Day 91 - March 31

Right up until the dog woke us up at 6:15 this morning (gotta love waking up to the sound of a dog getting sick on your living room carpet... I don't understand why he won't do that on the tile!!), we had big plans to go to Bellingrath Gardens today for their annual Easter Egg Hunt on the Great Lawn.

What we realized at 6:15, though, was that it was raining out. A lot. So we went back to bed for a while and hoped that it would stop sooner than later so it would dry out a little before the hunt started at 9:30. When we woke up at 7, we started to realize that wasn't going to happen. We got moving anyway, just in case, but it wasn't looking good.

Finally, sometime before the kid got up, and while we listened to thunder and watched sheets of rain come down, we decided not to try at all. Instead, we quickly stuffed some plastic eggs (re-using the candy Michaela had already gotten from the Coast Guard Easter party... now that's thinkin'!) and broke out the eggs we colored yesterday and hid them all around the living room, dining room, and kitchen.

When Michaela got up, she seemed to have forgotten about going to Bellingrath, but she was MORE than happy to look for eggs around the house. She totally got into it, squealing whenever she found another egg, and loved all the candy!

So we managed to avoid the disappointment of the missed hunt and the "princesses" (Azalea Trail Maids), and I think we may have even done better here at home!

Day 90 - March 30

Do you know what happens when you wait a day to put your picture up?

You can't pick a single picture.

I knew I was going to have to put up more than one for yesterday anyway since we went strawberry picking AND we colored Easter eggs, but I have so many more than that. Besides just liking a bunch of the pictures, I had a lot of fun editing. So I have five pictures.

And since I'm going to put up five pictures, I'm going to stop saying anything. I think the pictures tell their own stories.

Day 89 - March 29

So there we were at the dinner table, and Michaela had finished all her dinner - plus some seconds - so I asked her if she wanted dessert (not a normal thing around here).

She asked for a marshmallow - a recent obsession because the bag of them sat on the counter for a few days after we thought we were going to do the s'mores thing in the backyard last weekend. So instead of just giving her a marshmallow, Jason and I did that parents-communicating-with-no-words thing, and decided to get a fire going in the backyard and do the s'mores. With no work for him tomorrow and no activities for the girl, it was a good night to delay bedtime if we needed to.

So there we were, roasting marshmallows and putting together delicious s'mores in the backyard, and all the kid wanted to do was run around, keep an eye on the lizards hiding out in one of the Adirondack chairs, and eat a marshmallow out of the bag (followed by a piece of chocolate and a graham cracker).

And, of course, she wanted to play in the hammock which is generally off limits because we left it out all winter and it's grown green stuff in it.

But it was bath night anyway, so Jason tossed her in there and then let her think the hammock was a swing. I think she enjoyed!

(And it's time for the latest edition of Belly Watch, but I think I'm going to just put that on our other blog. So head over to The FlyingFish to see that if you're interested! I'll tell you this... I've grown a LOT in the last 2 weeks and 2 days!! YIKES!!!)

Day 88 - March 28

Shhhh......

Michaela's "sleeping."

On the "beach."

Day 87 - March 27

It's a.............

BABY!!!!!

Most people have a boy or girl announcement to make when they go in for the "big" ultrasound at 20-ish weeks, like we did today.

But we've decided to keep Yellow's gender a mystery until s/he makes her/his grand entrance this summer. So our first comment to the ultrasound tech today was to tell her that we did NOT want to know the gender. She very nicely avoided the critical areas until she absolutely needed to look and then told us to look away.

So Yellow is still Yellow and will stay that way until we see the goods in person. But everything else looked good on the ultrasound and Yellow is measuring 1 pound, 7 ounces already, which could be why I feel huge.

Oh, and Yellow is an acrobat like her/his older sister was in the womb. We have an ultrasound shot of Michaela's feet up by her head, just like we got of Yellow today. In fact, s/he spent most of the time bent pretty much in half.

Day 86 - March 26

After reading Michaela her story before nap time this afternoon, she decided to play teacher and "read" the book to me like story-time - holding it in front of her and telling me the story. This was absolutely adorable and I just HAD to get a picture.

Then she realized what I was doing as I changed lenses on my camera and got the settings just right to take a useable picture inside a semi-well-lit house.

So instead I got a grumpy, "Don't take a 'pitcher'!!!" face (not seen here), and a bunch of other goofy shots.

The first one was taken right after a pretty nice close up shot. I was told, "Mommy, take a 'pitcher' of my back!"

The second one was after I asked for a smile.

She's so cooperative.

Day 85 - March 25

Remember how I said Jason and Michaela had to check out the growing beans in the garden after the rain went through the other day?

Well, I checked 'em out today, too... with iPhone in hand.

Not bad for a week since the seeds went in the ground!

Day 84 - March 24

'Tis the season.... for Easter parties!

By Easter Sunday, Michaela will be on her 3rd egg hunt. We kicked it off today with the Spouses Club Easter Party. After decorating a cookie, picking up plenty of candy-filled eggs (only after we encouraged her to keep picking up more rather than stopping to open the first one), swinging, and bouncing in a bounce house, Michaela had the highlight of her day: meeting the Easter Bunny.

She might be scared to death of Santa Claus, but she loves the Bunny!!

Speaking of the swinging, I had to include a picture of that. At playgroup this week, Michaela truly learned (taught herself) the fine art of "Superman" swinging. She's got an awesome technique of running as fast as she can so she can get as high as possible and she perfected it today. She was so darn proud of herself!

And of course, the other picture is her time with the Bunny. She gave him high fives, she hugged him, she sat on his lap, she chased him down during the rest of the party to say hi as much as she could. Did I mention that she loves the Bunny??

Day 83 - March 23

I took this picture on time, I just didn't get around to posting it until a day later.

Anyway.... to the picture...

We had two days of rain, with periods deluge-type rain and multiple thunderstorms thrown in. Finally, in the afternoon, the rain stopped and the sun started to come out. And although the rain was awful for keeping us inside for two days, it was great for getting the garden working!

Jason planted greenbean seeds last Sunday, and we had sprouts already by Friday! CRAZY.

Of course, Michaela had to check out the progress, so she and Daddy headed out as soon as the sun showed up to check it out.

Day 82 - March 22

I know I've mentioned before how much Michaela loves to watch "The Fresh Beat Band." More often than not, you can find her jumping around the house and singing, "Shout it out, just like a rock star!" over and over again.

To compliment her love of the show, to feed this love of singing their music, and in preparation for our visit to New Orleans where we'll be going to an actual concert (though she doesn't know that yet!), we recently bought the Fresh Beat Band album from iTunes. Thanks to the kid-tough music player Uncle Josh and Aunt Erin gave her for Christmas, she can even listen to it on something that is not our iPods/Phones/computers, too.

So as she started to sing Rock Star and dance around this afternoon, I figured we might as well bust out the real thing. That resulted in at least 15 minutes of dancing around like a crazy girl, and following along with the songs. Here she is putting her hands up as directed in the song, "I Can Do Anything," complete with awesome facial expression.

Day 81 - March 21

Oh this picture makes me laugh!!!

This is what you get with your iPhone when your toddler is running circles in the open space between your living room and dining room after dinner and then runs up to you to tell you that she's chasing after seven (pretend) lizards.

Day 80 - March 20

Mama got away for a while tonight! It's probably not the same to meet people for dinner and drinks if you can't drink, but I had a great time anyway. And just because you can't have a drink with alcohol in it doesn't mean you can't have the same kind of drink without alcohol in it.

I can't say I really expected to see a straw made out of a sausage in my Virgin Mary, though....

Day 79 - March 19

This beautiful weather is messing with my schedule. Also, Jason getting home so late from work messes with my schedule.

And for the record, I wear a watch all the time, so I have no excuse for not knowing what time it is. Ever.

Tonight's menu plan called for "Family Favorite Cheeseburger Pasta."

I got busy enjoying a slightly cool breeze, temperatures in the mid-70s, the sunshine, and good company (the hubs and kid) out by the pool. Then I looked at my watch at 5:25 and realized how late it was. We usually eat at 5:30, for reference.

So we had Panera. This is definitely not cheeseburger pasta. Guess we'll have that tomorrow night.

Day 78 - March 18

About two weeks ago, Jason brought home a bunch of flowers for me. I hadn't had any flowers in the house since Valentine's Day, and those were a sad disappointment (roses that never opened, though they smelled wonderful).

These flowers, though - simple flowers that didn't cost nearly as much as the roses - have lasted forever! Yesterday, I finally took the bouquet apart again and pulled out the dead/dying stems and re-did the arrangement. It'll be interesting to see how long it keeps going as I keep taking the rotting stems out of the water!

And because I didn't take any other pictures today, you get to see my flowers.

Day 77 - March 17

Happy St. Patrick's Day!!! (from the girl without a drop of Irish blood in her... but I married into it!)

Instead of doing St. Patrick's kinds of things (not that I know what those are if it's not drinking), we headed over to Fairhope for the Arts and Crafts Festival today. I guess we partied a little, though, in that Michaela (and I) got a slice of chocolate chip cookie pie and some orange sherbet for a mid-morning snack. That was followed by a giant lemonade (my child doesn't really drink anything but water and when she does, it's either milk or 100% juice...lemonade is definitely a never-before-tasted treat) and a lunch of Italian sausage eaten while sitting on the curb.

That's how we party in the Dorval household!!

You get two pictures tonight. I love both of these. I especially love that I had to do almost no editing to them, and probably could've just left them SOOC (straight out of the camera), but, once I opened them in photoshop, I felt like I had to do something to them. (For anyone who cares, I did a very slight levels adjustment and used the Pioneer Woman "Warmer" action at about 30% opacity on both. And I cropped the one of here without the giant lemonade just a bit.)

Day 76 - March 16

I'm sorry to have to tell all the other parents of little girls out there this sad fact....

But....

My daughter is the cutest little girl in the world. That's just a fact, not parental bias. I swear.

Day 75 - March 15

It's the Ides of March. And in the south, that means your pool might be warm enough for swimming.

Well, it might be warm enough for your crazy husband and your equally crazy daughter, but not quite warm enough for the non-crazies in the bunch!

It did make its way up to 75 degrees today, though, so I ventured so far as rolling up my pants and sticking my toes in. I actually stayed like this for quite a while, until my back started hurting too much to keep sitting on the ground.

The toddler couldn't get enough of having her feet in the water, though, and was more than excited to put her suit on and get in with Daddy when he got home from work. She had a little bit of a rude awakening when she jumped right in off the board and the chill hit her, but it didn't keep her from kicking and screaming (literally) when it was time to head in for dinner.

If it gets 5 degrees warmer, and the day's hot enough, I just might venture past this....

Day 74 - March 14

I'm totally cheating tonight.

I did NOT take this picture.

I'll give you one guess as to who DID take the picture.

Got it??

I only wish I had a picture of her taking this picture. She's used to seeing me with a camera with the viewfinder right up at my eye (no LCD screen pictures for me), and she does the same with her own Fisher-Price kid-tuff camera. So, even though she's seen me take iPhone pictures by holding the phone away from my face, she still had to hold it right next to her eye as she snapped away. And she told me everything she was going to take a picture of, too.... "Mommy, I'm gonna take a pitchure of the sky." "Mommy, I'm gonna take a pitchure of that fence over 'der'." "Mommy, I'm gonna take a pitchure of the chair."

The sky was the prettiest one, so that's what I decided to go with for today's picture!

Day 73 - March 13

As I start typing, I'm still debating whether or not to put one or two pictures here. I have a picture of Michaela and then I FINALLY had Jason take a real (not with a cell phone) baby belly picture today. But I think I might keep the baby belly ones over on the other blog so I don't feel like I have to put them here. But then again, that's a big part of my year....

Eh, maybe I'll put that one in both places. I just realized I haven't updated the other blog since OCTOBER, so maybe I should pretend I still use that one.

So we had some rain yesterday and into today. Because of that, the park was wet and not really a good place for playgroup and our Plan B fell through (because we can't read schedules). So Michaela and I headed to the mall to wander around - and have Chick-fil-A for lunch because she asked. While we were there, I finally picked up the kid-sized umbrella she's been wanting for months (Santa meant to get one for her and forgot).

Of course, when we got home, she HAD to use it. Thankfully, it had started raining a little bit just as we were pulling into our neighborhood, so she had a reason to use it. It's funny how excited a $6.50 umbrella can make a toddler.

And then we have the other picture.... back in 2009, I called it the "Bump Watch" but I'm tired of the term "baby bump," so I think we'll use "Belly Watch" this time around. Of course, until I get ginormous again and then we'll go back to "Horizontal Mountain Watch."

So here's the Belly Watch.... 20 weeks and 5 days. And in exciting baby news, Jason got to feel a couple kicks tonight! It's about time Yellow kicked me somewhere other than my bladder.

Day 72 - March 12

All it takes to create a cuddly, wants-to-sit-on-your-lap toddler is four days with grandparents. I'm sure she'll go back to her usual mostly-independent self sooner than later, but for the next few days, I know she'll want to be right with us (mostly me since Jason will be back at work) and on a lap.

And that's what she did tonight after dinner. She asked to play a game on Jason's phone and had to sit in his lap at the table to do it. It was fun to sit across from them and listen to the game tell her "Congratulations!" as she got the numbers right. At the rate we're going, she'll know all her letters and numbers by sight before she turns 3... not bad!!

Day 71 - March 11

FINALLY caught up!

And with not much of a picture.

We were sitting outside this afternoon watching Michaela run around like crazy and I realized I hadn't taken a picture yet. She stopped for 3 seconds to sit in a chair so I took my chance for a quick iPhone picture.

She realized what I was doing and tried to scramble out of the chair as fast as possible. You can tell she's heading out. I called this one "gotcha" when I saved it to my computer - about two seconds after I took this, she was around the corner and out of sight! Such a turd sometimes!

Day 70 - March 10

Ah, weekend away! Well, night away anyway.

With grandparents in town, and a free night at a Marriott coming to us, we wisely decided to take a night away without the toddler while we had the chance! There's a gorgeous Marriott resort (they called it the #1 Marriott resort in the country when we came in the gate) just about an hour away in Pt. Clear, AL. It's right on Mobile Bay and really was beautiful. It's also an historic hotel - the original having opened in 1847 - and it was neat to learn about some of the traditions there.

One of the traditions is that they fire off a canon every afternoon at 4pm to honor our nation's military. The hotel served as a hospital during the Civil War and then as a training base for the Army Air Corps during WWII. They honor that history by having a procession from the lobby to the canon every day (in good weather) and firing it off. We missed the ceremony itself (we were in the spa!!!), but I caught a picture real quick on Saturday while we walked around before check out.

I'm hoping we'll get the chance to get back there for another day or two while we're still here, even with the kid. They've got pretty much every amenity you can imagine so it'd be a nice little vacation without having to go too far from home!

Day 69 - March 9

Fridays are gymnastics day.

This past Friday, there was a different trampoline set up at gymnastics, courtesy of some work being done in the part of the gym where it normally lives. Of course, trying to get Michaela off the trampoline and onto the rest of the normal equipment was a lot of fun.

But at least it made for good pictures. And with Mimi, Papa and Daddy there to help out at gymnastics, I got to take a ton of pictures. About 4 came out. Fluorescent lighting is not friendly.

Day 68 - March 8

I've definitely got some catching up to do here! It's already the 11th and I'm just getting back to the 8th!

In my defense, we've had grandparents in town, we (Jason and I) actually got a night away, and we've just generally been busy.

The grandparents (Jason's mom and step-dad, aka Mimi and Papa) got into town on Thursday, and the fun started immediately! Well, not immediately. Michaela was just a little shy and cranky when she first saw Mimi and Papa in person (these guys "live" in a computer, after all!), but she got over it when the gifts came out.

Here she is reading her new book with Mimi!

Day 67 - March 7

I've already put this picture on Facebook today. It is literally the only picture I took today. Usually when I say I've only taken one picture, I mean that there's only one usable picture. But today, this is literally the only one I've got.

To the story...

Michaela got a little cranky this afternoon, so she decided she wanted to sit in my lap on the couch - her second choice to riding her tricycle, but her only real choice since I was feeling terrible this afternoon. Incidentally, my lap is getting much smaller.

While she was sitting there, I started playing with her hair. Normally, this is not allowed. But lately she's been fascinated by braids. I credit "Jessie" of "Toy Story" fame. So I tried French braiding her hair. There were two problems with this. 1) Her hair was dry, which makes it tough to begin with and 2) her hair was dry, which means her perma-side part wouldn't let me put the hair where I wanted it.

So I resorted to a ponytail that I then braided, but at least she let me do SOMEthing with her hair. So I'll take it. Maybe if I can figure out a zillion ways to put braids in her hair, we'll finally get away from the single barrette on one side!

Day 66 - March 6

I think we need a little Fred around here.

It was an absolutely gorgeous day out today. It was sunny, the temperature was right around 70 degrees, and, of course, Michaela wanted to be outside.

So we brought Fred out with us to avoid listening to him bark at us through the open windows, and he thoroughly enjoyed the breeze and the cool grass.

Day 65 - March 5

She FINALLY figured out how to steer her tricycle!!!!!

And I couldn't keep up.

Day 64 - March 4

You almost got a picture of my dinner of scrambled eggs tonight. I forgot that I had taken some pictures this morning so I took a quick one of my pathetic dinner.

Thank goodness I DID take some pictures this morning because the two I have to share are definitely much cuter than scrambled eggs. (Is anything NOT cuter than scrambled eggs?)

Michaela looked so cute before church this morning that I HAD to take pictures. Of course, when she decides she's not in a mood for pictures, there's really no arguing with her. That's what you see in the first one... hiding in Daddy's legs.

But we got the second one because I told her she looked super cute and she'd be able to look at the pictures after I took them. Then Jason made funny noises and faces and we got a real smile. And she didn't even ask to look at the screen after I took the pictures because, by then, she was too wrapped up in playing with her monkeys. Go figure.

I know I'm biased, but this kid is cute. She just is.

Day 63 - March 3

Remember back on Day 37, when I shared my love of new glassware?

It continues.

This week I got a 10-bowl set of Duralex (same brand as my glasses, by the way) nesting/mixing bowls. I finally got around to washing them and putting them away in the cabinet tonight. And it was silly how happy I was about them. They range from teeny-tiny (1 oz.) up to big enough for most jobs (3.5 qt). And I'm in a little bit of love.

My love affair with glass kitchenware probably isn't healthy. But I blame my mother.

Day 62 - March 2

Sometimes it's the simple pleasures in life that make the difference in a day.

For me, it was finding artichokes for only $6 for a 4-pk at Sam's yesterday. And they're good ones. I thoroughly enjoyed two of them this afternoon and will probably cook up the other two tomorrow.

Yum.

Day 61 - March 1

It was about 80 degrees out today. 80. On March 1st. And the sun came out.

So the balance bike came out, too!