I have decided that this last stretch of my pregnancy is only going to be filled with cuteness and happiness and giggles.  I’m talking fuzziness and baby giggles and cupcakes that look like Star Wars characters!  This pregnancy has been plagued by too many unsavory things and I feel like I have not taken enough time to just sit and think about how precious this experience of having another baby is going to be.

I have this memory of Jessie and I taking Lukas to the pediatrician when he was only a couple of months old and the pediatrician telling us, “you guys look like you are really enjoying having a baby.  I wish more parents would just stop and enjoy it while they have it.”  That is something that has stuck with me.  It goes by so fast.  It gets away from you and I don’t want to be left in a place where I look back on certain things and feel like I didn’t laugh enough at certain things or that I didn’t take time enough to hug my babies while they were still tiny.  The laundry can wait.  The floors can be a little yicky for a bit.  I’ve got to hold on to these moments before they slip away and I’m left watching my children drive away as they leave home for good.

So my resolve to make only cute has solidified.  I’m surrounded by kittens.  Lukas is at a point where pretty much every other thing he says cracks me up (kids seriously DO say the darndest things) and I have another baby coming in a matter of weeks.  My posts until the obligatory “Why This Delivery Experience Sucked as Bad as the First” post after the baby is born will be cute.  CUTE.  And happy.  Because you know what?  I’m feeling better.  Things are better.  And I need to share it.  CUTENESS.  HAPPINESS.  CHILL OUT AND LOOK AT MY CUTE KITTENS AND KID.

Miss Squirrely Girl is currently suffering from a minor eye infection, but she’ll be camera ready by my next post!

That was the kitten part.  Now for the cute kid part.  A video from when Lukas was just a baby.  My heart hurts when I watch this.  So much so that when I was cutting it up, I looked at Lukas and yelled, “When the hell did I give you permission to grow up so damned fast?”  He just giggled and told me he didn’t want to pee pee in his underwear, but I think I got my point across.

Baby Lulu from Somer Canon on Vimeo.

Last Sunday I woke up and decided that I wanted to adopt a kitten.  That day.  I don’t like not having a cat.  It just doesn’t feel like home unless there is a resident naughty kitty running around causing mayhem and doing an absurd amount of sleeping.  I went through the usual channels and made the appropriate contacts.  Then, out of curiosity, I went to Craigslist.  There are lots of foster homes looking to place kittens for free to a good home, but nothing really struck me (besides the post from the lady explaining that she required so much information from potential adoptive parents because she found out people were inquiring about kittens to be used as food for large reptiles…people are shitheads).  Then I saw a post titled “Squirrel needs a home!”  I thought to myself, if it’s an orphaned squirrel, it can come live in the backyard with that whole gang of naughty squirrels and be happy!   I clicked on the link and to my surprise saw a picture of a tabby kitten.  Apparently this little kitten was being fostered after having been found by a construction crew in a dumpster (again, people can be shitheads).  I inquired politely and the foster mom called me and told me about this kitten.  She obviously had great affection for the kitten and was very forthcoming about little problems the kitten had.  I told her I’d be happy to adopt the kitten and the foster mom asked for my address.  Again, that made me comfortable that this kitten had been loved…..the foster mom wanted to see my house and see where I live and make sure this kitten was going to go to a good place.

I’m keeping the name Squirrel (I call her Squirrely Girl).  The name was given to her because she has an abnormality at the base of her tail.  Instead of her tail sticking straight up when she’s happy or alert, it curls back on her back…like a squirrel’s tail.  And it’s freaking adorable.  She’s an insanely sweet kitten who is about 3 1/2 months old.  She’s very good about using the litter box and not clawing my furniture all to hell.  She’s got a beautiful soft face and is a total lover.  She loves to cuddle and make biscuits on me.  I’m smitten.

That’s my pretty girl.

This should be the end of my post.  This should be where things end.  It’s not.  Life has a funny way of throwing me crazy curveballs simply because I think life likes to make me laugh.

Last night we had thunderstorms.  It rained all night and was quite cold.  However, since I am a million weeks pregnant, I am running about 100 degrees hotter than usual and had all of my windows open.  Early this morning, I heard it.  Mewing.  Not meowing…mewing.  The mewing of a small kitten.  Since Squirrel was asleep next to me, I knew it wasn’t her.  I got out of bed and looked out of the open windows.  While I couldn’t see anything, I knew there was no mistaking that sound.

“Wake up Jessie,”  I said.  “There’s a kitten in the backyard.”

I know that the best thing to do for stray kittens is to take them in.  Get them fixed and socialized with humans.  We don’t need feral cats running this neighborhood alongside the evil squirrels.  So Jessie gets dressed and goes outside and I lay back down silently hoping that I was wrong about that noise and maybe it was a bird.  Five minutes later he comes into the bedroom with a towel folded in is arms.

“Oh no,” I said.  “Tell me you don’t have a kitten in there.”

“Nope, ” he replied.  “I have two.”

He unrolled the towel on the bed and two tiny kittens, no older than 4 weeks tumbled out.  They were wet and shivering and scared to death.  I wrapped them back up and cuddled them so they could be warm.

“I’ve got bad news,”  Jessie said.  “There’s one more out there, but it got away from me.”

After a while of him searching, he came up with another tiny kitten bundled up in his jacket.  Two tabbies and one flawlessly black kitten.  I could have died from the cuteness attacking me.

We called the Humane Society about surrendering the kittens and they referred us to another place because this place is the only place in the county that accepts “strays” (Why the hell are orphaned kittens classified as strays?  Kittens are in high demand!).  So Jessie called this place and talked to a very nice and knowledgeable person who informed him that the place is NOT a no-kill shelter and if we surrender kittens to them who are younger than 8 weeks old, they will be euthanized.  That made my decision fairly easy.  WELCOME HOME KITTENS.  I’m not condemning these innocent babies to death simply because times are tight.  I can find room for them, at least for now and then see about adopting them out when they are older.  (This is also a sign of the times, folks.  DONATE to your local animal shelters, Humane Society, or ASPCA…PLEASE).

Since I am at least a foster mom to these babies, I named them.  Mister Alert-Fuzzy-Face is named Beau.  He’s the naughty beast that had Jessie searching for almost an hour for him.  He’s also obviously the Alpha kitten.  He’s the bold one and the one that wants all the attention.  While the other two, named Romeo and Salem, have slept non-stop, he has climbed out of his bed and into my lap.  It has taken me forever to type up this post because I have Squirrel sleeping on my feet and Beau crawling around on my keyboard and he’s now asleep on my shoulder like a little parrot.

Jessie titled this picture, “I Haz New Home?”  He doesn’t intend to leave.

So in the course of one full week, I went from having no cats to having 4 kittens.  It’s a good thing I love cats.

For the past few weeks I have been stomping around my house with one of those little storm clouds over my head.  If it wasn’t a pregnancy related thing stressing me out, it was other stuff.  I needed a break from all of the ridiculousness and have a high dosage of crazy cute to get my smile back.  That high dosage came in the form of a (nearly) completed nursery for this new baby.

This nursery was quite a bit of work.  When we first bought this house last November, we knew that this room would need a complete and total redo.  It had a wallpaper border at the top (I HATE THOSE!!!) and an old and yucky carpet that looked and smelled like someone had been brutally murdered on it (and when we tore it up, the marks on the hardwood floor didn’t do much to convince us otherwise).

These before pictures were taken before we actually bought the house.  I wish I’d taken more detailed photos of that scary carpet.  Just to prove that it looked like someone was murdered on it and then the carpet was bleached to death.

Luckily the room looks completely different now.  The contrast from that dark and smelly room to the bright and cheery room that it is now is awesome.  It’s a happy room.

I LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE this Vintage Snoopy bed set.  I guess I could have re-used Lukas’ bed set.  I made sure that his was very unisex and it is still damned adorable, but I really wanted this baby to have something of his own and for Lukas’ bed set to always be JUST Lukas’.  These boys are going to have to share a LOT of things during their lives, and I see no harm in throwing in a unique thing here and there.  Sure, these bed sets will probably be donated when this baby has outgrown his, but I still just wanted this to be something that was unique to each of them.  I grew up with lots of hand-me-downs and I know how those few things that were all mine were so special.  I want my boys to have those few things as well.

Here is the changing table/chest of drawers that my Facebook followers talked about last night.  Jessie put it together and kept doing silly Jessie things that had my in stitches.  This is EXACTLY like Lukas’ and that is simply because it is an awesome piece of furniture.  After it is no longer a changing table, it can just be a dresser/chest of drawers until they move out and take it with them.

Now I’m really going to kill you with cute.  Who’s ready for itty bitty baby clothes?

Drawer full of tiny socks, tiny hats, and dozens of bibs.  I’m so glad that I didn’t have to re-buy a lot of these.

I get excited about holding my new baby in my arms when I am reminded how tiny he will be.  That’s a tiny sock!

I’m hoping that both of us will be out of the hospital and home by the time trick or treaters come around to my house.  I plan on sitting on my front porch with my little baby swaddled and wearing this as I hand out treat bags.

Before I started having kids, I remember my mother-in-law telling me that I needed LOTS of onesies.  She was right and I’m glad that I have lots here.

Teeny tiny shoesies, anyone?  Yes, they are shoesies!

Teeny Tiny bunny slipper!  Passed down from his big brother who was able to wear them for about the first week of his life before he outgrew them.

Teeny tiny sneaker also passed down from Lukas.  Lukas wore these ONCE.  The child was born with size 12 feet, I swear.

A closet stuffed full of clothes.  Most of them are hand-me-downs, but there are a few outfits in there that are just for the new baby.

For those of you perceptive enough to notice the wallpaper on the inside of the closet, yes, we are leaving the pink ribboned wallpaper up.  When this child is old enough to have a problem with the pink ribbons inside of his closet and complains about it, we figure he’ll also be old enough to help remove it.  I hate wallpaper so much.

ATTACK OF THE GIANT BELLY!

Aaaaand the weird belly button thing is back!

And to put a proper end to this cuteness post, I give you a picture of my beautiful first-born.  He thinks Momma’s bed is paradise and takes every opportunity to get snuggled in under that quilt that he and I both adore.