New Year, New Seasons

Matt has started his new cleaning job full time. This will be his first full week back to work since early December. We've been pretty spoiled with him being home so much throughout most of December and even some of November. Once they finished closing down the district office he was running, Matt basically had 3 weeks of paid vacation before and during the holidays. I started getting confused over what day it was because every day felt like a Saturday since he was home! Despite the job frustrations, it has been awfully nice and a blessing to our family to enjoy that much time together. Matt's enjoying his new job so far. He says he likes the "mindless grunt work". (Of course, coming off a couple years of constituent work where you're mostly hearing people complain to you, who can blame him!) For much of the work, he's able to pop in his earphones and listen to music on his MP3 player all day while he works. He comes home tired physically instead of mentally now -- a welcome change to him since the former actually means he's burned calories instead of brain cells! :-)

The pregnancy is continuing along just fine, uneventful. I do feel like Christmas was a turning point though in that the heartburn, discomforts and intensity of the kicking seem to have kicked up a notch. It went from being hardly noticed to "GIVE ME SOME MEDICINE!" - but that being said, I still don't think the heartburn & joint discomforts & all that are as bad as my pregnancy with Madison. As of today, I am 32 weeks along. Less than 2 months to go now! The first time I actually verbalized "two months left", it hit me as a shock. All of a sudden it seemed to go from some time in the distant future to right around the corner. I went from not thinking about it a whole lot (mostly b/c I have most of what I need after already having a girl) to thinking, "Oh my gosh! I'd better get ready! I need to DO something!" Again, there's not a whole lot to do, but I have started doing things little by little, either to get ready or things I know I won't want to do after the baby is born.

Madison continues to develop by leaps and bounds - mostly evident in her vocabulary and understanding of different words and things. I'm amazed at how much she knows or says that I don't even realize. For example, I've heard her say the word/sound "Wawee" before, maybe even for weeks. It wasn't until last week though when we were coming home and driving into our parking lot that I realized "I think she's saying 'Where are we?'!!" Sure enough, since then I've heard her say it when we arrive at other places - someones house or the grocery store. She even said it when we drove by our church one time. I'm just amazed at how much she picks up, recognizes and understands. It's just lost in the translation to me for a while -- until I finally get smart enough to understand her! Her pigtails are getting longer. Her teeth are finally continuing to come in. Her appetite continues to be very healthy & ambitious. She often eats more than I do for a meal - especially as the space for my stomach continues to shrink & I feel full very quickly. It will be fun to see her playing with her little sister in just a few short weeks. It's hard to think of her as the big sister. We still refer to her as 'the baby' at times... not for long!