Nesting?

One of the top 5 questions I’ve been getting lately is, “Are you nesting?”  How do I answer this gracefully?  Umm…No.  No, I’m not nesting.  In fact, I have the complete opposite of nesting, whatever that is.

I wake up every morning feeling great and well rested and with a load of things I want to accomplish.  Then I get Ella off to school and Joe off to work and I have breakfast, take a shower, and get ready for the day and decide that I need a break.  By noon I’m pretty worthless.  I go pick Ella up at 2:30 and by the time I get home with her (we usually walk to school) and help her with her homework, I’m completely done for the day.  It takes all I have to muster up the motivation to give her a bath every other day.  All too often I justify putting it off just one more day.

That said, I have had little to no motivation to blog.  I feel guilty about it…honestly.  But when I sit down to type the motivation just doesn’t come.  Sure, lots of exciting things have happened over the past month, but I’m not really sure how to put them all down, so they just get left undone.

Here’s a quick summary, just so I feel like you’re at least kept up somewhat.

On October 24^th Paw Paw flew into town, and on the 25^th the 4 of us headed up to New Jersey for the east coast premier of “What Were We Talking About?”  In case you don’t remember, in the summer of 2012 my mom and her 3 best friends wrote and performed a play to raise money for Debra.  Here's the link to the blog post from last summer:  What Were We Talking About?  In total this play has raised nearly $80,000 from our 2 home towns!  It was wonderful to get up to NJ and see so many family and friends, as well as watch this wonderful play again.  I am so proud of Joe’s mom, my mom and the rest of the Wyoming Magnolias for their hard work and dedication to raising money for EB.

Of course Ella went Trick-or-Treating on Halloween.  This was the first year GiGi wasn’t able to make her costume, so I had to come up with the costume.  Since I wasn’t gifted with the same creativity gene my mom and grandma have/had, I was really crossing my fingers that Ella would choose a costume I could easily pick up at the local party store.  We had several ideas come and go.  At first she was going to be Dorothy (Wizard of Oz) and Sabrina would be Toto.  Then she decided she wanted to be a cowgirl and Sabrina would be her horse.  There were a few other ideas thrown in here and there, but ultimately she decided that she wanted to be a ghost (a friendly ghost) and daddy would be a vampire.  I’m going to blame school on this costume choice since we don’t really talk about ghosts, vampires, mummy’s and witches around our house.  One day Ella came home from school with a drawing she had done of these 4 Halloween characters.  I assume another kid at school was talking about these and Ella just jumped on the bandwagon.  Anyway, Ella wanted to be a ghost.  The kind of ghost that was just a white sheet with eyes cut out and draped over her head…think Charlie Brown.  While this costume would have been really easy, I had fear of her tripping over the sheet, or the eyes getting off-centered and her not being able to see clearly.  So I convinced her to still be a ghost, but one where her face was actually shown.  After a quick google search I found the perfect costume that didn’t involve any sewing.

Ella and vampire daddy

 

 Ella and her Mummy To Be

Ella has started attending Wednesday night activities at our church.  Every Wednesday we go to church at 5:00 for church dinner (always delicious!), then at 6 she heads upstairs for Children’s Choir.  Yesterday her choir had their first performance during “big church” so Ella practiced all week to make sure she had the motions and words down perfectly.  All of the kids did a great job!  I did get it on video that I've posted in the November folder on the right.

On Wednesdays Ella has also started attending GA’s.  For those of you not in the Southern Baptist world, GA’s stands for Girls in Action.  Think of something similar to Girl Scouts, but at church.  This was a big deal for me since I was very active in GA’s all growing up.  My first mission trip was through Acteen’s which is the teenage version of GA’s.  My mom was my GA leader and those Wednesday nights and the mission activities we did are some of my fondest memories growing up.  So I was thrilled that Ella gets to be a part of the same activities.  So far she loves it and every Wednesday night on the ride home I get an ear full of what they did or talked about.

I guess the most exciting news of the past few weeks is that Ella has lost not one but two teeth!  Her two bottom teeth have been really loose for a long time, but Ella was afraid to let me pull them.  Finally the first one was so loose that I was afraid she was going to swallow it, so I convinced her to let me just try pulling it and see if it would come out and not hurt.  Sure enough I put my fingers on the tooth and Ella pulled her head back, leaving the tooth in my fingers.  The VERY generous Tooth Fairy stopped by and left Ella $5.  The second tooth came out just a couple of days later, but this time the Tooth Fairy only left her $2 since it wasn't her first tooth.  All of this makes Ella feel very grown up.  Loosing tooth is a big deal when you're 6.

 

The trip to NJ was our last trip for the year.  We’re settled in at home for the time being and getting last minute things in order for this baby to arrive.

We ordered the car seat last weekend, and that was the last piece of the puzzle to getting things ready.  We have diapers, clothes, a crib and bassinet, and now a car seat (that’s on order but it should be here in a couple of weeks).  So this kid is able to come anytime and we’ll be ready for him.  It has been fun pulling out all of Ella’s old toys and baby items.  6 years is a long time and I had forgotten about so many things.  She loves to hear stories about what she loved and didn’t love, what clothes were hers, what blankets were hers, etc.  She often takes her baby brother doll and will put him in the bassinet, cover him with a blanket and give him a stuffed animal, then gently rock him and sing.  Her other favorite preparation activity is to rock her baby brother doll in the rocker and sing to him.  She’s been brushing up on her lullaby’s and plans on singing to him as often as possible.

I will ask that you continue to pray for our new addition.  I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a bit nervous.  I really just want him to be here sooner rather than later so that I can see his little face and know that he's safe and sound.  I tell Joe, I know I'm not going to stop worrying about him, but at least I'll know that he's ok.