Fall Happenings

It has been a busy several weeks since our last post!  We continue to make preparations for our new arrival, all while enjoying every minute we get to spend with Amita.  She has become a very competent walker and loves to walk inside and outside the house.  She also is becoming a great helper to us - she will carry items or get things out of cupboards (sometimes even when we ask her to!).  I'm hoping this behavior continues once our little one arrives... I know I'm going to need the extra help!  She is also still growing and is getting more and more brave with foods.  She has learned to use a fork and a spoon and loves to feed herself when she can.  And of course, her vocabulary continues to expand.  Some of her latest words are chair, shoes, jacket, cheek, chin, lip, and help please (a very handy one instead of the whining she was doing when she was frustrated with something!).  And for all the words she can't say yet, she definitely understands them and can either point to those objects or do what we're instructing her to do.   All in all, she's like a different little girl than she was just a few months before.

And in case all those things weren't enough, she's been growing up and getting ready for the baby's arrival too.  She has completely transitioned to sleeping in her big girl bed and we have moved the crib out of her room.  She has also stopped drinking from her bottles (bottles are for babies, not big girls!) and mama took advantage of her sleeping one night to completely rearrange the kitchen so that the cupboard all her silverware and sippy cups are in do not contain any traces of bottles or other baby items.

Meanwhile, I continue to grow at a normal pace too!  Everything has been completely normal with this pregnancy and our new arrival should appear sometime in the next month.  While we wait for that exciting day or night... we have been doing our best to get the house ready and complete any chores on our list that we can before baby comes.  I vaguely remember the first six months with Amita (mostly a blur now!) and we're expecting it to be twice as much with two kids under two!

Finally, here's a look back at just some of the things we've been doing over the last month and a half!

What little girl doesn't need a pair of ruby slippers?  I found these at St. Vinney's and grabbed them immediately!  They are a size bigger than what she wears now, but she loved them just the same (so I guess she does share a few traits with me!).

Hanging out with all the boys.  Who would've guessed the cats would manage to stay sleeping while she stomps around right next to them?  They have adjusted quite nicely to their "new normal" since she learned how to walk!

Amita is growing so much, she's as tall as a tree!!  Ok... it's a little tree... but still!

Playing at a playground near our house.  She loves the swings and the slides!

Whee!!!!  I can't tell you how many times she went down these in 30 minutes!

Tic Tac Hide!  Amita was having so much fun, she didn't want to leave and thought she could stay longer by hiding out.

Static electricity: for a while, her entire head of hair was standing on end!!

Enjoying a fall hike with mom and dad.  We hiked to the tower at Pike Lake State Park on a gorgeous fall day after church.  We managed to catch everything at peak color.  It was an amazing day!

On top of the tower surrounded by colorful leaves.  Amita enjoyed being up there, but wanted to do more exploring and the crowds of people there (late football game, so everyone had the same idea as us) didn't give her the freedom she desired.

One of Amita's favorite words is up.  But it's a whole lot easier for mama to climb down to her level now than to try to pick her up and carry her (she's over 25 pounds!).

And now, from a folder we call Nesting, here's some of the many projects Aaron and I have been working on (trust me, there's tons more, but at least our lists are finally getting shorter instead of longer!).

The new baby's room, all set up and ready to go.

Complete with a recliner for catching some quick z's as needed for mom and dad!

Amita's big girl room.  No more baby stuff in here!!

The loft, redesigned.  We now have a pull out couch that will function as our guest quarters.  I also kept the rocking chair close to the nursery as I expect that we'll be doing plenty of that in the weeks to come!

A Christmas stocking for our new little one.  I finished it on the bus this week.  This one was even more fun to make than Amita's because I got to design the patterns myself.  Can't wait to see it hanging near our fireplace in December!!

The garage floor has been painted with an epoxy.  It took a lot of work on Aaron's part to get the garage cleaned out and ready for this endeavor (there's an exciting side story you'll have to ask him about when you see him!), but the end results are fantastic!

My car with TWO car seats installed.  Good thing Amita was big enough to have her seat turned from rear facing to forward facing or it would be really tight back there!  It's going to be very different trying to get two kids in and out of a vehicle.  How exciting!!