— my little corner of randomness —
Before I post some more recent pictures, I wanted to make sure I posted ones leftover from June first. So here you have it.
Mmm…Muffins!
Mmmmm…Hummus!
Such a big girl. She went to get some snacks out of the pantry and went back to eat them on the couch.
Stay away from my goldfish, Mom!
That isn’t how you use the Sit & Spin, Maddie.
Much better!
Maddie likes to sit on her balls and bounce.
Here is a link to all the June photos.
Saturday morning I met a few of my best friends for breakfast. Two of them are also pregnant with their second kids. The one in the pink is Trisha and she is having a little boy a week after our girl is due. And the one in the middle is Brooke and she is due with her second girl in August!
My wonderful friend, Hillary, took the picture. She is the one Maddie and I went to Sea Life with. I just wanted to share this picture! 
Friday morning, Chuck and I went in to have my 20 week ultrasound. We asked the ultrasound woman not to tell us because we wanted her to write it in an envelope to find out later. Which she very kindly did!
I got a text message that Chuck’s mom had a gift for Maddie so we had to swing by his sister, Paige’s house (which is really close to the doctor’s office) to pick it up. Little did I know, Chuck was dropping off the envelope to Paige because she had a few things planned for us!
Chuck invited my family over Saturday. My brother and his fiancé were already coming over to babysit Maddie while we went to a concert. So while I was gone in the morning, Chuck picked up the stuff from Paige’s house as well as some fun pink and blue snacks!
He also got some pink and blue ice cream, but we forgot to put them out. 
My mom also brought over some little outfits and cards for each of us to write our guess if the baby was a girl or a boy. Maddie even picked girl. But probably because she likes pink things.
After we placed our guesses, Paige had instructions. There was a puzzle for me to put together.
Can you tell what we are having from this puzzle? No? We couldn’t either. So we moved on to the next puzzle….a poem.
Can you tell from this poem what we are having? No? We couldn’t either. So on to part three….the cupcake cones!
We each got a cupcake cone. Paige and Chuck’s mom colored the cake various colors. Two of the cupcake cones had the gender color inside. So we each picked our cupcake cone.
Now dig in!
There was orange, purple….then I bit into mine…PINK! And my dad had one, too!
And of course, I started crying! You can see it in my eyes in this picture. I would have been crying no matter what color was inside!
We opened the envelope because I am a freak and I need to see the proof that the ultrasound lady wrote down girl! I thought it was so cute that she wrote it in pink and even took a picture of the girl proof in put it in the envelope! It was so nice of her!
And here’s a picture of Maddie eating some cake.
Here’s a picture of our second little girl!
I should tell you that I was sure it was a boy from one of the ultrasound pictures we were given. I tried really hard not to look at it too much because I didn’t want to know! I was sure her little butt (or what I assume is a butt) was boy parts.
So I was happy when the woman put in the photo for proof that the baby was a girl. I am weird like that.
And that is how we found out! It was a lot of fun. Oh, and I will admit that I was a bit of a brat when I realized that Paige knew before I did! I got over it, but I did pout a little.
Oh, and I have my c-section for girl #2 scheduled for November 13th! I think it is very cool and very weird that I know that!
Now, I need to get this little girl some furniture in her room and find some bedding. Maybe I should get a minivan, too.
The pillow that Chuck’s mom made for us has been a huge hit. Maddie plays on it all the time. I like to lay on it. Chuck and Maddie spend a lot of time wrestling on it. Needless to say, it has been a great addition to our living room. 
Today while we were playing, Maddie learned how to do somersaults on the pillow. We took a number of videos and Chuck put them all together into one long (4 minute) video for me. There isn’t any sound because there were various shows/music on. There’s some of her rolling around and some of her playing in a blanket, too. Happy watching.
A few weeks ago, we met our friends Trisha and Chelsea at the Minnesota Zoo. The girls just love hanging out together.
Maddie was showing Chelsea how to go through the bamboo door.
Now you see her.
Now you don’t!
Can you see this goofy face Maddie makes? What a strange one!
And this silly pig was sleeping in his trough!
Along with the other little goodies I have gotten Maddie recently (Ball Toy and Slide), I also got her a table and chairs. I found this at a garage sale. It took Maddie a little while to figure it out (it was a little tall for her), but once she figured it out, there was no stopping her. She uses it every day. She either pushes it around the house or uses it to stack toys she is playing with.
The other day I caught her standing on the chairs and then sitting on the table. I have also caught her go over the couch from the table. Little stinker! Keep in mind, she was the one that pushed it over to the couch. I didn’t have it there. She’s resourceful, too!
Look at this face? I just want to kiss her to pieces!
A friend of mine and I took our kids to the Mall of America. She has two little girls and the youngest one is just 3 weeks older than Maddie. The older one loves Maddie and was such a good helper with her. Look at how cute they are shopping!
And here are the girls getting ready for lunch! They are so cute together!
A friend of mine got a slide for her daughter and it got my wheels turning and ready to start searching CraigsList for one. I found one and Maddie LOVES it!
The Kitchen House was the most recent book we read for my book club. Here’s a summary of the book.
When a white servant girl violates the order of plantation society, she unleashes a tragedy that exposes the worst and best in the people she has come to call her family.
Orphaned while onboard ship from Ireland, seven-year-old Lavinia arrives on the steps of a tobacco plantation where she is to live and work with the slaves of the kitchen house. Under the care of Belle, the master’s illegitimate daughter, Lavinia becomes deeply bonded to her adopted family, though she is set apart from them by her white skin.
Eventually, Lavinia is accepted into the world of the big house, where the master is absent and the mistress battles opium addiction. Lavinia finds herself perilously straddling two very different worlds. When she is forced to make a choice, loyalties are brought into question, dangerous truths are laid bare, and lives are put at risk.
The Kitchen House is a tragic story of page-turning suspense, exploring the meaning of family, where love and loyalty prevail.
We meet next week to talk about the book. I briefly talked to a friend about it yesterday when I saw her. I think we are going to have a good discussion about it.
The one thing the description doesn’t mention is that this takes place from the later 1700s through about 1810. People lived so differently then. It is just horrifying at times. The book was tragic yet seemed empowering in ways at the same time. I know I was in shock at a number of the scenes in the book.
The book was from the view of two of the characters. I don’t think one of the characters was the best choice for her own voice, but I did like that we could really see how the main character grew up throughout the book.
Overall, I did enjoy the book. It was a little hard to get into at the beginning because I felt like so much time had passed and events happened in the first part of the book, I couldn’t figure out where the book was going to go. But by the end of the book, I couldn’t put it down and needed to know what was going to happen next.
Happy reading!
