hopefully this is the last time.

the last time i have a picture of myself taken while pregnant.

the last time i post one.

the last time.


but we will just have to wait and see.

39 weeks.

i tested lesbian.

last night i had a dream that i had peed on one of those little sticks that you have to pee on when you're pregnant every week... you ladies know what i mean? anyway they have all these boxes that turn different colors if there's an imbalance in your protein or ph or whatever... in my dream they all turned purple and i asked what that meant and they said it meant i was a lesbian. ... then another lady came up to me showed me hers and said 'i am too! dont worry, it doesn't hurt.'

what?

seriously.

ara has this book and on one page it just says

LITTLE PUMPKIN.

she stopped me there and pointed out and said what each letter was only asking what the m, n, and k were.

then we read her alphabet book, which usually i tell her the letters and she tells me what they are for... but today i thought i'd just ask her what the letters were too... and she named all of them except i had to tell her j, q and z and told me what they were all for!

i know she's been learning letters lately from just constantly she points to letters everywhere and says 'this letter is?' but it just seems crazy to me that she can really recognize so many letters already...

she'll be reading to me by december! haha.

she does the same thing with each thing she learns though, we teach it to her once and then everywhere we go she asks, like she did with colors and she does it with shapes and she sings a song she learned from pbs about lines circles and squares...

she is a kid. straight up.

just a couple funny things she did the other day..

*our friend erin got her a beauty and the beast book and they're dancing on the cover. ara looked at belle and said 'pwincess belle' and she just looked over at beast pointed at him and said 'WOA'.

* she got a card from my grandma for halloween and she loved it. then she opened it and saw money inside, she yelled 'oooooooooooh monnnney!' and literally threw the card on the ground! seth and i were shocked. we use cash for everything but we have not taught her anything about it... but she's picked up its importance on her own i guess... scary. we take the money and save it for her anyway so.. it didn't last long.

* also she seems to be moving in a new direction... she WONT sleep with her bear anymore who she has slept with FOREVER, she only wants baby and she just says 'no bear, no bear, no bear!!!' and the other day (i never thought this moment would come) she wanted to play with her princesses she picked belle up and she had baby poopie in her other hand, she paused looked at them both and then threw baby down and ran away with belle! crazy. anyone who has spent any time with her knows how intense that decision was.

* we got the tub ready for our birth and its just a blow up pool and has fishies on it, which she loves... she thinks its a bed though... anyway she named one of the fish skylana.

*she's been playing on her own A LOT lately and totally has a little imagination, its so great.... she was playing with the cloth diapers laura made me and i heard her talking to herself saying 'baby, come out baby!' and then later she was playing with two red plastic cups and she had them on her ears and was saying 'headphones! headphones!' . i love this phase of alone time! i needed it and its super cute to hear her in her room just talking to herself. if she's not playing in her room or just around the house talking she wants to read books. fine with me!!

*she also has started saying 'thank you' every time we get something for her without us prompting her at all. so polite.

*also she's suddenly become scared of certain things out of nowhere, she said she was scared of the vacuum but i convinced her it was safe... but she is super scared of the cat on the cover of this book...

miss sneed.

i know, doesn't sound too appetizing, but that was me before i was mrs roberts.

and last night i was thinking about that me.

we went to see deathcab for cutie and his voice took me back, and while i felt the world change around me swirling in my mind through booboos downtown to mornings at ahshe to a ride in the car with a friend named polly on the other side of the country and landing in a small house in morro bay where my heart was shattered by love and then found again by my best friend.... i just had that deep realization of the separation of the skylana i've always been, the one i know inside and the one arabella will know.

there's of course the difference of who i actually am in contrast to who i was before i had a child, but theres even more of a difference in what i see about who i am and what she will see through her perspective. and i am sure the two are drastically different.... at least i hope they will be. its crazy that one of the people i love most in the entire world may never know most parts of me, and its good that way i think.... its just the weirdest feeling. knowing i will know her better than anyone all the time she grows up and know all the memories of her life and she'll only know a tiny fraction of me.

dont get me wrong when i say i want her perspective to be different than mine, because i obviously am a big fan of myself, its not like i dont like me and i want her to like me... but i want her to be a big fan in a different way. i like who i am very much, but i see all my faults very clearly and i see how mean i can be ... i want her to like me very much but having never experienced my meanness. i dont mind her seeing my faults, but i know my faults in her eyes will be so different and i know i wont ever even understand the way she sees me... i do know that the kind of mother i am and will be will give her a perspective of me that i could never contain myself and that i am beyond grateful for already... to know that someone will see me as love, as safe, as a protector, as a friend, as someone they look up too and hopefully even a hero, it feels a little sneaky of me... like i'm tricking her. but really i believe that the person she sees, that's the true me because if there has ever been anyone that i have been myself to all the true parts of my heart without the dust left from life and pain, its her.

its so crazy to find the balance every day between who i am inside as skylana, separate from seth, from arabella, from anyone or anything and the mother of arabella, and the wife of seth.... i am all of those things wrapped into one and on one hand they blend so harmoniously it seems flawless and then on the other hand they fight each other. some days i find the balance, but most days if something gets lost its the skylana i know... and although i'm glad for that to be the one neglected more than the others its the strangest feeling to feel separated from yourself in order to love the ones you need the most. i know that the more time goes on and the more time i have i will connect to that skylana again... but for now it is a balancing act and a beautiful dance where the life of my childhood, the young woman i was and the strong woman i become more of every day are being woven together over and over in unique patterns to make a complicated and wonderful person.

i'm pretty hip

i am in so much pain i literally dont know what to do.

i feel so lame because i think its silly that i'm in so much pain just from being pregnant. i feel like it seems like i'm being so dramatic or something...

but seriously my hip hurts so bad that i'm limping/waddling. it looks real weird.
seth was just laughing at me while i walked back to our bed from going to the bathroom for the 50th time.

i've tried going to the chiropractor and it felt better for like a second... i had seth massage my hip/BOOTY and it worked ... for like a second also. i can't pick arabella up because it sends sharp pains through my back and hip.

and i can barely do stuff around the house cause just walking hurts so bad.

i feel helpless and there's nothing more i hate than feeling like i can't do everything myself.

i'm not a fan of relinquishing control.

and i had contractions again last night... then nothing.

i hate this part, im getting the feeling of 'i seriously cant do this anymore.... but there is absolutely nothing i can do about it.' so i guess somehow i can do it, because i have to.

a question i have to ask one LAST time.

thank God.

is this what i look like?

then why in the world do people think it is somewhat ok to say things to a pregnant woman like

you look like you are about to pop... (do they realize that what you are actually saying is that another human being has gotten so big somewhere that they look like they will actually EXPLODE???- i mean look up the definition of 'pop' and then tell me its ok to tell any human they look like they might do that)

or some of my other favs...

wow, are there two in there?

big baby huh?

you've gotten so big since the last time i saw you!

you look so...... pregnant!


etc.

now. i would just like to say that i DO NOT understand, nor do i think i EVER will how these statements are seen as completely unquestionable and considered normal nice things to say. i can see how they would be statements that are maybe ok, but are still risks... i would assume anyone saying them would have the common sense to know this.

i am OBVIOUSLY wrong.

please, someone explain to me, why it has somehow become so acceptable to tell a person who already feels tired, huge, probably in pain, maybe has acid reflux, swollen feet and hands, and crazy emotions among a lot of other 'pregnancy symptoms' some women have... that they look big. WE KNOW. anyone gaining 20-30-60 sometimes even 70 pounds in 6-9 months KNOWS they look bigger and no one needs to tell them that. ever. if you want to say something about someone being pregnant try something OBVIOUSLY nice that you would never doubt is going to come off like they're just huge... for example (in case you that have said the previous really dont know what to say)

you look beautiful, when are you due?

a baby? how wonderful!

how have you been feeling? well... you look great.

there is no reason why their size ever has to be involved.

i mean not only would talking about how big someones gotten be questionable when they're in a normal state of mind, but especially when you're hormones are a little out of whack and you're probably more tired than ever...


i understand when guys say this stuff, because well... they're guys. its a little harder to understand them saying this stuff if their wife has been pregnant.... but the MOST confusing one for me to understand is women who have been pregnant before...

what the hell?

i really dont get it. i would NEVER EVER talk to a pregnant woman about how she's gotten bigger... first of all i would think it might not come off nice and secondly even if she didn't care, it just doesn't seem necessary or appropriate. people have said they're just talking about how big the baby's gotten, but come on.. pregnant women get bigger everywhere and we notice it more than anyone else, most the time when we think about how we've gotten bigger its not about our belly, we knew that would get bigger.... and i feel like the people who would understand that the most would be women who have been pregnant before.... but they say it to me the most.

whats the deal?


so. if you say these things knowing you're making a pregnant woman feel fat, you must be the worst kind of person there is... and if you're saying them not knowing, i'm telling you now, STOP. we dont like it. i've heard ONE person say they didn't care and every single other woman i've talked to who has been pregnant has said they hate these statements too...but just put up with them cause... i dont know, they dont rave on a blog like me i guess....

i think people tend to think they can say this kind of stuff to me a lot because i'm skinny? thats the only thing i can think of, like because i'm skinny i dont feel huge when i gain 30 pounds in six months. news flash.... I DO. so dont think that just because someone is normally skinny and may look super skinny to you while they're pregnant, feels that way... odds are they feel huge still, or at least uncomfortable in their skin at the moment.

i'm pretty sure other people might even feel more annoyed when hearing these statements while being pregnant because i'm the type of person who normally doesn't care what people say to me, unless you're my family or best friends... i never care what strangers say or think, and with this i care, it chaps my ass i mean honestly it makes me just want to stay home til i have her... so i can't imagine what a person who cares what other people think of them would feel or especially someone who's insecure. one statement probably isn't a big deal, but the thing is, you're not the only one saying it and sometimes its all i hear all day long... so at the end of the day, i just feel huge and ugly. nice.

ok. got it all out. luckily by thanksgiving i will FOR SURE be free of ever having to come up with responses to these annoying comments again!!! whoooo hoo!

but for the sake of all the other preggies out there... please, just think before you speak.

living on the edge.

i've been living on the edge this week. i am so pregnant. and SO over it. i've been unreasonably emotional and in so much pain... my hips are just aching, and it seriously feels like someone knocked my vagina out... if that makes any sense. then i had two nights of contractions, the second night was so painful i was CONVINCED i was in labor, i mean breathing through them and about to call my midwife when all of sudden ... THEY STOPPED. not cool. then the next morning both days my uterus was like insanely sensitive to the touch (like when arabella came in and climbed on top of me) like i had worked out all day the day before, but with my uterus, which i guess kind of had. both night the contractions were 2-3 minutes apart... the first night they lasted for 8 hours and the second night for four. weird. i'm officially NOT patient AT ALL. i want her to come, and NOW.

anyway in all of my crazy emotionalness, and being unreasonable and tired and lazy and a little sad seth has been ridiculously sweet and amazing. just doing whatever he can to help me feel ok. making me food, bringing me things i need when we're in bed, coming home to help me with arabella.... i couldn't even live without him.

pumpkin patch

what a good big sister in training...







and she was obsessed with this singing/dancing skeleton... of course.


and this isn't from the 'patch' but lately all she wants to do is play with her princesses... i LOVE it, she makes them walk around while she just talks to herself...

potty training update...

i totally jinxed myself.

my dream come true.

princess araBELLa.

so here's the story....

she got princess figurines for her birthday last year from auntie corinne...

and the first time she started getting into them was in july....



and this is how she quickly decided that belle was her most favorite princess....
i'm pretty sure its because she's wearing a yellow dress and she has brown hair. arabella's favorite colors....

she always has belle in the car and in her stroller.

she also likes to hang out with cinderella but not too much.

so we went to get her a costume today and she had to choose between princesses, doggies, lions, elmo (scary) but luckily that one had a hood so she was easily talked out of it, a snow queen (which she LOVED but it was waaaay too big), witches and fairies...

she wanted a princess dress.

she couldn't decide between cinderella and belle, then all of a sudden 'blue dress! blue dress!' and i said 'are you SURE, cause i know belle is your favorite... are you sure you want cinderella?' and she was like 'yea!!! no belle dress.'... so stupidly i listened to her.

mother always knows best.

we got home, put on cinderella's dress and within 2 minutes she wanted it 'off! ooooooooffff! no like cinwella! ... belle dwess! belle dwess?'

i went back and got the belle dress instead and she has been wearing it for the past half hour and has no intention of taking it off.... she's just wearing it playing with her belle and cinderella figurines talking to herself.

the cutest part is that my favorite princess is cinderella and seth's is belle! how did she know?

she must be perfect.

make me cry.

our friends gabe and laura came over last night and brought me these. they are cloth diapers, that laura made. i seriously almost shed a tear when she gave them to me.... they are so cute and so nice and sooo tiny! the tiniest cloth diapers i've ever seen, which is awesome because as soon as that meconium is out i can use them while she's little... no offense to anyone who has ever given me a gift, but these are definitely the BEST gift i have ever gotten. it means so much to me that she spent all that time sewing them for little nola, and they're adorable and i needed them. perfect. thank you so much laura!


also... on the pregnancy front... i really really started to think i was going to go into labor last night, at first i didn't want to get my hopes up but... i had contractions that were 3 mins apart for 8 hours! and some of them were really painful.. and then, they just stopped. bummer. i walked on the treadmill for 30 minutes this morning... nothin. well if i have her soon i'm hoping it will be this week or weekend... if not then i'd rather not have her til november.. just cause next monday we're supposed to go see death cab for cutie and then wed is seth's ex's bday, haha.. not pam.. i wouldn't mind her being born on pam's birthday... then the 30th is my aunts bday, which i wouldn't mind either, but my first choice would be if she had her own birthday that wasn't shared with anyone in the fam... and then friday is Halloween, which seth and i both kinda hate. so.... yea and then its november. its so crazy that my due date is just a week and a half away... election day baby would be super sweet too.... we'll see. i feel very ready to have her out though.... very ready, especially after last night.

swiss bliss

seth's friends from switzerland came over last night... they were cool, sweet, brought us chocolate and had no crazy reaction when they asked where we were having nola and our response was 'here'. ... they thought it was totally normal... which is a nice change in reaction. you can be sure that they were awesome by the evidence left behind... i dont know what happened on gossip girl last night because i skipped it to hang out with them and didn't even realize i was missing it! something i dont skip for my best friends.

there were many things that are wonderful about switzerland that we talked about, but the thing that stuck out the most was that evidently toilets dont clog there. ever.

our toilet clogs oh.. ALL the time. its worse than a normal toilet because the bottom is shaped like a rectangle kind of, super weird.... anyway it got clogged when they were here and they didn't know what to do. they didn't even remember what a plunger was called... and we asked if they had plungers and they couldn't remember every having one or using one. they said the toilet has gotten clogged but it was so long ago they couldn't remember it or what they did about it.. 'just left it and came back later and flushed it down?' they guessed.... awesome. also they loved the gummi bears too and we all watched the theme song together in english then in german.

in other news....

*ara got elmo chonies and has been potty training the past few days and is doing really well at it. i hope i'm not jinxing myself right now. i asked her a thousand times at target if she was sure she wanted elmo instead of princess chones. she was sure.

*my cervix is super soft and slightly open... perfectly ready for labor.

*my friend erin had her baby last night and i'm inspired.

*i got a cheap wet to dry flat iron and it works surprisingly well, so expect me to look nice the next time you see me.

*ara has a new trick called 'spiritual'... a video will come soon.

*i cut a girl's hair from meg's sewing class and she told me, which seriously happens any time i cut someones hair, that i did it so much better than the professional she's been going to. maybe i really should have finished school.

all in all life is good, i feel good... i feel ready for nola to come, but not impatient and i realized yesterday that my due date is literally two weeks away, nar nar binks. i kept thinking it was 6 weeks away... so that's cool.

and i didn't have my camera....

we just walked down to the 'park' (if you can really call it that, since it consists of two slides and some stairs and platforms. that's it) anyway, the park across from our house and i just can't even handle how cute my little family is together.... seth gets so into playing with arabella i love it, he runs up the slide to surprise her and climbs up on the platforms and she just laughs and laughs and then right when she goes down the slide he'll jump down to greet her at the bottom... i think he's so cool and such a fun papa.. but i can't even imagine how cool arabella thinks he is. its so amazing that she gets to have such a super cool dad that will be silly with her, play on the playground with her, catch her when she comes down the slide and make her feel safe... seth has always had the 'kid' quality in him.. where he can be funny and silly and play and do things a kid would do, and is able to think like a child would. that characteristic can sometimes make other things in life harder but i'm so thankful that he has it, because its so much fun and i can see how amazing it is for arabella. he's the best father there ever was or ever will be, i'm beyond thankful that my sweet little girl gets to have him and that nola will too.

lets keep the sabbath holy, could we please?

so we have this problem in our apartments....

there is some couple, or some lady who has guys come over... who is obscenely loud when having sex and for some reason can't get up and shut the freaking window before they start. they have woken me up about 3 times in the past few months and i dont know about all you, but hearing other people have sex is almost the worst thing i could hear, right after someone being killed and someone puking... especially when i'm woken up out of dead sleep to 'enjoy' it. i always go to ara's room to make sure she can't hear it in her room and turn on my fan so i can't hear it.. but really, does sex have to be sooooooo crazy that you are loud enough for someone to hear you through closed windows?!!? erin, our friendbor, says they have the same issue on their side of the building... and we can't figure out if its just the one couple or if somehow we are just surrounded by super loud sexers. either way every time its happened i have to use all restraint inside me to not yell as loud as i can out the window 'shut the fuck up' ... pun intended.

so to all my lovely readers, if any of you happen to have loud sex, thats wonderful, i'm a big fan... just make sure you're closing your windows first....

maybe its one of you tormenting me!

tiny blogger

this isn't a real blog, but i have to tell this story...

this morning i was on the phone with seth and ara looked at me pulled on her finger and said 'finger, off!... off, off!' i said 'uh, you want your finger off?'

'yeaaaa!' and she proceeded to try and pull each finger off, really hard....

what did i do yesterday?

cleaned the whole house.
cleaned out our closet.
did an ass load of dishes.
and did... wait for it..... 12 loads of laundry! what the hell?
i know, its because we just had a lot of dirty clothes, but also i washed all of our bedding and then i spilled curry on my bedding and had to wash it again. awesome. i was so sick of pulling apart dirty socks yesterday i almost raved about it on here, but i didn't, so i'll say it today....

my husband is the BEST, seriously the best... so that's why i continue to put up with this ridiculous little habit.. but... its still super awesome when you're doing 12 loads of laundy. see seth does this thing, and really its kinda funny, because its not just that he doesn't straighten out his socks when he takes them off and puts them in the hamper, that would be annoying yes, but normal still... no, he takes his off straightens them out and then REFOLDS them! like into crumpled balls... so when i do laundry i just have to undo a bunch of super dirty crumpled balls of socks, its sick. we've talked about it and he seriously doesn't even know he's doing it (which sounds like an excuse, but i know its true, i watched him one time and then said 'did you know you just did that?'... nope... besides who would WANT to spend that much time touching their dirty socks?) at first i thought he'd be able to stop, but now i see this is an unconscious addiction that cannot be changed. i have come to grips with that.... because i know i will probably never have to do it as many times as i had to yesterday.


side note: i forgot to say the other day when i bought ara her new clothes that while we were in the store i was looking at something and my cart was a few feet away from me, kind of in the aisle, but still with enough room to pass... a lady walked past it and turned to the side to get through and ara looked at her and was like 'oh, sowwy'. the lady just started laughing and so did i. how polite my lil lady is.

smart girl...

well at least because papa has taught her well.

full term.

37 weeks... nar nar binks.
and now onto the cute stuff...

so i got arabella some new clothes, finally, the last time i bought her clothes was when i posted about old navy stuff and she's just still been wearing stuff from her baby shower! poor hunny... anyway this is one of her new outfits..

(she insisted that 'princess' be in the pictures with her)



princess just said something really funny in that one..



i did manage to persuade her to be in a couple sans princess...



and then later i found this....



evidently baby poopie has found a new mother figure in princess.

face.

this weekend my grandma came into town and last night she came over for dinner, we had curry and pumpkin pie.. mmmm.. with homemade whipped cream too....it was HILARIOUS to watch her talk about how she plans out her finances every month, because LITERALLY i do the exact same thing, the exact same way! and its not like anyone taught me to do it, it must be genetic... and to see how excited she got about the organization of it, i could feel it, cause i get that excited too. she has all these systems to what she does, and i didn't know that, but when she was talking about it last night seth and i were just like 'woa, that's where skylana came from'. she is so precious, i'd love to be like her when i'm old... only super glam. her and arabella are the cutest too, she sings all the old nursery rymes and stuff to her and she loves it, except when my grandma sang humpty dumpty and said 'humpty dumpty had a great fall..' ara yelled 'OHHH NOO!'.. then we were outside and my grandma was talking about teaching her all those little songs and she said 'grandma's gotta be good for something right?' and ara just shook her head and was like 'no.' haha... but whenever we've seen her ara just sings about her all the next day 'mama gamma, mamamamaaaa gammma!' (saying mama's grandma, so i know who she's talking about) ... and my grandma was like 'grandma's gotta be good for something right?' and ara just shook her head and was like 'no.'

anyway my grandma is seriously the cutest thing you ever saw, she's 4'8" and she sounds like piglet when she talks... i'll have to post a picture of her sometime...


so today...

seth did some work for a local spa called 'san luis obiSPA' (which if you know my husband, you know that is like his favorite name for a spa... oh man) and they offered me a free facial...

i went this morning.

it was seriously, AMAZING.
i think you moms out there will know what i'm talking about when i say i can't even remember the last time i got touched when it wasn't sexual or romantic and it wasn't by tiny grubby hands... not that i dont love those touches too... . ha... this probably sounds real bad, but oh well... i'm sure there are some ladies out there who know what i mean.

anyway, it was just indescribable to get my hands and feet and scalp massaged, and she even threw in some free Microdermabrasion, which was awesome.

and the best part, they do tons of crazy stuff there, like whole body exfoliation and wraps... and she said to talk to my husband about settin up some more trades for whatever i wanted cause she needs website stuff done.... hopefully this will work in my favor. i could really use a 'never going to be pregnant again celebration body wrap' after nola arrives...

i know, second today... but...

some things are too good to pass up.

i'll save the best for last.

so first off here are some pictures of ara at seth's show, we didn't stay til he played, but ara didn't care cause all she wanted was to see jake...







and to play with hot dog....








this is her new friend 'scawecwow'. he lives on our neighbors porch.
she asked me to take a picture of her with him, and in the last one she's doing what we like to call 'the look' which another new thing... she does 'the look' and 'punk face' i'll upload videos at the end of this....





ok before the videos this is my favorite thing EVER. our friend jeremy wells gave her this barbie head, which is something i always wanted when i was little. its super hilarious cause, well i mean i think you can see how hilarious she is... but arabella LOVES her, its pretty much the best thing anyone could give her ... she named her 'princess' and she had seth hug and kiss her when he left for work this morning. i'm not sure if she's a bratz head or barbie head, either way she's pretty sexy...




and it looks like she's gonna fit in here.


punk face.


this is 'the look', she does it really fast at the beginning ....


and this is her trying to combine 'the look' and 'creepy walk'. it was too outrageous.

so classy

i dont know how easy it is to see on here, but this dress is navy blue. and THE cutest dress i have ever seen for a little muffin. i want to get this for ara to wear for christmas SO bad... but i just still can't bring myself to spend $30 on a dress that tiny. i can buy dresses for ME that are $30... and i'm waaay bigger. lame. i told seth about this dress and then yesterday i went and showed him and he's in love with it too. he was like 'woa, that's way cuter than i even imagined'