bumpy attire.

nearly nine months pregnant, feeling like eleven, i've suddenly come to understand the fashion habits of portly old men.  the pants-over-the-belly look, the classic undershirt-and-cardigan combo, and the socks-with-crocs ensemble . . . they've all become familiar to me now, as part of my dressing repertoire.  i'm also particularly fond of the cotton maxi-dress, though i must admit that with my stature i'm resembling a tent more often than i am a statuesque pregnant lady.

i'm also about as limber as a portly old man, which concerns me somewhat as i'm becoming more an more aware of the sudden turmoil that is about to erupt throughout my body.  i have daydreams of tip-toeing through the tulips, i kid you not - oh, the days when i took spry for granted!  it seems the most pleasant of lost abilities, to tip-toe or even perhaps to skip.

and so!  a month to go, give or take of course, and i'm absolutely ready to meet the monkey that's been tumbling ferociously in my belly for the past 9 months.   i hope everyone is finally getting a chance to enjoy summer - thunderstorms and earthquakes and all!  xoxoe.

blind ambition.

i woke up this morning with one goal - clean the windows.  well, the kitchen windows at least and that's job enough, given the incredible two inch thick dust on every slat of the cheap venetian blinds that came with our house.  how hard could it be?  i figured, get them in the shower, let the water do the dirty work, wash the windows in between, slap 'em back on and presto - instant gorgeousness!

oh, oh dear.  four hours later, this is my guide to cleaning venetians.

1.  force blinds from brackets, making sure to irreparibly bend at least one bracket at disconnection.

2.  carry blinds upstairs to bathtub, not realizing until its too late that your 6 foot blinds don't fit in your 5 foot bathtub.  persist.  bend and damage blinds forcefully until they're balanced just perfectly for all the shower water to run down blinds, out of the bathtub and onto the floor.

3.  soak up puddles with now water-laden bathmat. 

4.  get mad at spouse because he's not helping you and it's all his fault.

5.  carry dripping wet, yet still amazingly dirty blinds back downstairs and out to back deck.

6.  attempt to wipe dirt, bending several slats in the meantime.

7.  threaten spouse with immediate divorce if help is not offered NOW.

8.  spend thirty minutes watching spouse hook up yet unused garden hose located conveniently under shoddily-built deck.

9.  spend thirty minutes watching spouse spray blinds with hose.  perceive absolutely no cleaning action.

10.  precariously balance blinds on fence, stopping to pick them off the grass with every gust of wind.

11.  wipe each slat with a rag, cursing blinds all the while.

12.  perceive no discernible cleaning action.

13.  boldly state that you no longer care if blinds get clean.  ever.  woe to any spouse who makes suggestions.

14.  spend thirty minutes watching spouse try to fix broken bracket.  make snide comments about his ability to fix brackets.

15.  apologize once brackets are fixed.

16.  resist impulse to whack spouse across the head with blinds.

17.  argue for 10 minutes about how the blinds are to be reattached.

18.  reattach blinds.  stand back and sort all the slats that are stuck together with dirty water.

19.  realize blinds are put on backwards.  curse like a trucker.

20.  reattach blinds the correct way. 

21.  make lifelong commitment to never wash blinds again.  accept your dirty, water-spotted blinds for what they are.

so that was my day.  i highly recommend this exercise to anyone that wants to test their patience, relationship, and sanity.  cheers!

xoxoe.

ready, set, shop.

i've never been shy about my love for shopping, so creating a baby registry is something that i've been looking forward to with anticipated glee.  the research, the decisions, comparisons and final choices have been dancing like sugarplums in my pregnancy-addled mind, and so it wasn't until i began this enormous task that i realized exactly how overwhelming it is!

too many choices!!  tell me, little vegas, do you prefer to rock side-to-side or back and forth?  will you require a head cozy to keep your little neck straight and supported?  should i stock bottles if i intend to breastfeed?  and how many?  do you need a crib AND a bassinet?  do i need a diaper genie for cloth diapers?  and what exactly will that genie do?  how many diapers?  which car seat will best protect your precious body and lull you to sleep?  good lord, i didn't realize that the occasion to make the wrong choices for my child would begin so early!

so i figure i need some help, and if anyone out there has some personal experience or some "must-haves" then PLEASE, by all means, feel free to dispense with your advice or suggestions.  also, i've started a registry at babies r us, but if you know of a better place (for prices or choices) please let me know!

xoxoe.

settling into our space.

oh how nice it is to be home!  we've had a wonderful holiday - nearly sinfully restful - and now i'm tackling the nest.  it seems never-ending!  painting, stacking, organizing, sweeping, painting, hammering, eyeballing, sighing, grooving, adjusting, storing, putting bliss in place and just REALLY trying to tip-toe away from any signs of OCD.

our cat, stinker, follows me from room to room as long as there's a perch by the window.  she sits riveted by sparrows while i take a moment to wonder when the leaves will come out on the trees in my yard.  big trees.

vegas is feisty.  she tumbles now and then in the afternoon but saves her best tricks for after dinner.  i spend a good deal of my daydreams on designing her nursery.  i'm caught by a particular whimsical idea and if i still like it next week i hope to get started soon!  - (o! another little bird outside the window, i really must get a feeder - )

mark and i are heading to my cousin's grand opening at "hudson's" tonight, perhaps i'll see some of you there?  hope so - !

see ya later, suckers!

our dear family and friends, where would we be without you?  somewhere warmer, probably, but that's beside the point.  we'd be drowning in boxes and with our stuff strewn across two households and likely on our way to a bitter divorce if we'd had to survive this move on our own.  so - my deepest thanks, and gratitude.

and speaking of somewhere warmer, we're on our way to palm springs and mexico.  whoo hoo!  we'll be gone for two weeks, caught in sunshine bliss and entertained by bob and bev.

i'm sure i'll have lots of stories when i return - or, depending on my mood, perhaps even during the trip.  either way, did i mention that it's a girl?  yep!  mark is busy padlocking every window in the house as i type.  and so it begins.

much love, xoxoe.

mama lion covers her tracks.

every day i wake up twice as pregnant as i was the day before, i kid you not.  and despite the fact that every time i see a doctor they push back my due date (i'm now not due until July 26) everything is going swimmingly.

just last week i felt the baby quicken for the first time. it really felt more like fifty-seven pointy little fingers inside my uterus than like anything else and once i realized that i was actually feeling little vegas for the first time i let out a resounding and high-pitched "oh!", which immediately captured the attention of all 200+ fellow students in the lecture hall, and also my professor.  i could only imagine that he, and the rest of the class, were assured that i was extremely intrigued and excited by the geographical terrain of central america, which was the lecture of the day.  it was, to say the least, rather embarrassing.

 truly, the only way to salvage my thus untarnished reputation in the class was to become very visibly pregnant by the end of the class, and i took this task none too lightly.  promptly unzipping my hoodie so that my distended belly was in full view, i groomed the audience with a few carefully choreographed rubs of said belly.  once i was sure i had caught a few glances, i strategically placed my other hand on the arm of the chair, propelling my body out and upward, belly first - then swiftly placing said hand on the small of my back once upright.  this is the universal position for pregnant women everywhere, as i'm sure you're all aware.

as i left the lecture hall, i made sure to keep my hands in the aforementioned positions, and occasionally murmured maternally in the direction of the belly in order to really get my point across.  as pubescent after pubescent frantically cleared impending backpack obstacles from my path, i knew by the wide-eyed intimidation in their eyes that i had effectively declared my status in the class, and that henceforth all unusual sounds, sights, actions or requests on my part would be mutely accommodated.

i am pregnant, hear me roar.

mark n' erin sittin' in a tree, b-i-t-ch-i-n-g . . .

yep we sure are getting tired of sittin' in this tree, and even worse still our landlords are going to put it back onto the market in the spring.  this, and strong desire to make another startling announcement, led us to decide it was time to buy a home.

now i know what you're thinking - you don't just buy a home over the weekend out of the blue - especially if your name is mark.  mark is infamous for taking two years to buy his television, and even then he felt he was diving into it too quickly.  he has to shop, compare, contemplate, strategize, seek opinion, contemplate again - and by then, usually the technology has changed so the process has to begin all over again.

but if mark is known for his reluctance to make quick decisions, then I am infamous for thwarting all mark's plans.  unbeknownst to mc, i had already been shopping for a house for nearly a year, on the off-hand chance that he might suddenly drop his guard and agree it might be time to buy.  (and okay, so what if i helped him to that point with two bottles of cheap wine and a Wendy's burger?  a girl's gotta do . . . )

so, once mark drunkenly agreed it was time to buy, it only took us two days and five houses to find The One.  i'd already had a short-list of potentials but both mc and i knew as soon as we pulled up that we'd soon be living in the two-story symmetrical tree-flanked doll-house with the for sale sign on the gently-sloped lawn.  i kid you not, i had visions of little vegas floating down the staircase in her prom dress.  admittedly, we will likely only be there for the next three to five years - but you get my drift!

so, we decided to buy on saturday, looked on sunday, put in an offer on monday and called it home on tuesday!  so happy.  our possession date is february 19th.

here's a picture, and of course i'll be re-doing EVERYTHING so i'll probably get into some before and after reno shots.  btw,  baby vegas is great, due up for the sex-clarifying ultrasound in a month - (i'll see if i can get some video of that for you, thomas, since you have taken a particular interest ;-))