sometimes

Sometimes, you are really excited to have a baby, and so you start announcing it when you are 3 1/2 weeks along.
Sometimes, you have 10 friends in the ward who all have babies in the two months before you are due (although, interestingly, they all announce their pregnancies after you). And every single baby comes early.
Sometimes, you know what your real due date is, and it's earlier than the one the doctor's office uses. (Thank you, internet, for teaching me all about my body.) And try as you might, you can't help but count from the earlier day.
Sometimes, it is hot in the summer.

And because of all of these, sometimes, you feel like you have been pregnant forever.

Pregnancy brain

Over the past few days, these are things I have remembered:

• The birthdays of over 300 people. A friend asked how many I had memorized, so while Joseph was at the playground I sat and wrote them down til I reached 300 since that's what I had told him. Considering that there are probably 100 names in there of people I would never really wish happy birthday, even on Facebook (just because we're not really friends anymore), I felt kind of weird. But I was consoled by the fact that my mom probably knows just as many.
• To say, "Rise up, goon" whenever it seems appropriate.

Things I have not remembered:

• What day my doctor's appointment is. Yeah.

So, do I have pregnancy brain? Yay or nay?

Just chugging along

After our whirlwind May, things have been pretty quiet around here. When it rains (which is every few days), we find inside activities. When it's sunny, we play outside, unless it's too hot (it's only gotten above 90 once or twice, but that can still feel pretty hot). Life is just a mixture of Legos, laundry, Daniel Tiger, and dishes.

Joseph is into Legos big time these days. A few weeks ago, he was building and rebuilding mansions and penthouses for Lightning McQueen all the time. Even within minutes of him getting mad at me, he still announces, "I have a present for you!" and hands me his latest Lego creation. It's great.

Right now, he likes to take his bear, elephant, meerkat, blue Lightning McQueen, helicopter, red car, green car, and blue race car with him to bed. This makes it sort of hard for him in the mornings because he wants to have them all watch him eat breakfast and he can't carry them all down the stairs.

This is from my piano students' recital! It's been a fun, educational experience teaching basic piano to little little kids. They and their parents are so awesome and so patient with me.

Our Toledo zoo pass expired on July 1, so we made sure to go one last time in June. We went to every single exhibit, but I didn't take too many pictures.

We love waterslides.

I have been trying to ride my bike as much as possible. Dismounting is one of the hardest things I have to do, but it's all worth it for the sense of satisfaction I get. We've come a few times to these fountains since I've heard from at least one reputable source we can get in. And if that's false . . . oh well.

Haha selfie.

4th of July!

Rice Krispie treats with way too much sugar added on top. We . . .  didn't take these to the potluck because we were selfish.

But we did take this Jell-O. Later I realized I did the stripes wrong for both of these treats. Oh well.

We had a little service auction for a Relief Society activity last month and I won a free perennial garden. At first I was sad to not win a free plate of cookies, but in retrospect this is better. As soon as Northwood was done re-roofing our complex (and dropping water bottles and nails everywhere!) we planted it.

So far I've been happy to see how well it's stayed alive. Even the geraniums. They're going to repaint our siding at some point and we'll see if they survive that too.

As for how I've been feeling, the motto I've been operating on the whole month is "All I ever want to do is sleep." It's kind of funny -- when I was pregnant with Joseph, I was busy busy busy right up to 35 weeks. That 35th week I had a few finals, a few projects, a masters thesis to present, a masters thesis to fix up, and just general craziness . . . and then it stopped. Abruptly. The next five weeks were filled with walks to the library and walks to the RB to swim and naps and playing the piano and folding baby clothes and trying to not get bored with the pregnancy yoga DVD from the library and I think that's about all I did.

Whereas now, well, I've never been busy with school, but it's been this constant grind the entire time. A good grind, but a constant one. Lots of playing with Joseph and running errands and falling behind at keeping the house clean. I've realized with regards to cleaning that dishes and laundry and toys will always be there, so sometimes I decide to make things that will last a bit longer than a clean house.

Such as this:

Super easy. Super fun. Reasonably cute.

and this:

(we'll see if "Shake it Off Primary Style" and "Are you, are you coming to the Popcorn Tree" happen before the baby gets here)

and blog posts. Like this one!

Anyway, we've got about two more weeks of chugging along like this, and then things will get really exciting. So I guess we can enjoy the relative calm now.

Especially because I don't think my motto of "All I ever want to do is sleep" is going away any time soon.

It's Always Fun when Grandpa Comes

A month ago, we got a fun knock on our door -- it was my dad! He was in town for a conference and needed a place to stay. Or wanted to hang out with us.

Either way, he was here! So we did fun things.

Such as:

-Wrestle (I think this was more fun to watch than participate in)

-Visit the peony garden

-Visit the Ford museum (okay, usually cars rank somewhere between dinosaurs and space stuff on my list of things I don't care about, but this was actually pretty cool)

Oh how he loved the airplane

-Play in sandy water/watery sand

-Waterslides

We didn't see him much Wednesday because of the conference, but he did stop by briefly in the afternoon before heading off to more conference stuff. On Thursday, only Kevin saw him at the session he spoke in. (Meanwhile, this was while we were at the hospital for Joseph's thankfully-false-alarm heart checkup and replayed the only episode of Seinfeld I've ever seen by looking forever for our car in the parking garage. And this was with us using the panic button about ten times. But we found it, and Kevin eventually did make it to the session.) 

After that session, he was off to the airport. But he's welcome to come back any time!