One of the things we did this summer that was truly a once in a lifetime event was that we went to the Houston Museum of Natural Science to see the Louis – the corpse flower.

In case you don’t want to read the wikipedia article, in short, a corpse flower is a pretty rare thing that as it blooms, smells like death. There was quite a hubbub in Houston when it seemed the whole city was on Louis watch. Since these things are really rare, no one knew how much time it would take for it to start stinking once the blooming process began.

Marion and I bought tickets for a Monday morning 8 a.m. admission and pretty much had the place to ourselves! And thankfully (given that I was still in the throes of my all pregnancy morning sickness) it didn’t really smell very much. Despite missing the stink and the official bloom, the flower was still very impressive and worth the trip to see it.

It’s not every day you see an almost six foot tall flower!

Louis was part of the Butterfly Exhibit at HMNS and it was Mar’s first visit there.

She had the most fun, though, playing in the kids’ corner

Me and my sweet girlie

She was a little nervous, but as soon as she saw the train table in the new classroom, she was right at home. She didn’t even cry (and believe it or not, neither did mama!)

My sweet big girl

I refuse to think how our lives are going to be turned upside down and instead, prefer to think of a quiet, sleeping, peaceful newborn who will allow me to have coffee or lunch with friends, lots of time for knitting and sewing and still maintain an immaculately clean house.

HA!

I can’t even think that without laughing hysterically.

So instead of knocking out some projects I’d like to get done, say, before Christmas, being productive finishing the nursery, maybe making some baby clothes or at least organizing and washing the clothes we have, I’ve been doing every thing I can think of to avoid doing anything practical.

Namely, I decided it would be a great time to start a new hobby! Brilliant decision on my part, yes? It was such a brilliant decision, I decided to take up two new hobbies!

The first at least uses a skill I already know and doesn’t take up much time. It also has the added benefit of helping me use up my yarn scraps (something Josh appreciates very much.)

However, on the practicality scale, it’s non-existent. I’m now marginally obsessed with knitting doll clothes.

Marion was going through a period of not wanting to get a bath and so we got her her first baby doll to take into the bath with her (and maybe, hopefully? help with adjusting to baby sister.) Since she’s made to go in the bath, her accessories included bath toys, baby powder, a towel, diaper and PJs. But no real clothes. Let’s just say she was in our family for less than 24 hours before I started making her a new wardrobe.

Like the little hand reaching up to grab her from me? And it took less than 24 hours for that dress to find it’s permanent home on a teddy bear of hers. Also, yet another lesson in toddlerhood, for mama. The lesson being that baby dolls are meant to always be naked.

That lesson didn’t stop me from knitting some more though.

A little summer skirt and top.

And since it is still summer, a pair of shorts.

I can guarantee you that this winter, she’ll have more sweaters than you can shake a stick at.

My other hobby, not quite so “practical” and infinitely more time consuming. It’s yarn dyeing. Why, why would I need to dye yarn when you can purchase it in any shade imaginable and know the color is colorfast, lightfast, usually washable, etc. I have no answers for that. Simply that this baby is making me crazy.

First up, a little dyeing with coffee.

On the left, the undyed wool. On the right, after a nice bath in coffee.

So I made Marion a little slouchy beret. Because exactly what she needs in this, the hottest summer ever in Houston, is a wool beret.

This baby is eating my brain. Maybe I’ll turn out something practical by the time she’s five.

I’ve also been trying for my second experiment, dyeing with black beans. It’s not been as easy as the coffee and I’m on attempt three right now (well, it’s in progress.)

This is the result of my second attempt. The first attempt just resulted in mold. Don’t ask. Maybe one day I’ll get the denim blue I’m aiming to achieve.

Which do you think will come first? The baby, or color results I’m happy with?

He remembers what it was like to have a newborn in the house and how impossible it was to plan on anything, to have a schedule, basically, to have your own life for those first few months. So he accepts that our life from now to the end of the year is going to look pretty different after Sprocket is born. His way of dealing with that is to get in as much now as he can, which is what found us waking up at 4:30 a.m. on a Saturday morning for another triathlon.

The Clear Lake Tri was the second one he’s done this summer. I can’t remember the last time he did two in a year, much less a summer. This is how acceptance works. You get as much in when you can since you know it’s not going to happen for a while.

He did absolutely amazing and I’m so proud of him. He came in 16th out of 40 in his age group and he actually came in 9th out of 40 in the run portion! That’s pretty darn awesome I think!

This tri was fun, not just because he did so well, but because two of my friends had their husbands in the tri as well! It was a lot of fun cheering the guys on with a group of us. We had so much fun cheering, chatting and chasing after toddlers though that I didn’t really get a lot of good pictures. There are a few though.

Good luck daddy!

She gets very nervous at the start line

And they’re off!

This triathlon wasn’t set up to be super spectator friendly. It wasn’t the worst, but it wasn’t the best, especially not for taking pictures. So I don’t have any pictures of the transitions or the bike ride, just of the run.

Here he comes!

The best finisher’s present ever

My friend Jess took some great pictures and has me even more convinced that I *need* a DSLR for Christmas.

My gorgeous girl

With her constant companion of Mr Brown Dog

She’s going to be two in less than three weeks. I can’t even think about that!

And a great picture of Josh.

Thanks for letting me use your pictures Jess!

And this is why we’ll hire a babysitter instead of just relying on big sister ….

Watch Sprocket be born with dark skin and a head full of black hair!

If you’ll remember last time, there was this little thing called Hurricane Ike and two weeks without power that hindered my finishing efforts. That, and the fact my sewing machine went nutso on me until I (a year after she was born) literally, literally, fixed it by smacking it with a hammer.

This time, I’m determined to get the project done before Baby Sister is born and another hurricane hits and my sewing machine is unfixable with a hammer.

With seven(ish) weeks left to go, I’m proud to say I’m halfway done! That’s a pretty big accomplishment for me. Marion’s bed is completely done and really, the only must do projects that are left are Sister’s crib rails and bed skirt. There are a few other little things I’d like to do, but those are just icing on the proverbial cupcake.

(Apologies in advance, but this room is really hard to photograph and often the best pictures are with my camera phone, so there will be a mix of good and not so great photos.)

Before we even moved, we picked out fabrics for the new nursery and picked this mix of fabrics from Michael Miller

And this is what we started with after we moved (at least on Marion’s side of the room)

And this is what we have now! (That thing in the bottom left corner is my ironing board)

One of the first things we had to do was to get a new blind for the room! The girls’ room faces due east and so the sun comes up bright and early.

So we bought this dark gray blackout shade from Ikea, and it was wonderful, but in the end, it didn’t work with the drapery rod we chose.

Which meant, not only did I have to make curtains for the first time, I had to make curtains lined with blackout material.

I think they turned out pretty good! (I promise there are two of them, it’s just really, really, really hard to get a picture of them both straight on.)

This is my favorite little spot in the room, Marion’s little reading nook

It’s constantly in use! (And yes, it’s meant to hold books, but she usually just has them scattered on the floor.)

A rare moment of cleanliness

And even though she’s pretty well past teething (we’re just waiting on the two year molars), I still did her a set of teething rails just because I like the way they look

She’s been sleeping with a pillow for a while, so I made her a pillowcase to match

Well, she got two actually. I think Mr Brown Dog likes the bird better than the polka dots

Along with two new changing pad covers and a bow board. However, I realized with TWO girls, I’m going to have to make a much larger bow board!

One little storage basket (we need a few more of these, but that’s a scrap project for when I have nothing else to do, hahahaha!)

It’s only taken me three and half months since we moved in to get this stuff done, we’ll see what else I can knock out in the next seven(ish) weeks!

We drove along Seawall Blvd (for those of you familiar with Galveston) and when Marion saw the water, she got so excited and all we heard from the backseat was “water water water!” As we kept driving and she saw the water wasn’t stopping, we heard “big, big, big, big, BIG WATER!” Yes, the beach is in fact big big water sweet girl. She also learned “sand,” “seagull,” and “seashell” on this trip too.

At first, she was a bit apprehensive about the water so we didn’t stay in for long. We moved on to building sandcastles (correction, mama built sandcastles and sent Josh to fetch buckets of water for the moat) and all of a sudden, the beach because a really fun place!

And when you put Josh in charge of taking the sand castle building pictures, and he’s jealous of my super sweet sand castle building skills, this is the only picture of your awesome sand castle you end up having on the camera.

Marion had a lot of fun realizing the dogs could come out in the water with her.

Oh yes, Mr Brown Dog came with us.

Marion also learned that if Dada turns his back for a few minutes, she can reach her own hand into the potato chip bag and get a lot more chips than she’d be allowed to have.

Swimming with my boy. PS – Nanuq would be totally useless if I were ever actually in trouble in the water. The scardey cat would drown me trying to save himself.

Poor Gracie spent most of the trip trying to decide which of her herd members needed the most watching. Marion or me. All of Lou’s herd dog instincts come out when her flock separates. Not that we would ever test that on purpose.

Our first children

Learning how to play in the “waves”

The beach brings out the puppy in him

My brave girl. Her little fall didn’t phase her one bit.

Nothing cuter than a ruffled bum!

“Seashell mama, seashell! Seashell water mama!” Yes Marion, I know there are seashells in the water. We only heard that about 100 times.

Compared to our last family picture at the beach

How two years changes things!

So worth it, that we’ve been three times this season. I think (if I remember correctly) we’ve picked a total of about twelve pounds of blueberries. Marion probably ate about six pounds while we were out picking.

Moorhead is great for several reasons, one of the top being that they don’t use pesticides on their berries, so they’re safe for the littles to eat right of the bushes. There’s no better way to keep a toddler occupied for an hour at a time by giving them free reign to all the blueberries they can handle!

I took the camera each time we went picking, but I was pretty focused on filling my bucket, so there’s a mix of iPhone photos and camera photos from our three trips.

Marion’s first blueberry bucket

Really, is there anything cuter than an army of toddlers toting gallon sized buckets?

The look of delight on her face says it all.

Our first trip was at the start of the season, so the picking wasn’t so great, especially with littles in two. We left that day with about 2.5 lbs I think.

Our next trip up, with Megan and Tracey, went a lot better! As evidenced by this sucker the size of my thumbnail

Megan went back and got the girls their own buckets, thinking maybe they could “help.” Marion just transferred berries from my bucket to hers, sat down, and ate them. Some help.

Nom nom nom

Doesn’t get any fresher than that

Megan and Tracey

It’s hard to make forward progress when all your work is being eaten.

Our “helper” elves

One of the most toddler friendly things about blueberry bushes is that the ripe berries really just fall off into your hand. The not so ripe berries take work to get off the branches, so you don’t really have to worry about them eating too many unripe berries.

Showing Tracey how it’s done

Our much better almost five pound bounty from that trip.

Blueberry picking is exhausting!

And no pictures from our third trip out with Kelly and Leo. We were there to do some serious picking and came home with a little over five pounds.

So what do you do with almost twelve pounds of blueberries?

You help make delicious blueberry muffins

Nothing like a blueberry muffin with a side of blueberries

Make lots of blueberry jam

You eat blueberries with fresh homemade whipped cream

You also make a dozen blueberry mini pies, six personal blueberry crips and eat your weight in blueberries!

And after reading the website and seeing that they still have blueberries, I’m not ruling out a fourth trip this year!

Conversations with Marion, 21 months old

Conversations with Marion, 22 months old

Letter to my daughter, 1.9 & 1.10