If I were a street fighter. . . .

Grief. It's been almost a month since I posted last! So in the last month, I had an incredible New Moon party with my girlfriends: dinner and midnight showing. It was awesome! And I need to post those pictures because those girlies are my absolute favorite.

Next (a day and half after New Moon party), we flew to Alabama for Thanksgiving with Jesse's family! I love Alabama. I really do. Anyway, so these are a couple of the family pictures we did. Jesse needs to email me the others so I can post them too. Jesse's family is beautiful so I am going to post them too when I get the pictures.



And this is me if I were a street fighter. Jesse had to do the assignment for a character design class. So it's me in my yellow jacket and military hat. I have a robotic arm because I have a tendency to punch when angry. And I'm even wearing my locket chain. I love having a personal artist! No, this is definitely NOT Jesse's style of art. His assignment was to emulate it. If you want to see his style, check out mywhiteshadowart.blogspot.com. But it is sweet, you have to admit.
And other fun news: Jesse and I went to the ultrasound today. I totally had a Cali Stoddard experience. I was 110% sure it was a boy. But it's NOT! We're having another girl! Can you believe it? I still can't. The name we've picked for now is Claire. Middle name to come later. Now I understand, Carolyn, when you were sad. I cried when I first got home. I was excited, but I've totally been geared for a boy for two months now. I really thought it was going to be. But a girl will be AWESOME. Matching dresses, bows, accessories.... it'll be a joy. Another princess.
Anyway, now y'all know. Love you!

So . . .

I'm not even going to try to be creative about this.

I'm pregnant.

I'm sixteen weeks along and I find out December 7 what the baby is (hopefully).

I haven't been crazy sick this time. In fact, I've felt rather fabulous.

I just thought I'd let you know so I can start posting about baby projects.

I really am excited. I promise. I think my seemingly unenthusiastic state is a result of no exclamation marks. For that, you can blame my older sister. ;)

Binky blues

Despite Jesse's earnest expressions that we should wean Abby from her binkies, I have never had the intent to do so until she was closer to three. I was hoping by then she might better agree to whatever ridiculous plan I came up with.

Well, as of yesterday/today, Abby decided to wean herself. If anyone knows Abby, then you know that Abby is OBSESSED with her binkies. Which was unfortunately encouraged by me. So why did she decide to wean herself? More than a little odd, right? I thought so too. When nap time came today, she picked up each binky (3) and put it in her mouth, but would quickly pull it out with a disapproving look. After a few minutes of this, she finally put them all on the dresser and just fell into absolute despair on the bed. She cried for TWO HOURS. She kept asking me to wash them. So I did. Four times. But it wasn't enough. The last time I brought them in I asked her what was wrong. She said they tasted funny. And then she fell into hysterics again. She refused to let me even touch her and within 30 mins. of crying she was crying harder because she said her "head hurts".

This is why I didn't want to wean her yet, Jesse.

I took her binkies to better examine why they would "taste funny". All three have puncture marks---which were not there before this week. Sometime in the last few days, Abby managed to bite/puncture all of her binkies. And now they are deflated. Which I am guessing why she doesn't like them anymore and is also funny because that's how I was going to eventually get rid of them.

It broke my heart to just watch her crying and staring at her binkies as though they somehow betrayed their bond.

But after two hours of her crying, me almost crying, and two splitting headaches.... Abby finally dozed off. It's a blessing, I'm sure. Just not one I was up for quite yet.

My blue-eyed Snow White

Sarah, these are for you. :) I didn't get a chance to catch a picture of Abby and Samuel in costume quite yet, but we'll make sure to do that tomorrow. Not quite sure what her hair is doing or why she struggles to look at the camera, but whatever. Loves!

BEWARE: Halloween + random picture dump = super long blog post

Happy Halloween! Almost. I'll post pictures from that too. But here are a few of the month's pictures. Don't ask me why they're grainy looking. I can only blame Abby for playing with my camera.

Abby was WAY excited about pumpkins this year. And surprisingly, so was Jesse. I, on the other hand, didn't care for them this year. Weird, I know, but I opted to be camera person instead. Rather than carving, Abby got to paint her pumpkin.


She LOVED painting. She kept saying "Simba, Simba, Simba" and doing the whole half moon shape on the top of the pumpkin.


We actually managed to avoid paint on the t-shirt until we took this picture (below). She fell into her pumpkin and got green paint all over her leg and shirt.


Jesse's skull man pumpkin. It was really creepy. Honestly, it's grosser now that it's totally decomposing on our stairwell. So fitting for Halloween.


Leaves! Really, I should have a leaf jumping party one year. We get an unbelievable amount of leaves and have the BEST piles ever.


Abby demonstrating how to throw leaves.


She could seriously disappear in this pile if she sat down all of the way. It was awesome.


Falling into leaves. Hurrah! Who didn't do this as a kid?


So these pictures are from like March 2009. I just found them and thought they were hilarious. Abby and I were supposed to be pulling the same faces for the camera. I took them with my arm out as far as it could go. The second one is by far the better of the two.