A couple more ...

Some more lilac pictures, courtesy of Damian's flickr stream.

Lilacs! And other spring-y stuff.

My husband is a famous photographer!



That picture (which is even better when viewed giant size) is from our trip Sunday to Lilacia Park in Lombard (two towns east). Oh my god. It was a beautiful day and who knew there were so many different kinds of lilacs?




So, you know, the place is called Lilacia Park and it is the centerpiece of the Lombard Lilac Festival. Lilacs were expected. The reason we went, even. What I didn't expect were the tulips. Tulips, tulips EVERYWHERE. Tons of gorgeous color combinations that were the perfect frame for all of the lilacs.






And here is a shot of me (and the belly that might eclipse the world) enjoying the part of the lilacs I can't share with you here.




Keep an eye on Damian's flickr photostream. He has a bunch of pictures from Sunday that aren't up yet.

McLovin circa 31 weeks

Even though we are at 32 weeks now, I'm posting the week 31 picture.  Because I took it.  And the lighting setup took a while.  Plus, it's in the newly grey guestroom!  So, double bonus.

Last Room!

We (and by "we" I mean "Damian") finished painting the smaller upstairs guest room. We (this time "we" means "mostly Ashley") have officially painted every single room in this house, with the exception of the laundry room. Phew.

Before:



And I mean WAY before. That's from the realtor's site. The room is full of the previous owners' furniture, but you can see the diamond pattern wallpaper/border and the glittered ceiling.

I'm sorry? What? You can't really see the glittered ceiling? How about now:




It really was a sight to behold. Let me give you a closer look:



But now, after wallpaper stripping (house is totally wallpaper free!) and deglittering (house is totally glitter free!) the room is much more normal. To celebrate the normalness, we chose a nice, boring grey for the walls. We got rid of the crappy twin bed and moved the futon from what used to be the brown bedroom into here.



Let's see how long it takes me to want to start REpainting some of the rooms.

Well.

This is what was waiting for me when I got home from work today.

I think we need to work on our parenting skills.



Susie is the little girl who lives next door. She's currently riding her pink bike in circles around our driveway. I'm sure her mom is really happy that she found a knife to play with at our house.

On the bright side, she seems really responsible! Babysitter! Score!

Short lived.

It makes me sad to look at those pictures of the kid's room.

It looked like that for just about one week.

Now the fantastic rug is rolled up and piled on the bookcase/window seat. All that beautiful floor space is full of guitars, amplifiers, a 15-year-old TV/VCR combo, a futon mattress cover ... I could go on. In other words, it's a junk room. Again.

D's highly evolved nesting instinct has kicked into overdrive and he needed to get the other guest room painted, like, IMMEDIATELY. The good news is, he's nearly done. I'm typing to the dulcet tones of the power drill as he tries to fix the outlets in that room (ugh, the outlets in this house could not be more screwed up). The glitter is off the ceiling, the walls and trim are done. Hopefully by this weekend things will be back in their rightful place in their rightful rooms.

Or the garbage.

The only big change to the nursery is that D got the kid a mattress yesterday. Those of you concerned that we really were going to use Maggie's dog bed (and you know who you are) can rest easy.

The 31-week photo is coming. Soon. Monsieur Photographer just took it a few minutes ago (against the spanking new gray walls of the upstairs guest room). Pregnancy-wise, things are going well. I've mostly found the third trimester to be MUCH better than the second. Whoever decided the second was the golden trimester? I felt like crap for most of that one. The first was better than the second, and the third is better than both. The belly is still threatening to take over the world. At my 30-week appointment, I was measuring at 33 weeks. Yikes! Don't get excited, though. The kid isn't coming early. Nor is the kid particularly big. I have to go in tomorrow for an ultrasound to make sure, but I expect they'll find exactly what they found the last time I was measuring big: an average size kid and a woman carrying it entirely out front. It's moving nearly constantly and the movements have gone from thumps to more like the kid is stretching and rolling and shoving things. The (giant) belly changes shape about every minute or so. Last night, it had a definite point. A knee? An elbow? A conehead? Who knows.

Special note for my mom: I felt hiccups for the first time last week. D and I were confused at first about what it was doing. Why were the kicks so rhythmic? Then I remembered that my mom mentioned being able to feel hiccups and how weird it was. She wasn't kidding.