older brother--he's already baby hungry, for months, he's been holding out his arms, trying to hold every baby that he sees, and if he sees a crying baby, it's worse--tears stream down his cheeks as he reaches for him/her, he wants to help so badly.

I know in some ways, the discomfort will get worse (as I get bigger)--I just hope the morning sickness (that has lasted all day for me) stops soon. Regardless, I am grateful--it's an amazing blessing that we get to increase our family with another one of God's children, and being the woman that gets to carry the child is a pretty special experience, too.

I certainly feel tremendously blessed.

Happy Birthday Rob!

July flew, and if August has a chance, I kind of hope it will, too.

Rob's been working hard for our little family every day, and he never seems to get rest. Monday through Friday he has his "real" job, the one with benefits that covers all our expenses. Tuesday through Thursday he also works through the evening, until 10:30 pm most nights. Then, he's doing the work that he likes better--seeing clients as he fills the role of counselor to those with marriage problems, substance abuse and pornography addictions, as well as other issues. He enjoys that, helping people one on one and seeing them make changes for the good. It's a good thing, too, that the second job is earning him hours towards his LCSW.

When he's home, he spends a lot of time helping out with Guy. This morning, for example, he got Guy up, fed him, and didn't wake me up until he had to leave for work. I still feel bad that his birthday morning started like that.

We were able to meet up for lunch and give him the first of a few gifts, though.

Always up for a good deal (remember the donuts?), Rob's goal is to get as many birthday freebies as he can this week. A lot of restaurants share offers like that, so we'll start redeeming them tonight, for dinner. Easy enough for me, yea. :)

Some of the latest

Last week I snapped away at my family reunion. Here are some of my favorites:

Happy Fourth!

I love this holiday and what it stands for. I'm grateful for this country, it's founders, and the liberties we have. The fireworks, firecrackers, and sparklers are an added bonus that I love, too.

Hope you had a great weekend!

As Promised

In my last quilt post I said I was going to try to make a blanket out of old dresses that I recently found. These dresses were all mine (from the early to mid 90s), and they are a little painful to look at now. Though they are all "dry clean only," I decided to give them a wash and see how they'd hold. It seemed like they survived okay, so I promply cut them up and went to work. By the way, don't miss the pleats on the far right . . .

I know with a pattern like this you can usually do some strip piecing to put the whole thing together--but not when your cutting up dresses, it just doesn't work so well. So, I pieced each square individually. Don't look too close because it isn't perfectly square, but it turned out well, I think. I actually love the colors together.

Oh, and I'm cheating a little, it's not going to be completely out of old dresses--I bought a black remnant for the edges and I think I'll do some black fleece on the back (can't easily find any other fleece colors that match, unfortunately).

Bubbles

My mom just got a bubble machine for the grandkids. Next week the whole family gets together for the week, so this should provide some great entertainment. Every new toy needs a trial run before a big audience, right? Last night we gave it a go. The 3 grandkids around old enough to appreciate it surely did just that. And I enjoyed snapping away. Here are my favorites.

This machine looks like a winner--it's Gazzillion Bubbles brand, and came from amazon.com.

Does your kid . . .

hug other random-stranger kids walking around in the park?

At least the feeling was mutual. The other kid actually hugged Guy first, and over a span of about 30 minutes of independent play there were 3 different hugging moments when they crossed paths.

So so excited

A former schoolmate of Rob's (Cristina) took some photos of Guy last 4th of July. Shortly after that, she and her husband moved to D.C.--before I could get copies. Just this past week I was able to get in touch with her (thanks, Rachel), and we used Dropbox.com to transfer the photo files (really wonderful internet application that you should learn about if you don't already know about it). These are some of my favorite photos of Guy ever, I just really love them. It makes my day to get these, and more (but I'll spare you).It's fun to see how much he's changed (grown up). Again, Cristina, thanks so much!!!