We're in Agreement Now, well, Ahhlmost

BACKGROUND INFO:  I've had a particular baby name in mind for several months now.  I've tried on several other names --really, I have tried-- but I keep coming back to this particular name every time; frankly, nothing else has stuck for me.  Meanwhile, my honey-man, he has either revisited the very same names he had had in mind for the naming of our lil' Jellybean -all of which were, sadly, vehemently rejected the first time around- OR he's been consistently coming up with new, quite lovely French names - - names that, unfortunately, no American will be able to either spell or ever pronounce correctly.  There's this one name in particular that he's been repeating most frequently, that he keeps coming back to... it really is so lovely, and I do love it, I do, HOWEVER, I can't rightly say it myself, nor could I spell it without looking having to first look it up 3 and 4 times before the spelling finally stuck with me, but I still can't pronounce it correctly, although I love it whenever HE says it as it should be spoken.

MORE BACKGROUND: Earlier today, we were swimming in the pool together as a family and we have these two new floating lounger-type chair things for in the pool, one for the boy-O -and general adult use- and one for the girlie that was gifted to her for her 3rd birthday.  So, Jellybean was loving her new floating lounger, but insisted that she float right alongside me, holding on either to me or my lounger itself at all times.  Due to the close proximity and her placement, perpendicular to my belly most the time, she had a great view of my bulging pregnant belly (as long as she hadn't turned her head to look elsewhere).

SOME MORE BACKGROUND INFO: Earlier last week, one night just before her bedtime, our Jellybean was on our bed with me and she'd laid her darling sleepy head on my big belly and just then the baby began to repeatedly kicked right where Jellybean's head was resting, and so, for the first time ever, she reeeally felt and recognized the baby moving inside me. Before then, I'd hold her hand to my belly to have her feel baby-movements, but she really couldn't distinguish the baby's squirming from my own breathing or my own muscular movements caused by my laughing.  Well, since that night last week, I've found her often staring at my belly, watching for baby movements, and if and whenever she sees anything major, she'll whip a little dimpled hand over immediately, to be placed atop my belly, little dimpled fingers splayed, so that she can feel her baby sissy moving.

So today at the pool, Jellybean was watching my belly for baby actions, lunging for my belly in order for her to reach and place her little hand on my belly while floating alongside each other - - and each time she made a move to feel the baby, she kept calling the baby a to-be-given name, rather than the usual 'my baby sister', announcing to everyone there at the pool that she could feel "baby (fill in the blank)!" Hearing her refer to the movements of her unborn baby sister by any particular name, with her little hand placed so deliberately on my belly, it was a defining moment of sorts for me.

And so, later this afternoon, we finally had a conversation that may very well be the final wrap on the whole 'what to name this baby' dilemma.
 
As of today, the name that's stuck with me, plus the aforementioned gorgeous French name I cannot pronounce myself, they might be known together as our Baby Nacho's chosen name, first and middle, respectively ... Looking at what her monogram would be, a potential nickname would be 'Vroom, Vroom!'

First Birthday - Party Ideas, Anyone?

Our baby sweet potato girlie is gunna be a year old in less than 2 months' time and I wanna throw a little (or big) birthday party, more so for our parental benefit than hers, of course, primarily to give us and our friends and family a chance to celebrate our little one having lived a whole year in this world. I have no idea what to do though... well, that's not entirely true: I'm 100% certain that I want to strip her down to her diaper and present her some kind of creamy (aka messy) chocolate creation just for her to attack and consume.

Anyone have any party ideas for a child's first birthday? What did you do for your baby's 1st?

Oh, Wait, That Was an Inadvertent Lie

CORRECTION: There are a couple major unfinished projects yet to deal with. I have about, oh, a hundred or so holiday cards that haven't made it to the mail yet because I still haven't finished addressing 'em. Yeah, but I figure if they make it in the mail before this year's end, that's WAY better than last year: We never sent any last year. Annnd, well, so there's the cards thing, and well --this one makes me feel bad, but I know I gotta cut myself a break or I'll melt into a whiny puddle-- I failed to finish our presents for the grandparents and siblings. See, due to a restricted budget this year, we'd opted to take advantage of the cuteness we have on hand and to make Christmas gifts for our friends and family. Excellent idea, right? No really, it IS an excellent idea, but like I said, I'm operating a week behind schedule.

SOME BACKGROUND INFO: The angel boy-O used to 'collect' pine cones galore, but his collection had to been restricted to a very tall, very large glass canister-like jar kept at the bottom of our stairs. Mind you, although restricted in size, what he'd collected could have easily filled a couple paper grocery sacks, and that's a fact... Well, he has a rock collection too, which is also restricted in terms of its size, also stored in large, lidded glass jar. Over this past summer, he wanted to add more rocks to his already full jar, and I'd told him he'd have to pick and choose which ones he wanted to keep in order to make room for the new ones. [SIDE NOTE: If this 'pick-n-choose-which-can-stay-and-which-will-go' approach sounds mean, please believe me: If we didn't restrict his collections somehow, they would take over every nook n' cranny of our home! The boy would keep every rock and every bottle cap he sees!] So, rather than have to go through his rocks at all, he decided to sacrifice his entire pine cone collection, a collection I'd grown fond of, I gotta say. So yeah, he bagged up all his pine cones and headed for the trash, and then, after he'd gone to bed that night, I removed them from the garbage before the trash would be set out for garbage day -he never knew this, by the way.

So anyhow, I was trying to figure out how we could make something meaningful to give to our friends and family, and I wanted it to represent not just our baby girlie, but our angel boy-O as well despite his absence from our home. And I could not think of anything, at least not until our baby sweet potato girlie was sent home from preschool one day with a baby-hand-painted pine cone Christmas ornament, including a photo of her attached to it, taken when she was in the midst of her paint-covered creative efforts. And voila! I instantly knew what we'd do for everyone! Baby-painted pine cone ornaments, and soooo, our baby girlie has been helping mommie paint her big brother's discarded pine cones over the last couple weeks now, which we will give as lovely lil' holiday ornaments! Brilliant, yes!? --except she can only manage painting 5 pine cones at any one time, and we've learned the most it can happen is once a day, only every other day at most. We've had FOUR "painting of zee pine cones" sessions so far (more like three n' a half), and the last session, she was like, "What? More of these pokey things? Again? Are you kidding me?" and she didn't last more than 5 minutes.

Yeah, so it's taking a while....

The Last Project B4 Baby's Arrival: Tricot Blankey or Bust!

By now, Owen believes this tricot baby blanket is his... I aim to finish the binding on it tonight! Yes, waiting until nearly the very last minute...
I had originally planned to stitch the remaining binding while waiting/working through active contractions, pre-transition, before heading to the hospital. I'd thought it'd be relaxing...

Owen LOVES this blanket, seen totally conked out here.

"Past Due" or "Baby Haven"

Alrighty ~ Sooo, apparently our baby sweet potato girl apparently doesn't know she was due to join our family YESTERDAY!?

Yeah. Sooo, here I sit taking a break from work while working from home, still preggers... I'm trying to be patient, yes. Luckily, we do have plenty to to keep us prewhile we wait! This morning I couldn't sleep past 6am, so I got up and took pictures! of the baby's room! Check it!

What you can see from the top of our stairs:

The glider chair! Recovered! Like it? I love it!!!

I picked these up in '97 from Deseret Industries in Provo, UT. They've been in storage for over 10 years now, just waiting to don the walls of a baby nursery.

The frames had been a plain brown washed wood.. and I chose to refresh 'em with this variant blue and green mix.

And here's the cubby shelf! All loaded!

The left top-most cubby has this lil' turn table loaded with baby products.

The hot pink cubby is ALL Zero to 3 Month sized ONESIES!!
I am not kidding.

The bookshelf! The rainbow shaped pillow at the top was made by my Grammie Joanie and was once in MY baby room.

Here's her crib...

This framed poster is from 1992 - - I scored it from a read-a-thon library event in Cedar Rapids when I was in high school and I thought it'd be perfect for a child's room. See now? See how long I've been waiting for this lil' bambina to arrive in my life?!?

I'm going to hang this at head of her crib, so she can stare at it all she wants.

This lil' yellow checked seersucker toy sling will be handy...
Already has some cute stuffed animals in it waiting for her!

I have some other art pieces and frames that we haven't yet finished, along with a shelf I painted that will sit above her diaper changing table... Will post those eventually.

I Love Onesies and Baby-this and Baby-that

I have always had a preference for babies dressed in Onesies... ya know, those lil' baby bodysuits that snap between their legs? Some call them "infant creepers" - ?

The reason I prefer Onesies is because they allow total easy-access for the nibbling of adorable, chubby baby thighs!!! Amongst my "Top 20 List of Things I Love," is my love baby thighs... no joke. Just gimme' a lil' barbeque sauce and I could live on chubby baby thighs! - those and dimpled baby hands. While on the topic of babies and things that I love, my three most favorite sounds are the following (in no particular order): 1) a kitty's purring, 2) my honey-man's voice whenever he calls me by any pet name, and 3) a baby's laughter.

When my friends and cousins began having babies, I began painting Onesies for baby gifts (I've been a bit negligent with this effort over the last couple years, with some many babies!!!). Back in October, this is the first one I made for our lil' baby sweet potato girl.

My Auntie's Purty Flowers for Her Yellowstone Wedding

My auntie really likes the anemone, however, it's completely out of season right now, so we chose white and blue scabiosa as a substitute since the bloom well matches the large swirl-like centers of the flower design featured in the lace of her wedding dress, much like the anemone would have.

Surprisingly, it turns out I kinda failed to take any real pictures of the arrangements I'd made - - ?!? I uploaded my photos and discovered I only have a few shots and none of them were particularly thought out or well focused. For instance, I have zero close-ups of any of the personal flowers I'd made for either the groom or the parents of the bride and groom! Here's what I do have though, including a pic showing the bulk flowers we'd claimed them in Jackson Hole, stashed in the hatch trunk of our car after, to then be driven to Old Faithful with the AC blasting in order to keep the flowers cool and to prevent any wilting. It was pretty comical actually. It was 56 degrees outside and the inside of our car was cooler than that - - my honey-man wore his fleece with the collar up around his neck and ears and I had two sweaters on. Both our noseys were running, we were so cold in the car! We kept laughing about it the whole way to Old Faithful. It made the final stretch of our drive to Yellowstone particularly memorable.

Loosely arranged table vase bouquets made with fragrant white stock flower, both light and dark blue delphinium, both purple and white lisianthus, both blue and white scabiosa, white button mums and fragrant white spray roses. The water for the vases was slightly tinted a light periwinkle blue.

The bride's bouquet - made with white scabiosa as the feature flower with white spray roses as the core filler and white lisianthus and nummy-smelling freesia peeking out between the scabiosa blooms.

I chose jelly jars with tea lites as the candle holders in an effort to compliment the mason jars we used as the vases for the table flowers... This pic is meant to show how the jelly jars cast a charming candle light pattern on the table's surface.

The following close-ups are of the table flower vase arrangement we brought home from us. Although all the darker delphinium lost all its petals by Monday, the arrangement is still on our kitchen table, a week since it was put together and it's still lovely.