— my little corner of randomness —
Maddie likes to growl. It’s normal for growling to happen when she is making the noises of a bear or lion. But lately, she has started growling words, too. Mama, Dada, Baby, No….it’s weird and frankly, a little creepy. Take a look!
Yeah, she’s special! 
Maddie has learned to wink. Well, sort of. If you wink at her, she will blink. But she thinks she is winking and it’s really cute. 
Here’s a video of her demonstrating her “skill.”
I love that little face!
I have 4 weeks to go until we will have TWO little girls! That is just crazy! Today I also realized that it is only 3 weeks until my birthday. Having another baby a week after my birthday and our anniversary (Annibirthary) made me completely forget that I am almost a year older. Yikes. And it also occurred to me that the election is in 3 weeks…also on my Annibirthary. So there are quite a few things to have a countdown for!
I also should mention that Maddie is 20 months old today. I am not sure where the time has gone. She is still learning more each day and saying more words all the time. The cutest thing she has been doing is she has starting singing to herself. I usually catch her singing in her crib to her dolls. It’s a bunch of gibberish, but it is the sweetest little sound ever! She is still obsessed with her dolls (or “baby” as each of them are called) and is so very nurturing to them. She is going to be such a good big sister!
I have a number of videos of Maddie I have uploaded that I will share soon. And a couple other random things to share, too. But for now…I am off to bed to try to read a few pages of my book before falling asleep onto the screen of my Kindle. 
Last week I took Maddie to a local community center. The first Monday of the month, they set up a bouncy house for the kids to play in. Maddie had never been in one before, but she thought it was a lot of fun once she got over her initial hesitation of it.
It’s incredibly hard to get a picture of a toddler in a bouncy house, by the way. Here’s the one that mostly turned out.
And here is a little video I took of her. She had so much fun!
I’m 34 weeks today. (Even though it is late, it is still technically 34 weeks.) I can’t believe how quickly this pregnancy is going. Of course, at the same time, I feel like I have been pregnant forever! 
I realized last night that we are going to have a baby in no more than 5 weeks. And not just A baby…..we’re going to have ANOTHER baby. This, somehow, makes it more terrifying. My “ticker” at the top of my website says 42 days. But subtract 7 and I am left with 35 days. Oh dear goodness….that is not very many!!!
I feel like there are a bunch of things I really want/need to get done before the baby gets here. But part of me realizes this is the second child, so most of the things I think are important now, really aren’t. For example: dusting, cleaning the house thoroughly, sorting some things, some various projects I’ve been putting off, a few places I want to go with Maddie before her sister is here, washing baby clothes, making sure the nursery is set up, getting furniture for the baby’s room (which we have been working on for months…long story), picking out a name (we don’t just need to pick a name, we need to start thinking of names)….hmmm, I guess we should get on a couple of those things.
I have a doctor’s appointment tomorrow. Then only 3 more appointments (at 36, 37 and 38 weeks…my appointments have been on Wednesdays and I have the c-section scheduled for Tuesday, exactly 39 weeks, so no appointment that week). Wow….that’s a little scary to think about! And the only reason I would get another appointment thrown in there is if my blood pressure is high tomorrow when I go in. Then she would want to see me at 35 weeks, too. But so far my BP has been nice and low! I’m really hoping for no repeats of my last delivery!
So I’ll stop babbling and leave you with a picture I took of my belly this week.
I feel a lot bigger than I look! But I still have a few weeks left. (Man, I’m kind of stretching the limits of this shirt, aren’t I? ) Oh, and here are all the pictures I have taken of my belly this time around in case you are interested.
Ok, time for bed. I must get to sleep before my body wakes me up in a couple hours to pee….again!
Or knew someone that needed a perfectly wonderful high chair….I would replace mine with this one:
Only because I love the pattern. That is all. 
I just wanted to share a picture so that when I want to look at its pretty chevron stripes in wonderful shades of grey, I have somewhere to look. And my current one probably matches my eating area much better than this one would. But I can look.
Is there any item that you have bought and love, but then it comes out in a new pattern and you want it even more than the one you love? Happens to me all the time. (This is probably the reason I have so many Thirty One bags. )
A number of months ago, I came across this book at the library. I was renewing it all the time because Maddie loved the book and so did I. I did a little looking online and found that there are actually three books in the set.
I have given these books to a couple different people as gifts. They have cute stories and Maddie has learned a bunch of different animals from them. My mom really likes reading “Grandma Calls Me Gigglepie” to Maddie, too.
So if you’re looking for a good gift, you need to add something to your kids’ Christmas/Birthday list or you just want a couple new books for your kids, I highly recommend these!
A couple weeks ago, my MOMS Club was invited to join another club for a fun Mom’s Night Out event. We went to Canvas Collaborations which is located in a café/wine bar. They provide the paint, canvas and instruction to paint a picture that we chose. This was a private event so we got to choose the painting, but they have many events where they have the painting chosen and you sign up to paint it.
I was able to get one other member to come with me and we had a blast! It was so much fun to get out and do some painting, meet some new ladies and just generally chit chat!
Here are a few pictures.
Painting in progress.
Camilla and me with our paintings.
My finished painting. I ended up giving it to Adam and Katie because I thought they would like it. Plus it will look great in their house. If you look closely, I put two little hearts on a swirl on the bottom right next to the trunk. 
This is the painting we were using as our guide.
And here is the whole group with the paintings. A few of them were quite creative and did their own spin on the painting.
And here is the gallery of pictures from the event. Most of them were taken by the women that run the painting event with their cell phones. So they aren’t very good pictures.
We had such a good time that I just signed up to go again. I have a couple friends who are interested in joining me. We are going to paint this:
I’m really excited and really looking forward to another fun night out! If you want something fun to try for a date night, with some friends or just by yourself, I highly recommend checking it out!
Adam (my brother) and Katie’s wedding was wonderful! They had great weather, a fantastic turnout and everything went just the way they planned!
We started the day by getting my hair done…which quite frankly, I spent way too much money on for the atrocity that ended up on my head. 
Thankfully I had a couple cute items for the girls to add to my hair later to make it look a little better.
Here I am with Crazy-Hair-Lady.
After the hair debacle, I went home to feed Maddie lunch and put her down for an early nap. She went right to sleep and I couldn’t believe it! Then Chuck and I got our fancy wedding clothes on and his sister (Paige) came over to wait for Maddie to get up to bring her to the wedding.
Chuck and I headed to pictures. I think they went well. Adam and Katie picked some photographers they know. Adam went to school with one of them. Erin and Andi were very nice!
The beautiful bride!
Then Maddie arrived, we got her in her dress and it was wedding time! Maddie even made it down the isle….with some coercing from Paige. But she walked down the isle with my other brother, Charlie. She didn’t wear her adorable sparkly shoes…but who cares! She went down the isle!
After the ceremony, there were more pictures. Adam and Katie didn’t want to see each other before she walked down the isle. So we did group pictures after the ceremony.
Maddie loved collecting leaves and other treasures in her flower girl basket.
And a couple of the three (well, technically four) of us.
After pictures, we headed to the reception. Maddie sat with Paige while Chuck and I sat at the head table. Maddie did great through dinner and dessert, but didn’t make it too much longer. It had been a long day, so Paige took her home where Chuck’s mom was there to put her to bed so Paige could go home to her husband and daughter.
Chuck and I stayed a little longer, but after I stuffed my face with the delicious dinner, I was stuffed and my dress was uncomfortably tight. Plus, I wasn’t feeling well with my cough and cold. So we headed home fairly early.
Oh…and this is what I looked like after Chuck and his mom got all the crap out of my hair.
The families and friends continued to dance the night away and I heard everyone had a wonderful time.
Adam and Katie then took a mini honeymoon to South Dakota for some sigh seeing and time away. They want to go on a cruise at some point, too. But they said they had a wonderful trip with lovely weather!
Here are the few other pictures that I have.
And when Adam went back to work, his coworkers had a little surprise for him. How funny!
Congratulations to “The Norlings!” I am so happy for both of you and I am excited Katie is officially part of the family. I already referred to her as my sister and Maddie knows her as “Auntie Katie!” I love you both!
Over Labor Day weekend, we went up North with our friends the Fishers. They had made plans to go and invited us to go along with them. We went a couple years ago with them. Trisha and I were both pregnant then with Maddie and Chelsea. This time we were both pregnant with our second little ones (they are having a boy a week after our Baby Girl is born). So we were pretty excited to go up there again, but with the toddlers this time.
It was a much different trip than it was the last time we went. We had to accommodate the schedules of a couple toddlers. 
But it went great. We did lots of swimming, eating, rock throwing, playing….it was a perfect weekend.
Trisha did a much better job describing all the things we did. Here are her posts about our trip (if you want more detail about what we did…or are trying to waste some time while reading this at work ):
BlueFin Bay 1, BlueFin Bay 2, BlueFin Bay 3, BlueFin Bay 4.
Here are some pictures we took.
Reading on our porch (which overlooked Lake Superior).
Crazy Hair!
Out for a walk.
Pouting in the grocery store.
More reading.
Play Dough!
Swimming!
Throwing rocks…Maddie and Chelsea’s favorite thing to do!
Chuck and Ben went kayaking one day.
More rock throwing with dad.
On another walk.
Playing with Chelsea before dinner.
More rock throwing.
My loves.
Sitting by the campfire….someone had sore teeth.
Aaaannnddd then our camera broke and we didn’t get any pictures from the last day. So you might want to refer to Trisha’s posts. But here are a few of her pictures.
More rock throwing.
Dinner.
Family pictures.
And if you made it through all of those pictures and still want to see more, here are all of the pictures we took. Beware….there are a LOT of them! Oh, and here are the ones Trisha took that have us in them.
