37 weeks, 5 days

Well.  I'm still pregnant.  Are you all getting tired of hearing me complain?  I kind of gave up on always trying to just tell people the positives of this pregnancy and have accidentally started admitting (on a regular basis) when asked how I'm doing that really, I'm done: this baby has cooked long enough, I'm uncomfortable and ready to cuddle Bob so s/he needs to get a move on.

Anyway, in an attempt to avoid complaining too much, and for the people who haven't seen me recently...here is a picture of me at the beginning of the week.  

I just have a huge belly.  There is no way around that.  I'm getting kind of nervous about this, though.  I was anticipating being bigger and carrying this baby differently than with Lily because my muscles remember this and were already stretched out, as opposed to with Lily, all my muscles were tight and unyielding, so my belly stayed smaller.  Not so with Bob.  This baby wants everyone to know that s/he is in there.  I mean, just look at the picture: stickin' straight out.  Which makes cooking at the stove a treat.  But I'm getting nervous that this baby is going to be bigger than Lily was..and that is not a comforting thought.  I really appreciate all the kind friends/family/strangers who tell me that I am just all baby and that it doesn't appear I've gained weight elsewhere.  Thank you, and I love you all.  I'm sure I have, the numbers on the scale just keep going up..and even if people are lying to me, I don't care because they sure make me feel better!  Jesse has perfected automatic responses to my complaints: "all I see is a miracle," and "you're beautiful" are two of my favorites.  And, I'm incredibly thankful with how patient and helpful he has been!  But I know that I am definitely ready to feel more like myself and stop being so self-centered.

This past week, I've been trying to sit on one of those big exercise balls as much as possible to help the process along, and Lily has been enjoying it almost as much as I have.  

she thinks she's pretty cool

Speaking of being pretty cool...yesterday evening, Lily found her 3 remaining pacifiers that we have in the house.  She brought them all to Jesse, and this is how he handled that:

Then, Lily wanted to try it.

My family is special.

The three of us went to some yard sales today, and had some fun, but didn't really buy much.  One seller asked if I had seen all the baby clothes she had for sale and I had, but I think I'm just going to wait to do serious sale-ing until after the baby is born.  We don't need to load up on boy clothes if the baby is a girl, and we don't need a ton of girl clothes because we already have Lily's old stuff.  So I'm thinking that after the baby comes and I'm feeling up to such endeavors, I will leave Lily with Jesse on a Saturday morning or something and Bob and I will go out and find him/her some clothes.  We'll see.  It was a good time today, regardless.

When we came home, Lily was passed out so she went down for a nap, which worked out perfectly for Jesse and me.  He and I headed outside to finish working on the garden, and I'm so glad that it's done!  And also that I got to help some.

doesn't it look so good?

 Jesse put up some electric fencing- that you can kind of see- in the field there behind the raised beds, so we finished getting that put up today.  Now, when it comes to electric shocking things, he and I have both tried it out in the past to make sure it works [example: when we bought Zeke's shock collar, we both tested it out so we would know how badly we were shocking him before he wore it].  Today, however, I opted out of the field testing because I just somehow didn't feel that shocking myself with a baby on board was in the best interest of the baby.  Jesse assures me that it works, and I'm going to assume so, especially after watching him jump.

our raised beds with plants!  the left bed has beets, carrots, green beans, and lettuce.  the right has peppers, carrots,  and green beans.

planting squash

surveying the hard work

I got to be in charge of planting the tomatoes.  well, and the peppers in the raised beds.   for the record, I found 5 of our tomato cages at a yard sale for $5.

we ran out of cages, so one poor tomato plant just got a stake.

prepping for the corn rows

We're pretty excited!

And now, two pictures to show one of Lily's favorite new past times, apparently.  She enjoys crawling up onto our bed, mostly when I'm trying to make the bed and then I bury her in the pillows.  But one day, I was folding laundry and went to go find her and found her on our bed, trying to play on my cell phone.  Really, all she accomplished was disabling it because she incorrectly guessed the password too many times, but I think she was trying to call her daddy.

 I feel I am forgetting some things I wanted to post about, so my apologies if I forgot something important.  Hopefully I will feel up to blogging more this week..we shall see.