it finally feels like spring here in ol’ missouri.  of course, it’s bound to be short-lived with temps already reaching 80 degrees, but i’m not complaining.  the sun is here.  i stop short of bowing down to it, but i’m pretty darn enthusiastic that he’s decided to show up and stick around.

one of my favorite parts of spring is when all of the bulbs start to peek out of the ground like, “oh, hey.  is the coast clear?”  the daffodils have showed up in my yard and they’re lovely.  the hostas are starting to sprout and even the lilies and irises are greening.  *sigh*

and, of course, tower grove park is bursting with blooms.  every year i tell myself to take ella up there when the daffodils are in full bloom and take some pictures.  this year i did it.  she was dressed up in a very smart dress and looked quite the little lady surrounded by flowers.  she was very cute.  now if i could only get her to do a real smile and not a grimace, but perhaps that will have to wait until next year.  tony took a couple of shots of ella and me, and i made sure the pics were out of the cankle zone.  no one needs photographic proof of the swollen mess below my knees!  yuck!

otherwise, it promises to be a delightfully sunny and warm week.  i hope you get to get outside and enjoy it.  i know i am!

thankfully, i think this all gets counterbalanced by the fact that my spirit is incredibly willing, but my body just lays there and laughs at it.  i can barely bend down to tie my shoes, much less go wild and wacky cleaning and organizing like i really, really want to.  i’ve resorted to mentally moving furniture, cleaning floors, vacuuming under furniture, and the like.  basically, not much is going to happen until the baby is here.  even then, i’ll be too tired or sore to really do much about it.  this i know.

so basically, my house won’t really be baby-ready or clean until sometime in june.  i’ll be ready for it then, right?

and did i tell you my back hurt?

but hey, it’s all relative and i just got a kick in my belly to remind me why it’s not all so bad after all.

i get to my appointment and am handed another yak-inducing orange flavored syrupy cup of nast.  it’s sooooo  sweet that just the smell makes me want to vomit.  of course, this is the test i have to fast for, so on top of starving, now i’m queasy because of this glucose smell.  and i have to chug this whole bottle and my reward for this is two vials of blood getting drawn from my arm.  yay.

this goes on for not one, not two, but three hours.  every hour i have to mosey to the back and get stuck with another needle.  my arm is still bruised from last week’s adventure, so it’s left arm’s turn this week.  now i have two sore arms instead of one

the hope against hope is, of course, that the test will come back negative and i won’t have gestational diabetes and have to lay off all the sugar and chocolate that make up 3/4 of my food pyramid.  if not, at least it’s only six weeks until my due date.

so keep your fingers crossed.  as soon as i’m done licking the sugar off of mine, i’ll cross mine too.

but, here’s to a fresh start and a new lease on life and all that jazz!

there isn’t much new in dawn-land other than my ever expanding waistline.  tony bought a scale this weekend (our first) and now anytime i want to see how much girth i actually have, i can hop on.  yay.  just what i need :(  oh well, at least my ankles are still intact.  however, the other day ella asked what was wrong with my belly button because it was starting to stick out.  i told her that’s how i knew the baby was almost ready to come out.  i’ve got my own pop-out timer.  sweet!

other than that, i can’t believe it’s already 2010 and january 3rd.  time is flying by as usual and before i know it i’ll be screaming for an epidural and staring at a new baby.  if she’s as active out of the womb as she is in, then we’ll get along great.  i think big sister is going to have her hands full keeping up with the new kid.  little sister likes to move and hustle; ella’s finally going to have someone in the house that matches her enthusiasm level.  fargo’s too old and i’m too pregnant.  i’m not sure what tony’s excuse is

in the meantime, remember the recipe for a good year:  one day at a time.

see you soon.  no, really!

well, i’m busy getting ready and she stops coloring and looks up at me and says, “momma, penguins are birds.”

“mmm-hmm.  that’s right.  penguins are birds.”

“momma, penguins are birds that cannot fly.”

“you’re right; they can’t.”  i thought for a moment about this.  ”um, ella, who taught you that penguins can’t fly?”  i know i didn’t, so who should i credit here?

“momma, nobody taught me that.  it’s just word on the street.”

i give her the sideways look and burst out laughing.

“momma, why are you laughing at me?”

“because.  you are HILARIOUS!”

i was reminded of this when i was shoe shopping recently.  my task was a simple one:  find a new pair of tennis shoes for ella.  ones, this time, without lights or obnoxious animated princesses.  finding such a shoe is actually a little harder than it may seem.  there are a lot of ugly children’s tennis shoes out there competing for our dollars. 

i went to store after store after store.  i finally found a shoe that i liked, simple pink and white nikes.  now the hard part, finding her size.  i was convinced of her shoe size.  she’s an eight.  so after four stores, i found the right shoe and the right size.  my daft hunting and gathering skills were put to good use, and i celebrated my victory. 

and then tony tried putting them on ella. 

“no, daddy!  these shoes hurt my feet!”  she howled.  now the problem with ella (one of several), is that when she rejects something, there’s little we can do to change her mind. 

“no, really ella.  they’re the right size.  just let me put them on correctly.”  tony wrestled with her to no avail.  “dawn!  i think you got the wrong size.”

“um, no i didn’t.  she wears an eight.”  in the meantime, ella is shrunk in the corner of the couch giving the stinkeye to me, tony, and the shoes.  after a quick coaxing/blackmailing session, we managed to convince ella to give it one more try. 

“OWWWW!  these shoes hurt!”

okay, so i finally got the picture.  she wasn’t just being a drama queen, her feet actually were in no way going to fit into the shoes i spent all afternoon finding.  back to the store for me.

but this was the hard part.  back in the store, i stood looking at the new size–9.  nine.  NINE!  it’s not a measly little eight, it’s practically as big as my foot!  it’s so huge.  surely my little baby can’t fit into a NINE!  i called home just to double check.

“it’s a nine; get over it,” says tony.

ugh.  it was a nine.  her foot fit perfectly.  she is the big kid i don’t want her to be.  she’s growing up, getting bigger, and becoming more her, more ella.  it’s hard to reconcile that sometimes with the image of my sweet little baby ella i have firmly plastered in my mind. 

but that’s okay.  i’m learning to get over it.  and in the meantime, perhaps some mommy shoe shopping therapy will ease my mind….

all of this commenced on monday.  ella and slept in until eight; a full two hours past my normal wake up time.  it was delightful.

and then i went downstairs.  it was fifty five degrees in my house and seventeen degrees outside.  now, just to put things into perspective, tony and i usually keep the house at around sixty seven, sixty eight.  this keeps the first floor bearable and the other two floors just right.  any warmer and our bedroom starts to feel like an oven.  this aside, that morning, even our bedroom felt cold.

i made breakfast, dressed ella in the warmest outfit she had, and put a sweater on.  then we were off to the store to buy plastic for our windows.  i use the term window loosely here; our windows are more like glass-paned screens.  they give the illusion of protection from the elements, but that’s about it.  i go to home depot first but everyone else in my neighborhood must have the same issue, because they’re sold out.  off to lowe’s then to score some plastic sheeting.  as luck would have it, the people of carondolet must have nice windows because there was plenty of sheeting for the taking.

back at the homestead, the heater had been running pretty much the entire time and it had worked its way up to fifty seven.  it was almost warm enough to take off my shoes.  almost.  i went downstairs to get a ladder to put up my plastic, and low and behold, what do i find?

a wind tunnel.  yes, a wind tunnel in my basement.  the mock basement window (that i loathe and will continue to browbeat my husband until he replaces it with a real window) with the dryer vent hook up is no longer hooked up.  this has turned the hook up into a rather impressive cannon of frigid air.

gee, i wonder why my house is so cold?  could it be because of the artic sciroco blasting into the basement????

so i hooked the dryer vent back up, prop it up with a towel (because surely that’s going to help things in the long run), get my ladder, and proceed to ensconce my windows in plastic.

by the afternoon, you’ll be glad to know, the temperature had finally reached  a toasty sixty six and the furnace stopped for a breather.  when ella went down for her nap, i took a few minutes to admire my handy work and watched the plastic bow with the eddying breeze that now only blew on the outside of my home.

then i began my forty minute commute (don’t get me started about that).  about half way through it, i noticed an icky feeling growing in my tummy.  (yes, my tummy.)  hmmmm.  felt kinda puky, and so i began searching for a proper receptacle for my puke.  ah, yes, an empty cup from my weekend iced chai fix.  as soon as i got the cup, breakfast 2.0 began commencing.  ugh.  i hung out on the side of the road for a bit, contemplating my morale dilemma, to litter or not.  thankfully, it wasn’t much of a dilemma.  cup o’puke did not make the trip to school with me, sorry!

i felt a little better, but not much and the thought of trying to slap together lesson plans or just tough out the day.  i chose plan b.  tough it out and see what happens.  i was trying to survive my first block and got a visitor:  the hall monitor.  he told me my lights were on.  so i high tail it out to the parking lot, abandoning my class, to shut off my lights.  duhhh.

at the end of my day, i go to get my hair cut.  i get alllll the way there and discover i forgot my wallet at home.  oops!   so i have to go home, retrieve my wallet, then drive back.  whew!  no problem, it’s not that far.  then, as i’m literally getting out of the chair to go pay, i look out the window and see a meter maid writing a ticket.  for me.

ugh.  stupid ticket!  and my salon has raised their rates, so my haircut, ticket included, is a $70 after school event.  geez.

i’m really hoping that tomorrow goes better for me.  but i do have a dentist’s appointment, so we’ll see….

one such occasion was on a walk i had with the kids down the road and back.  i had the chance to talk with my youngest nephew, whom i’ll call “parker”, but just to let you know, he’s four.

and he likes to talk.

and share, much to his mother’s chagrin.

so we’re walking along, no big deal, and i notice he’s got his hand down his pants.

“aunt dawn.”

“um, yes, parker.”

“i’ve got my hand down my pants.”

“uh-huh.  yes, you do.”

“i’m touching my penis.”

at this point i’m reallllly glad i have a daughter : )  “oh…well, parker, that’s nice.”

now he’s pulled his hand out of his pants.  “my penis smells really good, aunt dawn.”

“is that so, parker?”

“yep.  do you wanna smell it?”

“um, no thanks.  i’m good.”

“it smells better than my butt.”

“really?”

“yep.  i used to put my hand down my butt all the time when i was little, but that made my hand stinky.”

“i see.”

“yeah, i don’t do that anymore.”

me neither, parker, me neither : )