...We have an announcement. 
If I didn't already believe in my Heavenly Father's guiding hand, these past few months would have confirmed to me without a doubt that He is watchful of me and has a plan for me, my life, and my family. 
We are welcoming into this world a new little one--hence forth to be known as "Blueberry"*--and we are so excited. Not only is it going to be an adventure, but it is a miracle. And not just your average miracle of childbirth stuff. I am talking no-way-on-earth-this-baby-could've-come-to-our-family-without-divine-mandate.
Between internships, finals that last for two months or longer, insurance issues, and all the other fun things, it has been well-nigh impossible for us to have a baby during law school. And not just improbable, I mean impossible. Add to those fun facts that this summer has been one full of every physical ailment short of scurvy (at one point I told Bryce that we had to stop joking about what kind of illnesses Little and I could add to our already rapidly accumulating pile of germs, because apparently thinking about it is enough for us to contract it) and Bryce being MIA for his internship, and you certainly do not have a recipe for a baby. And yet, miracle of miracles, a little plus sign showed up on a test a couple of months ago.
It has already been a much rougher pregnancy than the first, mostly because I have been sick beyond belief, but Bryce and Little have been heroes and kept the house functioning and me laughing while I've been down-and-out.
One day I walked into the kitchen to thank Bryce for doing the dishes for the millionth time. The conversation went something like this: 
   Me: "Thanks so much for doing all the work around here!"
   Bryce: "Is this what you normally do everyday?"
   Me: "Eh, more or less."
   Bryce: "Your life sucks!"
I had a good laugh about that one. When he's being serious he makes sure I know that he would gladly do the house work rather than trade me places at the moment. 
Little has also been a champ at making me feel better. Sometimes he will go fetch Bryce if he thinks I need some extra snuggles, but most of the time Bryce isn't allowed near me because Little has decided it is his job and his alone to help me when I'm sick. I seriously could not ask for a sweeter child. 

I'll say this much: It is certainly going to be an adventure. A crazy, all-new adventure. Welcome, welcome Blueberry! We're excited to meet you. 



*We're calling it "Blueberry" because when it was blueberry-sized and wreaking havoc on my system, I asked Bryce what a blueberry said and he responded with "Blargh!" Since that is what our dear little fetus has continued to say without ceasing, the nickname is sticking.

This was us 4 years ago. Can you believe it? I guess more accurately, this portrays the importance/joyful feeling inside on the day. This is how we actually looked most of the day:

Man Alive! That was an exhausting day! Some days it seems like it was yesterday and others it feels like it was a lifetime ago. Every day I find new reasons to thank my Heavenly Father for practically throwing this wonderful man into my life and for loving me enough to bless me with nothing I was looking for and everything I needed and wanted. 
Life with Bryce so far has one big adventure--sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse--and I wouldn't trade it for anything. What we can't laugh through, we cry through and brush ourselves off to come out better on the other side. I am truly blessed to have such an amazing man to balance me and love me through all of it. 

We were on a drive a bit ago and started planning our mid-life crisis; traveling, school teaching, beach sitting, etc. And yes, I acknowledge that one may or may not happen and the planning thereof would make it null and void as a crisis, but it made me realize a few things.
First of all, let's be honest... if one or the other of us does indeed have a legitimate crisis, it is more than likely going to be me and Bryce will be along for the ride. However, the important part of that is that he will indeed come along with me. I will never truly have a crisis in my life because I am married to a perfect-for-me man who takes whatever my latest obsession/fiasco is and doesn't try to change it or fix it (most of the time =), but knows me well enough to roll with it until I am ready to fix it and then steps in to help with whatever I need. It is a standing joke between us that even before we got married, he knew what I needed before I had an inkling of it, but waited to say so until I did. Ex: the L-word conversation. 
   ME: "I... ummm... well... I love you."
   BRYCE: "I know."
I kid you not. That is exactly how it went. Bryce had said it months previous, but made sure to mention it casually enough and move on with the conversation quickly enough that there was no pressure on me to say it back, or say anything about it. I--not realizing that I was already in love with him--didn't have to talk about it or face the facts until much later when I had thought it out, pondered all the ins and outs, and come to the very evident conclusion that I did indeed love him too. Then when it came to actually saying the words, I stressed and stressed about telling him and about my terrible timing, only to have him say, "I know." 
He does that all the time. Seriously, all the time. I come to some grand conclusion about a thing that has been constantly on my mind for who knows how long, only to find that he already knew what conclusion I would come to and has been allowing me to puzzle it out knowing that is the only way I will truly be satisfied with the answer. It would be annoying, but due to the fact that he is always right (yes, Honey, you are allowed to revel in that) and I can honestly say it has never been a bad move, I've come to appreciate it more than I can say. 

Not only does he know how my crazy mind works, but he is willing to go with it. I say, "Hey, Wonderful... I think I want to be an astronaut." and he says, "I'll check online for cheap space suits." He'd probably take a minute to consider and talk some sense into me or come up with alternatives, but if I was really sold on the idea he would do his best to figure out the most logical way to go about doing it and point out all the holes in my plan until we had a working one.

On top of that, he does it with whatever level of excitement it requires. This is a pretty common conversation in our house...
   ME: "Look at the shirt I made."
   BRYCE: "Cool."
   ME: "No, no. You're supposed to be way more excited than that."
   BRYCE: "Oh, I mean, WOW! That is the most amazingly awesome shirt I have ever seen!" (There is usually some jumping around at this point to emphasize the excitement).
And yes, it usually starts jokingly, but in the end if I am super excited about something, he is too. If it is a big deal to me, it is a big deal to him. That goes for the positive as well as the negative. Granted, the negative comes with significantly more let's-talk-this-through-before-we-make-it-a-big-deal, but in the end it's the same principle. He not only makes me feel important, he genuinely makes me important. 

In essence, whatever life has in store for us from this point forward is just fine with me because I have the bestest-man-in-the-wide-world by my side through it. Mid-life-non-crisis with Bryce is looking pretty good from here; and if we/I ever do have an actual mid-life crisis, Bryce will be right there crisising with me (or keeping it from being a crisis). He will be with me through all the crazy twists and turns our life takes to ground me and help me through and be the amazing man that he is. 

PS: I have to apologize for all the strange highlighting lately. I'll have to figure out why it is doing that. 

We headed out to California this past weekend to surprise my Grandma and Grandpa with a visit from all of us sisters. It was a blast! Not to mention the first time we'd all been together in 4 years. Crazy. We all decided that 4 years is way too long not to see all your sisters. Grandma and Grandpa were more surprised than I've ever seen them when we all showed up. They knew my dad was coming for a visit and that there was some surprise, but all eight of us on their doorstep was something I'm guessing they never imagined. We flew/drove in from all over so that we could all be there for the big moment, and even though we were only able to be there for a few days all together, it was definitely worth the trip and something we'll never forget.

We did all sorts of great things, not the least of which was eating at our favorite restaurant. I am pretty sure with the exception of the hanging parrots that used to cover the ceiling, it has barely changed at all since we lived there when I was a kid.

It all started one morning when I woke up to Little screeching at the top of his lungs. I of course jumped out of bed to see if he was indeed dying and found him yet again stuck inside his bed. He for some reason enjoys sleeping with his legs squeezed in between the slats of his bed and no matter how much I try to discourage it, he always does it. And he always gets stuck. This time however, was a whole different category of stuck. I pulled out all the tricks in my arsenal: butter, oil, vasoline.... to no avail. He had twisted it around so much that his knee was swollen and bruised and there was no way it was coming out. Meanwhile, my child is still screaming non-stop like the world is ending and I shudder to think what the neighbors thought was going on. Finally, I got out the screwdriver to loosen the railing enough to pry him out, at least that is what I thought. In reality, I ended up having to spend the morning taking apart the entire bed just to get his poor little leg out. 
After we were done and his leg was fully extricated, I looked at the demolished bed and thought, "Might as well finish the job." And thus our Little is now out of a crib and into a toddler bed, whether he/I was ready for it or not. 
In all honesty, it took a few days for it to be official because the instructions on the thing were so complicated that I had to wait for Bryce to put it together properly, but after having it fall on top of me a couple of times so that my bruises rivaled Little's, I was done. Little slept with me for a few nights until Bryce made it home to fix it. I think my message to him that afternoon when something like this: 
  "Ummm...  Honey, I may or may not have killed Little's bed... but at 
  least he isn't inside of it anymore."

Little did his best to help, and this time he really was helpful. He held tools and kept track of all the screws. (Please to be noting the "entreprenuer" shirt of Bryce's that we remade into pjs for Little. I was dying laughing that he just so happened to be wearing those while helping me with the impossible bed.) I'm not sure that he will be staying in a big boy bed as getting a knock on my door at 11:30 pm, or 5:30 am is not always my favorite thing, but we'll see. 

I found a little sticky note sitting in my scriptures and I laughed out loud remembering. I was called to work in nursery a while back and one day during coloring time, the kids started having a conversation about Heavenly Father and what good things He wanted them to do. There were plenty of little nuggets of wisdom shared, but the best were easily these two:
"Heavenly Father said we should color when we camp."
and
"Heavenly Father said we should not eat other people."
Try responding to that with a straight face. Seriously. 


In other nursery news... Little refers to most kids his age as "baby friends," so it is fairly common for us to bribe him to church with promises of getting to play with his "baby friends." However, the other Sunday, he woke up asking to see his "mommy friend." It took us a bit to figure out who exactly that was, but when the dots were all connected we found out that he was talking about his nursery teacher.
I am so glad that he loves nursery so much, and church things in general. He loves scripture time, he is usually the one to remind me to pray before we eat meals, and he is so so good about prayers in general.

Our nighttime prayers have become quite an event lately because everyone must be included. Pirates, animals, monsters, you name it... Everything in sight is gathered around. After Little gathers them together, he is very meticulous about their positions and makes sure that everyone is sitting up and facing forward--which is sometimes problematic for the tiny stuffed animals who don't sit up well, but he solves that by putting them either in my lap or his own--and once everyone is situated properly (this can take up to 10 minutes), he tells them all "fold arms everyone!" and then I know we're good to start saying prayers. 

The best part of praying with Little though is that he will sometimes say the prayers along with me. You can barely hear him, but as I am saying the words, he whisper-mumbles along with me in his sing-song voice. I am almost positive that there is nothing more adorable in this world.

Living with a two-year-old is perhaps the most entertaining thing in life, not to mention the most enlightening. It helps that I am pretty certain that I have the cutest child in the world too. 
With Bryce gone for the summer, we've started Skyping with him on a pretty regular basis (Little refers to it as "The Daddy show") and we have a special phone ring for him so that whenever Daddy calls, Little knows and instantly runs to the phone. Because of this (and a recent trip to visit with my family) Little now wants to call people all day long. So either we spend all day on the phone chatting, or with him trying to convince me to call someone or other. 
Another thing I love is that Little has started making up songs. He's always been big on music, but now I get serenaded with ballads of Daddy or Giraffey's escapades. I love it.  
Between getting more and more curious about the world and being able to communicate more about it, Little has also started to feel the need to label everything. It's not just a toe, it is a "big toe." It's not just a cracker, it is a "happy cracker." Sometimes they seem arbitrary, but for the most part his labels actually make quite a bit of sense. The best has been with fingers. Little finds his pinky and thumb fascinating and so decided to take it upon himself to label all the other fingers. The first one (the pointer finger) is the "mommy finger"--my sisters and I were laughing and decided it's because that is the finger I use to scold him--and I'll give you one guess as to which one is the "daddy finger".... Yup. The middle one. We had a good laugh about that. (I have to put a disclaimer that Little has never seen Bryce use said finger, but it is still pretty funny.)

We've also gotten into the stage of egregious mispronunciations. Let's just say that every remotely harsh consonant somehow turns into an loud-as-humanly-possible "t" sound and plenty of the other consonants turn into the "sh" sound, making all too many things sound very much like a certain unmentionable word. I feel like I have to walk through the grocery store announcing to the world that he doesn't mean it and we don't actually use that word in our house. Some of his mispronunciations are just plain funny though. Our favorite to date has been the way he says my sister's name. I'm fairly certain that she is going to be "Auntie Monkey" from now on in our house.
On top of all of that, I don't think Little could be any sweeter. If one of us gets hurt or sad, he is always the first one there asking, "You ok?" and making sure everyone is taken care of. Granted he often bustles himself off before you even have a chance to answer, but the fact that he cares at all makes me happy. We were visiting my sister's house the other day and there was a loud movie on downstairs. It was scaring him so I kept trying to take him upstairs, but he wouldn't budge. I figured it was because he didn't want to leave all of his cousins, but he was so agitated that I finally had to drag him kicking and screaming up the stairs, only to have him turn right around and bang on the door saying, "NO! Baby safe! Baby safe!" Little has a cousin about his age who he refers to as "Baby," and was still downstairs. I was more than a bit proud that my little man was willing to brave the scary movie to make sure his cousin was safe too. 
Life with Little just couldn't more fun. He is so happy and has such a great little personality sometimes I can't even believe it.

...and I think I need a tool belt. 
I'm kidding about the craftiness thing (and only half kidding about the tool belt), but my latest project makes me feel more than slightly triumphant. 
As I mentioned before--probably too many times to count--we live in a shoebox-sized apartment and thus have been forced to find all sorts of creative storage solutions. By the end of this stay, I am going to be the world's most organized and efficient human... and then we're going to have to leave this shoebox behind and start all over again in another one. Lame. But in the meantime, I think this one is my best solution yet. Our kitchen shelves hold maybe two boxes of cereal and a plate, so most of our food is in the hall closet (causing problems as we have a bug infestation of epic proportion at the moment. Blech.) and we needed to do some serious rearranging. I pulled a few ideas from the internet for pot racks--pallets, bicycle wheels, and some seriously awesome ladders--combined a few, and added a few ideas of my own to create this little beauty: 

I use the term "beauty" loosely. Granted, it was formed from salvaged parts, so all things considered I think it looks much better than anticipated. Either way, it works fantastically and cost next to nothing. We had to buy the chain and screw hooks and what not, but other than that it is basically just a couple pallets on top of each other (I had to reconfigured one of them), some wire strung between nails (next time I will use chicken wire because it would have been 10 times easier), a bunch of S hooks to hang the pots on, and a little bit of leftover paint. And there you go: one impoverished, and yet very working pot rack. 
And my pride needs me to note that I managed to figure it out and build it all on my own (which doesn't look like a feat, but trust me... in my mental state, it was). Bryce helped me hang it, but that was mostly because he was home when the shelf supports came, otherwise this baby would've been all me. 


Next up... The Closets: How to Turn a Closet into a Storage Room Without Making it Look Like a Storage Room.... I'll get back to you on that as I currently have not the foggiest clue.