Baby Belly

When I take Natalie to the bus stop, the two boys at the stop with her always run to their mothers as soon as they see the but to give them a hug. Natalie and I have followed their example and give each other a hug before she gets on the bus for school. Natalie's taken it an extra step and will also give my belly a hug and say "Bye Baby!" (She even counts out the baby when she sets plates and silverware at the table, silly girl. She still sets a place for Joseph too.) Owen has observed this ritual and now regularly comes up to me during the day to pat my tummy and say "Baby?" And I say "Yep, baby!"

and then he'll hug my belly.

(No, that's not a red balloon nor is it a big dodge ball... that is my ever expanding stomach that I'm looking forward to having return to it's regular size as soon as possible)

It's cute. He'll also on occasion pat his own round toddler tummy and proudly say "Baby!" Sorry buddy, there's no baby in you, but that's funny. Cute kids.

Last night we had an activity for the ladies at church, a little soup night sponsored by our ward Relief Society Presidency, of which I am a member (I'm the secretary). We made soup for the sisters. I made the curried sweet potato carrot ginger one again (in the big black pot, I made a lot...) and I also made the yellow soup next to that, which was a coconut lime soup that turned out sooo good.

I made it Tuesday to try it out, using this Chickpea Lime and Coconut Soup as my guide, and it wasn't that great. But I risked it and gave it a go again anyway and used a different coconut milk and added a lot more veggies and a bit more stock and lime and it looked so pretty and tasted great. It was a nice activity. It was a busy afternoon cooking and when it was time to go, I went over as is - like I had my hair up in a messy bun and was wearing the same red shirt from the day before. I was a little embarrassed with myself for not trying to step it up, but also know I just don't have a lot of "I'm trying to look pretty" in me right now. I'll try to start looking pretty again once this baby is out and I'm making progress getting my body back. I'm doing good exercising every day right now still and have been maintaining my weight, so going to just control the controllables as we finish this out. A good thing right now is that there's not a lot of room in my tummy for huge portion sizes, so that's helping me maintain. I'm getting my mental game on though and am ready to focus on losing this weight after the baby is born. Until then, I'm glad the holidays are here to help the time pass by quickly.