Settled.

My parents are coming to visit us today!  They are flying in and staying at our house until Tuesday.  The girls are beyond excited. They're our first house guests and the girls are dying to show off their rooms.  I won't lie, I'm dying to show off our house too.  I love our house.

Part of the reason that I love our house so much is that it feels like home.  We've settled into a routine and our life here in Texas and it makes such a difference in our moods. We still have to finish the nursery and the guest room is going to be rearranged now that Evan has my dad coming to help out, but otherwise, everything is where it's supposed to be.

Eating lunch with Elisabeth at school (isn't Julia's face lovely?):

 I am 25 weeks pregnant.  I told Evan that I feel like it's flying by, but also like I've been pregnant forever.  It's weird how it can feel like both things at once.  Of course, we found out I was pregnant pretty early in the pregnancy.  I wasn't even 4 weeks along.  It's really going to hit me that we're adding another person to our family after the holidays when it'll just be a little over a month before #3 makes her debut.

 Julia has finally decided to show an interest in clothing and unclothing herself.  I swear, that girl has her own time clock about when she should meet milestones.  She has shown zero interest in figuring out how to be independent in the clothing area, but in the last couple of weeks, she has started stripping and reclothing herself willy-nilly.  She also has been shoeing herself.  I told Evan that I don't know why we try to push her to do things before she's ready--she's never, ever complied.  She crawled when she wanted to, walked when she wanted to, weaned herself when she wanted to, talked when she wanted to.  Why are we surprised that she took her time potty training herself and has yet to want to poop in the toilet?  It's aggravating to no end, but it totally goes with her personality.  Her stubborn, ornery, sweet, unique personality.

 One thing that she has super excelled at is her gross motor skills.  That girl can ride a bike!  She was getting too big for her tricycle, so we found Ebeth's old training wheel bike.  It took Elisabeth weeks to get the hang of riding a bike; it took Julia 4 times going up and down the sidewalk before she told Evan she could do it by herself.

Just look at her go!