How we've been doing

Well, I am just about 26 weeks along (25 and a half to be technical) and strangers have now begun to ask me, "When are you due?" It's hard for my mind to get around the fact that I only have 3.5 months left before the baby is due.... three and a half months! I think I would feel better if we had set up the baby room already, but hopefully that'll get done before Thanksgiving. Other than needing to get finish my dissertation proposal, the biggest thing holding me back from finishing that room is deciding what I want in it. :) Do I want beige walls or yellow ones? Do I want gender-neutral bedding or boy-specific? I love black-finished furniture, but should I get a black crib?... choices, choices, choices. My mom, whose gone shopping with me many a time, could testify to my lack of decision making ability... this is why I generally prefer to shop alone. :)

Christian: "Do these pictures show how hot my wife is or what. Truth be told, I'm not sure if I should allow these on the internet. How the heck did I get such a beautiful wife?" (Christian insisted on having this be in the middle of my thoughts... I think he thought it'd be funny. Marriage is compromise, right?)

If you're wondering why I have blue pants on in these pictures, well, they're part of my costume. My friend, Brooke, hosted a costume party and Christian and I went as doctors. My hair-stylist thought I should go as a red-headed doctor from Grey's Anatomy and Christian should go as "McDreamy"... I've never watched the show, but I've heard it's an intriguing and addicting series, and, well it sounded like a good idea. Much better, anyway, then a scary set of doctors with fake blood all over or something. :)

We still haven't been able to narrow down a name for our son. Christian still loves the name "Archer" and I love the name "Gabriel" (with a hard 'a', like the angel in the Bible). Gabriel means, "God is my strength." Well, who knows, maybe we'll end up with an entirely new name. We've certainly talked about a few of them. For some reason it was SO much easier for us to come up with a girl's name (Isadora). Part of the difficulty, though, for me, is that it's hard to figure out what name would best fit this child whom I've never met. Names are powerful things.


May I present Dr. "McDreamy" and Dr. Addison from Grey's anatomy... yeah, I didn't go as all-out as Christian did. :)



Well, we moved into this new apartment at the beginning of October and we've been slowly making progress. Christian and I love to paint the walls, which we feel make it seem more like a home, but it makes things go a bit slower when you have to wait to set everything up until you've gotten to the walls. I went with new colors this time around. Part of the excitement of moving so often is that you can change your decorating when you move. I've purposely chosen (or obtained) neutral-colored furniture so that I can change the wall colors and accents more easily, and I certainly enjoy the process. In the last two apartments we used a dark sienna red for the living room, but in this apartment we used a muted forest green called 'bayleaf.' It's growing on me... but I still need to find some nice accents... I' m thinking some fake oranges or something. :)

Here is what our living room looked like when we first got the keys. Isn't that a nice view? And, look, clean carpet!! Wonderful, isn't it? The simple pleasures in life.


Here's another picture of our view from the living room. It feels so nice and homey.

I'll show more of the living room once it has reached a more cohesive state, but for now I'll just show the paintings I hung up this evening. As you can see we painted the kitchen in a yellow, but it didn't look quite right to have my yellow painting directly on the yellow (different yellows). But, I feel pretty happy with the solution I came up with. :)

I like coming up with new colors to paint on walls, but I don't always think about how the wall paint will go with my paintings. It looks like I might have a collection in our hallway (which will remain white) simply because the colors don't always gel. :)




OH! And I almost forgot. We got an unexpected, but appreciated, visit from Christian's father this past week. We had a lot of fun with him and it was so nice to connect with him once again. He got to see Chase play a great football game and we all got to talk over decaf coffee each night. :)