how we know it's really spring

they've opened up the library playground for 2012! excitement abounds.

egg painting

sam and i made a stop at the craft store the other day and picked up this little painting project (and one for me too—more on that one later). we actually got two eggs to paint, but sam kind of lost steam after the first one. i thought he did a nice job though, and hopefully he'll be interested in dying a few eggs in a day or so.

sam goes to the movies

(sam modeling his 3-D glasses,

which we let him keep rather than recycle as a souvenir of the day)

i'm a little slow on posting this, but last sunday sam saw his first movie in the theatre. he got some movie money from aunt missy, uncle jeremy, oscar and alice to go see "the lorax", so we fortified ourselves for the adventure (who knows what you'll get when you put sam in a large, dark, previously unknown space and try to get him to sit still for two hours) and embarked shortly after naptime.

sam was pretty excited to be going to the theatre (i admit, we hyped it up a little—but even for us going to the movies at the theatre is a rare treat), and even more excited about a box of popcorn bigger than his head (i think it was a medium) and a very large box of mike & ikes (both of which he shared with daddy).

everything went surprisingly well. sam happily munched away for most of the movie and had zero potty accidents (that was my greatest fear). i was a little worried that we wouldn't be able to convince him to keep the 3-D glasses on (i didn't realize we were seeing it in 3-D when we bought the tickets), but he seemed to get the idea and warm up to them eventually (also, did you know that they make them kid-size? i totally didn't. i don't know why i didn't think of that, but i was so surprised and glad that they do). the only fidgeting happened near the end of the story (after the popcorn and candy were gone), and i'll admit even i was getting a bit antsy by then (it's hard to sit still and be quiet for that long! but i'm mostly attributing it to worries that sam's wiggliness was about the errupt into full-on attempts to run through the aisles). of course, when it was time to leave sam was not to be budged. we stayed until the credits were over, and even then he was not convinced that we should be going home.

my favorite part of the experience: watching sam groove to the musical scenes (i REALLY wish i had video of that! it was adorable on top of cute, with a side of awesome).

it will probably be a while before we have another movie-in-the-theatre excursion with the boy, but it was really fun (thanks henderson-joneses!). in case you're wondering, i think sam enjoyed the movie, but his most enthusiastic comment was "more theatre popcorn".

20 weeks

i know i took about a million belly photos with sam, so i thought it was about time to take one of the girl (if only so she won't feel like she missed the spotlight—so focus on the bump, and not the craziness that is my hair.) here we are, 20 weeks big and halfway there. woot.

ps—here's sam at 20 weeks

switch swatch

one of the dilemmas currently on our to-do list is figuring out how to get sam happily moved into the spare room (the bigger bedroom) and sam's old room ready for the little sister. ideally, we'd like to have sam moved into his room at least one month before the girl arrives on the scene, and the first step in that process is getting the room repainted.

sam's current room is a denim-y blue that (after the room had been fully painted), i really decided was way too dark for my liking. so this time around, i picked out some much lighter blues, and we're going to let sam have a say in what the final choice is. i narrowed it down to four choices that i can totally live with, no matter what sam picks, but i'm still a little bit worried he's going to feel displaced (despite the fact that he's really getting an upgrade here). we shall see how it all works out, i suppose.

for the little girl's room, i picked out a bunch of grey/tan swatches, with the intention that the wall colors should be neutral, and as she gets bigger (grows out of all sam's baby hand-me-down stuff), we can re-decorate with color accents and accessories that are more girlie. mike and i both seem to have agreed on the most neutral grey, and i think it will be fine.

there will surely be updates as the rooms progress, but for now, we are (as usual) setting a leisurely pace.

making—wrapping paper

last month mike rescued a huge stack of ginormous paper from the recycling bins at work. since then we've been making giant pictures (mostly of trucks and rocketships), big paintings, robots to sword fight with (because chopping mama up while she's doing dishes is NOT recommended), and truck stop signs.

this week we made some personalized wrapping paper for the cousins having birthdays in march. i drew some basic birthday-type stuff (balloons, streamers, confetti, party hats, and candles) with a sharpie, and then sam and i colored them in with crayons like a giant coloring book page. it was sam's idea to add the truck, which i turned into a cake truck (because that seemed more birthday-like than a garbage truck—his original request).

i do believe that we're going to be rather sad when the giant paper runs out. however, in the meantime, we're having a blast.

oh joy!

we found out today at our ultrasound that it's a 99% certainty that we're having a girl.

i have to admit that i'm a little disappointed that we're not going to get extra mileage out of some of sam's newborn clothes (though, i can probably get away with blue onsies with little footballs on them in the privacy of our own house, right? right? i mean, they're so cute.) but i'm also thinking that little dresses can be just as much fun as truck shirts, tea parties can be as much fun as rocketships, and that it's okay to mix pink legos in with fire engine legos (all kids like legos—at least, they should). i also hear tell that potty training a girl is a lot easier (which i'm hoping is true), and that they're not as rowdy as boys (though having seen my nieces, i'm not sure i believe this one). in any case, even another boy would be a different story than sam, and it will be a whole new adventure finding out what "not sam" is like.

(let's not think about the teenage years yet though. i know what my teenage years were like, and i am not looking forward to it.)