Shower season begins

A few weeks ago I started a new season in this pregnancy - the Baby Shower Season. It really starts when you make that trip to Babies R Us and stare down aisle after aisle of things you have no idea how to use. Then come the showers! Then you come home with bags and bags of gifts from very gracious friends and family members, go through them, wash the clothes, and proceed to ooh and aah again over how cute the little baseball footed pajamas are. And then comes the thank you notes. I'm way too Emily Post to not write thank you notes, but after the 25th one I really wish I could just call my friends and say "hey - thanks for the pajamas! They are so cute!" My hand would be happy. But my uptight etiquette self would not.

My first shower was hosted by some of my friends here in Houston. I met all of these girls on the Knot years ago. Honestly, when I went for my first Knot GTG (dinner) I thought I'd meet some people to hang out with once a month, get wedding advice, ooh and aah over each others wedding photos and that would be it. I had no idea I'd end up with a group of such close friends!

These girls did an awesome job on the shower!!! Since we're decorating his room in a baseball theme, they took the sports idea and ran with it. All of the food was sports themed (and so good, by the way) and the cake...to stinking cute! Shannon does an awesome job - she also made the cookies for the favors.

The cake had logos from our favorite teams - Dallas Cowboys, Houston Astros & Texas A&M. ((and I know from experience that the A&M logo is hard to make!))

Meg was gracious enough to help design the invitations to match our bedding. The girls also pitched in and gave me really cute thank you notes to match the invites as well. AND we got our bedding as a gift! I was so excited and it is now washed and in the crib.

We had a great afternoon just visiting, eating, and doing the oohing and aahing over the cute little baby stuff. It's funny - I spend all day talking to these girls. Well, we all spend all day talking to each other. But it seems we rarely run out of stuff to talk about.

The Hostesses: Viula, Kelly, Shannon, (me), Jess & Lexie - all in our sports gear!

Pumpkin shortage?

I've heard talk on the internet about a shortage in canned pumpkin. I think some even mentioned a shortage in real pumpkins. Oddly enough I've noticed that there are no pumpkins at the grocery store - only at the Pumpkin Patch or the local nursery. I have no idea how much they'll cost either.

But canned pumpkin...I didn't seem to see a shortage there. Yet. We're still quite a few weeks from Thanksgiving. It's because of some crop failure, but I wonder if it has anything to do with the few (ok, maybe several) Pumpkin Spice Lattes I've had from Starbucks this season???

Either way I dove into my first pumpkin recipe of the season this past weekend. I decided a few weeks ago to take something to the church bake sale. I really didn't have time to put in a lot of effort - like doing decorated cookies - so I went for something simple. I saw this recipe on the Nest a few weeks earlier and decided to try it. It was a hit! Jason and I filled up the tray that I'd bought for the bake sale (a cute little ceramic Jack-O-Lantern) and had a few squares left over to try. They were fantastic and Jason had turned his nose up the night before because he thinks he doesn't like pumpkin. Even though he eats the pumpkin roll any time I make it...

Pumpkin White Chocolate Blondies from Loves to Eat

• 2 cups flour
• 1 T pumpkin pie spice
• 1 t baking soda
• 3/4 t salt
• 1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, at room temp
• 1 1/4 cup sugar
• 1 large egg
• 2 t vanilla extract
• 1 cup canned pumpkin puree
• 1 12-oz pkg white chocolate chips

Preheat oven to 350. Line a 9*13 baking pan with foil, leaving some hanging over the edge of the pan.

In a medium bowl, whisk dry ingredients together. Set aside. In a large bowl beat butter and sugar until combined. Beat in egg and vanilla. Beat in pumpkin puree (mixture may look curdled). Reduce speed on the mixer and slowly mix in the dry ingredients just until combined. Fold in the chocolate chips and pour into the baking dish.

Bake until the edges begin to pull away from the sides or until a toothpick comes out with just a few crumbs (about 30-40 minutes). Let it cool completely in the pan and use the foil to remove from the pan. Cut into squares and serve.

We finished!

This weekend we were determined to finish the work on the kids room. We'd painted last weekend and found that when removing the tape the paint had dripped on to the trim. So that was added to the list. We also needed to trim the doors because after adding mud and paint, they really didn't quite fit into the opening. And the last thing was to install the trim around the closet doors and the chair rail, do a little touch up paint and voila - we'd be finished. So Saturday morning we got started. Rachel was nice enough to help out Saturday afternoon (thanks!) and Jason and I finally finished yesterday.

Taped and ready to paint.

First coat of paint.

Overall, I'm really happy with the finished project. I'm still a little shocked it all came together. Jason really just had an idea in his head on building the closet and it work. We did have a few hiccups, but it all turned out ok. Now (in a few weeks) we'll have to do the other room. Honestly we'd probably both be inclined to say "forget it" but we already bought all of the materials! And I hate to waste money.

32 Weeks

How in the world did we get to 32 weeks? Do you realize that means I'll be pregnant for only 8 more weeks? And really, if he comes early we're talking 5-6 weeks. Holy.Crap. I finally took a photo of "the belly" after getting berated by my friends for weeks. I'm not happy with the photo because I look like hell after a long day at work, but it is what it is.



So Kelly (you know who you are) quit complaining. :-)

How to make a pregnant woman cry.

Everyone talks about those crazy pregnant hormones. The kind that can trigger a snot-slinging cry session in about 3.7 seconds for no real reason. Well, no rational reason. I am really not much of a crier - I'm too much of a cynic to cry over most things. Like the Hallmark commercials, a Lifetime movie or a crazy country song. I just don't break for things like that. However, I've become a victim of crazy pregnant hormones.

Exhibit A - Paint: Remember when I painted the master bedroom? It rained that weekend and we used cheap tape to paint the trim. So on the third day when all of the paint had dried I went in to pull the tape off...and half of the trim paint came off with it. I'm not sure if it was the cheap tape or the humidity but I first said a few choice things, then I called Jason and then I cried. A lot. Mostly because I was too tired to repaint the trim and I was ready to put the room back together. Jason came home from his weekend away and repainted the trim the next night. You can't tell that anything was ever wrong.

Exhibit B - The Necklace: I have a necklace that was a gift from my mom when I was in high school. It has three little rings on it that say "life, love & laughter." The chain broke a while back and I've never gotten it fixed or replaced. It's gold and I don't wear gold often so it was sort of out of sight, out of mind. Well, when I was packing for San Diego I realized the necklace wasn't where the rest of my jewelry normally is. I started to panic a little. Then I panicked a lot. Then I cried. Snot-slinging cried. So much that I couldn't even explain to Jason what was missing and why I was crying. When I finally managed to choke the words out he took all of my jewelry to the kitchen and started going through it. After about 5 minutes I had a light bulb moment where I realized that the necklace was in a little soap stone box on my dresser.

Exhibit C - The Gorilla: We have an archaic dress code here at work. It requires stockings - as in knee highs with pants, panty hose with dresses. Pure.Torture. Especially in this Houston heat & humidity. And because I'm one of those lucky pregnant women, I also have swollen feet. So at my last doctors appointment I asked for suggestions on controlling the swelling and she said compression hose. Now I typically wear pants to work every day, only resorting to a dress and hose when everything else is dirty. Like 4 times a year. But to save my feet from being ugly (yes, I think they're ugly when they are this huge) I was willing to sacrifice. I ordered a pair of compression hose in the biggest size they have because finding hose for tall people is tough. Then I had to get them on. Try picturing an 8-month pregnant woman wrestling a 45 ton gorilla. That would be the image of me trying to get these hose on. They looked like they would fit an 8 year old to begin with, but after much struggling, tugging, huffing and puffing I got them on. Sort of. Even with Jason's help! They stopped about 6 inches below where they needed to be. Hello - I was going to wear them under pants! Picture a 3 year old in stockings...when they fall down and the crotch is between her knees? This is when I started crying. Mostly because I am out the $6 in shipping and I'll have ugly fat feet until this baby is born.

About the kid

I completely forgot to update from my last appointment. I was exhausted, so forgive me. We had just driven back from Dallas for the Cowboys game. I went in first for my gestational diabetes test. You have to drink this really sugary orange drink that tastes like either bad cough syrup or flat soda and have blood work done twice. Mostly to see how your body is processing the sugar.

Then I had my actual appointment. Everything looks really good. No more worries about placenta previa. He's growing quite well but she made me feel ok about that. She reminded me that I'm taller than over half of her patients so I can't expect to have a 5.5lb baby. I told her I don't want a 5.5lb baby...but I'd also prefer not to have a 10lb baby. ((Hello - my cousin is nicknamed Bear for a reason. The nurses game him that name in the nursery when he was born because he was the biggest baby there!!))

I also feel pretty good about my weight gain so far, even though I freaked out by reading my chart while there was nobody in the room and I thought I saw a number I didn't. I started emailing Jason all depressed...but low and behold, that's why you should never try to read your own chart.

I passed my diabetes test - yay! I was REALLY worried about this. Having GD can lead to big babies. Hello - we've already discussed that I'm having a big baby. Reason #1 to freak out. They also put you on a diet. Um, pregnant women aren't supposed to have to diet. This is the one time that you get to eat it all, right? Not that I do - honestly. But still. I was really happy to have passed. The only downer was that I'm still anemic. So I have to double up on the iron supplements. I can handle that. I go back in a few weeks and then I think I go every other week. Then I'll go every week. Can we just say holy crap???

See that...

We have doors on our closet!

Well, we did. They were hung to see if they fit and then we took them back off to finish but - everything is going really well!!! And we put up a bit of drywall. This weekend Jason & Adam did the taping and muding of the joints while Lin & I painted the doors.

We also spent Saturday staining a desk. (I'll add photos tonight.) This desk has been in the family for a looooong time. It belonged to my great-grandmother. And my mom put about 6 coats of white paint on it. It needed at little TLC. Plus, if anyone tells you that TV will rot your brain tell them to shove it. I have proof! We've seen people use this orange stuff on HGTV to remove paint. You basically brush it on, wait 30 minutes and scrape the paint off. Sure, you need to do a little sanding but it's nothing compared to the amount of sand paper we would have had to use to strip this desk.

PS: See the paint color in the top of the closet? It's pink. Our ENTIRE HOUSE was that color from top to bottom (yes, baseboards to ceiling) when we bought it. I know how it happened - the seller bought a color and didn't test it. So we had to repaint the whole stinking thing before moving in.