Open letter to the little gray tabby cat

That lives in my neighborhood and comes to my house every night......

Little gray cat, you're effecting my sleep. Almost every night. You drive my cat absolutely crazy. Bandit starts waiting by the front door at sunset. And every night, after dark, this little gray cat shows up and Bandit flips his lid. Banging on the side lights, crashing in the blinds, meowing at the top of his lungs. Sometimes this goes on for HOURS per night. Last night it started about 10:30, right before I turned out the lights. I heard him again at 5:30 this morning. Were they going at it through the glass all night long????

Bandit's a big, fat cat. We don't call him "the Sheriff" for nothing. One of these nights, I'm letting him out there on your gray ass. Then maybe you'll quit showing up on my porch.

Please go home, so we can all get some sleep.

You would think

With all the posting I've been doing lately that I would have had SOMETHING to talk about today. But, I've got nothing. We kept it low key today.

I did convince my parents to come up tomorrow instead of Friday. I guess the pity act still works at 32. ha ha My mom knew I was lonely and didn't want to wait one more day. So Grammy and Pop will be here tomorrow in time for dinner. :)

Tomorrow is the Halloween carnival at Will's school. He's wearing his new Halloween shirt ($7 Walmart special) and he's taking his costume, too. I'm sure he'll have a blast! I'll be grocery shopping and cleaning the house.

He's arrived

Just wanted to let family know that I heard from Todd. He's arrived and settled in the country ending in -stan. :) So much for the worries about the weather - it was only 4 degrees colder there than here.

He says there are no windows in the building at all. At least it'll be dark when he's sleeping - ha ha. They're doubled up - he's sharing a room with another guy.

It was 7 am there and he was off to the chow hall before briefings for the morning and all is well. He'll call again when he can. They're allowed 2 fifteen minute phone calls per week.

Couple pictures for Todd

Todd and I started a project on Saturday before he left. I finished it today, so I thought I'd post a few pictures for him to see when he logs on.

Everyone else can pay no mind. :)

This is our play room, which isn't much of a play room right now. On Saturday it was wall to wall junk. But we purged a lot of stuff and cleaned up. I worked 1/2 the day to get this room finished.

Once Will's furniture arrives for his bedroom, his toys will be moved back in here. The bed is made because we have company coming. It'll go back to being a couch soon.

Will kept asking when he'd get his playroom back. I'm so glad he can go in there again.

Diaper bag dilemma

I'm pining for a new diaper bag. But I just can't decide which one I want. Anyone have a recommendation?

These are the 2 I'm in love with, but I just can't choose. Maybe I need both. ha ha


They're both pretty pricey, so I'm not hopeful that I'd actually get both. ;)

But if anyone wants to know what I REALLY want for this little guy, it's this:



A Moby Wrap in turquoise. :) :)

We were "boo-ed" tonight

Someone rang our doorbell and took off about 7:30. It scared me to death, because no one comes to the door after dark. So I peeked outside and I saw a bag and a piece of paper on the front porch. I immediately knew what it was.

Will was thrilled to death. He was so excited to get Halloween from some "sneaky friends". Tomorrow I'll run out and get what we need to "boo" two more neighbors. :)

We survived our first night

I was worried that Will would start waking up a lot last night since Todd was gone. Thankfully, he slept all night long. I let him stay up a bit late last night since he took a late nap that turned into getting up at 6:30. So we stayed up until 9:30 last night. I know, bad mommy. But it was pretty good. We had a late dinner and then snuggled on the couch.

He got to talk to Todd on the phone for a minute and that made him happy.

He went to bed with minimal fuss and argument about 9:40. I never heard another peep. He came and crawled into bed with me at 7:30.

Since we didn't go anywhere yesterday, I am dying to get out of the house today. We're going to Kroger to get a few groceries and to refill one of my many prescriptions.

I'll be busy this afternoon trying to recreate Will's Christmas list. It seems his daddy threw away the piece of paper that was Will's list. I just hope I can remember what was on it.

Furniture order placed

Woo hoo!! I am so excited! Now I just have to be patient enough to wait for it to get here. Will's room will be totally complete before Todd gets home. He's going to love it when it's all done.

Talk about a feel good compliment

I was telling my mom the other day about how much weight I've lost and how my neighbor even mentioned it to me. My mom pointed out these 2 pictures that I posted from last weekend and said that between last October (the picture of me squatting down) and this October (the picture of me standing with Will in front of me) that I look almost 50 lbs lighter.

SWEET! Best compliment EVA!! Esp. since it's not THAT big a change on the scale. And I'm still REALLY overweight and will have a long way to go after this little man gets here.

Good news!!

He's not going to kill me! ha ha

I got a phone call from overseas while I was cooking dinner. I told him about the furniture. He said to order it tomorrow after I get approval from the credit card company for the transaction. Woot! Will's finally going to have real furniture instead of the pieced together junk that's in there now!

Executive Decision

Alternate title: My husband just might kill me

So, we've been going around in circles for months about what to do about Will's bedroom furniture. First there was the Pottery Barn furniture. But they didn't have a bookcase with their collection. Then Todd liked a different bed from the collection than I did. Not to mention it was REALLY expensive. So, we moved on.

Next came the Land of Nod furniture. I totally fell in love with it - way more than the Pottery Barn stuff. But, once again, it was really expensive. Their shipping, delivery and handling was outrageous.

Then I remembered a set from Costco that looked like the Pottery Barn Kids stuff. So I looked for that - nope discontinued.

I scoured local furniture stores. Garbage. Seriously, garbage. Nothing that I would want in my house. And I'm not THAT much of a snob.

Todd and I talked some more. We compared the Pottery Barn Stuff to the Land of Nod stuff and decreed that we'd order the Pottery Barn Kids furniture. But once again, we were thwarted. Todd had miscalculated the total price (missed the nightstand) and once we added in delivery, shipping and tax - it was horrific. Not to mention way more than we wanted to spend. - about $2900 total. Yes, I know. I had to pick my jaw up off the floor, too.

So, the search continued. Back to the local furniture stores. We stopped somewhere different on Saturday. And miracle upon miracle - I found something I liked. No, LOVED. It was so similar to the Land of Nod - but I liked it better. I told the salesman which pieces I wanted (twin panel bed, bookcase, 1 drawer nightstand, 6 drawer dresser) and off he went to get prices. It's made my Lea, which is built by Lay-Z-Boy. So, decent stuff.

And he returned with the news that the furniture was discontinued. Seriously? Shoot me now.

So, off we go to another furniture store that the last salesman recommended - they MIGHT carry the same stuff. Nope, no dice. The salesman was a huge help, but they had NOTHING I liked.

Back to the drawing board.

Behold - the power of the internet. I googled the furniture collection I wanted - and I FOUND IT!! From someone who will deliver it within 1-4 weeks. And their tax, shipping, delivery, handling, etc is all INCLUDED in the price. YES, no extra raping by the store!

So, I priced it all up and put it in my online shopping cart. Then I decided I preferred the bookcase from Land of Nod that would TOTALLY coordinate with this set. So I removed the bookcase from my shopping cart.

And I clicked "complete order". Dang it for being Sunday. My credit card and check card won't allow me to make a purchase that large without authorization. And both companies were closed. So, my cart waits. Tomorrow - the furniture will be MINE!!

I did go and order the bookcase from Land of Nod in the meantime. HA HA HA *insert evil laughter here again*

So, in the meantime, here are some stock pictures of the items that are on order or are about to be. Todd is going to just have to accept that I made the final call on this without him. He'll either be relieved or he'll kill me when he gets home. We'll see. :)

Bed and nightstand

Dresser - I am not getting the mirror.

Bookcase (just 1 of those)

And yes, I realize that was the longest post ever - just to talk about children's furniture. HA HA

Interesting Development

I'm not sure how much of this is a product of what. But between the morning sickness I had in the first trimester and now taking Metformin and following the ADA diet, I'm 19 weeks pregnant today and 14 pounds lighter than I weighed when I got pregnant.

My maternity clothes are starting to fall off of me - my jeans are just too big. My neighbor even commented the other day that he couldn't believe that I was "that skinny and that pregnant". He said he could tell I've lost a lot of weight. I wanted to kiss him!

I can't say that I'm complaining, that's for sure. It sure is going to help with losing weight after this baby is born if I weigh when I deliver what I weighed when I got pregnant. By the time I was this far along with Will, I'd gained about 20 pounds. Since I started out weighing 30 lbs more this pregnancy than I did with Will, I'm thinking we're finally evening out the playing field.

Don't worry, the doctors aren't concerned. My uterus is where it's supposed to be and my tiny little (5 oz) man is growing inside me just like he's supposed to. I'm eating healthier than I have in years and consuming plenty of calories. This weight coming of is the stubborn fat I've been fighting for years.

I was about 30 lbs overweight when I got pregnant and about 55-60 lbs over what I really want to weigh. Hopefully within a few weeks of this little guy being born I'll be on my way to losing this extra fat for good.

Then once I get my lasik surgery and throw away my glasses, I'll be one hot mama. ha ha

Pumpkin Carving

We realized at 7:00 last night that not only had we not eaten dinner (or had a nap), that we hadn't carved our pumpkins yet. We promised Will we'd carve pumpkins on Saturday before Daddy left. So after a quick dinner of peanut butter sandwiches (hey - I usually cook!) we carved pumpkins. We only snapped a few pictures since we were trying to hurry and get Will into bed.

Portraits

We went on Thursday to Portrait Innovations to get family pictures and Will's 3 year pictures taken. It was a bit early for the pictures, but since Todd's going to be gone until mid-December, I didn't want to try and get it done then. The best news is my Christmas cards are already done, all I have to do is address them and mail them on the 1st of December. Woot!

So here's a little preview of some of the portraits we had taken.

My almost 3 year old


Watch out for the scary blue monster on my block. He picked out his costume himself this year and he's so proud of it. He loves being a "scary" blue monster.

Day 1

Today is day one. Daddy left home about 3:30 this morning for his trip overseas.

He'll be gone for about 6 weeks. After his trip to Oklahoma this summer, I'm pretty anxious about how Will is going to react this time. Last time he was distraught - not eating, not sleeping, acting out, crying and begging for daddy to come home. Hopefully he's better prepared this time. We've talked about it at length with him.

This morning he slept in - thank goodness - until 8:15. When he got up he came into our room and climbed into bed with me. He asked where Daddy was and I told him he'd left on his very long trip. Will didn't really respond - he tends to ignore things he doesn't want to talk about. Then he asked where Daddy's toy was and if he could have it while Daddy was gone. I felt so guilty I let him have it.

Last night while cleaning out some things in the spare room, Todd showed Will a Darth Vader piggy bank. Will was completely taken with it. Now it's out of the box and Will wants to have it. Oh man, just shoot me now. No more battery operated things in this house.

Anyway, so he's got Daddy's toy to keep him company while Daddy is gone. So far, so good.

Grammy and Pop (my parents) are coming to visit on Halloween and are staying a few days. That's going to be a good distraction for Will while Todd is gone. Then we'll head to Atlanta for a little while over Thanksgiving - which will include a baby shower for our new little man. We're going to try and stay extra busy and do lots of fun things to keep his mind off of Todd being gone.

Wish me luck!

I hate pregnancy insomnia

Doesn't my body realize that I am supposed to be a sleep camel right now? I'm supposed to be sucking up every moment of sleep that is possible before this baby arrives.

So why did I get out of bed for the day at 5:30? That's just unholy.

Houston, we have a GENDER!

It's a BOY!!!!

We are, of course, thrilled to death. He looks wonderful in there - we saw 2 arms, 2 legs, 10 fingers, 10 toes, facial features, lots of healthy organs, and one very obvious pee-pee. He wasn't afraid to show it off at all.

We're so happy to find out who is completing our family.

The ultrasound pictures didn't translate well when I tried to snap pictures of them. But we do have several pictures of his boy parts to ensure that he is - in fact - a boy. :)

Laurel Falls and Clingman's Dome - Smoky Mountain National Park

We went to the National Park on Monday for some hiking, fresh air and fall weather/color. We ended up doing 2 shorter hikes - 2 1/2 miles round trip to Laurel Falls and 1 mile to the summit of Clingman's Dome. We did this same combination of hikes in May of 2006, when Will was just 5 months old. I think he enjoyed it a bit more this time. Mostly Will rode on Todd's back in his backpack, but he did do some hiking, too.

On the way to the falls


At the falls - with a comparison picture for how big Will was last time we went. Notice how much more water there is in the falls in May than October?





With both of my babies at the waterfall



For comparison, here's May 2006.


Then it was back to the car and up to Clingman's Dome. It would have been a great drive had I not gotten so car sick. UG.

To start, here are pictures from the last time we went. It was SO cold and terribly overcast.


Cool guy posing on the way up.





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