Wherever I lay down to sleep

Spike is awesome. In any given room of the house, he'll zero in on the comfiest place to nap. I think his first preference is in a sunbeam, because I've seen him lie on the hardwood floor just to get some sun. If that's not available, he'll find the softest, squishiest place to sleep - the couch, or if there is a pillow on the couch, on top of the pillow. He's also been known to sleep in a little nest of clothes at the bottom of TJ's closet. I guess the fleece sweatshirts were too much to resist.

We recently bought Peanut a new bed for our bedroom, because he had been repeatedly waking us up in the middle of the night to try and entice us to go downstairs and sleep with him in Dog Bed (the only bed he's allowed on in the house). Of course, TJ being the softie he is, actually gave in a few times, which encourages Peanut to do this often. But we thought the root cause of the issue might be that Peanut's current bed wasn't squishy enough, and in his old age (all of 7 years old) he might like a more cushiony bed. So we used our handy giftcard to Petsmart (gift from Mom and Dad - thanks guys!) to buy him a big new foam bed.



Turns out this bed is very popular these days. Spike decided to claim it for his own, even though it's about 4x his size. (It's sitting in front of the baby's crib, to give you an idea of how big this bed is.) TJ tries to get Spike to stay off it, but I don't really care, as long as Peanut sleeps in it at night. (Peanut doesn't typically nap in his bed during the day - he prefers to nap wherever he falls down, or in dark corners.) Also, I think Spike looks adorable sleeping in the upper left corner of this huge bed. He sprawls out on it like he's a king.

Peanut is nonconfrontational about sleeping space, so we do need to boot Spike off the bed when it's nighttime. But during the day, everyone seems to be happy with this shared arrangement. You gotta love beagles :)

Dancin days are here again

Another season of "So You Think You Can Dance" is upon us. And I am oddly compelled to watch it. Thank god for TiVo so I can fast forward through all the crying and Mary Murphy's heavily-botoxed screaming.

But it's perfect guilty pleasure TV, and it turns out I'm not alone in watching it - lots of my Facebook buddies do too, and amazingly, some of my geeky coworkers as well. Awesome.

The dancers are pretty amazing - I guess as the series does more seasons, more (and better) people try out. And I can sit on the couch with my round pregnant self, eating pie and watching other people exert themselves. Yippee.

So I'm somewhere around 6 months now and I think I finally *look* pregnant, not just like I'm hitting the donuts too hard. It's still not as bad as I thought it would be, but I'm also still not like "OMG! Miracle of Life!" BabyX and I have a peaceful coexistence, but someday I'd like my normal size feet back.

Thanks to the miracle of the Internet and sheer luck, I've got 30 Etsy orders pending. Which is scary and cool at the same time. So I'm gonna stop wasting time and work on them. Yay.

There is a season

Hey! I think it might actually be spring in Seattle. Or, god forbid, SUMMER?! We've had the a/c in the bedroom running for the past several days because it's 80 degrees plus in the house (and of course our bedroom *would* be on the top floor, with all that rising heat.)

So my friends Carl and Shannon had their triplet babies last week and all seems to be well with them. How exciting!

BabyX is doing fine. If all goes well, we won't get any more ultrasounds, so I just have to believe that something is going on in there. If it weren't for the increasing roundness and weird occasional pokes from the inside of my belly, I still mostly wouldn't realize I was pregnant. Very odd. But this is the best possible scenario for me given my previous lack of enthusiasm for *being pregnant*. (I'm still waiting for the day when Amazon Fresh can deliver one fully-baked BabyX.)

I had a meeting at work today with some of the technical architects that I work with on a regular basis, and told them I was going on leave in Sept. As usual, it was me in a meeting room full of guys, so I knew they wouldn't get all squealy and stuff (other women seem to get all squealy and excited when I tell them about BabyX). But they were very nice about it, and said they would miss me, and couldn't I postpone until December :D So that was cool. It's hard to believe that I'll only be working for about 3.5 more months before I go out on leave for 5 *whole months*. Seriously, I've never had five months off from work or school, since I was about 4 :)

Of course, it's probably not going to be all that much fun, or relaxing. Surely educational, though. And interesting.

But I digress. I finally washed some of the baby clothes I got - the hand me downs from friends and the one new outfit I bought, which was a very adorable dog-print onesie (100% cotton, of course).

And of course, as with all sexist baby clothing, the cute mutt dogs are printed on what's clearly meant to be "boy's" clothes, with their blue and brown accents. The "girl's" clothes are always pink with butterflies and flowers. So annoying. I love pink as much as the next gal, but don't little girls like dogs? If you find a dog at all, it's usually some snooty little poodle, or *maybe* a scottie dog. You never see cute bulldogs or Rottweilers on baby girl clothes. Grrr.

But that's why I love Etsy - there's a ton of cute onesies there, with dashchunds and all sorts of puppies. And geek sayings! So awesome.

My mom is coming this weekend and of course we'll do some baby clothes shopping, and on the list is the Hanna Andersson outlet - lots of bright primary colors and less of the "pink for her, blue for him" philosophy. At full price, it's really expensive stuff, but I'm hoping we can find some cute things at the outlet. Wish us luck!