Birthday, Belly Button and Baby Blankets

I will start this long overdue post with a shout out to our wonderful state - Happy 100th Birthday Arizona. Today we're hoping to have an AZ afternoon out, weather permitting - possibly panning for gold at Fain Park since I'm not doing any sort of real outdoorsy stuff being I'm so stinking huge. Thanks for the "celebrate AZ" idea Dy.

Next, I suppose my belly button has now completely popped. I've been getting a lot of comments on how I have an outie. Hannah and Annie like to push it back in, or lift up my shirt thinking it is a direct tunnel to the baby and talk to her. I've become quite self conscious of it and have considered duct taping it down, but since I only have 14 days left, I think I'll just try to survive.

I have officially nested. That was a few weeks ago, now my house is getting so messy again and I'll have to continue to re-clean before this babe comes, but at least I've been able to declutter a lot. I have the car seat, crib and bassinet ready. I have a small stock of diapers, a new diaper bag and nursing pads. All the laundry is done and I'm just so ready to go!

This year I had 2 New Year's resolutions - learn how to sew and learn how to bake bread. The bread baking was a disaster, so I went on to the sewing. Cheramie and I worked together to make our little baby girl fetuses baby blankets. It was so time consuming and incredibly frustrating. I'm not quite careful enough to be a sewer. Nevertheless, I finished the quilt and from afar it's adorable. Up close, not so much. I was about to take all the seams out for the 10th time when Jeremy reminded me that if it becomes Claire's favorite blankie like Annie's yellow one, it won't matter what it looks like now, in a few years it will be so trashed no one will notice the original flaws. So it's complete, flaws and all. I feel quite domesticated.

Speaking of Annie's "lellow winkie", last night I had a dream about it. Now you should know that Annie is now about 4 1/2 years old and attached to that blanket more than ever. We've started calling her Linus. She coccoon's herself in it to get her through primary. She sleeps with it, she grocery shops with it, but she doesn't take it to the park she says. It has been stitched back together so many times it looks plain scarred. The new rips might have to stay because the fabric is so thin it would never hold. Anyway, back to the dream. I dreamed we were at my parent's house and it was in the middle of the Afgan war. Annie desperately needed her blanket so it was my mission to retrieve it from the basement. The only problem was, that Bin Laden was in the middle of a shootout with the American's and I had to go right through the crossfire to get the blanket. I made it out safely and was given an award for my bravery. Sometimes that's how important that blankie seems to Annie.

So that's what's been going on around here. Let's hope I can survive 14 more days, til little Claire joins our family.