Run Kami run!

After many, many months of training and I can't even begin to imagine how many miles run, Kami completed her first marathon on Sunday!!  This was originally supposed to happen back in December before the Icy Disaster swept through and cancelled the race, so here we are almost three months later with a baby road trip over to Fort Worth for the Cowtown Marathon on a beautiful spring-like day (a million times better than the ice and snow!).  The perfect day for a run!  You know, for you people who like to do that kind of thing...

Check out the awesome medal - it's a spur!  I love you, Fort Worth.

Go Kami!  Winnie the puppy dog was not cooperating on the picture-taking, but I promise she was very supportive.

I have absolutely no desire to ever run a marathon in my life (I probably wouldn't even wake up for it...), but I'm happy to support my friends who do.  It gives me an excuse to create inspirational craft projects that look as though they were inspired and executed by a seven year old (giant bubble/block letters!  pink glitter paint!).

So proud of you, Kami!  And just watching her run 26.2 miles made us hungry, so Carolyn, Eva, and I had frozen custard from Curly's and delicious brunch at Cafe Brazil in her honor.  You know, we had to walk a little bit from where we parked to the finish line...there was even a very small hill involved.  Definitely exercise.  And then I promptly went home and took a nap.

Demonstrates improvement in social skills, although expect decline in coming week

Harrison is somewhat notorious for being...well...less than welcoming to visitors in our home. Or even to those who live in said home, although he and Zach have come light years from that initial meeting and the infamous Death Yodel.  However, he actually didn't cause physical harm or mental trauma to anyone during the last two social occasions at our house - huzzah!!

Event #1 - our annual Super Bowl party, which I'm also referring to as Dipapalooza 2014.  We seriously could have just made a meal out of chips and dips, although the giant piles of delicious smoked meat would have been sad and lonely.

Quite the spread...and yes, there was a Manning jersey and Denver Broncos supporter in our house for the Super Bowl party.  I'm surprised Craig let him in the door.

Harry mostly stayed in hiding and didn't scream at anyone.  After he and Grace literally had a run-in at a prior Super Bowl party, this was pretty epic progress.  I was really proud of him for basically just staying out of the way.  Maybe he was feeding off of Craig's happy vibes about the slightly lopsided victory for his Sea Birds.

Event #2 - Momma Dale came to visit last weekend, and he didn't yell at her ONCE, even when he got shocked on the nose due to excessive amounts of static electricity rippling through our air.  Just some minor nighttime stalking, but there was no screaming or death yodeling attached, and they even shared a chair (although this was really just Harry more standing his ground than willingly sharing).

While Dale was here we also did fun things like eat our body weight in fried chicken at Babe's (now THAT is how you celebrate Valentine's Day with a pregnant lady - it was amazeballs) and get Dale her Texas steak fix at The Keg and do some cutesy shopping for Baby P (I'll let you guess which two out of three activities Craig participated in out of that list).  Since it all flew by too quickly, can't weekend time move at half the speed of weekday time?  Or even if weekend time stays the same, then weekday time speeds up? Something feels a little off about this whole split.

And look, we progressed to utilizing a lesser degree of caution when in close proximity to the cat!  They played Candy Crush together by the end of the weekend!

However, I think all of this "progress" (which probably isn't even actual progress, just strange coincidences or possibly Harrison's decreased lack of giving a shizz as he ages) may go to crap when Uncle Wes comes to stay this weekend.  No love lost between those two, so any ground gained may go right out the window. Literally, if Harry traps Wes in a corner and he has to escape through a window.  It's possible.

I realize this entire post is sad.  The social antics of my cat.  Craig has requested that we get him a Prozac prescription before the baby comes...it's probably a good idea.  Sigh.

Fear the machine...wait, don't

For Christmas Craig got me an awesome serger, which I said I wanted but I was also a little afraid of because it has KNIVES that cut fabric and you thread it with four giant things of thread and I didn't really understand how the whole thing works...but yeah, I wanted one anyway. :)

So yesterday I actually pulled it out of the box and made sure I wasn't going to injure myself with it - boys may get excited by things like miter saws and robot vacuums, but I'm pretty excited about this kind of machine.

Successfully threaded and ready for action!

So I didn't actually do anything with it besides obsessively read the manual and thread with new colors and do a test round of serging to make sure I could actually operate this thing.  Ta da!

Yeah, I know, it's not that exciting, but it's exciting for me

In related fabric news, Craig fell in like with some puppy dog crib bedding at Buy Buy Baby (I would say "fell in love," but Craig would tell you that it's impossible for him to fall in love with something like crib bedding), and while I could appreciate the adorableness of the playing puppies, I was way less in love with the plaid...situation...that dominated the colors and style.  So in typical Erin fashion, I decided it would be smarter AND more economical to just make something cuter with even adorabler puppy dogs. In non-typical Erin fashion, I'll actually make this happen before the baby shows up.  I'm a major project procrastinator overanalyzer.

Project #1 - crib skirt.  I'm going to use the fancy new machine to serge the edges and then flip under for hemming with the other cool machine, use a TBD combination of these guys (imagine me, buying excessive amounts of fabric and bringing home options instead of just committing...):

...to appliqué adorable little puppy dogs in the shape of this super cute guy...

...onto a solid grey background. Undecided on whether to throw in a box pleat on the front skirt or not. Let's see how it turns out.  And if the entire thing turns out nothing like what I have pictured in my head, then we'll throw down $60 at Pottery Barn Kids for the animal alphabet version and I'll have a lovely pile of scraps.  Actually...it would save a lot of time to just spring for that whole set and be done with it...hmmmm.  We'll see how today goes.

Off to go sew!  You know, AND watch the Olympics.  Oh, and one more nursery update - we're paying a qualified professional to install crown molding in this particular room where the ceiling slopes onto the wall at a funky angle and we almost lost our minds trying to figure out how to work all the angles.  Worth every penny, should be done in a couple of weeks.  When the magical carpenter man also comes to install the new built-in bar and wine fridge for the kitchen/breakfast nook area...yay!

So, I'm still a person...

Just because I'm pregnant doesn't mean I ONLY want to talk about the baby.  I'm still me, people. I'm aware this is an epic, life-changing event that will completely rock my world and probably change the way I feel about a lot of things and how we live our lives...but I'm actually still me at the moment.  Which means that even though I LOVE talking about the baby and what's going on with my pregnancy and getting advice on how to handle this whole parenting gig, it's not the ONLY thing I want to talk about.

Let me caveat by saying this is really not an issue with 97.3% of the people in my life.  I'm generally surrounded by wonderful, supportive friends, family, and co-workers who ask me about my life in general and talk about things other than the tiny child I'm currently carrying around with me at all times. But sometimes the 2.7% really get to me.

Work has been the most challenging battleground on this front.  My admin at work is well-meaning but a little overreaching in her concern and sympathy - I'm greeted every morning with a belly stare and a "how are you feeling?" when previously just a simple "good morning!" would suffice.  And I know she's desperate for her own daughters to give her grandchildren, so I think I'm filling this strange surrogate role in her life that's freaking me out a little bit. Another admin, whom I'm spoken to for approximately 10 minutes in the last 15 months, now carries on epic conversations in the hallway with me about everything from belly bands to breast pumps.  It's a touch awkward.  And since these relationships don't exactly go past the acquaintance phase, I can't just say "please stop doing this" without it coming across the wrong way.

And this week I got the "you're finally looking pregnant!" exclamations on multiple counts. Well, thank you - it's not like I was trying to NOT look pregnant before, so I'm glad the baby's popped out enough to satisfy your desire to see a pregnant-looking pregnant lady walking around.  This is wonderful for you, but marginally uncomfortable for me - huzzah!

I'm aware this is an epic, life-changing event...but...

I'm so fortunate to even be able to have this experience and bring a new life into the world, and I don't want to seem disinterested or anything less than thrilled or grateful for the little guy hanging out with me...but every once in a while I just want to talk about what book I'm reading or weekend plans or even the ridiculous stock market.  For the 97.3% of you who do this, THANK YOU.  It's nice to not worry about kiddo or parenting or daycare for a minute.  You guys are awesome.

For the other 2.7%, QUIT STARING AT MY BELLY.  And maybe also stop offering me parenting advice from your lifestyle in 1976 that doesn't resemble our lifestyle in 2014 in pretty much any way at all.

All that being said, we're going to go devote seven hours of our lives today to a one day condensed Weekend Childbirth Seminar at the hospital, so really it probably all IS about the baby.

And now that I've devoted this space to pretty much talking about the baby while essentially asking you to talk to me about things other than the baby every once in a while...thanks for letting me rant and ramble.  It's probably just the crazy pregnant lady talking.