Elf on the Shelf...and 26-weeks

Last night, we started Elf on the Shelf with Ayla. For those of you who have never heard of it, it's a story about how little elves who work for Santa come to our houses to watch and see if we're naughty or nice. At the end of the night, after we're in bed, they go back to the North Pole and report back to Santa about the day. Every morning, before we wake up, they come back and sit in a different spot for the day and we have to find him. Cute, right? It's like a nice way to bribe and threaten your child to behave. :) We named him J.B., short for Jelly Bean...we leave him a jelly bean each night instead of milk and cookies like we leave for Santa. His first spot was pretty obvious...on the mantle in the living room. I wanted to start out easy. She thought it was pretty cool and it was so cute because all day, she kept saying hi to him and would talk to him about what she was doing. Tomorrow, he will be waiting for her on the towel rack in the bathroom so he can watch her brush her teeth...a daily battle lately.
And P.I.P. news--I am 26 weeks along and to risk sounding like a broken record, I'm still feeling great. Hopefully I'm not eating my words later, but this has been an incredibly easy pregnancy so far. With each week, she is moving more and more and I'm loving it. She's still the most active at night...I'm keeping my fingers crossed that that changes when she's born. :) She really gives my bladder a beating. I feel like she's always stomping on it. I don't remember ever feeling that while I was pregnant with Ayla. My belly has grown quite a bit since my picture two weeks ago...and let's just pretend I don't have the same shirt on. (Erika, do I look round enough for you to take some belly pics?)

I'm getting so anxious to meet her...to see what she looks like and to see what her personality will be like. It's a different kind of excitement than what I felt with Ayla...with Ayla, I was super excited, but it was a Holy-#$%*-what-in-the-world-is-it-going-to-be-like-to-be-a-parent-fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants-I'm-totally-freaking-out excitement. We had no idea what to expect. Having gone through the last two years with Ayla and experiencing everything with her and feeling the absolute purest, truest form of love, I am ecstatic to get to do it all over again with another little person. How lucky am I? I want to enjoy every last second of the baby stage this time. I was so stressed out and nervous about doing everything "right" the first time that it just flew by and I hardly even remember it.

We finally started cleaning out the "office" so P.I.P. will have a room when we bring her home. We're nowhere near finished yet, but it's a vast improvement. I wish I would have taken a "before" picture to show you all just how bad it was. Seriously. It was a disaster. I'm getting anxious to get it all done now that we've made a good dent. I've been searching Craigslist the last couple of weeks for a long dresser that we can put in the nursery. Ayla has one in her room and it worked really well as a changing table. I finally found one this weekend and nagged Dean until he went and got it for me tonight. I really really wanted it and wanted to be sure to snag it before someone else did. It is now sitting in our garage and I'm giddy about it. We're going to paint it white and attach new hardware. It's a beautiful, solid piece of oak furniture...it's hard to find stuff like that these days...and it was only $75. Dean was disappointed that I didn't bargain with the guy. I'm not good at wheeling and dealing (and by "not good" I mean I don't do it at all) and like I said, I really wanted it, so here's the 75 bucks, gimme my dresser. Here is the "before" picture...stay tuned for the "after" picture...