WHOA!

He's 10 months old already!

Photography Challenge

The autumn of beauty is still beautiful...

~Latin Proverb

Fall in Wisconsin

I had to take a picture of the beautiful leaves in my front yard. Soon they will be covered with white and, when they reappear, they will be brown and slowly becoming part of the earth again.
I love fall, but this year it seems to be flying by so quickly that I haven't had my usual childhood flashbacks: until today.
Things I love about fall:
1.That distinctive smell of cool, crisp leaves brings me back to walking on our front sidewalk with a blanket 6 inches deep with leaves and making a trail with my feet.
2.Piles of leaves on people's lawns reminds me of when, after school, my siblings and I would make several piles of leaves (nests) and we would fly from one to the other. Of course, they would need to be rebuilt every so often, but there was such joy in jumping (flying) into the softest pile we could build.
3. Dewy mornings- it's just beautiful to see perfect droplets of water sparkling across my lawn on yellow-golden leaves and grass that is still green :)

32 weeks, 5 days

Here's what's new:
I had my 32 week checkup this week, and everything looks great. My weight gain is staying steady, I've been feeling ok for the most part (wednesday morning was a little rough, but we made it through:), and Jon and I started our childbirth express class. We have one more meeting with our class, then we graduate. And we will get a certificate saying we are booksmart ready for having a child. Amazing that 6 hours of class time is all we need to be adequate parents :P
Anywho, I finally took an updated picture this morning, so this is 32 weeks, 5 days:


My sister also came to town with her family to help me paint the mursery this week- it looks great!! so BIG thank you to her- I will post images of that once it's all set up.
On wednesday, I met up with my friend, Diana, to have my maternity pictures taken. Despite the cold and really bright sunshine, she really got some great shots: check them out on her blog.

My Sister's Family Pictures

My sister asked me to do their family pictures a long time ago, and (if you read the previous post) the last time I was up there I forgot my memory card for the camera. Well, I remembered it this time I went up. I actually was up there for my baby shower that she threw (which was AWESOME)
I thought these turned out kinda nice, despite the fact that these were taken during Katie's naptime, and she was QUITE cranky!

28 weeks pregnant (just about, anyway!)

Here I am- it's a beautifully cool fall day, the Brewers made it to the playoffs (hasn't happened since the year I was born!!!), tried Indian Food for the first time ever (the general consensus was that the orange stuff tasted the best), and I finally remembered to take my "weekly" picture.
The past week was SO much fun and full of craziness- I taught art on Tuesday and Thursday, had a photo shoot on Thursday night, a wedding shoot on Friday, and a maternity shoot on Saturday.
Thought I'd show off Mr. Pinchie some more to you all, since he's getting SO big~ I now weigh a whopping 142 lbs!

25 weeks (and then some:)

Good afternoon!
I have to thank Diana for keeping on me about updating my blog- we went shopping today at Kohl's (she got a lot of fun shirts, and I got some AWESOME super-dee-duper soft underwear.) I think I scared Jonathan a little bit cuz I was so happy about it when I woke him up this afternoon. Seriously, I had such a burst of energy, I was hopping around and folding laundry and putting away blankets and making the bed and talking about my day and so on and so on..... Well, I might have been on a little sugar high from the mint chocolate chip ice cream cone I got from Kopps. MMMM.
So, you may notice that I am a little more dressed up this week for the picture- I remembered to take the picture on Tuesday early afternoon (so technically the pic is from 25 weeks, 1 day). The reason for the "dress up clothes" is cuz I am now an art teacher at St. John's in Wauwatosa! I met the kids for the first time on Tuesday- all I did was go around to the different classrooms and talked to them for about 5 or 6 minutes about me and what we can expect for the year. So, I have a teacher wardrobe (thanks, KT, for some of your work clothes!!) Fortunately, I am still little enough that I fit into a couple of my pre-preggo pants- as long as I wear them with a belly band!
Mr. Pinchie (as Jonathan so lovingly refers to our son, since we haven't landed on a name yet) has been rolling and kicking and thumping and elbow-ing and knee-ing and generally going all over the place- mostly at night after Jonathan leaves for work. I will have to borrow his video phone one of these nights so I can show him what it looks like when Mr. Pinchie is sticking a leg/arm an inch past where my tummy line actually is and rolls across the stomach. It's just fascinating!!
Overall, I am feeling great, though nighttime is still iffy, and if I need water, I get a bad gag reflex, but the weather is cooling down for fall, our sugar maple is dropping it's already golden and fire-colored leaves, and the air just seems fresh. What a wonderful time of year!