On being lame...

There are so many things I LOVE about being a teacher. It really is the best job in the world and the only thing I want to do, except for maybe be a mama... and I'll get to try that very soon, too. BUT, the one thing that makes me sad about being a teacher is how absolutely spent I am on Friday nights. Granted, I'm also growing a close-to-4-pound baby, but this really hasn't changed much about my Friday nights. Typically, I can't stay up past 10:15 or so. I just cannot do it. I try. I really do. And it especially makes me sad when Friday nights are my only quality time with my favorite man on the planet.

Here's how my most recent Friday night went:

-Get home around 6. Get ready to go on a hot date.

-Go to Moonshine with Tyler and wait for 45 minutes for a table on the enchanting patio. The weather was beautiful. I enjoyed a water with lemon, Tyler a beer, and we split a corn dog shrimp with blueberry mustard appetizer. (mouth watering and delicious, I promise!!)

-Enjoy delicious dinner and fun, heart stirring conversation with hubby.

-Ice cream run to Randall's.

-Ice cream and catching up on shows from the week on our couch.

-Lauren's out by 10pm. Even though I fought hard against it. Our evening of quality time down the drain.

Well, it was a great evening up until that point. :)

In other news... I'm currently 32 weeks preggo. That's 8 months. Just 8 weeks left. I really need to buckle down on getting this little lady's room ready. Here's what is currently on my to-do list. (If you've been reading this blog, you may notice that this list has not changed much. )

-Order crib bedding

-Make mobile

- Get cute drawers knobs from Hobby Lobby

-Wash Elle's clothes in baby friendly detergent

-Move baby things that we borrowed from storage to our apartment.

-Find a place for these things

-Make these cute wall hangings. Aren't they great?!

-Find a fun colorful fan like this.

-Take before and after pictures for the Bee's baby book.

I currently have accomplished:

-Order glider

-Paint dresser and changing table/bedside table (double function!) for Elle

-Borrow a really great antique bassinet

-Decide on crib bedding

-Organizing a crafting party so that I can gain motivation and inspiration from my crafty friends to get this finished :)

Alright! Who's ready to get busy!?

I feel a little weird...

...being this excited about something that catches poo.

But I AM! That's right friends, we are cloth diapering. For multiple reasons. I'll lay them out for you:

1. It saves LOTS of money. Even calculating the cost of water and electricity you use for all the extra cycles of wash, I calculated (using this fancy shmancy cloth diaper money saver calculator app. I did not do the math... ) that we would save upwards of $700 over the course of sweet little Elle's diapered life.

2. It's not that difficult! I've done my fair share of research and have talked to lots of close friends that do this and, sure, it will take a little extra effort to do a load of laundry. But our laundry doing is going to be up by like 200% anyway... why not throw in a load or two of diapers every week?

3. Did you even SEE how cute that diaper is?

4. In some small way we're lessening our carbon footprint on our world. We do live in Austin, after all.

This weekend has been full of things for Elle. The most exciting of which included a cloth diaper shower thrown by the wonderful Anneke Swanson. The girls in my missional community came together, bought Ellerbe Anne some much needed poo catchers and accessories (thanks ladies!), prayed over us, and made lots of cute onesies. It was so much fun. I'm really blessed to be a part of such a wonderful community that is learning to love one another as Jesus called us to.

The second most exciting thing was our birthing class. Tyler and I sat and attentively (most of the time) listened to all the wonderful and gory details of labor and delivery. There were multiple times that both or one of us were crying. Out of sheer joyful anticipation for that day. Oh, friends, we cannot wait! We're so excited to meet this little river dancer. It's going to be a wonderful, wonderful day. I'm not nervous about the whole "giving birth" part, just yet. I know it won't be comfortable, although I'm hoping to have something to help with that, Lord willing. But it's one of the most hopeful kinds of pain I'll ever experience. No matter how ridiculous everything gets, there will be a sweet little crying, pooping, love nugget at the end of it all. I kind of feel like I can handle anything if that's the end result. Maybe I'm being overly optimistic, but those are my current sentiments on the subject.

The THIRD most exciting part was having dinner with the Dansby's. They have 2 sweet kids (Noah and Annalise) and they are loaning Elle LOTS of really cute baby clothes. I mean, my child is going to be VERY well outfitted. Here's one of the cute little numbers that we inherited for a few months from Annalise:

You'll just have to excuse the awful lighting. But you can clearly tell that it's capital A-Adorable.

Pretty cool that God is providing in such practical ways for our little family.

Also... today I'm 31 weeks. That's a big deal. Because that means that in only 9 weeks we could be meeting our baby girl. Those are single digit weeks, friends. My mind's reeling a little bit.

Here's the 31 week belly:

Wow, it looks a lot bigger on that picture than I feel like it looks in real life??

One day, I'll take one with my REAL camera and put it on here... but for now, computer pictures are just a lot easier. and also, maybe one day I'll write about something other than Elle, but right now I don't think about much else. :)

Happy Sunday!