Blogging Month

I just learned from a friends' blog that November is blogging month. She has set the amazing goal of blogging daily, I think I will just go for twice a week. However, if I even met my goal of weekly that would be an improvement.

Today my post will be about the fact that I am awake. I have been awake since 4. Yesterday I woke up at 6. What's the point of the weekend anyway? Yesterday was my fault, today is completely Emily's. We attempted the toddler bed again last night and so she wandered into our room at 4 and wouldn't go back to sleep. Going to sleep in the toddler bed didn't work so well last night, so it had no chance this morning. Really, I don't understand her. When I put her in the toddler bed she screams like she's dying. She then gets up and walks to the end of the hall. She calmly stands there until I come and then walks back to her bed, perfectly willingly. I put her back in bed, walk out and we start the cycle again. After doing this about 15 times last night, I sat in her rocking chair until she went to sleep since she was almost there anyway. I seriously do not understand.

Redoing

In lieu of planning my lessons this week, we've been having fun redecorating the house. Jacob read an article that said that every home should have a picture of the Savior and a picture of the temple. We've had the first one covered since we got married, but we've kind of been counting our wedding picture as a picture of the temple. As you can see below, you can't even tell it's the temple. So, we moved all our family pictures to accommodate for a lovely picture of the temple and one of the First Presidency. I really love how it turned out.

Yes one of the frames is empty, it will be the new baby when he gets here!

This picture, which didn't turn out well in the photograph, we just got today and will be hung in the nursery. We went to Costco for chicken and Greg Olsen was there! The picture was only $20 and someone at Costco got smart and put picture frames on sale. So, we got it signed and are very excited to hang it in the nursery tomorrow.

I also did some redoing on my look this week. Alright, not much of a change, but I did get new glasses! Surprisingly, after having not seen an eye doctor in 5 years, my prescription was only worse by .25 in each eye (Jacob will tell me how to say that correctly later.) It's nice to have glasses that I can see out of and that stay on my face!

On a random side note (I know, I need to learn to stick to one topic per post) Emily is turning into such a big girl. Tonight she didn't want to sit on my lap as we read stories and sang songs, she had to sit next me. It didn't work well in the rocking chair and felt very strange to be singing primary songs without a little girl on my lap.

Halloween Fun

Halloween was a fun time this year, especially since Emily was old enough to be excited about the candy!

Our beautiful pumpkins that Jacob carved. I cleaned them out. I also made some tombstones that fell over and broke at the slightest breeze....that was kind of lame.

Emily dressed as Abby Cadabby. She loved her costume and even left her pigtails in all night! I tried again for church today and it lasted the normal 2 minutes. I guess Halloween is magic.

Emily and Jacob at the ward trunk-or-treat. Emily actually has an ear infection right now, so we just did this instead of normal trick-or-treating, she gets pretty crabby in the evenings. She got more candy than any 18 month old needs anyway.

Jacob and I just wore scrubs for our costumes. He was supposed to have his stethoscope, making him a doctor and I was supposed to have a witches hat, making me a witch doctor, but we forgot our accessories. Two of our friends were also wearing scrubs, so we just decided that we had dressed up as Reed and Jyll for Halloween. They were a paradox or "pair-of-docs".

She dug right into her stash the minute we got home. Normally her shoes have to come off first thing, but she was so excited about the candy that we were able to get a few more pictures of her in her costume.

Starting Again

It has been a crazy weekend, but a lot of craziness in my life has come to an end. All semester I've been working away at my teacher work sample. For those who haven't already heard me complain about it, it's basically my senior project. It really wasn't as bad as I expected, just extremely time consuming. Many other things have fallen by the wayside in the past few weeks as I've tried to get it done. However, it is now complete and will be turned in on Monday!

Along with turning that monster in, I will also be starting at a new school on Monday. BYU has us teach at two different schools during our student teaching, once in a lower grade and once in an upper grade. I have to say that while I'm sad to leave the school I was at, I'm so glad to be going to an older grade. I'm still not positive, but I'm starting to think that I'm not cut out to teach the younger grades. I just can't handle how sensitive they are! I also feel like half of what I say goes right over their heads some days. So, I'll be trying my hand at 5th grade again. We shall see how it goes. Right now, I'm mostly just excited that I get to spend the next little while observing, which will mean that after school will be my time and I'll be able to catch up on some things....hopefully. Being pregnant is dang exhausting, so right now I'm tempted to just catch up on my sleep. Unfortunately, work and house cleaning are calling my name.

PS - Does anyone have any good costume suggestions? I really did not want to dress up for Halloween as I don't have money to spend on a costume or time to make one, however I will probably have to wear something to school on Friday. Being pregnant also makes this more difficult. So, I am open to any and all suggestions! Emily is going to be Abby Cadabby (a fairy in training from Sesame Street), but I can't think of a Sesame Street character I can be, so I can't really go for the family theme.

100 days/Emily/Birthday

I've been meaning to blog forever, so this is going to be another one of those random, long posts. I have about 4 different posts written in my head, I just haven't had the time to put any of them on here! First, I would just like to draw your attention to the pregnancy tracker on your right. I have less than 100 days left!!!!! I know, that's still a lot of days, but the end is getting closer. The only unfortunate part of that is that the baby is still completely breach. He has not moved one inch the entire pregnancy. Hopefully he'll decide to move himself soon because my bladder cannot take much more of this.

The next blog post that's floating around in my head is about how my baby has suddenly been replaced by a toddler. When did that happen!? She is getting so big and learning so many new things. This morning I grabbed the tray off her high chair to go put some breakfast on it and rather than following me around, like normal, Emily went over and climbed right up into her high chair. She's so tiny, but it apparently is not going to stop her from getting where she wants to be.

We went to her 18 month check-up last week and the doctor said that everything is looking good. She's still ridiculously small (25% for height and .5% for weight) but she is clearly not malnourished, so oh well. Her doctor also decided to tell me that I should start potty training her. He noticed how conscious she is of her diaper and the fact that it needs to be changed and said that even though she's really young, we could probably succeed in potty training. This morning I got her up and she pointed right to her clean diapers and said, "This!". I grabbed her a diaper and set her down. She laid right down, ready to be changed. She was only wet, but apparently it needed to be changed now. I tend to think her doctor might be right, but I just can't do it right now. She's with babysitters all day, so I would basically be forcing them to potty train her for me and clean up all the messes that go with it. We also still have to transition to the toddler bed. (I was starting to get sick from lack of sleep, so we went back to the crib and decided to try again later.) Maybe we can potty train after the baby gets here.

The final post that's all written in my head is about my birthday. It was so much fun. I have an amazing husband. He kept everything a secret from me, until the night before when he told me that I was going to get a pedicure after I got home from school. That was awesome. Pedicures are one of those things that I love, but never do for myself. My friend Amy met me there part way through and it was fun to just sit and talk. When we were done, her husband Dave came to pick us up and take us back to our house, where Jacob had made a delicious dinner of spaghetti and garlic bread. Dave and Amy stayed to celebrate with us, which was really fun and Emily had been sent to play with some other friends, so it was a nice, quiet evening. We ate spaghetti, watched Bride Wars, ate cake (that Jacob made) and ice cream and relaxed. On top of all that, Jacob also got me a beautiful new maternity dress and an absolutely gorgeous coat. It was a great day.

My fancy new dress

I have the white one! It's actually pretty awesome, it's not maternity and doesn't look big, but will probably button over my belly for most of the pregnancy.

Fish And Hair

We have given up goldfish. Tigger died the day I wrote that last post. Also, all the little goldfish I bought for class are now dead. That's 6 dead fish that I've had to deal with since Saturday, it's gross. So, we have gone back to the beta fish. We've had one before and he lived a decent amount of time, hopefully this one will follow suit. He does not have a name yet, so suggestions are appreciated.

Also, I decided to die my hair today. Literally, I decided right before it happened. I really love the color though! You can't see it in this picture, other than that it's dark, but it does also have some red in it. I'm really tired, so ignore the look on my face please. Maybe sometime soon Emily will sleep through the night again and then I won't be so tired!

Cheese!

Emily has started saying "cheese!" and smiling every time she hears the camera turn on, which just makes us want to take even more pictures of her! So, here are the results of her new habit.

I was trying to take a picture of the fish, but she thought she needed her picture taken first. But, you can see her new hair cut! I don't totally love it, but since she won't let me do anything with it, it was the only way to keep her hair out of her eyes.

Emily's new fish, Tigger. (This angle makes him look bigger than he is, though he is a big fish.) We also had Pooh, a white Koi (named for Tigger & Pooh, Emily's favorite), but he died within a few hours of being purchased. Apparently if you don't hold them over the security sensors on your way out of the store it scrambles their brains. Tigger seems to have lived through the trama so far. We also got her new tennis shoes with Winnie-the-Pooh on them. She insisted on wearing them all night and tried to wear them to church. She really likes Pooh Bear.