Hi kitty cat!

Holden has a minor obsession with Harrison. Shockingly, this relationship works for both of them. And really, that's all.

Love you, kitty.

Face-off! No one was harmed. Harrison really just wanted his catnip mouse that Craig is dangling.

Excuse me, baby, but this is really my ottoman. I guess I'll let you borrow it for just a little while.

I still can't believe this is ok with Harrision.

Hello, cat. Hello, baby.

Harrison is...protecting?...Holden while he sleeps.

Harrison used to be much more suspicious of the baby...and the feeling was a little mutual.

Oh, the early days - comparing the size of the baby to the size of the cat

And a very merry Christmas to all...

...and to all an incredibly short Christmas summary in the form of very few phone pictures. We're pretty tired around here. But for all of the best reasons. Except for a lingering cough for our poor sick baby; that is not one of the best reasons. Sigh. Almost there. I'm extremely grateful for all of my helpers over the last week and really miss them. Love you, family.

Presents are pretty cool, Dad

We bought chocolate chips with the intent to bake goodies...but so far they've only served as a toy for the baby.

Story time with Auntie Manda!! Please also observe the proximity of the cat to this situation and chalk it up to a Christmas miracle.

Christmas is exhausting, y'all. Also, I'm totally about to outgrow my space egg swing. Yeeps.

Go away, germs...and bobcat

Poor baby Holden has a double ear infection (both ears!!) AND the flu. So basically that's where the last few days have gone. And having a sick baby is just one of the worst things ever. The end.

In completely unrelated news, there's apparently a tiny little bobcat who thinks our patio furniture is basically where it's at. Whaaaat?!?

So I called animal control, who promptly came (arrived 15 minutes later, so impressed!) and scared him away...and HE. CAME. BACK. And snuggled up in the cushions again. After Bob* dashed off again, Craig rearranged the cushions to make it a little less inviting. And hopefully that's all it takes?? Because I don't really want to have to figure out how to keep a little bobcat away - we have enough going on INSIDE the house.

* obviously the bobcat's name is Bob. duh.

Dad, Dad, what did you bring me??

So Craig isn't traveling for work nearly the way he used to (thank goodness!!), but he's spent two of the last four weeks in Florida - which means single parenting on this end, yeeps! Fortunately Holden's a pretty cool kid and tries to keep things pretty easy breeze for his mom...except for this congestion/crud that I think is basically going to take over our lives FOREVER and keeps him (and in turn me) from having a good night's sleep...but we survive. We're both glad when Dad gets home, but I think he may have set a new precedent on this last trip that Holden will come to expect..."Dad, Dad, what did you bring me??"

Holden + new Mickey Mouse doll (thanks, Dad!) = grins and giggles

Operation Nursery...complete!

It's definitely been a work in progress, but now we finally have what is probably the only "complete" room in our home.  Holden, I hope you like it!

He really does have an army of puppies in there!  Quilt by my wonderful mommy, crib skirt by me, puppy prints from Etsy, crib from Pottery Barn Kids, crazy wall camera to watch him sleep installed by Craig.

All ready for changing!  Dresser and mirror are from Ikea, and random assorted things are from random assorted places.

The giant alphabet wall!  Alphabet decals are from Etsy, chair from Buy Buy Baby, storage ottoman from Target.  Learn your letters, Holden.

The tiny clothes await!  Itty-bitty plaid shorts, I die at the cuteness.

Lots and lots and lots of tiny clothes...and diapers and toys and books.  Thank goodness for plenty of storage space.

Cute things on shelves, yeah yeah!

Alllllll ready for lots and lots of reading, courtesy of wonderful friends building his library at the baby shower.  Yes, we probably need an actual bookcase or something, but for now a basket on the floor works for me.

All ready for you, Holden!  Curtains by me

See, we at least appear to be ready for a baby...

I love the "little man" banners from the baby shower, so they're on the wall now!

Here's your cozy place, Holden.

The puppies are waiting!

Sooooo pregnant

You know what's exhausting when you're 39 weeks pregnant?  EVERYTHING.

I'm rocking wet hair and flip-flops in this one...BECAUSE I'M 39 WEEKS and tired, y'all.

Here's what's up lately...I've been hyper-aware of Holden's movements since his heartbeat was a touch slow last week...but at my doctor's appointment last Wednesday he was jumping around like a crazy bean and had a right-on-target heartbeat of 122.  And he's doing a really good job of kicking and punching in there, so I'm not worried about it - except when I get focused at work, pause, can't remember the last time I felt him do anything, and then frantically poke at him to make sure he's moving around. "Knock it off, Mom!"

As of last Wednesday, there's a whole lotta nothing going on down there right now.  So we'll see how the next week goes, but have already scheduled a date for induction since I'm not really interested in being pregnant FOREVER (which is how it feels right now).  A scheduled birth!! Yes, that appeals to the accountant in me, but I'd rather my body and Holden just come to terms with each other and do this thing. We'll see what happens. And my doctor reminds me that this could all change at any time. Yeeps.

Anxiously awaiting his arrival around these parts!!  And distracting myself by doing things like sewing curtains for bedroom (which Harrison may or may not approve of)...

...and snuggling with the fur children, who have absolutely no idea how much their worlds are about to be rocked even though we keep telling them a baby brother is coming...

...and approving betting pools at work on the birth of our child, which I don't think Craig was a huge fan of, but someone should at least have fun with this waiting game...

...and playing in the dirt by replacing last year's sad dead herbs with adorable new ones, plus a citronella plant that will theoretically keep mosquitoes away.

I also cleaned out the fridge and freezer - like, CLEANED.  I suspect I'm over-nesting.  But I have to do SOMETHING.  And yes, every activity is followed by a break on the couch because I'm just tired.  More tiredness to come in the near future, though, so I might as well get used to it.  See you soon, Holden!  We just don't quite know when!

Puppies, paint, and paying people for perfect corners

Remember how we reached "just need to perfect the chair rail...and the crown molding...and do eight million other things to really make this room a nursery" several months ago?  IT HAPPENED.  BEFORE THE BABY'S BORN!!!  That's really a major victory.

Here's that chair rail in progress, which we did finally get done in February:

And then there was this crown molding thing going on...you see that funky angle on the wall with the window?  That slope into the wall and ceiling business?  That makes crown molding kinda tricky.  We gave up and called in the pros, which was a really excellent decision.  Because then things started looking like this:

Sometimes that yellow just comes out really, really bright...I promise it won't blind the kid

Yeah yeah!  Totally painted walls and totally painted chair rail and beautifully installed crown molding AND then we could do cool things like set up the crib and make it start to feel like a baby room.  Major, major props to Craig on tackling the painting and ladder work and general furniture assembly.  I sure hope Holden appreciates all the physical labor his dad put into his room.

Then that's where mom steps in - time for decorating and sewing and putting things on walls and cute-ing up the place.  Remember those little puppy dogs I was working on?  I made an army of them...

...and overanalyzed spacing them out and practicing just the right stitch length to applique them to the background fabric...

...and finally, finally made it all come together in a crib skirt!  Huzzah!  Again, busy season really puts a damper on getting projects done, wah wah.  But at least it's done now!

Yay for puppy dogs!  Full nursery pics coming soon...because it's DONE, y'all.  Totally ready for a kid.  At least the room is ready...I don't know if that has any bearing on us really being ready...

Packing for a trip where you come home WITH AN EXTRA PERSON

And not just an extra person, but one whose clothing size you don't know.  Does he need an adorable newborn onesie to come home in, or should I throw the three month version in there in case he's a whopper?  WHO ARE YOU, TINY PERSON?!?  This is fascinating, terrifying, and exciting all rolled into one.

In case you couldn't tell, I packed a hospital bag...or as much as I could pack with a big note stuck on top reminding me to grab all the things I'm still using that can't really hang out in a bag for an undetermined amount of time.  Just one more thing in a string of "ok, this makes is very REAL" moments that seem to keep occurring...every day.  Yeeps!  But Holden has a place to sleep and diapers and clothes and food (well, theoretically my body's working on that - science and nature at work, y'all, it's for real! - but we have some backup formula on hand just in case), so really we're ready to go.  Or at least we appear to be ready to go.  There's this whole mental/emotional component that is NOT covered by giant boxes of diapers and wipes.

Just look how super pregnant I am!!  Ahhhhh!

We've made really good progress on the nursery and the organizing of all the things - I'll give you a real post on that, but for now let me share an army of tiny clothes...

Washing all of the clothes and organizing his closet made me really, really happy.  Sometimes strange things (excessive organization!) make me happy.

In other baby-related news...my belly button hasn't really popped out (yet), which gives me great joy.  There's just something about that belly button POP happening to my own body that was weirding me out.  Although it is kinda weirding me out that my belly button is just stretching...crazy town.

Also, a note for my husband - when I share my stretch marks with you, "ewwww" is not the appropriate response, even if quickly followed by "I'm kidding!" - come on, husband, you're dealing with an emotionally wrought and extremely pregnant wife.

Early on in the pregnancy I was T-I-R-E-D, and I'm sad to report that I'm pretty much back to a very tired state.  Tiny things are exhausting, so how am I supposed to summon the energy to push a human out of my body??  Adrenaline and drugs kick in for that part, right?  Still waking up in the night (training for the parenting job to come!), although last night I'm not sure if it was kicks from Holden or my extremely vivid "being chased by dinosaurs" dream that woke me up.  Yes, dinosaurs.  Who knows where that came from...

Tomorrow is May.  I'm supposed to have a baby in May.  Eeeeekkk!!

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.

Fifty shades of every paint color ever

Even though we now have some small idea of what our little one is going to be like, we know we don't want a blue sports crazytown room, so it's time to commence the preliminary rounds of Baby Nursery Decisions!, which I'm going to officially name and treat like the Olympics.  Also, the Olympics start in thirteen days, and we all know how I feel about the Olympics, so we better get some of this nursery stuff knocked out so I can focus on curling.

The walls were a perfectly fine neutral tan sort of color, but I really didn't want out baby to have brownish walls.  Commence the color debate!  And actually, we both liked the idea of doing a yellow nursery (agreement, huzzah!), so the dad-to-be was off to Home Depot to clean them out of pretty much every yellow-ish paint sample that exists.  And then the narrowing process began...

The contenders get a spot on the wall for further consideration...

...while the rejects sit sadly to the side.  Sorry, rejects.

After much debate and overanalyzing (I'll let you guess who did most of that) and moving paint samples from wall to wall, we committed to getting samples of four colors and slapping them on the wall to see how we felt about them.  Ok, let's pick a yellow!

And we kinda picked a yellow.  But then, because why would we keep anything simple, we decided it would maybe also be a fantastic idea to put up a chair rail and do a DIFFERENT color under the chair rail and also put up crown molding and definitely make sure we have the right color for the ceiling, too. Aaaaaand here we go.  Yeeps.

Fortunately we were a little more decisive on the grey (or is it gray? Apparently I skew British on that one) for the bottom portion of the wall.  I mean, yes, we still taped up paint chips and overanalyzed and narrowed it down to four and threw some paint on the wall, but it just went a lot faster than the Yellow Debate. Besides, Harrison was helping with this decision.

Allllll the colors.  And a ceiling fan with no blades.  And miles of tape and acres of dropcloth put into place.  We're doing this thing.

Zach really isn't sure if any of this is a good idea.

All decisions in place, finally, and let the painting begin!  We debated hiring someone to do this, and after each of us put about twenty strokes into painting the ceiling, we thought that might have been a really really REALLY good idea. Have you ever painted a ceiling?  It's a giant pain - fortunately Craig will not be defeated by something like paint, and he powered through and did a dang good job on it.  You go, honey!

I taped up a fake chair rail to guide us, and we kept painting.  And painting.  And painting.  Lightening walls isn't ideal, because often you need juuuust that extra coat of paint to make sure it really looks good.  Yeeps.

You're making excellent progress, husband.

But the painting is done!!  Well...mostly.  We'll have to do a few touch-ups here and there, and the chair rail and crown molding still have to be painted to match the trim in the room, but the giant swooshes of rollers are all taken are of.  Gallons of sweet chamomile, lemon souffle, and gentle rain later.  And here's where we stand at the moment...

The yellow looks way brighter at night - I'm hoping it all mellows out a bit once we have the room pulled together.  Although it really doesn't matter, because this yellow is what it is.  We're committed.

Looking good!  We were even making really good progress on the chair rail until we got halfway around the room and realized that, even with measuring and using a level along the way, we managed to drift up about an inch from where we started.  And for the OCD anal person in me, that is most definitely NOT ok.  So on tap for this weekend - perfecting the chair rail.  And the crown molding.  And getting them puttied and caulked and painted.  And getting all the supplies out of the room and babying it up a bit.  That's probably a little optimistic for just one weekend, so I'll let you know how it goes.

I hope you like your room, baby - Mom and Dad are putting some sweat into this one.  And I love it.