27-1/2 weeks (Almost 7 months!)

So today I finished "What to Expect When You're Expecting." I gotta tell you, the closer it got to the delivery, the more it felt like reading an thriller. This isn't necessarily because it's a sensational book with unexpected twists and turns; I just have an active imagination. The only parts I didn't read completely was Chapter 17: Fathers Are Expectant, Too (that's for the daddies) and Chapter 20: When There's a Problem. (It's way too unnerving to see all the things that can go wrong in a pregnancy.)

About a week ago, after finishing dinner, Emily was kicking exceptionally hard. Jared & I were impressed. "I bet we can see it, too," I thought out loud, then moved my shirt out of the way. Sure enough, we could see little jabs in the same spot every couple seconds or so. (She must have had the hiccups.) The movements looked even bigger when I put my water bottle on the top of my stomach.


27-1/2 weeks, and finally starting to show in the stomach as well as everywhere else!


So I went swimming today for only 15 minutes when the pool closed @ 11 am. Luckily the pool opened up in an hour, so I came back home and thought to myself, "What can I do in an hour?" There was a pair of Jared's jeans that got torn in the butt (ha ha!) that I never had to time to fix, so I got to work on them. Normally I wouldn't care, but they were Jared's favorite pair, and what I thought was expensive, and lately we've had to cinch our belts around here (hyuck). So I got my sewing machine out.

Jared had already ironed on a patch in the back. All I had to do was take off the back pocket, reinforce the patch around the perimeter, reinforce the hole so it didn't start ripping again, and sew the pocket back on. Jared was just as curious as me on how to work the sewing machine and in the whole sewing project. I only broke one needle (because I didn't have it screwed on tight enough), but then I found my heavy-duty sewing-machine needle and that worked. In the end it didn't look half bad. I even had the right color thread! I bet you can't even tell which cheek had the tear, huh?

It's this one!

This is getting me psyched up for my next project, one that's been in the making since high school: my jeans and T-shirt quilt. I have a decade of our jeans and T-shirts, cut up into squares and put away to be made into a patchwork quilt. I just didn't want to give away shirts that were too tacky to wear but that held a memory to me. I wonder if I should just start patching them together, or be too afraid to start a little bit longer?

I do have a lot of time on my hands ever since school ended, maybe I should just go for it...

Last of all, Monday we had Mike and Cami over, so I decided to make Tabby's recipe for chicken lettuce wraps from PF Chang's. I had a food processor and a bunch of other kitchen toys I'd gotten from a couple a long time ago, but I had never learned to use it. Since the chicken in the recipe had to be diced, I determined this was the day I was going to learn how to use the food processor. So with Jared's & Mike's help, we got it working. Although it took 1/2 an hour to figure out how it worked, chopping the ingredients took 1/2 a minute, so it was worth it. I'm going to have to double the recipe next time, though; it was so good!

Since then, I've learned (I think) how to work my manual chopper (another hand-me-down) and my hand blender (garage sale, $1). So helpful! The only kitchen toys left to learn are the two pasta makers I inherited. (I didn't realize I had two until we were unpacked, tee hee.)