Fun Friday

Fridays have kind of turned into a special Mommy-Daughter date day. In October, we went to Einstein Bros. Bagels each Friday morning to celebrate their Pumpkin bagels (and it helped that they were free!). Now we go out and run errands and just take a few minutes away from the house and computer to be with each other.

I really LOVE it!

Today, we dropped J off at work and headed to Dunwoody for my 30-week OB appointment. It was a relatively quick appointment since they just had to measure the belly and listen for the heartbeat.

Cutie Face enjoys going to the OB office because there are walls full of baby pictures. She could just stare at them for hours! In fact, we walked by a wall of photos as we went to our room and, after a few moments, she was begging to go back into the hallway to see the babes. ("Baby? Baby? BABY! Pleees plees PLEES")

Thankfully, they had a "Highlights" magazine in our room and that occupied her while we waited for the doctor.

We met the newest member of my doctor's practice--he was a one-man show until last month and it was fun to meet a woman OB (I've never had a woman as an OB/Gyn before!). Verdict is still out on if I'll choose her to be my full-time OB but she seemed nice and Cutie Face felt very comfortable with her (she has longish wavy/curly hair and resembles me a lot which made Cutie Face ask "Mommy?" when my doctor left the office!).

The office just received a new Ultrasound Machine and needed to calibrate the picture settings on it. The OB asked if I'd like to be the "guinea pig" and I agreed. It was a really fast ultrasound but it was another 4-D one which was fun.

Sadly, Babette #2 absolutely continues to REFUSE to show us her face. This time she had BOTH hands in front of her face. I guess we'll just see her in 10 weeks! I just hope she isn't hiding anything scary behind those hands :)

Since it was Friday, I decided to head to a bagel place right across the street from the doctor's office. I've heard great things about Goldberg's Bagels so no time like the present to try them!

Handily, they were right next to a Starbucks, so we headed over for some tea once we bought our bagels. I'm pleased to announce that these bagels truly are New York style bagels and tasted sooo authentic that, despite eating breakfast earlier in the morning, Cutie Face ate her whole Blueberry and I ate the other TWO bagels. Carbo-loading for tomorrow's cross-country race is my only excuse!

Since we were practically in the 'burbs, I decided to get some errands out of the way after we ate. I needed supplies for next week's Tutorial Tuesday!

We don't have a crafty store like Hobby Lobby too close to us so off we went. Turns out I got a little lost but it wasn't a huge deal and we were in the Hobby Lobby parking lot in no time. I couldn't resist a Super Walmart, though, so we headed there first.

Cutie Face found the baby aisle and loved the baby toys, bottles, etc. I think she is really getting into the Big Sister idea--we are so blessed that God is seemingly preparing her sweet heart for a baby!

While in the Crafty aisle, Cutie Face spied "Melmo" (ie "Elmo") and we spent a good five minutes playing and talking to the Elmo balloons. Despite their apparent similarities, Cutie Face, for some odd reason, favored the balloon on the right MUCH more than the one on the left. Weird.

The rest of the day was largely spent writing Monkeys on the Bed blog posts while attempting to get Cutie Face to sleep (I knew I shouldn't have let her taste that Gingerbread Latte sample!). Finally, we both got in a 1-hour nap before we headed off to pick J up at work...and then to Ikea for dinner and shopping!

Sadly, my phone (also now my camera!) died on our way over there so I don't have any pictures but Cutie Face once again greatly enjoyed herself and J and I checked out some "Big Girl" beds...we may have come to a few decisions, too! Yay!

This weekend is grossly busy but stay tuned for a weekend recap on Sunday evening! Hope y'all have a great one!

Mothering Touch

Along with the weather (finally! brilliant sun!),

Cutie Face turned a corner this morning from being a baby to being a mama--she really wanted to be with her blanket and/or babies from the moment she woke up.

We started with a morning walk where she pushed her blanket up and down our sidewalk:

She learned that the stroller could be pushed in many different ways--

she pushed it with one hand:

Pulled it from behind:

pushed it sideways:

and took a momentary tantrum/frustrated break while pushing the normal way (clearly not the preferred method)

After her morning nap, she found the sling that the twin made for her birthday. After we put the baby (also made by the twin for her birthday!) in the sling, she did not want to take it off. It was so cute.

She'd stare at herself in the mirror for minutes, making sure the baby was

Properly situated:

and Properly loved (lots and lots of tight squeezed hugs):

Cutie Face even wore the baby + sling while we ran errands (she was in the stroller!). i think she is going to be a great big sister!

Sunday calls for a Sprinkle...of love!

As you may know, my twin and I are expecting our second daughters 2 months + 1 week apart. She is due in 4 weeks! Crazy!

Lil' Miss was treated to quite a few showers before her arrival. One of the twin's friends and I didn't want Sweet Pea to feel unloved so we threw her a "sprinkle" instead of a "shower". It was a casual, low-key affair with a "sprinkle" of people but it was really fun!

We had cupcakes and punch...but we didn't eat the cake as J and I had a slight mishap with it in the car on the way up to the 'burbs...which is also why you won't see a close-up picture of it!

We also had delicious savory food!

To jump start the party, we had all the attendees paint a onesie for Sweet Pea. I used my freezer paper stencil tutorial and it was a lot of fun! Most of the onesies sported a number stencil--there were numbers 1-9--perfect, I thought, for taking the month-birthday photograph...at least for months 1-9!

There were also flowers, birds, butterflies, and fleur de lis designs:

Painting onesies served as a great way to relax and have fun chatting

Everyone was so creative!

Two of the twin's former students came to her shower, too--so sweet!

After onesie-painting, we retired to the "present room". The theme was polka dots so we had fun polka dot puff balls hanging from the ceiling:

The twin was ready to go!

The girls gave her an awesome gift full of babysitting coupons! So smart!

I promise, we weren't bored!

It was so nice to see a lot of the twin's friends at the party to sprinkle Sweet Pea with some love. We can't wait to meet her in person!

Blog Title finally coming into play!

You may remember from my first post that I mentioned that we wanted to name our blog "cutie faceS" (plural) because we wanted the blog to grow with our family....

well, as hinted at in the post title...

Cutie Face #1 will have another little Cutie Face to contend with in 6 months!

Unfortunately, the wee one was displaying typical second-child behavior (or so I hear!) and being difficult. We couldn't get a good picture even after 10 minutes of probing! So no gender news yet but here is the "best" picture we got at 12 weeks, 4 days:

And to give you an idea of what cooperative Big Sis, Baby C looked like at 12 weeks 6 days...

Yeahhh...looks like this one will be fun or at least really really good at hiding!

More details to come, for sure, but right now this tired mama needs an N-A-P!