How Many Wipes Does a Mommy Wipe?

I was laughing the other day about how my life consists of lots of wiping. Wiping hands, wiping, paws, wiping floors, wiping counters, wiping booster seats, wiping faces, wiping butts. What am I forgetting? Wiping little finger prints off of things. Anyways, that's random, but I've never really thought about how "wiping" is a huge part of being a mom.

look how long my hair is!

Charley will be 16 months on Sunday and is getting to be such a big girl. Still not walking, but I think at this point we may be dealing more with fear rather than ability. This month she started walking behind push toys and being more relaxed and efficient with "cruising." When holding our hands, she practically runs, which is hard for me to keep up with considering I'm waddling more and more.
She is starting to understand more and more things and make more and more connections. For instance, if I say, "You wanna get the mail?" she will drop what she's doing and crawl at full speed to the door to the garage. If I say, "You wanna swing?" she will drop what she's doing and crawl at full speed to the back door. We are working on a simple, "Yes please, mommy." Yesterday she and I were sitting in the living room and we couldn't see the door to the garage, but we heard it open and she squealed very loudly "daa-deeee!!" It was so precious. She loves her daddy.
We are currently making the transition to one nap a day. Her morning nap kept getting later and later (b/c she would just sit in there and play), and then she wouldn't even take an afternoon nap, so I figured we should try to combine them. The first few days of it resulted in one 30 minute nap, which was horrible, and then she had two days of 2.5 hour naps, which was actually worse! She tends to be grumpy with too much sleep. We're on day three of napping 1-3pm. Yay! Maybe that will stretch out even longer the more active she becomes, but for now, it seems to work best for her.
Charley is still pretty reserved in public and just kinda stares at people who talk to her (although she does wave to any and everybody and says hi to them. It's when they actually pay attention to her, she doesn't know what to do!). She loves being silly and laughing, she's in to absolutely everything, and is quite the talker. She is very strong willed, loves being independent (trying to be independent) and will pretty much cry if you try to help her with things. She is generally a very happy little girl and we LOVE being her parents (even during her most stinkiest of moments, literally and figuratively).
And there you have it -- thanks for bearing with me! I hadn't given a Charley update in a while and wanted to do so before the chaos begins! Less than 29 days to go! Oh, and I guess at that point, my "wiping" will double!

Confectionery Confessions

After two months of "being good" by not eating sugar, I have completely blown it these last two weeks. And by "blown it" I mean BLOWN IT. After weeks and weeks of denying myself any sugary goodness, I have recently been indulging in almost as much as I can get my hands on. I went from snacking on almonds, avoiding sweet tea, banning sweet cereals -- even any type of granola bar -- to having a dessert of some sort pretty much every day. Argg. I knew when I started this it wouldn't be a permanent thing, and that sugar would inevitably re-enter my life. However, I was hoping that 8-weeks of sugar constraint would at least help my body "be okay" with just "a little" sugar now and then when everything was said and done. But -- apparently I'm an all-or-nothing type of girl when it comes to baked goods and the such. Tisk tisk. I have four-ish weeks left in this pregnancy and I hope to get back on track (after I eat the cupcake a friend gave me today...apparently it's the mother of all cupcakes and will totally be worth it. *well, it's now a day later, and yes, I ate the cupcake, and yes it was in fact worth it). Another hurdle to jump over (or just knock over and fall on my face) is that I have two loaves of zucchini bread in the oven right now. Mmm...zucchini...sounds healthy, right? Well, 2 cups of sugar and 1 cup of oil later...not so healthy. However, I did substitute half of the oil with applesauce, so that "helps" according to the ladies on the website where I got the recipe. Yes, by adding the applesauce and subtracting oil, I am decreasing the amount of fat but increasing the amount of sugar. Fabulous. But it just sounds healthier than chocolate and ice cream (my weaknesses), so I will just pretend it's good for me. Not to mention, I just had to make the bread b/c D grew the zucchini in our garden and it was massively huge...better for baking than stir frying.

So I finally took a belly pic the other night, purposely wearing the same thing I had on when I was about to pop with Charley (well, I purposely took the picture when I remembered I had the same shirt on). My only observations when comparing the two are that even though the current pic is two weeks sooner than the Charley one, I do seem to be carrying slightly differently (but I still think it's a girl!)

37 weeks - Charley - 2008

35 weeks - Baby 2 - 2009

It's funny to guess what this baby is and when he or she will come...especially when you put it in writing and can go back and look at it. The day I went into labor with Charley, I had posted a blog and a poll about "when the baby would come." I had NO CLUE it would be within 24 hrs of that post. At this time in my pregnancy with Charley, D was in Kenya and I really wasn't very apprehensive (I credit the Lord for that). If he, Donald, had to leave today for Kenya, I'm not so sure I'd be confident that he'd make it back in time. But only the Lord knows. I may be sitting here on October 1st with no baby. We will see! I am just grateful for the miracle of pregnancy and don't ever want to take it for granted.

Bridging the Gap

We spent some time in Charleston again this past week/weekend for Donald's biannual family reunion (themed Bridging the Gap). We are very close to his family who lives in Charleston, and see them quite often, but this reunion was comprised of people from all over the country...Texas, California, New York, etc. I figured out over the weekend that Donald's grandfather's mother had 8 brothers and sisters, so it was all of their children and grandchildren, etc. who participated. The last time they held the reunion in Charleston was 1999. D and I had just started dating, so in attending the reunion, I was just trying to survive! This time I was trying to learn more and more about my husband's and my children's family and the history behind it. What a difference 10-years makes. Anyways, the week was fun...it was a four day event, which definitely puts white family reunions to shame! Here are some pictures to enjoy...

The whole group at James Island County Park...yes, I know you can't see faces, but just giving you an idea of the size of the family

Cousins Jrew and Charley, held by their daddies
Here we are in our family reunion t-shirts
Happy First Birthday, Jrew!

Here is a pic of Donald's mom, grandfather, and 7 of his 8 aunts and uncles. No, it wasn't a coincidence, everyone was instructed to wear white on the last evening. :)
From left to right: Myra, Darryl, Frenchie, Alice, Granddaddy Thomas, Andrea (Novice), Ron, Kenneth and Evelyn (uncle Leo is missing in the pic)

Here's the family after church on Sunday. The family has been members of this church ever since times of slavery. The church was founded in 1818 and is referred to as Mother Emanuel because it is the oldest AME church in the south. Remember the story in history class about Denmark Vesey? He was a founding member here, and during the Vesey controversy (planned but unsuccessful slave revolt), the original church building was burned. After the church was rebuilt, worship services continued until 1834 when all-black churches were outlawed (that's insane). The congregation continued the tradition of the African church by worshiping underground until 1865 when it was formally reorganized (after the Emancipation Proclamation, I'm assuming). Just an interesting piece of history for you. Hopefully the Lord has received almost 200 yrs of glory and honor from the people of the church.

5 lbs 9 oz

About 14 months ago, I had a post titled "5 lbs 8 oz." That was the approximate weight of Charley about 30 days before she was born at week 38. Today we got to see Baby 2, who weighs approx 5 lbs 9 oz. Will this baby be born early? Who knows. I am not counting on it (but it'd be nice to shave off a week or so).
We were careful not to look and see what this baby is at the ultrasound today. I still have my suspicions, which are based on pretty much... nothing. I guess I can put it in writing...I think it's a girl. Of course I will be just as pleased with a boy, shell-shocked, maybe, but happy. We would love for Charley to have a brother and a sister at some point, and don't really care the order. We'll see what God has in store. Maybe she won't ever have a brother...or maybe she won't ever have a sister. It's cool that the Lord already knows this.
It totally is year-of-the-boy around here, which is a small factor in my it's-a-girl theory. Not including first-half of '09 babies like Jackson, Emma and Emerson, the ratio of boys to girls that we know of this summer and fall is like 7 to 1. We have welcomed Hayes, Emrick, Liam, Walker, and Joshua; we're waiting on baby plaid-shorts Jackson and Zachary. So. I really can't imagine that we would be having boy number 8. We'll see!