Lovey

Pretty much since Kalena was born I've been hoping she'd find a lovey. Some sort of comfort object that would help her sleep or keep her happy in the car-- that sort of thing. She's had blankets and stuffed animals and all that, but nothing that she was particularly attached to. I'd pretty much given up on the whole idea when she finally found one. It's a stuffed tiger I got when I was in high school so it's probably about 10 years old. The only problem now? It's as big as she is!
Also, it's heavy. The thing probably weighs 10 lbs. Most likely because the paws are all filled with sand. But the combination of Big + Heavy means Kalena can't carry it around herself. Instead, she just points to it or grabs the tail and hands it to me so I can carry it. It's cute how much she loves it though. She'll hug it or give it kisses and sometimes she'll stop playing and walk over and pet it. We'll just have to be careful to never lose it, because I'm guessing it would be hard to replace.

Pigtails!

The whole time Kalena was with me at Kari's, Kari kept insisting that I need to get her hair cut. I kept arguing that I didn't want to get it cut because I don't want to deal with her having bangs, and that it would be fine if I would just do something with it instead of leaving it crazy all the time. So then when I got home I thought it would probably be useful to have some barrettes and such if I actually wanted to do anything with Kalena's hair. I've mostly been keeping it out of her face with barrettes, but today I got ambitious and decided to put it in pigtails.


Pretty freaking cute, if I do say so myself. They aren't the best pigtails ever since I had to do them while she walked around, but I'm guessing I'll get better at that part. Also, I knew her hair was getting long, but I didn't realize how long until the pigtails were actually in. It made her look so much like a little girl that I had to wonder where my baby went.

As surprised as I am to be saying this...

The ultrasound this morning says it's a boy! Wow.

Do you think she's trying to tell me something?

Yesterday morning Kalena stopped playing, walked over to the closet where we keep the diapers, opened it, took out a diaper, took out the wipes, walked over to me and sat down to be changed. I thought 15 months was a little young to be doing that but I guess not.

Well, I can't back out now

After my mom left Pueblo, for a few days I was there with Kari and Kalena and baby Amelia. A couple times during those days Kari ran a quick errand leaving me at the house with the two little ones. I spent those quick errands alternating between thinking, "Okay, having two won't be too bad." and, "Oh my heavens what where we thinking having another one so soon?!" I just kept trying to remind myself that Kalena will be 19 months old when the next baby gets here, not 15 months, and that's a big difference developmentally. (Please don't tell me otherwise.)

Even those few moments alone with the two of them made me appreciate my mom that much more because the age difference between Kalena and Amelia is the same as the age difference between me and Kirsta. But she also had boys who were 4 and 6. Crazy.

Here's my mom with the babies. She's a professional.



P.S. There's another picture where Kalena is smiling, but I just think her expression in this one is great. Do you think it's an indication of how she'll react when this baby is born?

FINALLY

As I mentioned in my post yesterday, part of the plan for last weekend was to spend Saturday in Boulder hanging out with some of Brian's family. For those of you who don't know, Brian has 6 siblings (I'm the only one in my family who married someone with more siblings than myself) but up until Saturday I'd only met 3 of them. I've gone the entire 3 years we've been married without meeting half of my husband's siblings! But now we're back in Colorado and that had to stop. So now I have FINALLY met all Brian's brothers and sisters.

Left to right: Sara, Brian, and then the three I hadn't met yet: Keenan, Nikki, and Kendall


Me with Sara and Kalena at a nice little park near Pearl Street.


Kalena hanging out with her dad and uncle Keenan.


Minus the car breaking down, it was a really good day.

Just add a couple verses to that country song

You know when you see the trail of some sort of car fluid on the highway leading to the side of the road where there is a big puddle of fluid? And you think, "oohhh, that sucks." On Saturday that was us.

Let me back up a little. On Friday after Brian got off work he drove up to Pueblo to meet miss Amelia and be reunited with his loving family. (Or, a wife who was ready for him to take his daughter away for a few days so she could sleep.) Anyway, we were planning to go to Boulder on Saturday to hang out with some of Brian's family. Saturday morning we left and we got all the way to the Boulder turnpike, just inside Westminster city limits when, all of a sudden, the car made a funny noise, all the lights on the dashboard came on, and the car quit. We had enough momentum to get us to the side of the highway where there was just enough shoulder for us to be all the way off the road. Brian got out, saw the lovely puddle of fluid under the car, changed Kalena (because why wouldn't she pick broken-down-on-the-side-of-the-highway as a good time to dirty her diaper?) and called a tow truck. Luckily the tow truck had a call cancel so they got there really quickly, and a couple of Brian's siblings drove up from Boulder and picked us up so we could follow the tow truck to a mechanic.

Anyway, the point of the story is that the mechanic called this morning to let us know that if we want to fix the car it would cost us $1800. Now, not only do we not have $1800 lying around, even if we did we wouldn't spend it to fix a car that's 11 years old and has 200,000 miles on it (and a big dent in the side.) So we're down to one car. And while that one car is in considerably better condition than the Camry, it doesn't have any air conditioning. Also? It's a stick which means I can't drive it because I'm pathetic and I never really learned how to drive a stick. Well, we've always said that we thought the Camry would just run fine until it died, so apparently we were right.

That's not all though. On an unrelated note, our Realtor called about a week ago to let us know the air conditioner wasn't working at our house. As if it's not hard enough to be selling a house right now, everyone who was even looking at ours was looking at it in August, in West Texas, with no air conditioning. I'm guessing it was a little less than comfortable. We wondered what might be wrong since it worked JUST FINE the entire time we lived there. Well, we had an air conditioning guy go out today to see and it turns out somebody cut the wires from the main unit. Who in the world would do this and why? No idea. Good times for us though. Good times.


P.S. Of COURSE the gas tank in the Camry was full when we broke down. Why wouldn't it be?

Pictures and such

Apparently Kalena has been reading this blog, because she decided to bump up her wake up time by about an hour. That's been fun, especially since she also wants bedtime to be about 2 hours later than normal. Hopefully things will get back to normal once we're back in Grand Junction. Anyway, I never posted my 20 week picture, so here it is:


And since I hit 21 weeks yesterday, here's that picture:


(Apparently the lighting in Kari's dining room is really yellow.)

Miss Amelia is already into making fashion statements.


And Kalena is obviously thrilled to have a girl cousin.

It's too bad I'm a morning person

These past couple days while I've been in Pueblo I've enjoyed a privilege that I haven't had since before Kalena was born. No morning obligations. Every morning since Kalena was born I've had to get up, either for work, or for church, or for her. Even the days that Brian was sweet enough to get up with her and tell me to go back to sleep, I knew they were just waiting on me to get up.

Before we came to help out Kari, we (my mom and I) decided we'd probably be the most helpful if we weren't also having to run around after a 1 year old. My sister Kirsta graciously offered to keep Kalena for a couple days so we could do that. So while Kalena enjoys playing with her cousin Patrick (you can read about the fun time they're having over here) I get to spend my day just being an aunt. I get to hold the sweet baby, but pass her off when she cries. I get to watch her cute little facial expressions while she sleeps, and then enjoy my own night of sleep uninterrupted. And, of course, I get to sleep as late as I want in the morning. Turns out that the latest I want to sleep is 6:45 am. Yep, with no alarm, no sun shining in the window (it's a basement bedroom), nobody getting me up, and no baby monitor with Kalena on the other end, I still don't even sleep in until 7. That means without Kalena here I sleep roughly 20 minutes longer than I would otherwise. *SIGH* I guess that means I should stop complaining that she gets up early, because apparently even if she didn't, I would.

Introducing

My niece, miss Amelia Phelps. She is adorable, and I know you can't tell this from the picture, but her hair has little highlights in it. It looks like she spent her first day of life at the salon:) She is Kari's daughter for SURE.

More of the cuteness.


I love her scrawny little newborn limbs! And my phone is in that picture on purpose so you can get a sense of how small she is.


Baby girl with mama.


The little sweetheart with her daddy.

I have a niece!

Kari had her baby! She was born at 3:21 pm, weighs 6 lbs 3 oz, and is 19 inches long. I hear she's a cutie, but unfortunately I don't get to find out just yet. Soon though!

19 weeks

Yeah, I'm a little behind here since I'll be 20 weeks on Thursday. Whoops. It's just so easy to take the pictures Sunday morning before church because I know I'll always look nice then. Or presentable at least. I'm still working on finding a doctor, but I have a consultation set up for Monday at one practice so hopefully that goes well. Anyway, here is the belly as of yesterday morning.


Yes I did get a haircut, how nice of you to notice. Last Wednesday my mom and I went and got pedicures and haircuts and left Kalena with a babysitter. An actual teenage girl babysitter, not a friend with kids. That was a first and it went well; the sitter said Kalena had a good time. (Is anyone who's ever met Kalena surprised about that? Me neither.) Here's a picture of the hair from the front.


It's a tiny bit shorter than I was planning on, but my hair grows fast so that's alright. I felt a little guilty when I went to get it cut and realized the last time I cut it was a year ago. Not a trim or anything since then. That is why I don't color my hair. I'm too lazy to go get anything done to it so I'd just end up with roots like halfway down my head. Also, it's a good thing straight and one length works with my hair because, again, too lazy to do anything else. I suppose that's all for now, my life is pretty boring these days.