Buckle up, cause here we go again.

We are having another baby! I am 9 weeks along right now. We went to the doctor last week and got to see the little kidney bean that is growing in my body along with it's little beating heart. Seeing your baby's heart beating for the first time is one of the best things a mother can ever see. We are all very excited, although at times I wonder what we have gotten ourselves into. I think Dan said at one point when we were discussing when we should start trying "let's just get it over with." He then went on to say that our lives are crazy enough right now, lets not wait until it calms down and then start over, let just keep going. I agree with that....most the time.

Stella is VERY excited. I know she's only 2 but she already LOVES babies. Her favorite toys are her babies. She loves to look and touch real babies and she doesn't care if they are complete strangers, she will walk right up to them and touch them. I'm sure that makes those mom's super happy. Almost every Sunday she tries to steal real babies from church. She is in the "toddler room" from kids 18-33 months but every Sunday she tries her hardest to get into the infant room. If she can't break down the door she will wait until someone sets their baby in the car seat down and then she pounces. She tries to lift the carrier and by the time I see her and tell her "no" she is screaming "MY BABY, MY BABY!"

She is a little confused however about the baby and where it is growing. My best friend was just pregnant and recently had her first baby, a beautiful little girl who they named Veda. The whole time she was pregnant we would talk to Stella about it and say "baby Veda is in Auntie Amy's tummy, we love her, you are going to be best friends, etc." Well baby Veda was born last week and Stella seems to think she is now in my tummy. Every time I talk about mommy's baby she says "baby Betta, baby Betta." She also thinks the baby is growing in my boobs. Again we had this problem when Amy was pregnant. At any random time Stella would grab Amy's boobs or pull her shirt down exposing her and say "Baby Betta in dare." Repeatedly we told her that the baby was in her belly and we thought she was getting it towards the end since the molesting had come to an end but apparently not. She is now pulling my shirt down, poking my boobs and saying "Baby Betta." I mean I guess my boobs are as big as some pregnant woman's belly's so maybe it isn't her fault. I think we might be making some progress though because starting last week she now lifts up my shirt and yells into my belly button random things to the baby.

Houston we have a problem

Stella likes to take her shirt off, period. If she can't physically take it off then she will take any opportunity to flash her boobies at anyone who is standing by her. Not only does she flash them but she also yells "BOOBIES." Let me assure you that she does not get this from me. I NEVER take my shirt off, in fact I have become pretty skilled at taking my bra off without having to remove my shirt, that's how much I hate taking my shirt off.

On Monday Dan, Stella, and I went to Chicago for the day to visit the Shedd aquarium. We had an absolutely great time, it was amazing. We spent four hours there and then went to visit a friend of Dan's who lives downtown. He lives in a building straight out of Sex and the City, it had amazing artwork in the lobby, cool furniture, and a greeter who had to call in order for you to be allowed to travel on to the elevator, super fancy...not a place for a toddler. So we got up to his amazing 24th floor apartment overlooking Chicago and the river and Stella settled right in. She touched every button she could reach, put her grimy hands on his full length mirror, stuck her fingers in the dirt of their plants and almost broke their Kate Spade vase. I tried to do as much damage control as I could and tried not to draw any attention to ourselves. I thought I was going fairly well and that maybe, possibly we could pass as normal adults until Stella, looked at Dan's friend, pulled her shirt up and yelled "STELLA'S BOOBIES" right at him. Yay, not normal.

Oh do you know the Muffin Man? I sure do.

I never had an amazing body in my opinion but there was a time when I looked decent in a bikini and good in most clothes. There were even some things I liked for example my boobs. They were a nice size, not too big not to small....now I would describe them as large sacks of jello that hang down to my belly button. I can deal with them though, with a good bra on you can't tell so I don't lose sleep over them.

When I was pregnant with Stella I gained 500lbs. I think I was depressed because my body was growing and changing so I figured the best idea would be to eat a M&M blizzard everyday. NOT SMART!!! After I had Stella and lost the weight my skin has never quite gone back to where it is supposed to be. Now having this extra skin causes a problem when I wear any type of pants. My solutions has been to buy bigger pants so that the waist doesn't squeeze the skin over the top of my pants creating a huge muffin top that could feed a large kindergarten class. However my husband AND apparently the sales girls at the Limited beg to differ on this theory. Dan says "You look like you have poop in your pants. You're pants are too big, maybe you need to go somewhere where they can teach you how to dress for your body type." The girls at the Limited must have also gotten this memo.

I want shopping on Mother's day for some new pants. I put on this cute pair of black capris and when the waist was creating a muffin top with my extra skin I exited the dressing room to ask the sales girl for a different/bigger size. "You don't need a bigger size" she said. "Don't you see my muffin top?" I replied. "Those are the right size, they will stretch." was her response. I never believe this "they will stretch" business. If they don't fit me when I buy them, they aren't going to fit me in two days. She got me the other side since they pride themselves in excellent customer service and I tried them on. This time there was no muffin top, but there was a lot of saggy butt material going on. I left my stall once again and said to the sales girl "don't these look better? No muffin top." "No" she said, "they are too big." So I bought the smaller size and am super excited to put them on again and watch people scream in horror when they see my lovely lady lumps. But at least I won't look like I have poop in my pants.

Happy Mother's Day!

Today is the 2nd mother's day that I have been able to celebrate with my sweet girl. I love holidays and especially ones where I get gifts. Mother's Day is creeping up on the list of my favorites because it is my day and I can use it for an excuse for anything, i.e. Dan asked me to clean my car out today, my reply "umm....no, it's Mother's Day." He didn't argue.

My morning started out very nice, Dan went to McDonald's to get me an iced coffee and also brought home some flowers. When Stella woke up she presented me with the adorable gift she made for me at school which is a plate that says "Happy Mother's Day" and then has her hand prints on it with glitter paint. I will cherish it forever but at the same time I had to laugh because her hand prints basically make it look like she has 3 fingers on one hand, and an abnormally large middle finger on the other. I mean I'm sure she was totally cooperating and that's why it turned out that way. (sarcasm) When I said to Dan "her hands look like funny blobs he said "I thought it was her feet" and he was serious. My second gift was a card from Stella where you can record a message. You push a button and it says "record a message after the beep" Dan wanted her to say "I love you mama" instead I opened the card up and heard her yell "BEEEEP." The third great present which was not planned happend when I went to get ready for church this morning. As I am in the shower I was lucky to realized we had absolutely no hot water. And it is not even like the water was room temperature, nope it was ice cold. I would have skipped the shower except that I hadn't washed my hair since Friday and it was starting to take on a life of its own. The water was so cold that I was literally gasping from the shock of it. We ended up running into church 10 minutes late, throwing Stella at the child care workers and praying that the offering wasn't at the beginning of church since we were both ushering... I think we might get kicked out as ushers pretty soon.

Other super exciting things that happened today...Stella didn't take a nap, Louie tried to kill the neighbor's puppy but instead in the heat of the moment ripped out one of this nails that then blead all over my kitchen floor. And our neighbor kid asked us for money for the twelfth time this week so he can go on a field trip to cooper's town.

All in all it was an amazing day filled with lots of love and laughs. I am so thankful for my little family and all the crazy things life brings each day. God is so good!

The Topless Dancer

Our daughter Stella will be 2, June 2nd. Besides being the love of our lives she is also our constant entertainment. I grew up dancing my whole life so of course I secretly wished that if I ever had a daughter that she might enjoy it too. I would never have pushed her if she didn't like to dance but lucky for me she is already a natural born dancer. She dances ALL the time, to songs, commercials, and even people's cell phone rings. And I do have to say she has some pretty good moves and she is very serious about it. In the last couple of days however she seems to have taken her dancing to a different level and one that we think we should maybe be concerned about. Recently when she is very serious about the dance she takes her shirt off and refuses to cover up! Last night she danced around the house for close to 20 minutes topless. We tell her she needs to cover up and she just screams "NO" and continues on with her show. At one point she even started rubbing her belly and I think attempted a belly roll. Her favorite songs at this time is "Single Ladies" by Beyonce, she even requests it saying "mommy, oh oh ohhh" and also "I like to move it" by Will. I. Am. Dan and I always wished that our kids would love to dance. We dance all the time and I think our dancing when I was pregnant must have rubbed of on the developing fetus. As for our topless dancer, I don't think we are going to force her to keep her clothes on at this time (when we are at home at least) as I feel as though she should be able to express herself freely, however if she keeps this up for several years we might have to reevaluate the situation.

My little brother, the baker

Here is another example of how I fall below average on the housewife scale:

My brother Adam is 3 years younger than me. Our family is very close and I am lucky enough to see him at least every other week. He has always been the "smart" one. Not that I am dumb, I mean I did graduate college with honors, but he is super smart and in ways I'm not. And not only is he smart but he is a amazing baker.

It is no wonder that I have insecurity issues when it comes to being a housewife because I seem to come from this family of highly gifted male cooks. Today my brother took off of work so he could bake pies at my parents house. He has been baking these pie for probably the last decade. Every holiday we beg him to make his carmel apple pies. Oh did I mention he makes them from scratch?! Yeah he makes them from scratch, he cuts up the apples and most importantly makes the carmel from scratch! They are amazing and he recently sold 4 of them at a silent auction for $24 a piece! So he took off of work today so he could make the pies for people that won them in the auction. I am not complaining because I get to reap the benefits when he makes them for us but his great baking skills does not help my case. I actually hurts me by making my attempts at baking which consists of puppy chow, rice crispy treats, and box cake look pathetic. I am the oldest child and the only girl and no one is ever begging me to make a dessert.

The Washing Machine

When I was 8 months pregant we bought a brand new front loading washer. I thought this would help me want to do the laundry more. It worked at first, I was doing well keeping up with the laundry until about a years later. Almost every time I would do a load of laundry water would leak out the bottom. I didn't think this was normal but I am also not the Maytag man so I told my husband "the washing is leaking" and decided my work was done. Well, he did nothing about it so I stopped doing laundry. It would get to the point where I had to where my old bikini bottoms becuase I had run out of clean underwear and Stella was wearing all mismatched pajamas, it would be then that I would cave and do a load.

One day my mom came over to watch Stella for a little bit, the next morning she called me and announced "I'm coming to get all your dirty laundry." I didn't want to do it but I knew I needed help so we packed her huge SUV with all three of our entire wardrobes and drove away. It took her two days of constantly doing laundry to finish it all.

In my defense I do not feel like this is entirely my fault. I repeatedly told my husband we needed to get the washer fixed and he did nothing about it. Finally when my mom took all our clothes away he decided to get it fixed. It has been several months and I am proud to say I have kept up with the laundry and have not worn my bikini bottoms as underwear lately.