The red wire or the yellow wire??

There was a very tense moment in the Lemmon household today. The events that led up to it are as follows:

For her birthday Ben bought Lily one of those riding toys you sit on and push yourself around with your feet, a Dora the Explorer thing with lots of songs. All the buttons for the songs worked for the first 3 days or so, and then they started petering out, and eventually the only thing that would happen when you pushed the buttons was a pathetic "mis am..." (the beginning of "mis amigos") or "beep b...". It was really starting to get on our nerves, so Ben completely opened it up, found all the little gears, found the one that was supposedly messing it up, and took it out so it would work again. And it did! For about 2 days. :( Sadness ensued.

Lily got a little tired of it, and didn't play with it for awhile, which was ok with us cuz it was seriously annoying. But today she got it out and kept trying all the buttons, hoping one of the songs would work. So Ben got out his screwdriver again, and as I'm washing my hands after changing Lily I hear, "Do I cut the red wire or the yellow wire?"

It totally reminded me of every movie/tv show I've ever seen where everyone stands anxiously around the sweating person trying to defuse the bomb but unsure which wire to cut. I wasn't sure if he was serious or not, but it turned out he was. "Either I'll guess right and it'll start working again, or I'll totally ruin it and it won't annoy us any more." He figured either way we win. :)

He cut the yellow wire, pushed the button, and TADA!! Success!! My husband is a genius! And he made his daughter very happy.

In other news, I've got pictures of the rag quilt I made for Lily. Here they are!

The front.

The back. The dark color is a brown, if you can't tell, not black.

Close-up of the ragginess. I just love how it turned out, and it really is soft and cuddly. Lily seems to like it too.

So right after I finished the blanket, Ben told me I should make another one for baby Michael (though we didn't know it was Michael at the time). But I said I needed a break from sewing so I wouldn't be annoyed with having to do all the cutting and sewing again so soon. But after we found out it was Michael we were expecting, I got all gung-ho again. So the very next day (the 14th, actually) we went to Walmart together and picked out fabric for a baby boy rag quilt for Michael. I'm really excited about it, and just today I got all the squares cut out so I can start sewing tomorrow. Well, maybe tomorrow. The house is getting kind of messy... we'll see what I actually end up doing. Anyway, here are all the squares of the fabric that I'm using.

 

Hopefully it'll be really cute. The three plain fabrics will be fore the back, and the 7 prints on the left will be on the front. I'm thinking now I maybe should have gotten more blue and another, maybe brighter, green, but the Walmart selection, although seriously cheaper which I appreciated, was pretty limited. I think it'll look pretty good once it's put together.

And finally, Lily is already 13 months and a week or so. Not that that is super exciting or anything, but it's just weird that it's going so fast. I've probably said this tons of times, but it just seems like she is growing so so fast. She wants to do everything by herself lately, and she is so opinionated! She gets very stubborn about what she will and won't eat, and she likes to make the decisions of what she is going to wear, and she'll even tell me when she wants to go outside and see the ducks (who live in the little creek behind our condo). Just lots of stuff like that, and it's constantly making me think, "Wow, she is so not a baby anymore."

Here's my latest favorite pictures. :)

She thought it was cool that I was letting her wear my hat, so she kept it on longer than she keeps on her own hats. I'm so glad she's not growing out of her dimples! I hope she ever does.

 
I love this!! She's constantly doing this, grabbing some sort of clothing or dish towel, wrapping it around her neck and then posing with her arm like that. She KNOWS she's so cute!

But this...
is my absolute favorite! She'd just taken off the hat, and I asked her to look at me and smile (which never works, but I keep trying), and she turned right toward me and made this face! What a goose!!! I completely adore this little girl.

We know what the gender is!

And we're not going to tell you! Ok, just kidding... it's a boy!! Ben and I were completely surprised, because we were both fairly certain it was a girl. So wrong, but that's ok. Now we have to start referring to him as a him instead of a her! Sorry buddy.

For the name, we've chosen Michael James. Michael is my dad's name, and James is Ben's dad's name. We really liked the idea of naming our first boy after our fathers. Our fathers seem to like the idea too. :)

Ben's really excited to have a baby that'll look like him. Now we just have to figure out how to paint the room Michael and Lily will share so neither one of them get a gender complex.

Ultrasound pictures:

Profile. He was being really camera shy and it was hard to get any of his face - though he didn't mind showing off his boy parts the moment she put the ultrasound thingy on my belly!

Cute little foot!

He was measuring exactly 20 weeks, 2 days, only one day bigger than we were guessing from my last period date, so he's right where we expected, and my due date is still July 2nd. So far this pregnancy hasn't had any complications, unlike Lily's where I was going in for ultrasound every month or more often starting at 17 weeks. It's been nice though that this time around is so much more normal and stress-free.

We're having a boy!!! Can you believe it?? :)

I'm 20 weeks!

I'm 20 weeks, I'm 20 weeks, I'm 20 weeks!!!!!! I really didn't think I could wait until I was halfway, it seemed like it would take forever... and it did. But now I'm halfway!! And tomorrow Ben and I get to go to the ultrasound and find out for sure what the baby is! (Ben and I, but especially Ben, are fairly certain we already know what it is, but we'll tell you if we were right or not after tomorrow!) I'm so excited. I'm also excited because we are getting a babysitter for the afternoon/evening, and going to go on a date and celebrate Valentine's Day a day early. We're going to The Melting Pot, and all I can say about that is "Mmmmmm." I've been craving it forever. Yum yum yum. Sorry, pregnant cravings showing. Anyway, tomorrow should be a fantastic day!

In other news, a few weeks ago I came across this and decided that I wanted to make my own rag quilt for Lily. It took me a long time to actually go out and buy the fabric (and I spent way too much - next time I'm going to Walmart for the fabric), and then even longer to actually finish cutting and sewing everything together. But I finally finished just a couple of days ago, and I'm really proud of it! It's my first real sewing project since I was like, 8, and I basically did it all by myself (though Ben was very helpful when I was a little hesitant about making mistakes, and cutting all the seams into rags). I don't have a picture right now, only cuz I haven't taken a picture yet, but I will soon.

Cuz what's a blog without a picture of Lily? She's enjoying mac and cheese here. :)

My Little Fashionista

I just had to take some photos of Lily tonight and post them here. She cracks me up!

She brought me her underpants (they go with her pink dress) and wanted to put them on, even lifting up her foot so helpfully. She has such a distinct style, wouldn't you say? (And yup, that's my lip gloss in her hand. She loves to go through my purse.)

And actually, she's been wanting to wear these shoes all day lately, for the last couple of days, whether or not we're going anywhere. She also brings me her jacket to put on. These are worn over her jammies. I'm fairly positive you'll see these looks in Vogue next month. :)

New video of Lily

I know I never do videos anymore, but I just love this one of Lily and her Daddy reading a book together, so I finally asked Ben how to compress the videos we have so blogger will accept them. I think I'm gonna do a post soon that has a couple of my favorite videos from the past couple of months.

For your viewing pleasure: (I love how she likes to eat the apple like a big kid.)


(Disclaimer: Please ignore my squeaky voice. Thank you.)