After!

So here is our new furniture. I'm still not done with the whole room. I don't care much for the pillows that came with our couches, they seems too southwestern for me. I'm keeping my eyes open for fabric to cover them and match to curtains. I always get nervous when I pick things out at a store and am not positive how they will look in my house. Joey and I were both relieved that they work so well. Our table doesn't have the leaf in it right now because it would take up the whole dining room. I'm also not sure about the lazy susan that came with it, but it sure is fun spinning food toward Joey! The only downer was that the delivery men (they blamed it on someone else) dropped the table top and crunched a corner. We'll get our new, new table in a week or so. Now onto finishing the backyard and tiling the floors!

Before...

When Joey and I got engaged, we looked at furniture for our first apartment and realized we were dirt poor. Luckily, we came into lots of donated furniture. In fact, in our first apartment we didn't have a single new piece of furniture. Joey found our huge, green, feather-shedding monstrosity at work... which was a disaster cleanup company. They mostly dealt with sewage leaks and mold, but lucky for us this was just a fire damage job. Some rich person with horrible taste out there had this couch custom made complete with pea green flower print and fabulous dust ruffle. We never smelled any smoke on it and the people who owned it got a nice chunk of insurance money. Since then, it has served us well... aside from the feathers scratching us and going up our noses and the cushions sliding off daily. I can still picture Joey standing on his dad's truck lifting it up to our window (it wouldn't fit through the door) to Matt and me. Then having to drop it back out the window when we moved to Dayton.

I'm not just posting this to show my love for my couch, but to rejoice in the fact that by tomorrow it will be gone and so will our dining table! In their places, we will have STORE BOUGHT furniture that matches! Hooray! So here is the before picture of our living room. Stay tuned for the after picture.

What the cup, Cake?!

As some of you know Sarah and I are starting a cupcake business. Halloween was pretty much our first attempt... and there was a lot of error going on with our trial. I had my doubts if we could make it in the cut-throat world of confections, but Valentines Day was booming for business! Here are a few samples of our work. Sarah said in all we made 152 cupcakes...but I was spent long before that. We have a website for our company http://www.whatthecupcake.com/. You can also email orders and questions to whatthecupcake@yahoo.com.

Tracking Bigfoot

By 8 o'clock I usually crash on the couch watching some stupid reality show after eating some rocky road ice cream. I keep asking myself, "Why am I so tired??" I know I'm pregnant and it's supposedly like running a marathon...blah, blah, blah. I know what the real reason is- M.A.X.



I try to explain to people just how mischevious he is, but I can never express it fully. Either that, or I'm just a big whiner and people don't want to listen to me anymore. Either way, I try desperately to document his behavior on film, but it's all in vain. It's like trying to capture Bigfoot on film, no one believes it's real. Of course Max just loves the camera, so whenever he hears the whir of the lens popping out, he drops whatever he's breaking and runs over to breathe heavily into the lens. For instance, here's a video of him. What I was trying to get was him pulling the suitcase out of the closet over to the bed to create a step stool. He wanted to grab whatever random item I had placed on the middle of the bed out of his reach. Now, I realize this is pretty ingenious of him to figure out his own solution, but his inventions always come with some bodily injury risk.



Exhibit B: I had to get ready this morning to go deliver cupcakes, so I set up the gate in the doorway of the bathroom and headed for the shower. In the 10 minutes I was in there (I sped up as I heard various crashes and squeels) he had knocked over a lamp, unfolded all the towels I had just folded, taken the heater vent out of the hole (I don't know what he threw down there), pulled out the drawers of Joey's closet organizer, and somehow changed the time on my alarm. Not to mention earlier this morning he pulled the table runner off the table knocking over the roses Joey gave me, getting water all over the place. I find myself saying to him, "This is why we don't have nice things!"

They say the darndest things

So last night Joey and I were talking about how eventually this little growing thing has to come out of me. I was saying I hoped it would be easier this time around. Then HE said, "Man, I just hope I'm not as exhausted this time. That was hard." Ummm... yeah, you poooooor baby, that delivery sure was hard on you!

Those Crazy Lights

This year is off to a good start. I realized that this is as good as I'm going to get at somewhat of a journal, so I thought I'd give an update on us. Plus, I don't do the whole Christmas letter thing, so this makes up for it!

Max:

Oh where to start. He had his check up and I bet you can guess where he fell in the percentiles. The nurse reassured me that he is very close to being in the 20% for weight... all 22 pounds of him. He is still tall at 33 inches. So tall in fact, that he can reach the top drawer in the kitchen and pull out carving knives. He loves pushing buttons (literally and non literally). He frequently changes the cycle on the dishwasher and tries to turn on the stove. He is a good helper though, he loves to close the dryer door for me... sometimes before I want him to. He can say a few words (I use the term loosely). He can definitely say "shoes," but I think he may be referring to his feet. He can also say, "hello," "knock, knock (which he also acts out)," "socks," and "cracker." Most of these probably would still sound like gibberish to the untrained ear, but I speak Max and therefore we get along... until Daddy comes home and then I'm chopped liver. he loves being with Joey and really loves tools. He could bang a hammer on the drive way all day if we let him.

Joey:

He completed his FCC license in December. The class was super expensive (not to mention the week off of work unpaid) but he did really well, like always. Yeah, that's right, he could be the announcer on a cruise ship or be a DJ on the radio. Actually, he needs it to work at Sierra Pacific (his dream job). He has turned in his resume there and hopefully his connections there will pull some strings! Joey's also been itching to work outside the house (no closet doors yet, ahem). He loves pulling out ugly trees and getting rid of weeds, which I am very thankful for! He just fixed our side gate that was barely hanging on. He's a perfectionist, but it's worth it. He wants to finish the backyard this summer, and is a little disappointed his pack mule (aka me) will be out of service by then. I'm still working on convincing him that I will be huge and pregnant and then have a newborn while he talks of camping trips and anniversary cruises.

Me:

Well, I get the question a lot of, "So... what do you do all day?" I mainly chase a knife wielding toddler around keeping him from ingesting poisonous substances. It's kind of strange to me, but I've had feelings of wanting to teach again... hmm, guess those stinky fifth graders weren't so hard after all! Seriously, I love staying home with Max. I love watching him figure out new things like how to use a fork. He has a great sense of humor. Yesterday we were playing in the backyard and I showed him how to hit the tree trunk with a stick. He seemed to think that was ok, but chasing me and trying to poke me in the butt with it was much more fun! I have been working on a couple projects myself. Toni and Jake (we all know who really picked it out) gave me this awesome magnet board that I got to paint and decorate. It was the perfect gift! I'm sure I'll get more crafty as the nesting instinct starts to kick in... hey, maybe I'll have a clean house then too!

Stink, Stank, Stunk!

I don't have much new to report, other than I think I'm going to go into hibernation until spring. I think I could really sleep that long. When I'm pregnant I turn into one of those dolls where when you lay them flat their eyelids automatically close. I've missed a lot of good shows this way and apparently I snore.

On one hand, I'm really glad I'm not teaching with this pregnancy. I remember when I was pregnant with Max I would fall asleep with my head on my desk during recess, not to mention having to breathe out of my mouth to keep from inhaling the toxic fumes 10 year old boys produce. On the other hand, I have noticed if I'm busy, I don't notice how incredibly disgusting I feel. If I was teaching at least I would have bigger problems than whether or not my food would stay down. I told Joey last night that it feels like my stomach is full of rotten eggs on a ferris wheel. I can't tell you how many antacids I've taken or how many foods I've tried to settle my gag reflex. All I know is if I even hear about anything BBQ'd I have heartburn the rest of the day! Basically, I'm down to hot chocolate and peanut butter toast.

I know it may shock my family members, but I'm an optimist at heart. I have searched for the silver lining in this stomach-acidy balloon. First, it must mean the baby is healthy and I've got prego hormones up the wazoo, right? RIGHT?!? Secondly, all I wanted with Max was fresh fruit and now that is all he eats... all 20 pounds of him. SO this baby has got to be a fatty... a fat, docile, sleepy baby. (Don't burst my bubble on this one, I have to hold onto some hope!)