This one is for Mom!

My mom has been wanting to see prego pics. Of course I don't have anyone to take any so I had to have Aly take them. FYI short people don't have much room to carry a baby so it all goes out! I am 6 months pregnant and look like I am 9! That is just the way it is for me. I have a short torso with no room for my guts and the baby to go! I still have over three months to go. I will get bigger out in front but I will also start to get wider.

Don't even think about asking me how much weight I have gained. No pregnant woman wants to answer that! I am doing better than I did with my other two pregnancies but I still don't care to talk about it. If things stay on track I will gain the appropriate amount of weight and that is all that anyone needs to know!

Honestly, I don't really like taking pics of myself right now. I miss my old body and it is hard to watch it grow. I just keep telling myself that I am one of the lucky ones who bounce back quickly. With both of the girls I had my shape and weight back by the time they were three months old.

Aly's Spring pictures

Last week was spring pictures at Aly's school. During their spring pictures they spend far more time on each child and try to get a perfect picture! These are my favorite pictures to order so I made sure to take lots of time primping Aly for her pictures. She was pretty particular too, she wanted to choose the pose. I was a close up pose from the chest up. However, she wanted a full body shot of her laying on two rocks. So, I figured I might as well let her choose since she is the one that has to live with them. After all they are pictures of her!

Since she was doing a full body shot they suggested that she shouldn't wear a dress. So I found a nice fancy shirt and paired it with black leggings. I spent an hour that morning curling her hair! She absolutely loved her hair! I put lots of hair spray in it! I won't know till we get the pictures back though if her hair was still in place. By the time she came home from school most of her curls were half gone. I am hoping for the picture they look the same as what I have captured in the above pictures! Of course I will post them as soon as we get them!

Baking

Call it nesting or call it experimenting but I sure have been having fun baking lately. I have really learned how to cook with yeast and have learned all the secrets for helping dough to rise in a cold house! I have also loved finding new recipes on allrecipes.com. They are such a great website and many users review recipes so you can read how well others liked it before trying it out. Lately I have made homemade donuts, cinnamon rolls, Amish bread, and pizza! My favorite of all was the cinnamon rolls. The recipe claimed they were just like the ones from Cinnabon at the mall. I personally think they were even better! My children loved them too!

The first picture is a loaf of Amish bread I made. Between the girls and myself we had almost the whole loaf ate in an hour. It was so good! The funny thing is KK wouldn't eat bread before I started making my own! The second picture was a garlic, bacon, chicken, artichoke pizza. It was good but I did learn that I need to season my chicken a little more next time!

The first picture was a first attempt at homemade donuts. It was an interesting recipe that called for mashed potatoes as one of the ingredients. To be honest, I think I will try a different donut recipe next time. They were o.k. but I would like to try and experiment with donuts that are baked and not fried. The last picture is the amazing cinnamon roll recipe from allrecipes.

Swim Lessons

KK started swim lessons today. I had been thinking about doing them for over a month now but needed an indoor pool. There isn't any place locally but we did find a place about a 35 minute drive away. Last summer KK only made it through a few weeks of swim lessons at our local pool. Aly was so afraid of lessons and would cry that it made KK scared. So for the rest of the summer I put her in a float vest and let her have free play during Aly's lessons.

By the end of summer KK was very comfortable in the water. So comfortable in fact that she would demand to take off her floatation vest and claim that she could swim without it. She would go a few strokes and gradually start sinking towards the bottom of the pool. Of course I was right next to her but I did let her sink a bit so she would be humbled and learn that she can't swim yet.

This year we decided it was best to put KK in lessons all by herself. She tends to be fearless and is willing to do most things. Aly influences her though and if Aly is scared of something, it makes KK think she should be scared. So now I am taking KK to swim lessons alone while Aly is in school.

I am confident we made the right decision! Today she was thrilled to go to swim lessons and did everything the teacher asked her to do. She even put her face in the water and didn't cry about it.

Our plan is to see how the next 4-6 weeks of lessons go for KK. If she makes good progress we may consider introducing Aly to this place and seeing how she might progress there. Otherwise, we may just have to take things slow with Aly and let her stick with the doggy paddle for now!