Joint Baby Shower!

Weekend before last, I shared a baby shower with one of my best friends (since age 4!), Katie, who has recently moved to Seattle.  She's due 5 days after my due date with her first, a little boy! Our mothers and my aunt Boo, who is also close with Katie's family, were the hostesses.  

Here we are with the hostesses, Katie's sister Kristin, and my sister-in-law Susan, who drove down from Greenville for the afternoon.

Did you notice the cupcake towers to our left and right?  They did one tower with blue icing and one with pink icing.  My aunt Boo is a delightfully incredibly gifted chef, and she did a fabulous recipe from this most darling cupcake book. Other cute gender things they did incorporated into the menu included pink and blue M & M's, white chocolate covered strawberries with pink or blue accents... SO CUTE!

Since this is Katie's first, and since the same crowd gathered to honor Abby Jane not very long ago, we decided for Katie to actually open presents, while a basket by the door collected extremely kind and generous gift cards to assist my little family in a few of the upcoming purchases we have (like some sort of stroller to accommodate all three girls- that's another post for another time, though!!)

We had a fantastic time, and it was such a delight to share the celebration of new life with one of my best friends!  

And here would be the difference between one baby and two with practically the same due date...

A FANTASTIC UPDATE ON BLYTHE AND JOY is that in an ultrasound on Friday, Joy measured 5 lbs 1 oz and Blythe measured 5 lbs 3 oz!!!  Praise the Lord!  We were so incredibly thrilled.  I turned 34 weeks yesterday, so we feel so great about their weight at this stage of the pregnancy!  

And yes, yes that does mean there are over 10 lbs of baby girl in my belly, bless their hearts. And bless Jake's heart for all the extra responsibilities he's restricting me from and taking on himself around the home as a result of those 10 lbs!

19 months

I wanted to record our little family before it expands exponentially... and before my belly got so big that it made other people uncomfortable to see!  So my mom took these for us in her backyard on Sept. 8, when Abby Jane actually turned 19 months...

She thinks it's so funny to feel the babies kick, and she announces it when she does.

Kissing the babies...

And now we're back to being 19 months and on the go! I love this candid shot- Jake and I are obviously springing into action, she's obviously a few steps ahead... 

19 months is SO fun.  This kid is practically having conversations with us, and she can be REASONED with a lot of the time. She especially responds to frank conversations with Jake.  He'll sit her down and explain things to her (i.e. why she shouldn't cry after Mama puts her down to go to sleep, why she should take a bath willingly every time, why we share, etc.)  It's great, because then I can refer back to conversations she had with her daddy and ride on their coattails (i.e. "Remember how Daddy said that when I put you down to go night-night, you don't cry and you just say, 'Night night, Mama, I love you!' " AND IT WORKS!)

ONE OF MY FAVORITE things that has happened this month is spontaneous "Thank you!"'s and "Bless you!"  Today at the store, some man coughed, and Jane said, "Bless you, man!"

-she moved to a big girl bed very successfully when we moved into the rental, pics to come

-loves her new rocking horse, more pics of that coming as well

-still LOVES the park, especially the new one we went to yesterday that's really close to home

-fav foods are pasta, hummus, dipping things in hummus or ranch dressing (veggies, pita, whatever), any fruit, her daily smoothie... oh and any treat, which is always spoken as TREEEEAAT! when she says it! (i.e. these great Trader Joe's alphabet cookies)

-started a music and art class at a FABULOUS local place called Miss Lala's Treehouse, and Abby Jane is loves, loves, loves it, talking about it all the time!

-has quite the sense of humor and does things on purpose to make us (and herself) laugh all the time 

With very few exceptions, I think we've made it around the corner of any struggles with her transition in the move.  Most nights we walk out of her room after putting her down and just shake our heads at how much we could just eat her with a spoon.

Miss St. game

Quick housing update: we have made tons of offers, and it has become clear that the Lord does not desire for us to buy a home before Blythe and Joy join the family!  So last weekend, we moved into a cute little rental home just 5 minutes from KSU.  Thankfully the lease agreement is such that we can continue to househunt and break the lease with a minimal penalty at any point, so we feel great about the decision to go ahead and settle into this little home for now!

Here is Abby Jane helping me get some things settled in...

NOW, onto a fabulous day in the Loveliest Village on the Plains.  Sadly it was minus Abby Jane as the game started right at her bedtime.  We're going to make it up to her with a basketball game this winter.

Because it was just a day trip, we missed getting to see SO many of you, but it was delightful to be with those of you we did get to see!

A cute little ADPi let us girls into the beautiful new chapter room in the fabulous new dorms (with two of us incredibly pregnant, I don't think we looked very threatening), so this picture is evidently where the exec sits in the new room... oh good memories...

This was after one of those fabulous touchdowns- being in Jordan-Hare is like a taste of heaven.

At Toomer's Corner after the game...

We were so thankful to get this day together in our favorite town with some of our favorite people!

The most wonderful time of the year

It's football season! Happy opening Saturday! Jake just left a little while ago to head down to Heaven, I mean Auburn, for the game tonight, thanks to a ticket from our dear friend Alex Carothers. Abby Jane commemorated her second kickoff Saturday by delighting us with a spontaneous "Waaar Eagle! Hey!" during breakfast, saying "Touchdown Auburn!", and, sadly, acquiring a black eye from running into a statue after we had Saturday bagels at Panera. This was after she fell in the driveway before getting into the car and got another bloody knee on the same poor knee that she seems to open up every day...  

Taking a break from College Gameday

Doing "Waaar Eagle" on Grammy's back porch

Trying to show you the black eye- it's her right eye, but hard to see in this picture

18 months

Abby Jane turned 18 months on the weekend we moved, bless her sweet soul, so that post is now over 3 weeks late... but it is here for our record's sake!

I'm going to try to say what she was doing right at 18 months and not over the last several weeks, because that is for another post...

Here she is helping us wash the car right after Jake arrived in GA...

-fav foods: smoothie ("seemoo"), grapes ("dape"), blueberries, ("booties"), cheese, and bites of whatever we're eating

-knows a dessert when she sees it, no matter if she's ever had it or seen it before, and calls it a "nummy" (i.e. walked in Crumbs cupcake shop for the first time, and she says "NUMMIES!!!!" and yes, yes it is)

-loves to run and announce it "Abby RUN!!" sometimes followed by "Mama RUN!" which is getting challenging...

-is getting better at going down stairs (did I mention that she fell down an entire flight of hardwood stairs in June? stairs are a priority in our learning right now!)

-puts more and more words together in two-three word sentences

-at 18 months, her average week consisted of at least 3-4 playdates a week, and either going to the pool, beach, park (her mothership), or just the courtyard area outside our CA apt every day- getting outside every single day b/c it never rains in CA (thus the fires)

-not afraid of big kids- gets pushed around by older kids at the playground who are moving faster than her and usually takes it like a champ

-has continuously scraped up knees, which I love- it's a daily sign of her adventure and fun-scraped knees under a pretty dress makes me smile, though it's sad when she gets hurt...

What we were working on (see how little this list changes for 19 months...)

-not hitting

-coming when called (I'm picturing a twin on each hip, trying to sprint after my toddler and making the come-when-called obedience a priority!)

-sharing

One good side to the hitting issue (she's not superbad about it, but it does come out when she gets frustrated sometimes) is that the kid can stand up for herself!  One of our last days in CA, we were at the Lumbar Yard (not relevant unless you're a CA friend) and she was about 30 feet away from me looking in a fish tank.  This big 3 yr. old boy comes up to her and starts making monster faces and waggling his fingers around his head, and all this is about 4 inches from her face.  She was drinking her sippy cup while he was trying to be scary to her, and after him doing this for a minute and before I could get over there, she rears back and bops him on the head with her cup.  He ran away crying and I stifled a chuckle before apologizing to the dumb mom of the mean boy who was busy looking in a store window while her son got regulated on by my little girl.  And that's my girl.

More pics to come soon...

And the girls' names are...

Joy Savannah and Blythe Annabelle!  We picked Blythe and Joy because they both have meanings to the effect of happiness, delight, exuberance, and obviously joy... which is exactly how we felt when we found out we were having the twins!  Savannah and Annabelle were chosen for their good Southern roots.  We both grew up in Georgia, have deep family ties to Georgia, and love the Low Country, thus Savannah.  We associate the name Annabelle with the antebellum period and the historical South, though the actual Hebrew meaning is grace.

We are so excited to officially announce the names!  I'm 29 weeks now, so they'll make their grand entrance in 10 weeks or less!

Disappointing people and mortification

I disappoint strangers on a daily basis.  

It is so sad to obliterate their delight and hopes that they're talking to a lady who may be going into labor at any second, an observation based on the size of my belly.  Two of my favorite lines I've heard in the last week: "Any day now, huh?"and "We'd better get you in and out of here quick!" (after I walked into a store).  Then it gets all awkward when I say, "Oh no, I'm not due until late October."  If I were really mean, I'd leave it at that and make them feel terrible.  But I always do add, "But I'm having twins, so it sure does look like I'm due tomorrow!"  I really honestly have this same conversation multiple times a day.  My mom ran errands with me this morning and witnessed the phenomenon.  She asked if I should just carry a recording to play when someone starts to get all excited.  It's pretty funny.

Now for the mortification.

So I'm new in town, right?  Sort of?  My mom and I took Abby Jane to a park on Sunday afternoon that has opened just recently, and we'd never played there before.  She was still wearing the smocked dress that she had on at church, but I didn't change her b/c swings and slides are typically not too dirty.

I didn't count on the HUGE amazing "splashground" (there are probably 7 or 8 different water elements and fountains there!) that was about 50 feet from the swings, which are of course Abby Jane's obsession.  So she starts asking for the "rain" as she call fountains, and the asking becomes more and more insistent (i.e. "I need rain!!!") until I start feeling TERRIBLE for not letting her to play in the water.  

So I do what any good mom would do and took off her pretty dress and bloomers and let her run around in a DIAPER in those fountains with the hundred other appropriately attired children.  

I have never felt so redneck in my life.  

She drew even more attention to her little naked self by her total and boisterous glee and delight to be playing in those fabulous fountains.  I was mortified, but she was happy, which is what counts, right?

I took no pictures because I didn't want the event visually recorded or her to ever say, "MOM HOW could you let me do that in front of ALL those people??"

So here are a few pictures at the same park (though few are centered- she was moving too fast!) when I took her back there yesterday.  

Clothed.