swimmin'

It's been CRAZY hot lately. Avery and I have really enjoyed spending an hour or two in the afternoons at the pool near our house. The kiddie pool is the perfect place for Avery to get a little bit of freedom while I cool off in 12 inches of water. Fun times.


Avery's little imagination has just started to awaken and it is super fun to watch her play. She pretends to "cook" all the time. In this picture she is pretending to make "cheese" (macaroni and cheese) for mommy. She kept stirring the water in the pail then
looking at it and saying, "hot". I would have to blow on it and she would give me a "bite". So cute.



Snack time.

the apple doesn't fall far from the tree..

It seems that Avery has adopted some of her mommy's crazy preggo cravings/food obsessions over the past month or two. She loves to eat pickles, Mexican food, ice-cream (eye-keem), french onion dip, and Sonic Cherry Limeades...just like me. Her favorite food obsession, however, is cheese dip.

Because I am totally digging on the Mexican food lately, we eat Mexican at LEAST twice a week (I'm seriously not exaggerating). I'm in hard-core LOVE with Taqueria La Guadalupana on Summer Ave. It's the kind of place where you just point to an item on the menu when you are ready to order because the servers "Don't even speak American". I'm totally obsessed with that place. It's just wrong, really.

Avery ONLY eats cheese dip when she goes to Mexican restaraunts and usually wolfs down the entire bowl of cheese dip by herself. It's a sight to behold. We have learned the hard way that it is necessary to come armed with the poncho-sized bib and a million-and-one baby wipes in order to go to a Mexican restaraunt with her.




maybe we should put away the hot sauce...hmm...that might be smart.


Daddy hasn't even pushed her seat all the way in yet!

The Avery way to eat cheese dip: Chips are optional. Fingers work just as well as utensils.


mmmmm.....makes me want some cheese dip. yumm-o.

cuteisms- courtesy of my little puddin' pop

AVERY (emphatically):
mommy.
eye yah youuu.
a-men!

TRANSLATION:
mommy. I love you. A-men!

I'm not quite sure if that was one sentence or three, but I just melted. My favorite Avery-ism to date!

some pictures from our cruise...

I made a little slideshow from our cruise to Mexico. Enjoy!

Make a Smilebox scrapbook

what was lost is now found!

After looking (in toddler-inspired hiding places) for my long-lost phone for over a week, I am happy to report that my phone is BACK! While David and I were on our Mexican cruise, we got a text message from my brother Joseph, who was house-sitting for us. This is what it said:

found your phone...
in a bag of chips!

Yes. That's right. A bag of chips. The ONLY place that I failed to look in the entire house, mind you. David and I had a good laugh about that one and then breathed a sigh of relief. Had it been necessary for me to buy another cell phone, it would have been my 4th one since JANUARY. Most of my cell phone fatalities were due to being water-logged in some form ( 2 of them were dropped in the dog bowl. A lesson that I learned the hard way!).

Toddlers are the best!

dude, where's my phone?!?

OH Dear Goodness.
If I don't find my cell phone soon, I may have an aneurysm. No really.
Keeping in mind that I have a precious toddler who LOVES to talk on mommy's phone, here is a list of the random places that I have looked:
1. sofa: all I found was crushed up goldfish and an unidentified moldy brown thing.
2. under EVERY piece of furniture in my house: I really need to dust sometime!
3. the dog's crate: even HE was confused about that one.
4. the refrigerator: yes. that's what I said
5. all of the trash cans in the house: even the dumpster. sad.
6. the backyard.
7. avery's playroom
8. avery's closet
9. our car: I found dried up french fries, water toys, and the equivalent of half a box of cheerios on the floor, but no cell.
10. every closet: including inside David's shoes.

Now, I am at a total loss. We have a teeny tiny house... not some cavernous mansion. This shouldn't be hard, right?!?

I may go insane.

it's a...

BOY!

Hooray! We are sooo excited. Charles Joseph Tillman will be born November 26, 2008. Little Charlie has a very special name. His first name is after David's dad. Most of you know that David's dad passed away from cancer when David was 19. He was an awesome, godly man who left an amazing legacy for his family. Charlie's middle name is a family name from my side. My grandfather, dad, and brother are all named Joseph. Plus -- I just love the story of Joseph from the Bible.

Here are some pictures from our doctor's visit today. Of course, we had to wait forever. Avery hung in there pretty well. We packed lots of toys, snacks, and books to keep her occupied. Honestly, I think that she would have much rather played with the biohazard trash can or the stirrups! Don't you just love that Avery's just hanging out by the contraceptive poster in the picture? Nice, right?



When we finally got to go to the ultrasound room, Avery insisted (loudly) on sitting in my lap. She then decided that she needed to help the Sonographer by holding the ultrasound-thingy with her. Isn't she cute? When baby Charlie appeared on the screen, she said, "baby!" really loudly. It was so sweet.



I kept telling my friends that I thought that the baby was a girl because I didn't want to get my hopes up. When I saw that little tell-tale sign that the baby is a boy, I just started crying and crying... It was so amazing. His little body is just perfect. He has 10 fingers, 10 toes, a healthy heart, spine, brain and kidneys. He was attempting to suck his little hand, but kept hiccuping and so his fist never quite made it to his mouth.

How amazing is it that a little person is growing inside of me? I am overwhelmed and thrilled by the miracle of life. I know that all you mothers out there will agree that seeing your little one growing inside of you is like nothing else in the world.

book club, boundaries, and pickle juice

My book club met last night to discuss our June Book Love the One You're With, by Emily Giffin. I have to say, this book was a little controversial. If it came with a rating like the movies do, I would definitely say it would be rated PG-13 for subject matter. The book opened up some great conversation within our group about the importance of communication in marriage and creating boundaries within relationships. Emily Giffin really is a great writer. I would never have chosen to read this book on my own, but I really like the fact that it prompted me to really evaluate my relationships and standards. It made my "baby brain" have to work a little bit. That's a good thing!

We ate at Sauces , a restaurant downtown. Super-cool atmosphere, but the food was just kind of mediocre. Kind of disappointing. Maybe if I had had their specialty Mojito, I might have felt differently! Sadly, however, babies and Mojitos just don't mix. Since I had tough time deciding what to order, I decided to go with one of their recommended entrees: crab cakes with remoulade sauce. Sounds yummy, right? That's what I thought too. Hmm... not-so-much. The last time a had crab cakes, I got them at Paulette's, so maybe it's not such a fair comparison! I think that the other girls enjoyed their food more than I did, but then again, THEY were able to sample the Mojitos! You would think that being preggo, I wouldn't be so choosy about my food, but I gotta tell you, I wasn't digging it.

Instead, I ate some of my food and went home to indulge in my new favorite obsession:

Yes, that IS a jar of pickles you see. I know, I know... soooo cliche, right? At least I don't follow it up with ice cream!
My new love isn't just any old jar of pickles, it's the creme de la creme of pickles: Claussen Kosher Dills. I have quite the discriminating palate when it comes to pickles!

So -you might be saying to yourself: "Hmm.. that the jar is completely devoid of pickles, and the pickle juice is more than half-way gone."
That's true... and there's a good reason for that. I have discovered that it's not enough for me to simply eat the pickles. It seems that drinking pickle juice has now become my new passion in life. I have to admit that I'm a little ashamed of my new addiction. How did I let things go this far? Where are those boundaries when you need them? I blame it on the hormones. Seriously, though, it's the yummiest thing that I've ever tasted these days.

oh, pickles... i love you so...

how do you REALLY feel?

Every day I ask my sweet little munchkin, "Do you want to have a baby at our house?". Every day, she emphatically answers, "NO". That's when I usually say under my breath, "Oh, well... too late.. we are having one anyway".

It's become somewhat of a joke around our house to ask her the question now. Since we always laugh at her response, she continues to say, "no" even if we insert other things/people in place of "baby". David likes to ask her, "Do you want a Baby Gunner at our house?" or "Do you want a Baby Mommy at our house?" and "Do you want a Baby Kitty at our house?". Each time her answer is... you guessed it...."NO!"

While David was goofing around on Avery's little play guitar the other day, he made up this silly song for her. We managed to get it on video. I think that I was laughing while filming it, so, sorry for the less than Speilberg-esque footage. I hope it makes you smile anyway!

just like her daddy!!!

Avery is in LOVE with ketchup. She can't get enough of that High Fructose Corn Syrup. This is some video of Avery creatively eating her favorite condiment.

having fun "owdide"

Avery loves to be "owdide". Since It's been so hot, I try to limit our outside time to the early morning or early evening hours. She loves throwing sticks to Gunner in the backyard ("two, two, GO!") and attempting to slide down her steeper-than-it-should-be-for-mommy-to-feel-comfortable slide. But her new obsession is anything she calls "A-ee" a.k.a "Avery". "A-ee" is coloring, drawing with chalk, painting, using her magic writing board, or writing with bathtub crayons. We discovered that the reason she calls drawing "Avery" is because mommy and daddy always write her name when we color with her. Pretty clever, huh? Anyway - she loves to go to our carport and color with chalk. She lies on her tummy and colors (thus causing more laundry for mommy right away) and then goes to lie on her back so that we will "tace" her outline. It is the funniest thing! She will make us do it like a million times in a row and never seems to tire of it! She cracks me up!

Translation Recap:
owdide - outside
lide - slide
tick - stick
A-ee - coloring
two, two, GO! - counting
tace - trace

Make a Smilebox slideshow

girl or boy?

So --- I've taken a few online quizzes that are supposed to "predict" the sex of your baby according to Old Wives Tales. The results have been pretty much useless. The last one I took online said that I have a 59% chance of having a boy and 40% chance of having a girl. I think that my doctor would say that those stats are probably right. I have about the same chance of having a boy as having a girl! Nice.

I guess we will have to wait for the official results after our ultrasound next week.

Anyway - According to the online quiz, here are the "reasons" for my results:

And Here's Why...
You are carrying the extra weight out front, so it's a boy.
The hair on your legs is not growing any faster during your preganacy, so it's a girl.
Boys are carried low. You are going to have a boy.
Sleeping in a bed with your pillow to the south indicates that you will be having a girl.
Your feet are not colder than they were before pregnancy. You are having a girl.
You refuse to eat the heel of a loaf of bread. You are having a girl.
Dad-to-be hasn't been gaining weight along with Mom-to-be, so it will be a girl.
The maternal grandmother has gray hair, so a boy will be born.
You had morning sickness early in pregnancy, so you are expecting a girl.
You are looking particularly good during pregnancy. Therefore, it must be a boy, because girls steal their mother's looks.
Your chest development has not been very dramatic during pregnancy. You should expect a boy.
Since the sum of the mother's age at conception and the number of the month of conception is even, it will be a boy.
A needle on a thread held over you belly moves from side-to-side, so it will be a girl.
Your urine is a bright neon yellow color, so you will have a boy.
You have a craving for salty or sour foods, which means that it is a boy.
Your nose hasn't changed during pregnancy, which indicates a girl.
You have been craving meats or cheeses, so it is a boy.
Your baby's heart rate is 140 or more beats per minute, so it's a girl.
You have no desire for orange juice, so it's a boy.
Your belly looks like a basketball, so it's a boy.
You show the back of your hand, so it's a boy.
You use the handle, so it's a boy.

Craft Night

I've discovered that I'm not so great at sitting at home and just hanging out around the house. Avery and I love to be out-and-about. We get a little stir-crazy when we spend too much time at home. During the school year and most of the summer, I teach preschool a few days a week which really helps break the monotony. For the last couple of weeks, however, we have had a little break between summer preschool sessions which has caused me to be a little more creative in my use of time!

So - this week I hosted Craft Night at our house. A few of my friends and I like to get together around once a month to do fun little projects that we always want to try, but never seem to have the time to do unless we schedule specific time. This month we decoupaged wooden crosses. Generally, the first hour is spent talking and eating and the last 30 minutes is actually spent on the craft, but we have a lot of fun hanging out. Here is a picture of a couple of our finished crosses:

Da-Dahs!

There is this massive mural on the wall of our children's ministry area at church. Avery discovered it while we were working during VBS. She quickly became infatuated with it. She would say, "Dah-Dahs! (Jesus)" every time we walked in the room. We had to take a few pictures of her in front of the mural because it was just so sweet. Now when we pull up to the church Avery says, "Da-Dahs!" and then, "Bais! (play!)".

little picasso

Avery made her daddy's Father's Day present this year. She loved painting his picture frame. She loved it so much that when I told her it was time to stop so we could go, she screamed, "No! Lellow, lellow!!" like a million times.

Happy Father's Day, David!

Avery loves her daddy so much. We are so thankful for his godly influence in our lives. We think he is pretty terrific!

Piggy Tails!!!

I just had to take some pictures of Avery's hair in her little pig tails. How cute are they?!? Her hair is just now long enough for me to pull it back. She was obsessed with them after I put them in. She kept touching them and laughing. Having a little girl is so fun!

Sprinkler Park Fun

David gave me this really cool new Flip camcorder for our anniversary. It is really cute and tiny... and PINK! How fun is that? Here is my first try at recording anything with it. I took some video of Avery at the sprinkler park with some of our friends on Wednesday.

Our 8th Anniversary

David and I celebrated our 8th anniversary on Tuesday night. We went to Paulette's and enjoyed a fabulous meal there. It was a great treat!

baby update

We just got back from our 15 week doctor's appointment. The doctor was able to find the baby's nice, strong heartbeat (150 bpm) very quickly. Looks like we are doing well! We will find out the sex of the baby at our next ultrasound in 3 weeks. Here's a picture I found to show what our little peanut might look like right now...