Getting ready

This morning we took the baby carseat down from the attic and put the cover on it. Ella was very very interested in helping to put it together and she has been using it as a recliner all morning. We're getting all ready little one, hear that? ; )

Waiting

Hi everybody. Just hanging out here waiting on the next little McCall. Tomorrow is the due date and I am so ready. Happily, Gramma has been here since last week and we are having a great time and staying busy while we wait for her arrival. There's not too much to report other than that, but I'll let you know about the new baby as soon as possible!

In the meantime, here is some cute little Ella-belle for you:

Father's Day

Before

This morning we got an e-mail from our contractor saying that he had filed for permits and will be having a dumpster delivered to the new house today. It is so exciting to think about things starting up there! Also, Paul and I very rarely pay for someone else to do work for us. We usually try to figure out how we can do things ourselves and save some cash. Of course we are planning to do a lot of work ourselves at the house this time too, but it is really fun to think that stuff is happening over there today and I am not doing it. : )

We are hoping to get some tax refunds for what we're doing to the house since it's in a historic district. This requires a lot of before pictures, which are fun to post anyway. They kind of look better with nice, shiny, "after" pictures right beside them, but oh well. I will let you experience a little of the ohmygoodnesswehavealottodo factor we are feeling.

This is the fireplace where the water came down the chimney from an ill-conceived plumbing project upstairs undertaken by previous owners, who refused to turn any heat on all winter and let a pipe burst.

more drywall damage from pipe incident:

cool old firplace in need of some spiffing up (there are fireplaces in almost every room! but only possibly one is functional):

 the kitchen, or lack thereof, our first major project:

 holy murals batman!:

big beautiful staircase:

the ill-conceived plumbing project (yes this is a bedroom with a toilet and half shower installed. yes there is a section of pipe running into the doorway. yes they did not finish this at all, but did hang up a very pretty towel rack.):

another bathroom that was pretty much entirely wrecked (i think i can count 4-5 layers of wall visible):

and finally, here is that ohmygoodness factor i was mentioning:

New house

 Well, here it is folks! Our new house! It seems like I've been waiting so long to be able to say that! But we finally closed yesterday. And then got a call from the realtor saying that the deed was unable to be written and filed yesterday so we should not go to the house yet for liability reasons . . . ARGH! Today it was written though, and we went. : ) We took a few pictures, pulled down a few cobwebs and thought, ohmygoodnesswehavealottodo.

Ella was unfazed by the work prospect. Duct tape in hand, she was ready to go.

On second thought, Dad maybe you should get started . . .

On third thought, nevermind, let's just enjoy the porch.

Don't worry, you will soon be drowning in photos of the inside and the work going on, I suspect. But for now, let's just all enjoy the porch.

I'm 30!, baby's coming!, new house soon!

Well it's been another hot and very busy week for us. It was filled with lots of real estate drama and a big milestone for me--turning 30. Also we are waiting for baby #2's arrival any time now and trying to guess how soon it will be. This is that crazy stage where it could happen in hours or in a month. Hard to plan. But due to so many of our other life variables right now, I sort of feel like, why bother planning anyway?

I don't have any new photos to share tonight, but I did want to pop in for an update since poor bloggie has been a bit neglected this week. Most of what I have to share is about my birthday, but of our 3 main topics for this post, it's the only one that is in the past, so . . .

Here is something I wanted to write about last night in the midst of my birthday festivities, but of course, didn't, since I was in the midst of them and not at a computer (how boring would that have been?). Have you ever imagined what your perfect day would be like? I have. I took a while to think about it a couple months ago and love to imagine how I could make it happen at some point. Here it is: wake up in a beautiful room overlooking the ocean, have leisurely breakfast of pastries and coffee alone with something good to read, meet up with some ladies for a shopping trip to pick out a fantastic outfit for the evening, have a nice lunch out, short nap, dance workout class, shower, pampering like nails and hair and makeup done, get dressed and go out to a nice dinner with lots of friends and family, listen to live music under the stars, head home with my hubby. Doesn't that sound fun? What would yours be? I was reminded of this yesterday in the midst of the birthday festivities because my 30th birthday had a lot of the characteristics of the perfect day. Enough were missing that I still have something to look forward to, but I did get to eat a bagel and coffee for breakfast, go shopping, get my nails done, listen to live music under a non-raining thundercloud, and have a very nice dinner. It was a good day. Also not on the imaginary perfect day list, but fun add-ons yesterday were: go out for frozen yogurt treat with sweet little daughter and happen upon a pretty good craft show.

The other great thing about my birthday was that now I don't have to worry about turning 30 any more. It actually feels really good to be 30. My mom told me she liked turning 30 because it made her feel like she finally had some credibility. I totally get that. Y'all, I am a substantial grown up now. My friend Annie sent me a quote on my 21st birthday that also sticks with me. I can't remember it exactly, but the idea was that when you get older, you don't lose all the other ages that came before. You still are your 5 year old self, 13 year old self, 24 year old self etc, but you add more to who you are too. I love that thought and I think it's absolutely right. So thanks Mom and Annie for helping me interpret my birthday! : )

So there you have some debriefing of one of the week's big events. As for when the baby will arrive and how our transition to a new downtown house will play out, those have been more difficult to nail down, but I will keep you posted. 

Buddies

Chomp

I gave Ella this piece of paper to play with whole. When she gave it back to me, it looked like this. She didn't explain, but I think I have a pretty good idea what happened.

36 weeks

Today I took some pictures of the maternity top I made to put it up in my etsy shop. Since I have the photos, I figured I would post this profile shot, despite my total inability to make a normal face in a self portrait, because I am now REALLY pregnant. I am past the 36 week mark guys! It could be any day now. I feel like I haven't devoted as much energy (or anxiety!) to this pregnancy as the first one, probably because the results of the first one are keeping me so busy! But let's document here that I definitely look like a pregnant lady this time around too.

I am getting really excited to meet our new little one as the time gets closer. When I think about what Ella means to me now versus what my fuzzy notions of "a baby" were before she was born, I suspect that I am in for a profound treat and life shakeup again. But it still seems so hard to conceptualize a real precious little human as the reason for my beach ball belly. Nothing like giving birth to do that for you though! And it won't be long now!

Modern art

Ella is giving a good visual representation of the way I feel about a lot of the art at the Nasher Museum . . .

Huh?

Mulberries

For the last few weeks, Paul has been eyeing this spot near the farmers market where there are a ton of mulberry trees. They are laden with berries this time of year, and mostly they just fall on the ground. So yesterday we went over there and caused them to fall on a tarp, where we could gather them.

Ella loved all of this. She tasted the berries, put them in a bucket, and even tried to shake a low branch (not of a mulberry tree, but it was a good idea). She also turned partially purple. Thankfully I had the foresight to take her pretty white top off before she really got into it. I lacked the foresight, however, to make sure the diaper bag was stocked with wipes. We had one. It was dry. Oh well. Sometimes you just have to be a mess and be ok with that.

This morning we had mulberry waffles. Yummmm.

Whirrrrgh

Ella doesn't have a lot of words yet. And to be honest, most of the words she does have are technically animal sounds. But the funny thing is that one of her best "animal sounds" is the noise the bread machine makes. Whirrrrrgh. I tried to catch her making the noise along with the machine this afternoon, and unfortunately, even though she was happy to whirrrrgh on camera, the bread machine went into its (silent) rise cycle once I started filming. Booo. But the video is still really cute. That noise she makes is basically what the machine should be sounding like if you can use your imagination.

Feeling hot hot hot

It has been sooo hot this week. I used to live in this temperature range for most of the year growing up in Florida, but now that it's not normal I can really feel it. For the first few days this week I just felt like it was so hot I couldn't do anything. Like lift a camera or put a thought together, hence the no blogging. But now that it's been a few days, I'm getting used to it and not only did I lift a camera, I did it outside at the playground at 4:30 in the afternoon. (I'm not exaggerating on the heat, we were the only ones there! And this was primetime at a normally busy park!) But having acclimated ourselves all week, Ella and I had a great time. The place was shady and there was a breeze too. I bet it was a crisp 87 degrees, nothing like the high of 93 the weatherpeople reported. It was funny to have the whole place to ourselves, and I think Ella missed being able to beg snacks and toys off of the other kids who are normally there with snacks and toys. But we found a ladybug:

Ella found it, I should say. She actually pointed it out to me. I made her do it again for the picture. : )

Also, we climbed up the taaalllll tower, Ella making a break for it, and me in hot pursuit. (She's not allowed to climb the tall tower, but normally there are big kids helping to block the way.) This face is saying, I'm about to go for it Mama, catch me if you can!

Also, we just ran around.

So, the bottom line from this post is, it's hot, but we have made it past surviving all the way to thriving!

Big day

It was an exciting day at the McCall house. We had our first two showings, after not having anyone come to look for a whole week! I thought the house was looking very pretty . . . let's hope our potential buyers did too. I can see how the frantic cleaning and then driving around could get old if you had to do it a whole lot. But Ella and I did have a pretty good time lighting up the town this afternoon.

First, we went to visit Paul at work which was a lot of fun. It was a beautiful day and where he works is a really fun place for a kid to adventure, complete with huge grassy lawns, little rivers and waterfalls, sculptures of alligators and dinosaurs, and lots of bridges and walkways. Ella was delighted to see Daddy of course. She also loved climbing around. I wish I had brought my camera!

Later in the afternoon for round two of showings we went for frozen yogurt and then to the playground. The only problem was that the entire rest of our town also thought getting frozen yogurt on a beautiful friday afternoon was a good idea. There are 2 competing yogurt places in our town, or at least in our family. They are both good, but Tutti Fruity (where we went today) is much cheaper, slightly less good and always INSANELY crowded. Local Yogurt costs mo' money, but is yogurt heaven and usually not as crowded. Score one in my mind for LoYo today. But still, the whole town was right, yummy yogurt was the perfect thing for this afternoon. Ella cried when it was all gone.

We went to the park after that and Ella loved it. We have just found this park near our house that has toddler sized play stuff. There is no 25 foot tower for her to scale, and the slides are fun, not frightening. This makes Mama and Ella happy. Also, we ran into our friends from church for the second of 2 times at this location. Super!

If all that wasn't enough excitement, we have been practicing using utensils today! This morning Ella spooned her own yogurt at breakfast. (It worked out ok because all she had to do was dip her spoon in and yogurt would stick to it, which she could then lick off.) It was so cool to watch the intensity of her effort and to see her satisfaction at being able to do it herself. So this evening I let her try her chicken nuggets with a fork. Yes it was a grownup fork and I guess this could be considered dangerous, but her tiny plastic fork would never have worked and she did a great job with the real thing! She ate all of her pieces with the fork, sometimes cutely picking up the piece to help put it on, then pulling it off and putting in in her mouth with her hand. I gave her raisins for dessert and she was so into her fork that she asked for it again. And sure enough, she ate all her raisins with a fork too. Or at least holding a fork.

I'm dizzy from all the action today!

Baby birdie

This spring, a mama robin very kindly decided to build her nest in a bush just directly outside our kitchen window. It's in a perfect viewing spot! So we have been in on the nest-building, egg warming, and baby-feeding. And now the little birdies have flown the coop. This guy was hopping around on the deck this afternoon. Excuse the hazy photos, this was taken through the window and the screen. I didn't want to scare him away!

He did show off some rudimentary flying skills too. I only saw him flying downward, but then he reappeared so he must know how to go up too. The cutest thing was that his mama came over beside him and gave him some food while he was hanging out on the rail. I tried desperately to get a shot of that, but she is totally onto us inside observers and always flies away whenever we get near the window. (This did make baby viewing easier when they were in the nest though!)


There's something about babies, the more awkward they look, it just gets cuter, don't you think? I love this guy's little grey feathers poking out from his head and his tummy. All together now . . . AAaaawwwWWWWWW!

Grooving

You can't argue with these moves.

For sale

Look at that! We are officially on the market. It feels so good to be done with the neverending list of fixy things we had to work on over the last month or so. If you have never had to do it, let me tell you it is a pain to get your house ready to sell. And we haven't even gotten into the living in a showhome phase where you have to keep everything neat all the time in case someone wants to come take a look. (Please someone come take a look!) But this was one of the first milestones with the whole moving downtown thing. A big checkmark. Ok a little checkmark. But still: house on the market-check! (The big ones will be closing on the new house, selling this house, and finishing renovations. That's all.)

Wish us luck! And if you are thinking of moving to Durham, keep our sweet little yellow house in mind!

Black beans and spoons

A spoon is cool and everything, but really, black beans are best enjoyed when just grabbed by the fistful and jammed into the mouth. But still, a spoon is really cool.
 

Can you see how gloriously covered in black beans she is? This is the messiest Ella's been in a while at a meal. Thank goodness (and Vovo) for that awesome bib. Sometimes it's just fun to play with your food.

Boxing lessons

We've had some boxes around lately. And Ella has learned an important childhood lesson. Boxes are a great place to hide out, or just hang out and read a book.

Some corollary lessons to the above are, 1. if you try to climb on top of a box, it squashes and turns into a ramp you can slide on 2. if you lean on the walls of a box too hard while inside, you will wind up sideways.

The Three Amigos Mariachi (and cowbell) Band