Well, folks … we are tooling right along with this pregnancy. Only 9 more weeks to go. Can you believe we are in single digit weeks?

Me either.

I’ve been working “hard” on a quilt for the baby girl’s room, and I am loving it. I’ve got most of it finished, but I’m waiting on an even-feed foot for my machine to arrive in the mail any day now.

Mail just came … not today.

Anyway, here’s the top of it …

I have the back finished, and it’s all sandwiched – just waiting to be quilted. I haven’t decided on binding, yet. I think I’ll go with a solid pink or yellow\r, but I need to get my butt to the fabric store to get that.

Since a lot of you have asked how I’m doing … I’m fine. Baby girl is moving lots and doing just great, as far as we can tell. Luckily, the only things I’m craving this time around are salads and water with crushed ice* unlike my first pregnancy when I lived off of fried mozzarella sticks and oreo mcflurries.

* So my teeth may fall out from crunching ice, but at least I’m not gaining 50lbs! I only gained 34lbs with Emma, but I consider that a miracle from above.

Unfortunately, I’ve got myself a pinched nerve in my upper back, which is making sitting, laying down, bending and pretty much any other movement not so much fun. It’s crazy how 20lbs can totally affect your body. Thank goodness for heating pads.

And fans, since heating pads are hot, and it’s like a million degrees here.

Ahhhhhhhh ……..

Jen noticed that I hit 30 weeks today.

Yeah. I might be panicking just a wee bit.

Panicking about the nursery (JUST painted it this past weekend … still not done … we have no decorations … Emma’s still sleeping in the crib converted into a toddler bed …I still have to make a quilt … YIKES!)

Panicking about natural childbirth. I really really wish I was one of those amazing women who imagine natural childbirth being magical – so far, I am NOT one of those women. I am scared out of my mind. I have moments of peace and feelings of “I can do this” and a lot of faith … but most of the time? I am shaking in my flip-flops.

Panicking about having two kids. Emma has days. Days where she leans against me all day long, crawls up in my lap all day long, snuggles into my neck all.day.long. And while I love it, I wonder how I’m supposed to fit two. So many of you told me not to worry about this, and I thank you for that. Mentally, I know it will work. It will. I totally get that. So I’m trying not to think about it too much.

Of course, there’s that nagging voice in the back of my head … you can barely go to the grocery store with one, how in the world do you think you’ll be able to do it with two? And then I get the answer … do it after Ken gets home.

Problem solved.

Oh, just look at my girls.

*happy sigh*

Every little thing gonna be all right.

99 days.

ninety. nine.

less than a hundred days until we get to meet this little girl.

the guest furniture has been moved out of HER room, and we have less than 100 days to paint, decorate, clean, organize, sell clothes, buy clothes, take our natural childbirthing class and prepare to go from one easy-to-tote-around kid to one easy-to-tote-around-kid and a newborn.

less than 100 days to get emma to give up her converted crib / toddler bed for a big-girl bed … which may be the biggest battle of all.

miss E doesn’t like change.

i have a sneaky feeling she’ll be okay once she meets her future best friend.

To be the daughter of two people who can’t draw stick figures, I think Emma’s pretty talented.

mommy (me):

her self-portrait:

And daddy – who is the only one in our family with legs, apparently:

I haven’t been around much lately – anywhere. We’ve been moving furniture around upstairs so we can actually start working on the baby’s room, we’ve been spending most of our waking hours in the pool, and we’re getting ready for our Florida vacation in a couple of weeks.

And I’m still pregnant. With an outie belly button.

I went through a period where I wanted my house to look like the Pottery Barn catalog. Dark furniture. Neutrals everywhere. Brown, tan, khaki. Pretty much every shade of brown you can think of with a little muted green thrown in for good measure.

oh goodness, this picture is pre-hardwood when Emma was just a crawly baby

Now? I’d give anything to have white slipcovers on our sofa and chair. With bright yellow throw pillows. With a white tv stand & DVD shelf.

I know … white on a sofa with kids and dogs is kind of insane. But white slipcovers can be washed. With bleach.

We also used to have dark wood in our master bedroom, but we’re in the process of selling it and replacing it with light wood furniture (that we got for free or as gifts!) And I’m going to go with a yummy light blue (think beachy blue, not country blue) on the walls with sunny yellow, orange & white accents.

I even have tan & brown everyday dishes that I now don’t like, because I’m so over brown.

I wish I had gotten the bright Fiestaware. Or white dinner plates with colored saucers and cups. Meh.

All of that to say, I finally feel comfortable admitting that I like colors. And I mostly like light and airy colors. And I really like yellow – even if it’s not a main color, I tend to want yellow as an accent color in almost every room of our house.

Emma’s nursery is my most favorite room in the entire house …

We shunned the normal girly pinks and went with something more neutral, even though we knew it was a girl. And I still love it to this day. It’s the perfect color, and we’ll always have a punch of yellow thrown in there somewhere.

And I am loving our brightly colored home office / playroom which is a yellow’y green with hot pink and orange and teal accents.

I painted my black desk white a few months ago and then added sunny yellow accents this past week. If I could just have a  vase of wild white daisies sitting on my desk every day, I’d never ever leave.

Seriously, seeing yellow everyday just makes me happy.

So I’m wondering if we should do like we did with Emma – just forget the “pink for girl” rule and paint this next baby girl’s room a nice, cheerful yellow.

*insert big fat cheesy grin here*

It’s a beautiful sight to me.

ps – Emma is doing fine!

Well, we are half-way through this pregnancy.

I can’t believe it. The first trimester pretty much dragged, but now that the morning sickness is gone, it’s truly flying by.

I don’t really have a lot of thoughts on what’s coming next, because we still don’t know the gender of this baby. Because we are doing things rather differently than we did last time [midwife, birthing center, natural birth], the ultrasound wasn’t as easy to schedule this time around, and we pretty much had to take what we could get. But we will be finding out on May 27th.

Once we find out what this booger is, I’ll be able to start really planning. Mainly the room & what to do with the 5 bins of clothes leftover from Emma. And the diapers.

I love that I have to actually plan his/her diapers in advance.

So now, I’m just working on my labor & delivery playlist, reading up on natural birth, and enjoying the kicks and punches that s/he’s already delivering quite regularly.

And trying to explain to Emma that just because mommy has a baby in her belly doesn’t mean that Emma has a baby in her belly.

It’s been a busy few days, and I just haven’t found a spare moment to blog. I guess I should be blogging about what all we’ve been doing, but I really need to be cleaning out dresser drawers since we sold our bedroom furniture.

Mmmm-hmmm. Sure did.

I love Craigslist.

My selling it almost brought us to one of these moments …

… but it’s all good, now.

Pregnancy hormones are FUN.

So are almost-three-year-olds.

I need a really really long nap.

ps – we went to the Riverbanks Zoo in Columbia this weekend to scope out some stuff for the photowalk. I’ll post more about that later.

First of all, I just have to thank those of you who have sent emails, twitter messages, flickr messages and facebook messages to see how I’m doing. I really appreciate you guys reaching out to me.

Two words – I’m fine.

I have to laugh that the last post that has been up for here for a week is called “B6 Is A Miracle Worker,” because it totally quit working miracles. I’m trying to be very thankful that sick mama = healthy pregnancy, but the bottom line is that I’m ralphing 3-4 times a day most days. And the rest of the time, I feel like I’m going to. Either my system got used to the B6 or things are getting hot and heavy in that there uterus. Crazy baby doing bad bad things to momma.

I was so very kindly reminded that I am actually quite lucky. I’m lucky in that it’s not more serious, and I’m not dealing with hyperemesis or anything like that. I have a dear friend on the tail end of her pregnancy, and she’s been out of commission for months dealing with multiple hospital visits to get fluids, serious medication, and generally not being able to do anything. I still have a few good days here and there, so I am thankful for those.

And popsicles. I’m thankful for popsicles.

Okay, that’s IT. I am so done talking about this stupid morning sickness. My last few posts have been about that, and I’m soooo over it. Blah. Done.

I never had morning sickness with Emma. I think I remember one morning of feeling a little nauseous, but that was it. And when people complained about morning sickness, I felt bad for them — but I really didn’t think it was *that* bad.

Those of you who have dealt with morning sickness can virtually slap me now, because I totally 100% deserve it.

These last couple of weeks have been hell. I don’t normally say that word, but that’s the only way I can describe it.

I really didn’t throw up that much – maybe once or twice a day. But the constant feeling of nausea was so exhausting. Even when I knew that I was feeling nauseous due to lack of eating, I couldn’t eat because everything I thought about eating made me feel more sick. Poor Ken had a week of making his own supper or ordering in pizza, because I couldn’t even imagine trying to cook something. Especially chicken.

So I pretty much laid on the couch all day every day. Housework went down the tubes. Dirty laundry was piled up everywhere, but I couldn’t bring myself to put it into the washer. Dishes were all over the kitchen, but loading the dishwasher turned into a gag fest. I don’t even want to talk about the bathrooms or the furballs all over the floor. Ken was amazing through it all, and I don’t know how I could have done it without his help. And poor Emma — well, she watched more tv than she’s ever watched in her life.

So around 11pm on Friday night, I was desperately searching the internet for help when I saw an article on vitamin B6. And then I saw comment after comment about how amazing it is and how it worked for so many women.

Bought it the next day, took it that night, woke up feeling about 1000% better. I take a whole 50mg pill every night and then a half of a pill the next morning. If I start feeling icky in the afternoon, I take another half. So far, it’s working really well for me. I still have some serious food aversions, and I can’t eat a lot of the things that made me throw up last week, but I’m doing a lot better.

I promise to post about something other than feeling sick in the next couple of days.