davejenbarnes

I’m rarely in any pictures, but David grabbed the camera last night and pointed it at me so I had to smile.  I have to admit, the belly does not seem so large now at 34 weeks as it did at 20 weeks.  I think because it got big fast and has stayed more or less the same size for 13 weeks.  It also helps that I have 3 layers of elastic around that belly and I’m wearing a non-maternity shirt and I have a 20 month old on my lap, and I’m sitting.

I know I’ve updated here and there, but I think the baby flipped into a breech position yesterday.  All of a sudden, all of the kicks are way down low around the exit and they HURT.  C’mon, Baby baby, kick my ribs instead!  On the other hand, it was SO MUCH EASIER to sleep without a head wedged between my legs.  (haha, taken out of context that is a very silly statement)  Let’s pray that this little one decides to get head-down and stay head-down.

UPDATE — Alien kid turned my belly into a football and immediately I felt some bumps and kicks up high again… shortly afterwards, Braxton Hicks started up every 30 minutes apart for about 4 hours then slowed down to about 45 min apart… I’ve been having “regular” though veeery far apart BH contractions for about 10 hours now.  Hopefully they’ll go away when I fall asleep.  They’re SO distracting!

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Meet the birthday boy for whom I sewed the puzzle ball.  He has the best blue eyes ever.

I hear that new tires make all the difference.  Dave agrees.  He took the van in this morning to Discount Tires and got a set of new BF Goodrich Precept Touring tires.  The old tires were bald.  Shiny bald.  Yul Brynner bald.  And cracking on the edges.  Don’t-wanna-drive-on-those-tires-another-hundred-miles bad.  We couldn’t get free new tires thrown into the arrangement (and probably wouldn’t have wanted the tires that would have gotten thrown in to a deal like that) but Greg at LoneSt★r Motors got us a deal we could not refuse.  Let’s just say, “Wow” and go with it.

So a big shout-out to Dave’s folks for coming to our rescue and making these new happy treadful tires (and the extended warranty) possible.

I usually don’t blog gifts before they’re given, but I’m sure this little sweetie pie isn’t going to know the difference.  He’s only one, afterall.

And the boys w-a-n-t it.  Oh, they want to grab it and hold it and throw it and James wants to take it apart and Lowell wants to hug it.  Shannon, it’s a good think I put Gavin’s name on it or they’d probably hide it and hold it ransom.

Evite reminded me that I hadn’t RSVP’d to a birthday party this Saturday.  So I checked with Dave.  He’s busy.  Cool, we can go! (Meaning, we don’t have to be with Dave anywhere at that given time.)  So I washed the laundry today to make sure the boys had clean orange shirts set aside and got to thinkin’… we don’t have a gift.  And we don’t have the $ to buy a gift for the birthday boy (Happy 1st Birthday, Gavin!).

Well then.  I’ll just make one.

Yeah, that’s what I’ll do, I’ll make the gift!

What will I make…What will I make…What will I make????  I end up on ravelry and do a free pattern search for “ball.”  One caught my eye.  I started it, but it was going to take forever to crochet.  I sit down to try to reverse engineer the crochet pattern from a picture of one that looks to be a tad quicker to make (the ovals are crocheted in the round, not back and forth).  No luck.  I end up with big holes.  Ok, okay.  There must be a way to sew one of these.  Yes, there is!  Purl Soho’s Last Minute Patchwork + Quilted Gifts.  But it’s $22 at B&N, nope… not paying $22 for a book to make a birthday present just because we can’t afford the birthday present in the first place.

Weeeeellll.. it’s obviously got an oval in it.  Hrm… the bottom looks like a triangle… noo… maybe a … AHA!  It’s a half-circle with an oval 1/4th of the circumference of the circle!  I can do this.  In a few hours I had all the little wedges sewn up.  Now I’m handstitching all of the stuffing holes closed (I’m taking a break because my wedding ring finger joints are inflammed).  BUT!  I am making the Puzzle Ball with no pattern.

Yes, I feel smart.

We’re headed back out to Sweet Berry Farm again this morning, this time with Daddy.

Here are 3 quick pictures of our trip yesterday morning.

Maybe Little Post

Every once in awhile something (like finding a machacado con huevo taco here in Austin or remembering the $450/mo rent for 1100 sq. feet) reminds me of when we lived in Rio Grande City that *almost* makes me wish we still lived there.

I headed to our small group last night minus the boys.  James and Lowell seem to be coming down with something so they stayed home with Dave.  It was more important for them to get a full nights’ rest.  I know that Lowell needed his rest because he took 2 naps on me in the rocking chair yesterday and the night before.  Falling asleep on a parent on the rocking chair is usually an honor he reserves for Daddy, not me, so I know know know he needed that rest.

Anyhow, back to the being by myself part.  No, let me back up a little.  David fixed a roast in the crock-pot yesterday.  I normally eat my roast with plain ketchup.  It’s always been good enough for me.  Ketchup wouldn’t do last night.  Nope, not after Amy fed me a roast beef sandwich on Friday with Rudy’s BBQ sause.  Ketchup will not do any longer.

But we didn’t have any Rudy’s BBQ sause.  No sirree.

So, as I’ve mentioned twice already, I was by myself last night.  Amy’s house, where small group is hosted, is about halfway between us and a Rudy’s so I went ahead and took the drive out to Rudy’s and walked in a few minutes before they closed and grabbed a big bottle of that delicious sauce and proceeded down the queue to the register but not before I grabbed two 1-liter glass bottles of Mexican Coca-Cola.  If you’ve never had a coke from Mexico, you should.

Now I know people who live for a Dublin Dr Pepper and this is along the same lines as that.  Dublin Dr Pepper is formulated with sugar, not high-fructose corn syrup and it makes it That. Much. Better.  Same deal with the Mexican cokes.  Sugar.  Pure Sugar.  It makes it oh, oh, so gooood.  And they’re usually found in tall skinny glass bottles.

When we lived in Rio Grande City, we had a big plastic soda bottle case.  We would head over the border every other week or so to the coca bottling plant in Miguel Aléman and get a case of full coke bottles for, like, no kidding, $4 — that’s 24 liters of joy for under $5.  The cokes from Rudy’s were $2.59 each so I paid for 2 what I used to pay for 2 DOZEN.  They’re not worth it for that amount of money on a regular basis, but it helped justify a 9:20 pm run to Rudy’s 18 miles away, and… I know David and I each got our $2.59 worth of enjoyment out of them.  Mmmmmm