Nora and Anneliese got their first bath together tonight. A friend loaned us this bath seat thing; it's like a mesh bouncer that she can recline in. We put a few inches of water in the tub and plopped them in. At first, she wasn't so sure. This girl hasn't had a lot of baths in her life because Mama's lazy (and Mama believes it's not necessary for tinies). After I snapped a couple of pictures, I left Jason in there with the girls and went to do something in the kitchen. I heard the sound of giggling and singing. That took me back to my own childhood! A few minutes later Jason had finished bathing Anneliese and Nora had dumped a cup of water on her too forcefully and the whole situation kind of devolved, as expected.

We had lettuce out of our garden this evening. I said that it was maybe the best lettuce I've had in my entire life. Part of it was that it was a darn good variety of lettuce. The other part is that my pride in my garden tastes goooooood. The rest of the salad ingredients came from Whole Foods ($5 for cherry tomatoes say what?), but I'm looking forward to the day we get to harvest our own cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, etc. The tomato plants are looking great; we'll probably need to set up our trellis soon. I got a bell pepper transplant at our church plant sale on Saturday. I abused it for the rest of the weekend (left it in the trunk of the car, it got knocked over) but it looked like it still had some life in it when I planted it, so we'll see. I also sowed the cucumber seeds today. We have four squares left and we're trying to decide what to do. I'm thinking beans--bush or pole? I would love some kind of squash, but don't have the room right now. Basil? Beets? I'm already thinking ahead to summer and fall, too.

Here's what things are looking like these days.



Now I'm off to work on my La Leche League application, which I've been working on for literally years now. I'm feeling all fired up about some stuff and ready to be done with the application part so I can get in the trenches and help some people.

Where were we, then?

It's one a.m. Anneliese, 10 weeks old, has been mostly sleeping through the night for a week or so now. I am revisiting my old friend, the late night shower. I had forgotten about the late night shower, even though that was part of my life for months, maybe even the first year, after Nora was born. I don't have time during the day so showering late at night when Jason is asleep, but around to (I hope) wake up if the baby cries, becomes my routine. This is, for me, part of life with a baby.

Another part is the baby crying in the car. My heart beats so fast it feels like it will come out of my chest, and my mind races. Do I need to pull over and comfort the baby? Will the comfort continue once I buckle her back in and start driving, or will she go back so screaming? Is it faster to (eek) just keep driving so we can get there and everybody can be happy and settled? There's no one-size fits all answer to this. Anneliese has been a relatively happy car baby, but in the past week or two we've had a few tough rides. I hope this isn't becoming our new reality. Nora hated the car for the first several months of life but chilled out when she was finally old enough to appreciate a toy or two, a stage that is coming soon for Anneliese. We'll see.

My gripes are minor, though. Really, the adjustment to life with two children has been more seamless than I expected. The day after I came home from the hospital Nora had to go to school, and so our new life began. After several days away from Nora, I really wanted to be the one to get her ready. Jason took care of Anneliese while I got Nora dressed and gave her breakfast and then we were off. (Anneliese had jaundice, so every morning that week we set off as a family of four and dropped Nora at school, then stopped by the hospital for blood work.) It felt so good to walk Nora into her classroom looking at least a little bit less pregnant than I had at pick-up the previous Thursday. I was the mother of two!

It helps that Anneliese has a incredibly laid back personality, something that is part of Nora's personality, too, but it took Nora a little longer to grow into it. It helps that she's the second child and we know we didn't break the first one so most everything will probably be okay. We were like, "We got this," from the very beginning. Changing diapers is like riding a bicycle--we'd changed a few thousand before and we're pretty fast at it. Okay, like there's so much skill involved, I know, but when Nora was born it had probably been a good decade or more since I'd changed any back in my baby-sitting days. And breastfeeding is a lot easier when you've fed a baby before and you know what to look for to know everything is going smoothly. I think the circumstances of this birth, which turned out to be a relatively easy one for me, made a big difference, too.

So now we are a family of four. And we have done a lot in ten weeks. We've cuddled, rested, played, and enjoyed lots of yummy food from our friends and members of our church. That meant that we didn't have to cook dinner for almost a month! Then we got back in the swing of things and started cooking again, which is actually fun in a way--I found I'd missed it. Jason has been busy at work. Nora has been busy at school and is full of wonder for the world. In her little world, this whole changing of the seasons thing is a big deal! When Anneliese was first born we were having wintery mix, aka snow and rain nastiness; two weeks ago we had 90 degree days. We've been to Greenville, the Atlanta Botanical Garden, Fernbank, Nora went on a special Saturday zoo trip with her teacher, and we've been, you know, everywhere else. Restaurants and malls and Home Depot, oh my.

We also went to Hastings Garden Center, which is a neat plant nursery and has a cool miniature train that Nora can't wait to see again. We planted a little garden of our own, a square foot garden. It's so small that my grandmother kind of dissed it and said it wasn't worth mentioning, but we're intensely proud of it so I'm mentioning it. It's our little sixteen feet of tomato plants, flowers, onions, lettuce, carrots, parsley, cilantro, bell pepper, and cucumber. And maybe a few other things, we'll see. We've done mostly transplants and attempted to start a few things from seed. We've really enjoyed putting it together and I know we're going to love eating out of it. We've already had some of the herbs, and the lettuce is ready for harvest any day now. Surprisingly, the only plant that looks really sad is a flower. I haven't take pictures since we first planted but I need to. As I've told several people, I don't think it's bad at all for someone who had never before in her adult life dug a hole in the ground! My parents weren't into gardening so I had practically no kid experience. Thank God for Google and the library. Both of the above help me succeed as a functional adult.

I don't want to end this on a gripe, but I have to go dry my hair. Major pitfall of the late night shower. If I sleep on wet hair, my hair will be more than impossible the next day. Mega cliche alert, but any minor inconveniences of being a mom? My kids are worth it.

Oh, hay there, blog. I kind of forgot about you. Like usual.

Here's the update on us. I had a baby! It seems really redundant to post that here because I'm pretty sure everybody who reads this is also on Facebook or speaks to me in real life. For the sake of posterity, though, I'll announce that Anneliese Joy was born on Feb 13 weighing 8 lbs, 11 oz. I had a natural birth and it was awesome. She's 8 weeks old now, and she's a smiling, happy, delightfully squishy baby. Check her out!



Not the best pic I have of her, actually, but it happens to be one of the most recent. I'll post some more later. Maybe!

We also started a garden and we're looking forward to an awesome summer.

More later, I hope!

Okay, so clearly I am experimenting with free blog templates and it's not going so well. I didn't realize the one I just uploaded had "kindergarten" as part of its graphics and clearly that doesn't work. Also, these narrow columns cut off my pictures. This is one of those times where I briefly wish I had some design sense or some motivation to figure it out for myself, but I don't. I guess I'll keep looking at free templates and hope I find something that works soon.

I'm 38 weeks pregnant today. If I'm honest with myself, I'm really feeling kind of "done" being pregnant. I'm shocked that I feel that way because I was induced with Nora around 40 weeks, and physically I didn't feel done at all at that point. I felt like I could have kept going for a couple of more weeks, at least--and in a way I wish I had, but that's another story for another day. I'm carrying this baby differently and I think that is affecting how I am experiencing the end of pregnancy, physically. I'm basically ready for her to come any time she wants to, as long as she's ready, too! I really wrestle with these feelings because intellectually I know that a lot of babies need longer to cook, and I really don't believe in forcing the issue. But whatever--it's not really in my hands, anyway. What will be will be.

Emotionally speaking I'm probably ready, too. In both of my pregnancies I've been shocked by how intensely I experience emotions. I've been called "too emotional" in my non-pregnant life, which is kind of a pet peeve because I kind of feel like, well, I'm me and this is how God made me. I can control how I behave but I find that when I try to control how I feel about things it just makes things worse. For me being pregnant is kind of like being drugged by hormones all the time. The first trimester was really intense. I've had a bit of a reprieve lately, but today was particularly rough, and when I heard Jason was going to be about an hour late last night my heart really sank and I thought, "How am I going to get through this last hour?" My patience is just out the window, and I hate to see Nora bear the brunt of it. The truth is my lack of patience is probably interacting horribly with the patience-testing qualities of the average 3 year old. When I think back on how I spoke to her throughout the day yesterday, it was a lot of "No, stop, don't, hurry, hurry, I'm getting wet!, hurry!! Let's have quiet time. In a minute. I don't know!" I really dislike days like that and they're really low parenting moments I'm not proud of. The good news is that it's the weekend and I'll have back-up in the form of Jason. So here's to a peaceful weekend for all three of us, and here's hoping I can show a little bit more kindness towards my family than I have been lately.

A couple of more things. One, we did decide on the baby's name and I think we're happy with it, so if she wants to come on she at least will not be nameless. :) Two, we're a week away from our amazing romantic vacation at Barnsley Gardens. I'm really interested in seeing what gets here first, the baby or Barnsley. :) We didn't plan it this way; Jason's work sends us there every year and this happens to be the weekend it falls on this year. While I would love a nice vacation with my sweet husband, having a sweet baby this week would be even better, I think. So we'll see how it all shakes out.

Since everyone is curious about what we're naming the baby, I thought I'd let you in on the process a little bit.

We don't want to tell the name before the baby is born, so a lot of people assume that we've had the name for a while and we're just keeping it a secret. Nope, not the case! Not this time! That was the case with Nora. I think we decided pretty firmly within about a month of finding out that she was a girl. Her middle name is Grey, after my sister and my grandmother, and I'd known for years that I wanted that to be my first girl's middle name. There were a couple of other names we considered, but none seriously. Nora just "fit."

This time has been so, so hard! We've had at least four names that we've seriously considered but decided against. When I say we've decided against them, I don't mean that we're keeping them on some list somewhere. I mean that there are names I liked two months ago that I have had such a change of heart about that I cringe at the thought of one of my children having one of those horrible names. Weird? Yes. I have a lot of naming hang-ups, I'll admit. I have this weird thing about using names of my friends' children, even if the friend is really an acquaintance or someone I rarely or never see. I'm trying to get over that particular hang-up because it's been pretty counterproductive in this particular name-searching process.

The following I consider to be qualifications, but not hang-ups. I don't like to use the names that are right at the top of the list in popularity, and there are certain current naming trends that I really don't care for at all. (I won't mention them here because that would be rude.) I do like a lot of "classic" names like Abigail, Hannah, Amelia, etc. but a lot of those happen to be extremely popular right now. I don't want another name that ends with an "a," just because I don't. I have ruled out some names because they have strong "s" sounds at the end and I don't think that sounds right with our last name. I want a name that sounds good with Nora, but isn't too matchy-matchy.

There's a name I've really been digging on for a couple of weeks, but tonight Jason announced that he just doesn't like it. I think his main problem with it is that it's a little unusual and he had never heard it before. I have heard it before, not to get all "gender stereotypical" on you, but I think women generally pay more attention to such things. Or maybe that's just me. Anyway, the name isn't crazy out there and I actually have an acquaintence who has a child with that name (meaning I'd have to overcome that particular hang-up to use it!). I don't mind Jason's veto, except now we've got nothing. NOTHING. My biggest fear is that the baby will be born and I we'll make a snap decision and regret it. So now we're really feeling the pressure. Wish us luck!

5 Awesome Things About My Kid

Skip this one if you don't like braggy posts. The title says it all.

5 Awesome Things About Nora

1) She's a great communicator. We can talk for hours, and I love hearing her thoughts and her opinions about everything. I love when she retells the stories she hears at school, and when she gives me her 3 year old interpretations of things that she learns at church, and when she asks a million questions. I just can't get enough of her.

2) She loves music. She may not always love the same music I do, but I've always been so impressed with her interest in all kinds of music. She's very opinionated and she will tell me whether she likes a song or not, and she'll attempt to interpret the lyrics. She can identify many instruments and has a special fondness for the banjo. She's also really curious about the violin. We're looking into lessons for next year, but I'm not sure it's in the budget. Her favorite Christmas song was Sleigh Ride--she really liked a bluegrassy version by Tony Trischka. She caught the tail end of another, soft pop version on the radio and she found it disappointing in comparison. "This is not 'Giddy-Up.' This does not have banjo," she said.

3) She's a foodie. Nora is the opposite of a picky eater. She'll eat almost anything! This is convenient, amusing, and fun for me. I've never cooked a special meal for her, and sometimes we get to try new foods at the same time (a couple of weeks ago it was roasted beets). She's always liked spicy foods, sometimes more than I do, although if she gets a bite that's too spicy sometimes she'll protest, "It's making my mouth too cool!" (Why does she think that spicy food is "cool" instead of "hot?" Who knows. But I cherish her little word mix-ups, especially since as she gets older makes these cute little mistakes less and less often. Now I wish I had written down more of what she was saying about a year ago, because it was hilarious.)

4) She's laid back. Nora is, for the most part, very sweet and agreeable. Not perfect--she has her moments (don't we all)--but most of the time, she's down for whatever. She has fun pretty much wherever she goes. She loves life, loves her friends, and...

5) She loves her mommy. I know, what kid doesn't? But let me tell you, it feels amazing to be on the receiving end of Nora's sweetness. There's not one hug or cuddle I don't appreciate. There's nothing about her I would change. I love that girl.

End overly sappy blog entry.