If you were to come over to our house today and peek in our bathroom there are three things you would notice right away.

From Daily Daguerreotype

1. It’s about time for the bathroom’s weekly cleaning, but I’m sorry… I’m too busy compulsively working on my 3 year old quilt to realize, care, or do anything about it.
2. There is still no door. Matt found five layers of paint on the door that he was painstakingly trying to strip using The Worst Chemicals Ever before we decided to spring for a heat gun to peel off the old paint. As strange as it may seem, the bathroom door is low on his priority list because he’s a notorious Project Finisher and wanted to complete the laundry room first to fill his deep internal void. At least this is what he claims. I have a feeling he is putting off the bathroom door until LOST is over to prevent me from inviting people over for weekly LOST parties. He claims I “chitchat” too much during the tv show when we watch it with other people. WHATEVER.
3. And then this one… a grody tennis ball sitting on the pedestal sink. Shall I zoom in for you?

From Daily Daguerreotype

Yes, a drooly, filthy once-bright-pink tennis ball. Anyone who has spent five minutes with Berlin has figured out that she is OBSESSED with fetch. It could be considered clinical… or just the “golden retriever” in her. So every time I’m in Target and they have tennis balls in the $1 section, I pick up a bag. Or two. Or two hundred.

Well they seem to get lost in the backyard frequently, so we’re always pulling out new balls for her to play with. But then out of the blue she’ll find an old ball, and it’s always at the most inopportune of times. Like this morning when she was up and ready to go outside at 6 am. Matt walked her over to the back door and opened her doggy door which she quickly bounded through. Five minutes later I got out of bed for my 911th trip to the bathroom, and who should come in to join me but Berlin with her dirty, stanky backyard find. Knowing full well that when I headed back to bed she would lay down next to me on her own bed and tear the ball to shreds leaving felt and rubber pieces all over the bedroom floor, I quickly confiscated the ball and placed it out of her reach… on the sink.

She was devastated and went back to her bed to pout. Until she found another ball out of reach under my dresser which kept her occupied for about an hour.

So is a nasty tennis ball sitting on our bathroom sink unusual? Not at all. Just stroll through our downstairs and you will find them everywhere. On top of bookshelves, the fireplace mantle, hidden in drawers. Inevitably when I go into labor and need to be packing up my hospital bag, instead I will be frantically running around the house collecting old tennis balls and sanitizing the surface they were sitting on because MY MOTHER WILL DIE AND KICK ME OUT OF THE FAMILY WHEN SHE SEES THESE!

I’ve already posted about one gift I received at Christmas with the “local” theme, and today I want to post about the other gift which is local to Chicago, where my oldest sister lives.

From Daily Daguerreotype

It’s an insanely cool and funky appetizer tray featuring a plate with Chicago landmarks. I realize that it is supposed to be used for hor d’oeuvres or cupcakes or other bite-sized entertaining foods, but I’m one of those people who has a hard time putting something away in a cupboard and only using it on special occasions. Do I have hor d’oeuvres out every day? NO! But I have bananas out every day, so let’s put em on the cake plate!

(Also, don’t those tomatoes look good? I typically despise an uncooked tomato, but pregnancy is doing weird things to me, people!)

Chicago is one of my favorite places even though I’ve never lived there. My first trip to the Windy City was right before my freshman year in high school when my dad took me on a business trip with him. We stayed in a mind-blowing suite on the twenty-something floor of the Hilton Chicago Magnificent Mile that included a cheese platter and a bottle of wine. My dad let me have a swig of the wine which I thought was disgusting at the time, but I was all about that cheese! I handed out pamphlets at his seminars, went to numerous dinners in private rooms of fancy restaurants, enjoyed a true Chicago hot dog while watching Sammy Sosa play at Wrigley Field, and fell head over heels in love with the son of my dad’s old college roommate – a senior at Arizona State University. I came home knowing I was going to live in Chicago one day and even created my very first email address with “ChicagoGirl1″ as the username.

My next trip back was in college when a few of my friends piled into a white Oldsmobile for a spur-of-the-moment roadtrip. To save on accommodations we pulled the car into truck stops to sleep for a few hours each night leaving us mighty tired and mighty greasy when we finally made it into town. Our trip was ill-timed, just a month after 9/11, so everything in the city was completely shut down. We couldn’t go to the top of the Sears Tower, most of the municipal buildings were closed, and the streets were dead quiet. But the city was still beautiful, and the guy I wanted at that time kissed me, so Chicago remained magical in my mind.

I took another trip back to visit my sister for Easter and interview for a record company internship later that year. I loved driving around downtown and imagining myself hanging out there all summer long, although I eventually wound up in DC for a different job. I met up with a friend who took me to Maggianos for my very first experience with calamari. (Mance, I think I still owe you a dinner at Smith & Wollensky.) And I finally got to the top of the Sears Tower on a gorgeous day where I could take in the whole city – beautiful and sprawling as ever.

We’re headed up 65 again this year for Easter to eat some more great food and enjoy the company of family. No matter what I can’t help but think that maybe one day I’ll live there for a while. Although perhaps if I lived in Chicago the romance would wear off, and I’d rather always think of it as a beautiful place to fall in love with the wrong person… but eat the best slice of pizza around.

Something about how the doctors at the hospital would do their darndest to keep my baby alive if she were born today makes me feel equal parts affection for those in the medical field (look! I’m giving them shoutouts!) and equal parts total terror that this is all for real. She is going to be outside of my womb in give or take 16 weeks, and she’s going to have tiny hairs on her earlobes that are even cuter and more snookerable than the tiny hairs on Matt’s earlobes. I know. Hard to imagine.

She’s moving all the time now, and Matt regularly gets to feel her. Sometimes she makes me feel a bit uncomfortable, but I certainly wouldn’t classify any of it as pain at this point. I have had very, very little back pain which is SHOCKING for me. I’d go so far as to say I have very few negative side affects these days, just an undying need to be eating 24/7. I have no stretch marks on my belly… wait for it… but my butt looks like planet Earth from space.

Um, I really don’t know how to say this in an… appropriate… way, but I’ll try. I mean, it’s inevitable. You come to this blog and you know that sooner or later, me being a pregnant woman and all, I’m gonna talk about the girls. So here it is. It’s hard to know when one looks at me which is bigger right now, my uterus or the two gallons of half and half I’m carting around.

I’ve pretty much decided that I would be very happy having two kids, although Matt would like a couple more. We’ll see about how things go, and I might wind up pulling through for him cause he’s such a nice guy. But I tell you what, Matt, if you could somehow arrange for these girls to be sucked dry back to, maybe a B cup after a fourth or fifth kid, SIGN ME UP!!

Next month Matt will be turning the big Three Oh. We were talking about it briefly last night and I asked him if he is where he thought he’d be at thirty. His response was, “I knew I didn’t want to have kids until I was thirty, and then I figured once I turned thirty I might as well bite the bullet and go whole hog.”

Well, Penny, know that at least I wanted you.

I was thinking about it all a bit more, this him turning thirty thing, and realized how jealous I am that he’s there now and I’m still two and a half years behind. Some people look at thirty as the end of all their fun, the time they need to settle down and get serious about life. I see it, at least from watching Matt draw nigh unto it, as the real beginning of your life.

I mean think about it, so maybe you’re expected to be married, have a real job, maybe some kids and own a house? That’s hardly a heavy weight when you realize that you’re no longer expected to go out for ridiculous cocktails after work with slutty people who are just trying to score. You’re no longer expected to wear a bikini, or even come close to thinking about looking good in any type of bathing attire whatsoever. And you can completely forgo listening to pop music in exchange for the 80s rock you know and love so well. In other words, you can just be your regular old ordinary self, and suddenly all your attempts to seem “hip” really just make you look like a person who is not aging gracefully.

Take all of that into consideration, and frankly I’ve been waiting to be 42 my whole life.

I can’t speak for him, but from what I see Matt is happier now in his approach to his thirties than he ever was way back when he married me at age 24. He’s found so many things that he loves completely independent of me or anyone else. He plays music regularly with talented musicians, has found rock climbing and a passionate love for the food and drinks of the Spanish people. He is in his element both in his job and also on the weekends when he meticulously creates things out of wood. And soon he’s going to have a motorcycle of his own to tinker around with.

All around thirty seems like an age where you can be unabashedly genuine. If so, sign me up.

From Daily Daguerreotype

It is gor-ge-ous here. Ok, well not specifically right now. Right now it’s drippy and dreary from rain, but it’s 56 degrees, is what I’m sayin! The past few days have just been downright springy. And I almost don’t know what to do.

After Christmas, I had myself all ready to settle in for a long winter’s nap in front of the fireplace with hot cocoa and National Geographic. We had a week which was referred to as the “Deep Freeze” wherein our hot and cold water lines to the washing machine started to freeze up. But after that it became positively lovely, and I will be darned if that’s going to change.

Every morning I wake up and hear the chirping of birds outside my breakfast nook window, and I brew myself some coffee and sit down to check my email. And when I take the dog outside, many afternoons I don’t need a jacket. I could really get used to this.

All this to say, in the midst of the “Deep Freeze” I had a heart to heart with Matt wherein I mentioned that um, hello, we’ve moved to Tennessee where it’s not sposed to be so darned cold, and we bought a house, and I had kinda hoped that when it was so darned cold out we could just open the dog door to the backyard and let Berlin outside without having to shoe up and jacket up and scarf up to keep her company. I mean, we’re not apartment dwellers anymore. We have a fenced backyard. Dog should do dog things back there without the need of an escort. So I asked, would he please put together a Behavior Modification Plan for Berlin?

And he did.

See, our pup loves being outside, and she loves romping in our backyard. But she doesn’t like being places without us. We are her security blanket, so she’d rather hold her bladder in the house all day than go outside by herself, bless her heart. When we take her outside for potty time, she needs us to go out the door, down the back deck steps and out into the grass with her. Then and only then will she pee and poop. But she might not do it in the dark because she’s scared of the dark.

Well let me just say, my husband is a brilliant man and my dog, despite her many fears, is very smart as well. Matt put together a plan, and the key was consistency – we each had to do the same exact thing when he took her out in the morning and I took her out in the evening. Gradually we would make her try harder things, which wound up being not so gradual because she’s a very quick learner. (Aside, will trade husband for a week of potty training your toddler in exchange for two David Gray tickets at the Ryman!)

We started off by making her use the dog door when she came back into the house. Then we would stand at the bottom of the deck steps but wouldn’t go out into the grass with her. Then we stood in the middle of the steps. Then at the top of the steps. She didn’t like that phase. Then we would stand at the top of the steps and she had to go both in and out of the house via the dog door. Let me also note that no treats were used. See, she’s not food motivated, she’s praise motivated. So there was a lot of yelping and “WAY TO GO, BIG GIRL!” And our neighbors officially think we are nutty!

Then yesterday as the sun was setting, I took her outside, and she zipped right out the dog door, down the steps and into the grass. I sat in an Adirondack rocking chair on the deck while she played in the backyard, completely out of my sight. She eventually brought me a ball which I threw off the deck and into the backyard for her and this version of “fetch” ensued for about a half an hour. Then towards the end, when it was completely dark, she flopped in the grass to rest out of my sight chomping on her ball. So I snuck into the house, and about two minutes later she was back in the house via her dog door.

Of course, the next step will be just saying “Wanna go outside?” and having her run over to her dog door and out into the backyard without anyone’s accompaniment whatsoever. We’re getting there.

But frankly, with this gorgeous spring-like weather, I kinda wanna be outside with her. You know, endorphins and whatnot.

From Daily Daguerreotype

Don’t open the door to the bathroom else you might go tumbling through to the basement. The handyman has been here for a scant four hours, and this is the tremendous progress he has already made:

From Daily Daguerreotype

From Daily Daguerreotype

This afternoon Matt and I are heading out to the Lowes and The Depot to pick out our floor tile and grout.

And here’s a photo of the new rug for the nursery:

From Daily Daguerreotype

I apologize for the shower curtain which was haphazardly thrown on top of it this morning. And of course I was too lazy to move it for the photo, so you’ll have to use your stellar imaginations to dream up what it would look like in completion.

Can you tell I’m completely exhausted and it’s not even noon?