From the depths of sleep deprivation...

Bethany wanted us to say Happy New Year. She's awfully excited to see all of 2010. We're hoping she'll sleep through at least some of it. She'll be a month old in four days - CRAZY.

The Brownie Cometh.

Bethany Emerson Brown arrived Sunday, December 6, 2009

at 9:29 a.m.

She weighed 8 pounds, 13 ounces, and was 20 inches long.

She is fabulous, and we adore her.

You probably don't want to read her birth story, but I'm going to work on it this week and post it. Let's just say things did not go according to plan, and leave it at that. Fortunately, everything turned out just fine.

People have been wondering about her name. We just like Bethany, plus it's not super common. My grandmother's (the Motherina's mother's) maiden name was Emerson. (Very tricky - but her first name was Mildred, and I just wasn't going there. No offense to any Mildreds who may be reading this.) Anyway, the Emerson honors her and my great-aunt Martha who filled in as my grandmother after mine passed away when I was a baby.

Isn't she great?

Things that make pregnant girls happy.

Yeah, so if you haven't had these yet, you're missing out. If you live somewhere without access to them, I'm really sorry. REALLY sorry.

Brownie is cooking away, and showing no indication of vacating the premises. Procrastination is apparently a hardcore genetic trait.

Back in September...

My good friend Lauren (who is already Auntie Lala to precious little James, and will be Auntie Lala to the Brownie as well) came into Atlanta for a little reunion weekend before, you know, our lives change forever. That's us in the top photo. She was able to arrive in time to attend a fabulous shower thrown at the MonkeyBean Mansion. Having friends who are photographers is very helpful, and Melissa ROCKS for taking these amazing pictures, even though it meant she didn't show up in any of them. BOO! I'll let them speak for themselves, with just a little captioning for fun.

Here you see Kinsley, with her extremely awesome cupcake, and also the tissue pompoms that Melissa & Julie made - three of them are going to be installed today (!) in the baby's room.

And here are Julie & Natalie working hard on making little bibs for the Brownie. You can almost tell that Natalie is pregnant in this picture, but now she's not! (Baby Avery arrived on the 18th - yay!)

A little depressing French music for your morning...

Music Playlist at MixPod.com

Soon and very soon...

...bunches of things will be checked off the non-baby-related to do list. They all swirled around this week (ugh), so after I present at the National Council for the Social Studies conference tomorrow morning (and you KNOW folks are just lining up to see a 9AM presentation on a Saturday), the work that's left can largely be called "fun."

Until then...

Because Amy asked so nicely...

Here is the most recent decent picture of the Brownie. We've had one more since this one, but even the midwife who "took" it said that it looked more like a Halloween decoration than a baby. Turns out this 3-D technology isn't perfected, and if some other body part is in front of the face, you get a spooky image. This one is actually from September - sorry.

At this point, the Brownie was head up (boo!), but now s/he has complied with modern medical practice, and is head down, so that's one less reason to end up with a very unwanted c-section (yay!). At the last appointment, I also got to watch him/her doing practice breathing, which is pretty cool to see.

We have had several lovely showers, and people have been very generous, so we feel like we're in good shape for the Brownie's arrival in about a month. I managed to forget the camera at every single one of the showers, so I am at the mercy of others to have the time to download photos and send them to me. I am being patient, since I still have photos from APRIL on my camera. Ugh.

I am aiming for massive progress in the Brownie's room this weekend - we moved a bunch of furniture out and did some rearranging on Halloween (in between giving uncostumed teenagers one piece of candy each - boo again!), so it's almost time for the decorating & organizing, which we all know is my favorite part, vastly preferable to actual cleaning. You might get lucky and get to see the results of that in photographic form, but it also might be March before that happens.

Happy Wednesday!

Assorted news.

To answer the questions of our adoring fans....

I am feeling fine. Not great, exactly, but fine. Way better than earlier in the summer when sleep was my sole activity. I am VERY fortunate to have work that allows me to sleep a little bit later, and work in bursts rather than sit in a cube and try to function. And, of course, it is MUCH easier than feeling this way with a roomful of seven year olds.

The Brownie will be a surprise, gender-wise. Everyone has varying opinions about what they think, some based on actual evidence (the overabundance of female cousins in our families) and some based on proximity (everyone else is having a girl so I am having a boy). It will be interested to see who is correct!

Name wise, things are up in the air. Because we both teach, a LOT of names are eliminated due to unfortunate connotations. Of course, I never intended to give my child a name with three capital letters and multiple apostrophes, but even those old standbys like Justin and Joshua bring back shudders. (All elementary teachers know that the J-names are never a good sign.) One friend of ours is calling the baby Oswald. I can also guarantee you that is not on the list.

I am so ready for it to be fall that it's not funny. I am saying this even though I do not have one single pair of maternity jeans that fits, so my jeans-and-sweater uniform is potentially going to have to be on sabbatical this year. We'll see what happens.

Happy Wednesday!

Hello, Internet.

(For the two of you who were worried, the mail lady battle continued, but I persevered. The mail box has now been relocated to the other side of the porch, and the "tree" is no longer Public Enemy #1. I just roll my eyes at the mail lady.)

Questions on Sunday afternoon:
1) Why do I get six or seven bug bites every time I am outside for longer than 10 minutes? Note that this is not pregnancy-related; it has happened for years.

2) Why did a bunch of yellow jackets decide to build their nest inside our bedroom window frame? Operation Yellow Jacket Removal is in progress, which means I have to sleep in the other bedroom. I do not like change.

3) Is the destruction of Yellow Jackets any indication of the result of the UGA/Tech game come Thanksgiving weekend? At that point I will be 9.5 months pregnant, so I doubt I will care.

4) Why is growling suddenly the preferred method of communication for my Sunday School class? I do not like having to say things like, "Speak, don't growl," repeatedly.

5) Why are vanilla malts not considered part of a balanced diet? There has to be a way to put vitamins in them, so that they are like broccoli, only yummy.

That is all for now.

Note to the mail "lady"

1) Delevry is not a word.  It is spelled d-e-l-i-v-e-r-y, which I would think you should know, given your line of work.

2) The "tree" in question is a hibiscus plant.  It's not currently blooming, so I'll give you an exemption for not being able to identify it from its leaves alone, but by no means does it look like a "tree."

3) It is not in your way. At all. And yes, I am going to cut it back, as requested by your stupid note, because otherwise you won't deliver my mail, and I'm not in the mood for that. But know that I am VERY underwhelmed with you.  Just as I was underwhelmed with you LAST summer for demanding that I trim this very same plant WHILE IT WAS BLOOMING.  You claimed the bees were going to "get you." Newsflash - bees will leave you alone if you leave them alone. I swear, I must not have taught your flailing around crazy self in second grade, because if I taught my students anything, it was to LEAVE BEES ALONE.  I digress.

4) You should be grateful that I am working on patience, because you almost got attacked by a crazy pregnant lady, had I not taken a deep breath and counted to 1293837423847438748.

The end.

Coming Soon:

December 1, 2009 (ish)

I am embarrased to admit I like anything that this closely resembles High School Musical.

Nonetheless, I do.

Watch it, and tell me I'm not crazy.

Then, stay tuned for real news later in the weekend.

So sometimes I don't blog for a month and half.

And it appears that the world continues to move on without me. WHO KNEW??

Regardless, absolutely none of you wanted to hear the "I hate my job" that has become my everyday for the last couple of months. Now that I see the light at the end of the tunnel, I can ignore the idiocy that I deal with every. single. day.

See last we talked, I have torn up our house with the goal of doing some massive rearranging. Then, I lost any desire to actually DO that rearranging, so now we just have a torn-up house. I'm thinking I'll overcome this soon - the question is HOW soon. We are going to give away a bunch of stuff. This has already begun, and I know it will make our lives easier. I'm even being harsh with the classroom stuff. I GAVE AWAY AN ENTIRE BOX OF CHILDREN'S BOOKS, PEOPLE!!! Some of you will have to pick yourselves up off the floor right now, so I'll wait.

******************************whistles to self**************************************

Now that we've all recovered, I will tell you about my new favorite thing: www.pearbudget.com. It is fantastic. We've always been good about living within our means, but aside from tracking things sporadically, I've never been super sure where all the money went. Now, I know, for sure, that we're only really blowing money in a couple of areas. (Namely, food.) This is much easier to use than Microsoft Money (what I used in college, when I really had to know where all the money was going - only back then, the categories were a bit different, but I digress). It also makes you input everything yourself, so you feel the burn. My BFF Dave would be proud. Further news: Lindsey has quoted Dave's radio show to me THREE times in the last week, which is pretty funny.

The farmers' market opened this week, but we weren't there, because we were here seeing a preview of Ken Burns's newest documentary on the National Parks. Oh my heavens - it is spectacularly gorgeous (of course), and tear-jerking! I think I cried three times. He's done an amazing job of making it almost an inclusive history of our country, too. Did you know that a Japanese immigrant was instrumental in getting support for the Great Smoky Mountains national park? I didn't! Very cool stuff - it'll be on PBS in September, and I know that I am the only one dorky enough to dedicate 12 hours of my life to it, so you don't have to lie and tell me you're going to watch it. That's okay. I'll just tell you about it. :)

And I know it's dreadful to post this much text without a picture, but I'm on the work computer (SHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!) and there are no pictures on here. I should give you some pretty waterfall to look at soon, but that might be July. Ha.

Oh yes.

Courtesy of my brother - a little Macon love for all of you. Though this does prove that Jack McBrayer is more than a bit older than I am, because gym uniforms were happily forgotten before I started high school. Kenneth is on tonight, of course, along with the rest of the 30Rock gang...

Merit pay has been the hot topic for those of the teacher ilk here lately - our state legislature just approved extra pay for people who teach *some* subjects - what a crock. Anyway, I loved what this blogger had to say about merit pay in general (quit rolling your eyes, Petey).

And because y'all know I have some mad Mr. Rogers love, and because I forgot to remind you about his birthday this year, I thought you should know that you too can own your own trolley:

I know. I want one, too.

All is right with the world...

The windows are open.
Our neighbor is babysitting his granddaughter - she's making mudpies.
The daffodils are blooming.
The snow in our front yard has finally melted.

Hard to believe that cute picture below was just less than a week ago!

Days like today always make me wish I was with my college roommates "studying" in Audubon Park in New Orleans - we'd take our books & a blanket & fall asleep within the hour - it was great.

Happy weekend...

Happy March!

It never snows in Georgia when it "should," and usually it doesn't even count, but this is fantastic. It started during church, and by the time I drove home, the houses, cars, and the park were covered.

It's like movie snow - you can actually see the great big flakes!!!

(I know I'm entertaining all of you who see this stuff as a nuisance - some of us still think it's pretty cool.)

Unfortunately - x 5.

Type the words "Unfortunately (your name)" in Google and see what you get.

In my case:
1) Unfortunately, Sarah took these and many other fascinating facts with her to her grave.
2) Unfortunately Sarah and Aldous have chosen the same place to take their vacation.
3) Unfortunately, Sarah's not telling the truth.
4) Unfortunately, Sarah is unprepared for her attraction to John Churchill, a handsome soldier of much merit and little fortune. (What is that - a latter-day Jane Austen novel?)
5) Unfortunately Sarah cannot understand the thick drawls of many Senators from Alabama, resulting in many unintentional misquotes.

Hysterical? I thought so, too.

{Many thanks to Jenny at Allsorts for the idea.}

Merci beaucoup.

Big, huge, gigantic, slobbery thanks to everyone who answered the poll. I owe each of you some additional individual thanks, but please know already you've been a big help.

In other news, if you have not yet seen last week's 30 Rock, I sincerely recommend that you hightail it over to Hulu and watch it. Then, report back. It is, without a doubt, hilarious.

That is all for now.

Poll.

If you were a big social studies geek, and you could study whatever you wanted during your six weeks at nerd camp, what would you want to study?

Note: Those of you who never comment, now would be a good time. *coughcoughPetercoughcoughBarrettcoughcough*

Hearts, hearts, hearts.

Valentine's Day was never my favorite. I had fun making valentines until about fourth grade, and then it was just a drag. It was never very exciting later, either. Now, I like the crafty aspects of it, but could still really care less about the holiday. Yesterday, I looked at a list of restaurants with prix fixe menus for Valentine's, and NOTHING. Nada. Zilch. Absolutely none of it looked good. Seriously - why stuff a perfectly good fillet with OYSTERS? Yucky.

The worst of the worst? Places that advertised a "rose for the lady" at every table. BLECCCCCHHH.
With all of that said, I had a blast making my cards for Sarah's swap, and stupidly forgot to take a picture of them. Things are going swimmingly for Lisa's swap package, as well, and that one should be on its way to her shortly. Here's the mantel, currently, waiting on this year's valentines to arrive and cover it even further in crafty goodness. I decided that the Christmas card holder could continue in service for an extra couple of months. Besides, the cute dress card that Sarah made last year covers up the Christmas star at the top. Aren't I tricky...
Props to Sarah for the bottle brush tree & button tree idea/direction - those used to be Christmas decorations, but I've decided to make them work year round.

Coming up for air...

I wish I could say that it's been fun, but it hasn't. When the highlights have included debating the finer points of state economics standards, you know it's been crazy.

One swap down, one to go, and I'm super excited to see what everyone has been making. In all fairness, making stuff has been more of a highlight than the econ discussion, so I should stop being an Eeyore.

I owe you a mantel picture, KK, but it will have to wait for a day when the clouds are not screaming "SNOW" like they are tonight.

Trying to devote some energy this week to figuring out where I'll be next school year - I'm entertaining all offers within a reasonable driving distance. Resume available upon request...

Happy Tuesday.

Wow.

This was the highlight of the day, for me. At first, I thought it was going to be this, but Reverend Lowery just did me in. I've sung that song many times, in many places, with all kinds of folks, but hearing him say those words on the steps of the Capitol - wow. It's just been that kind of day.

Shameless bragging.

Why does Lindsey look so excited? Because it's snowing, of course! We had some nice big flakes on Saturday evening - not enough to stick, or even to count, really, but it was (very briefly) exciting. It almost justified the arctic temperatures we've been having.


These were my anniversary gift last week. I know, he's great. And I shouldn't show off like this, but I'm going to, anyway. We celebrated with an oh-so-fancy dinner at Mi Barrio, which is (da-da-da-dum!) reopened after the Lopez family's holiday break to Mexico. Not a moment too soon, might I add.

We've been really working at cleaning up and cleaning out around here, which has made me pretty scarce on the blog. I've also been working on my two swaps for Valentine's Day. Once we get the cleaning done, I think I'll be more than ready for some heartish decorating.

Happy week!

Dull.

We have had a comfortably dull week. Sometimes it's nice when that happens, I think. Lindsey's off watching "the game" with some friends - OU fans for you, Lennye. The TV and I are going to have some quality time, especially because there's a new 30 Rock tonight. It's safe to say I'm obsessed. I used to tease Lindsey about having a huge crush on Tina Fey, but now he says I'm the one with the crush.

Whatever. She's hilarious. You can't fault a girl for that, now can you.

Happy Thursday!

Look who's come to live with me....

Yep, it's a new yo-yo maker. Only this time, it makes hearts. Tonight, I read the directions (only in English, not in the other three languages, I'm not crazy), and tomorrow I'll attempt one. I know you'll be waiting with bated breath.

It is POURING here, which we desperately need, but it's too warm for January, and now it's humid! We'll have enough of this in July, thank you very much, I don't know that we need it today. Hmpf.

Happy Monday...

January Mantel

January Mantel
Originally uploaded by sarahblascovich

For the mantel-loving folks out there, here is what it looks like today. Mid-month, it will probably go ahead & transition to Valentine's Day, just because I love red that much. It also means that I can put out last year's swap goodies, and add this year's to it as they arrive.

Fun things include: our photo by MonkeyBean; an altered bottle made by Dawn, coveted by me, and Christmas presented to me by the Motherina; bottle brush trees Monkey & I dyed last year; and the l-o-v-e-l-y soldered piece from Lennye.

The other side of the mantel is kind of dull, so I didn't even bother to take its picture. For excitement, I signed up for the Decorated Fireplace Mantels group at flickr. Since I'm the only one in the group who's posted a picture so far, we'll see how this goes. I just want to make sure I'm up on the hottest mantel trends (*snicker*). Speaking of flickr - I'm thinking of upgrading to the Pro account. Any thoughts on this? I mostly just want the ability to EASILY organize & label all of my pictures, somewhere other than our skittish hard drive.

Happy Sunday!

Resolution.

Resolution.
Originally uploaded by sarahblascovich

I will use more of this yarn this year. I mean it!! I decided to use the felted sweater bowl the Motherina bought me for Easter in the way in which it was intended, too.

In the bowl, you can see an unfinished dishtowel (navy), an unfinished scarf (speckled), unfinished knitting practice (green), & really pretty yarn that I know will be something fun - just nothing very large, since I only have that skein.

To help me make this resolution a reality, I've been trolling YouTube for knitting & crochet videos. The best I've found (so far) are from www.knitwitch.com; she's even a Georgia girl, so it's like supporting the local economy or something. It's interesting how many people attempt to hold the camera between their chin & shoulder while attempting to explain what they're doing - let me just tell you, this doesn't work. At all.

Happy weekend!

Ahem.

I would like to record for posterity's sake that we accomplished things today. Super fun things, like weeding through our mountains of books to give a bunch away - three boxes worth, in fact, and I haven't even touched the Everest-sized pile of school books.

We also ordered pizza and it was delivered. To our house. This is not something that can happen just anywhere - in fact, it's the first time I've been able to have pizza delivered directly to me since I lived in Macon. In 2004.

There are advantages to city living.

We spent New Year's here - it's a nice enough place, and much calmer than our hood on a major holiday, but as Lindsey pointed out, if you've grown up looking at woods, it's just not that exciting.

And if you aren't already a fan of Richard Peck's YA novels, I highly recommend them. I just read Fair Weather, which is superb, and definitely a whole mess better than all that crud full of fairies, wolves, & mist that the 10-15 set seems to enjoy reading these days. {For more fun, check out A Long Way from Chicago & A Year Down Yonder.}

Happy Friday!

Happy 2009!