Yay, basement is fixed!

My husband rocks! Connor and I went to play at a friend's house this afternoon and daddy took it upon himself to repair the basement, laying down the carpet and putting Connor's toys away. The basement is back to being a usable space and my house smells good again! YAYYY!!!!

Baby shower news and I got my birth kit today!

I had my baby shower hosted by my good friends Breanne and Anne on Saturday. It was unfortunately delayed once because Anne had to have surgery and most of the guests were booked up or busy with flooding, but it came off beautifully on Saturday. Breanne made a really tasty spread with seven layer dip and veggie pizza, and Anne ordered a lovely cake that looked like a bubble bath with a rubber ducky in the middle. It was really adorable! I got overwhelmed with gifts, and even with surprise gifts from my family who couldn't come from the lower 48. I got a ton of duplicate gifts too, so I had the fun of going and exchanging certain ones for bigger sizes of the same thing -- Timmy didn't need nine pairs of shoes in the same size, but now he's outfitted until age 2 in fun and cool Robeez! Everyone was so sweet...we can't wait to try out our new wipe warmer, pea pod hat and fleecy car seat accoutrement.

The midwives came over for their home visit today and did all the standard prenatal stuff...and boosted my ego by telling me how pretty and cozy my house is, despite all the basement detritus everywhere. They also loved my soft chewy molasses cookies and took a few for the road. They also dropped off my birth kit...so no kidding we are ready whenever Timmy is!

Not that the humongous belly, indigestion and discomfort didn't do it before, but it feels so REAL when all the equipment is in place and ready to go. I just did a huge load of baby wash too. And of course after the ego boost of the midwife visit, I got leveled by a four year old who yelled out in the BX that I must be having two babies because his mommy didn't have that fat a tummy. Oh well, you want the truth, you ask a kid! LOL

Funniest blog I've seen in a long time

I absolutely crack up every time I check this blog. Charlie and I are addicted to the Food Network challenges, particularly the cake ones, so it's a blast to watch one of those with these absolutely incredible cakes and then read this...

CAKE WRECKS

Check it out. Often. There's apparently no end to stupidity and it gets updated a lot. I don't whether to cry or laugh that there is so much fodder for this blog.

Want to see our backyard family?

Here's a mama and her twins hanging out in the backyard just behind our fence. Connor was very excited to see them!


It's tiring to eat the Freels' trees! Gotta stop for a postprandial nap! This little guy fell asleep for a good half hour while his brother napped against the fence. He twitched every time Connor yelled "Moose!" out the window.


The whole family needs a rest...they love scratching themselves on the abandoned wing set outside. Rich next door took it down yesterday...I would hate to be him, with three angry moose ringing the doorbell for their scratching post.


Okay, one final snack before we trot off into the woods.

Timmy's Quilt

I finished Timmy's quilt! Didn't it turn out pretty? Connor's is a twin size, and I am short over half the patches. I'm going to dig into my scrap bag and hopefully knock out the patches over the next couple days.

Ummm, I don't want to be pregnant anymore

I know, I know...I've lectured many childbirth clients about the fact that the ninth month HAS to be uncomfortable, so you think that pushing a baby out of your bum is more attractive than staying pregnant. After all, if you went into labor when you felt as good as you do in the fifth and sixth month, there would be no motivation to go into labor!

Doesn't mean that I'm not doing a little external and a LOT of internal whining. I went to the midwife yesterday...we're now on weekly appointments...and it went well, but still you find yourself staring speculatively at her hoping that she can offer some magic bullet for hips hurting, painful Braxton Hicks, heartburn and weird hairs/stretchmarks/dark lines appearing on your body randomly. She can't other than having a baby, but you hope anyway! LOL

So I'm resolving to just try to enjoy having Timmy all to myself right now. I'm making him a bright quilt and Connor's memory quilt will need to get finished up now that I bought the backing and batting. I also ordered Timmy his bunting and warm car seat cover so he isn't the original newborn popsicle when winter hits in a few weeks. I love washing and folding all these sweet little baby clothes...makes me long to hold him on the outside!

I think Timmy might be a touch more mellow than Connor...he moves around a lot less and less aggressively than Connor ever did. Connor used to stretch and wiggle for hours and Timmy seems to be pretty content to just get comfy and settle in. He's hiccuping like mad a lot though, poor guy. I can tell he hates it when I lay on my right side because he prefers the left and the turning over makes him shift to a less comfortable position. I get my ribs kicked for moving on him.

I really wonder if he's going to go as late as Connor did...he might, but I've got some signs that things might go a little sooner with him than they did with Connor. Things that didn't happen until a few weeks from this point last time. We'll see! I have no idea what I would do if he did come before his due date because I'm booked up through then!

I need to go tackle cleaning up and getting Connor dressed and fed...I made a playdate for him this morning, completely forgetting that I was hosting a La Leche League meeting this morning, so I've got to walk over to Alyssa's and beg off today. I was really looking forward to it too. Sigh. Oh well, hopefully the weather will stay good tomorrow and we can do the park and walking tomorrow with our little ones. Okay, enough rambling! Gotta go!

Book Classics List

I shamelessly stole this from a friend's blog...by age 18, experts contend that the average American has only read six out of 100 of these classic books. I find that shocking because these are some of the best literature has to offer! I've also appended an abbreviated list of my favorites that I think everyone would benefit from reading as well! Add this list with your personalization to your own blog, and if you've read less than six, get to crackin'! :-)

INSTRUCTIONS FOR USING THIS LIST:

* Look at the list and bold those you have read.

* Italicize those you intend to read, and/or books you've started but haven't finished

* Reprint this list in your blog so we can try and track down these people who've read 6 and force books upon them ;-)

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma- Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility- Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas (en francais)
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery (en francais)
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Erin's Essential List (obviously I've read all of these):

1 Atlas Shrugged - Ayn Rand
2 Iliad - Homer
3 The Odyssey - Homer
4 On the Origin of Species - Charles Darwin
5 The Scarlet Letter - Nathaniel Hawthorne
6 House of Seven Gables - Nathaniel Hawthorne
7 The God Delusion - Richard Dawkins
8 Fahrenheit 451 - Ray Bradbury
9 My Sister's Keeper - Jodi Picoult
10 The Constitution of the United States (and the Federalist/Anti-Federalist Papers)

I think there's more that I would love people to read, but I don't consider essential to existence. Looks like I've got a few books to catch up on myself!

Connorisms

Well, my posts have been rather doom and gloom lately...literally, with the flooding in the basement and the non stop rain! (And yes, it is STILL raining.)

So I thought I would do a "isn't my son Connor so cute" post just to remind me to be in a good mood...after all, we're only a few weeks away from adding yet another cutie to the family!

Some Connor sayings with translations:
- Melmo! (Elmo, from Sesame Street)

- Dat's bunny! (That's funny!)

- Men, men, manwee men ah-ahhhh! (The theme song from Two and Half Men...and his pitch ain't half bad!)

- See-see Steet! (Sesame Street)

- RAWERRRRR!!! (in response to what bears and lions say)

- B...A...B...Y...Babee! (Yes, he can spell)

- D...A...D...Y...Daddeee! (Okay so not well, but he CAN spell)

- Fredey, da titty! (Friday the kitty -- Friday is emphatically Connor's cat. They sleep curled around each other every night and Friday puts up with all kinds of Connor loving)

- Baff, I...want...a...baff...peez! (pauses and all, we were prompting him to use his sentences to ask for things and now the pauses are essential in his mind)

- I...nee...a...huck...peez. (I need a hug please. This one melts mommy every time)

- I am sad, daddy! (Notice this says daddy...that worked to melt mommy til she realized it worked too well, so now Connor reserves that one for daddy because mommy just says, "I'm sorry you're sad, but that doesn't mean you get out of time out for painting peanut butter on the sheets")

- No, no want! (in response to anything we do not deem essential...like naps, face cleaning or vegetables)

He's been doing a ton of cute things too...he gets the room set up for nap and nights and we have to go in a specific order. First the overhead light goes off, then the bedside light goes on, then the fan, then we close the drapes and say nigh-night to our toys with kisses before picking our books for reading time. As we go up the stairs, mommy or daddy HAVE to pat his bum and sing the bum bum song...it's requested rather imperiously if we neglect this sacred duty. He puts his clothes in the hamper and LOVES to put things in the trash, which is great because mommy can't bend over easily to pick things up anymore. He can get up in his snazzy new car seat all by himself and will sometimes even put the straps over his own shoulders, which makes him grin each time. He's getting very verbal and loves to talk about the things he sees with his "smart eyes" as we drive in the car...mommy is never allowed to pass a bus, truck or e-e'er (excavator) without some minute description of big vs small, colors and how fast it's going. If there's a moose within a mile he can spot it too...though it's amusing to see what an Alaska kid he is, since he's been calling cows "moose" in his books. Since it's been six months since he's seen a cow and seven hours since he saw a moose, I guess it's only natural! We also know who will be civil air patrol in case of another World War, because this kid can spot a plane 15 miles away through thick fog.

Connor loves the Small But Mighty bear t shirt Nana sent to him and would wear it every day if mommy and the health department would let him. His other favorite clothes include his helicopter shirt, his airplane shirt and his striped tee shirts in blue and green (orange stripes are just barely tolerated). He's outgrowing his Gerber pajama sets Grandma got him but we're having a difficult time letting them go...so his pants are up to his calves and the sleeves are 3/4 length when we can't convince him to wear his new pair from Old Navy. We're dreading the winter...he hasn't had to wear a hat for three months and mittens for four and we don't take to change well in Connor's world. He passionately hates new clothes or shoes until forced into them and then he becomes devoted to them too.

Connor is so sweet tempered we're hoping it lasts through his threes at the least. He believes in sharing to the point of forcible sharing, plying his little friends with toys whether they want them or not. When someone gets hurt, he cries for them or offers "hucks" and "tisses" for them to feel better. The kid unerringly went to the one troop in Charlie's office who adamantly does not want children and asked her pick him up and he offered her a "tiss" gravely. She took it and admitted that he didn't constitute reason #437 for not having them. LOL He's super sweet and compliant about almost everything until you hit one of his streaks of stubborn and they're a mile wide and granite hard. Potty training is one streak and certain foods are another. But that's a whole other Connor post for other days! :-)

He has a few annoying things too, but they're almost cute in their annoyances. He refuses to leave a door open if he can help it so we're constantly sending him back upstairs to free a trapped kitty cat. He's been imitating Cookie Monster while eating lately so we've been fussing at him about his bad Cookie Monster habits...the cheerios end up scattered everywhere and it sounds rude. Every night it takes him an hour to wind down because we have to count to 20 multiple times, say our ABCs several times and talk about different animals, colors and things that happened during the day. Mommy and daddy are desperate for alone time, but we hate to squelch him too so he's been up a little too late at night lately.

Okay, I have lots more but no more typing time. Need to go love on the cutie before hustling him out to the veggie pick up. Hope you enjoyed too!

Well...we flooded

It's not bad. At least, not yet. Charlie went downstairs this evening for the nightly inspection and found a water welling up through the whole downstairs. It's ground water seeping up through the cracks in the foundation, so we can't even do any clean up til the pressure equalizes -- the more we bail out, the more will seep. We're 40th on the list for bail out and clean up services, but they're estimating they won't even try for 4-5 days since the rain is continuing til Thursday at the least. Please send "anti-rain" vibes up here to Alaska...the borough is now officially a state declared disaster area. And Bush is flying in tomorrow, so security on the base is going to suck. Could life get any better??? Actually we're counting ourselves lucky...there's a 1000 people that can't even reach their homes right now and some 300 homes are not livable. We're holding on just fine and are blessed with the luck of the Irish so far!

All I can say is thank goodness for nesting, because one week ago the basement was a wreck of boxes and our mattress was still down there from the June heat wave. My preggo little heart couldn't take it anymore and Charlie cleaned it up last weekend. Whew. Then we were prepared and moved everything but the plastic binned stuff, so we palletized that tonight to get it out of the water. All we can do now is wait and hope that it doesn't get worse...our friends have 5 inches of water and he's deployed while she visits family down in the States so they aren't even able to salvage stuff themselves.

Here's Connor playing along the shore of Polaris Lake. His normal rock throwing spot is under about five feet of water, so he had to content himself with the picnic area.






And just because he's so darn cute...how can you be too pissed about flooding when this little cutie is smiling??

Noah's Flood, Alaska Style

It's been raining for weeks here in the Interior, but this past week has been amazing as far as volume that has fallen...I think I read that over a 1/3 of our annual precipitation fell in two days? We have two major rivers in the area -- the Tenana and the Chena -- and both are well above flood stage. Poor Salcha, just a few miles south of Eielson AFB, took the first hits...Charlie has a troop that couldn't get to her house down there from flooding starting on Tuesday. And then Fairbanks took the brunt of the rain and now 1000 people have been evacuated -- the mayor declared the borough a disaster area and is asking the government to do the same so people can get some help.


I can't believe this rain! We're fine here even though Moose Lake is right in our backyard, though the usual moose paths around the lake are underwater. So far we don't seem to be in any danger of water in the basement or anything, but I check carefully several times a day just in case water starts collecting against the house. Poor Connor has been housebound for days, though we have escaped to the indoor playground several times. If it was just sprinkling, no problem -- but when I say rain, I'm talking about cats and dogs, can't see your hand in front of your face, puddles the size of small ponds rain. Toddlers don't like driving rain. Go figure. Mommies don't much care for it either!

I'm supposed to go downtown today for an appt, but I read that the place I'm going is cut off from the main town and when I try calling no one is answering, so I'm guessing there's no point in heading down there.

I hope everyone comes through this Old Testament deluge okay, with loved ones intact and salvageable possessions.