Updates...

Lots of updates going on here today!  The first one is on Poppy.  I love this girl more than words can describe.  This afternoon when she woke up from her nap, I sat on her bed and she crawled over and put her head on my enormous belly and said, "I missed my baby brother soooo much!"  She talks about him all day and is genuinely so excited to meet him and help take care of him.  Last week she even told me that she is baby brother's mommy.  I broke it to her gently that she is not his mommy, but being a big sister is like being a little mommy.  So Poppy's update is that she continues to get cuter and cuter by the day.

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I had a doctors appointment this morning and as soon as the doctor began my exam, he said, "Woah!  The baby's head is right here!  Do you feel like you've been walking around with a  bowling ball between your legs lately?"  And yes, as a matter of fact, I spent all last week complaining about how all of sudden it feels like he is super low.  The doctor said that he has definitely dropped significantly over the past week and I am 1cm. dilated.  I still have a month to go and he said that I could still go all the way to my due date, or even further, but it also means that he is definitely getting ready to come out!  Which brings us to the next update - the nursery...

Here is what the room looked like before...

And here is what it has looked like for the past 2 months...

And here is what it looks like as of 5 minutes ago...

As you can see, there is still a ton of work to be done, which is making me super anxious.  But Marc has been kicking it into overdrive lately and I think it will be done soon.  (I hope.)  Will keep you posted!

School's out for summer!!!

We've been getting baby stuff galore dropped off at our house lately (Thank God for having tons of nephews!).   Poppy was super excited about having an extra car seat to play around with all day.  She calls her cabbage patch doll "baby brother" and after she buckled him in and then herself into their car seats, she called me over to tell me that they were ready to go to the zoo!  She literally played with that thing all day long.

This little girl has been cracking me up with the things she says lately.  One of my favorites of the week was yesterday morning, we were reading a few books in my bed and she looked down to see that she had a few mosquito bites on her leg.  She asked me why the bugs bit her and I told her that it's because she's so sweet and they like the way she tastes, and that they would heal soon.  She said, "I have a good idea!  Today we can go to the beach and I can put my legs in the water and the water will splash on them and help heal them.  And then you can have baby brother while we're at the beach, and he can give my bug bites a kiss to make sure they heal!  Sound good, mama?"  When we first told her that I was pregnant, she immediately asked when the baby would be here and we told her this summer- when we start going to the beach (we assumed that she didn't understand what the summer was, but she knows that we go to the beach in the summer).  So now she always talks about "when we go to the beach to have baby brother".  We are actually take a "sibling" class at the hospital tomorrow morning, where they'll give her a tour of the maternity section of the hospital and have her practice bathing and feeding a doll.  I think she's in for a little surprise when she realizes that we won't be having this baby at the beach!

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I am getting so behind with pics of different things we've done over the past couple of weeks.  We took our nephew Gage, and Poppy and met some other friends at a Bison's game last week.  We usually drive by the baseball field a couple times a week and each time Poppy sees it she asks when we can go watch a game, so needless to say, she was very excited.

And she is just smitten with her cousin Gage.  Anything he says or does makes her burst into giggles...

And then for some reason, she always associates sporting events with food.  Hmmm...

"Get your popcorn here!"

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So today was my last day of school!!!  I can't even tell you how hard it was to make it through these last few weeks!  I have been so tired and exhausted, but I'm also in turbo nesting mode, which means I try to cram as much as humanly possible into every second of our weekends.  I am so glad to be able to just be home with my favorite girl while we prepare for this baby!  I only had to work a half day today, so as soon as Poppy woke up from her nap, the two of us were off to the zoo.  We had such a great time, just the two of us.  Can't wait for the fun adventures we have waiting for us this summer!

Strawberries!

Saturday morning, we woke up bright and early to hit the strawberry fields.  Poppy was so excited she could barely contain herself!

Here are my two worker bees, hard at work...

She was not impressed that her basket wasn't filled within the first few minutes...

But after some hard work...

we picked over 2 flats of strawberries - enough to last us a lifetime!  (or at least until next strawberry season)

After our naps, it was time for even more hard work.  We had to wash, chop and freeze most of them (for making yummy smoothies all year!)

Then on Sunday we headed over to Uma's to make strawberry jam...

Tucker and Poppy were quite the helpers!

Every time I turned around someone was trying to eat the jam...

Finally, the finished product!  Can't wait to make pb & j's with all this jam!

We also managed to make strawberry shortcake and frozen strawberry yogurt popsicles.  And if Poppy had her own way, she would have just eaten all of the strawberries fresh - I seriously cannot even believe how many strawberries this little piggy got to eat this weekend!

Summer is here!

It seems like summer is finally here!  We've been enjoying every second of the nice weather.  Here's what we've been up to over the past few weeks...

Brendan stopped by to help Poppy test out her new beach ball sprinkler...



The highlight of Poppy's week - Pizza Thursdays with her cousins...

Swimming at Uma & Upa's for the first time of the season!



And the countdown is on - only 3 more weeks of school and then I have the next year off!!!  Woot woot!

Dance recital!

Sorry about the unintentional blogging break.  Life has been busy.  Real busy.  And I have officially hit the 3rd trimester fatigue.  I have been so tired lately, I barely even know what to do with myself (other than sleep and eat ice cream).  One thing I wasn't too tired for though was our much anticipated dance recital.  Poppy has been so excited about being able "show off her dance moves" on the big stage.  Here we are back stage at the dress rehearsal...

And here we are getting ready to go back stage before the big show.  Poppy had a pretty bad cold and hadn't been sleeping well all week.  She was so over-tired by this point, you would have thought she was drunk (eating confetti off the floor and everything).  One of my favorite parts about the recital - while we were waiting our turn back stage, she turned to me and said that she was so glad that baby brother gets to be here with us and then proceeded to lift my shirt so that she could give my big tummy a kiss.  Awwwww.

And she was a total rock star on stage, remembering almost all her moves.  As soon as it was over, she kept saying "That was so exciting!  I'm so excited mommy!".  It was quite the contrast from how she was at the Christmas show.

Enjoying her post-recital lollipop...