So much for a Christmas Baby

We're still in a holding pattern, just waiting for the arrival of baby number two. In the meantime, we wanted to wish you all a very Merry Christmas.

In the meantime, Nola thoroughly enjoyed her last Christmas as an only child.

Aunt Jaimee and Ron Jeremy

So Jaimee's engaged.

Her beau, Beau, is back in Louisiana, and Jaimee just got a job selling pharmaceuticals throughout the Central Coast of California. Part of the long distance arrangement is visiting each other often. Upon returning from her last visit, for Thanksgiving, she sat next to a celebrity (of sorts), who was happy to walk out of the plane with her, and even asked for an eskimo kiss to remember her by.

Never fear, Beau, Jaimee declined, and she said all frisking was done exclusively by the TSA.

Oh Christmas Tree!

With our second baby's due date looming, we thought it wise to get the Christmas tree early this year. We returned to the cut-your-own-tree-place nearby, but that experience wasn't nearly as exciting as the fact that our tree just wouldn't stay up when we got it home.

Here, Nick and Nola hunt down the perfect tree

Looks like they found it!

Note: Nola's rock/dirt clod collection continues to grow with each outing.

Poor Nick, it took nearly three hours for him to maneuver this 10+foot tree into our little tree base (as Nola and I could only watch and offer him an occasional, "Good job, Daddy!")

After all that, it still managed to topple over during the night,
so Nick finally conceded and tethered the tree to the curtain rods on either side.

Good job, Daddy!

We've missed you, Blogspot

Unbelievably, we still have some unpacking to do. Most notably (well, with concern to our blogging frequency), we just unearthed this magical little cord that enables us to upload images onto our computer.

Hallelujah! Blog readers, prepare yourself for some serious catch up. That is, if mommy's third trimester energy levels permit...

In the meantime, we thought it best to share a little bit of our October with you all.

Nola picks her pumpkin at the Pumpkin Patch, as well as 1 of about 250 clumps of mud she dutifully collected along the way.

Bee at the Zee? No, Boo at the Zoo! Nola met up with her cousins in Santa Barbara for some trick-or-treating and awkward pictures with strangers dressed as fairy princesses. This was so much fun, thank you, Smiths!

Here, Kim and Taylor's crew poses with the fairy stranger. Although the picture is grainy, I thought it was cute to note that both girls are dressed up as ballerinas/princesses, which seemed to inspire the remaining days of the month for our little princess...

...whose biggest milestone, as of late, seems to be contributing a generous helping of slobber to any drink mommy has on hand.

Oh that, and hoarding lots and lots of dirt clods.

All Boxed Up and No Place to Go

We closed escrow two weeks ago, but have some minor home improvements going on at the new house (to be blogged about later), so we are in a funny kind of holding pattern. We were supposed to get over to the new house to start cleaning up and moving in, but the painters were still hard at work, so we decided it would be best to have a Nola photo shoot back at our current house.

Nonnie, who came down from Aunt Kim and Uncle Taylor's house, just to help with the move, took these pictures of our precious cargo. Thanks, Nonnie!

The Farm

We joined the Princes on their most recent trip to Underwood Family Farms, as Sarah and Tony take Wednesdays off to spend time with their twins, Fallon and Fletch. The farm in question is about 7 miles southeast of our new home (well, the home that will be ours THIS WEEKEND!) It's filled with all sorts of animals and activities for the kiddos. Our activity level is a bit below the twins, but I still got an action shot of Nola (thanks to Sarah reminding me to take pictures.)

In Escrow

Part of my nesting for the-very-recently-blogged-about-little-Akl has involved some serious stressing out over our 940 square foot slice of heaven. While pregnant with Nola, we house hunted, but decided that the three of us could fit into our cozy little home. Now that we are growing (well, I guess I've been doing most of that lately) we've decided it's time to broaden our square footage. Here's a street-side picture of our future house, and the reason we won't be doing anything crazy like eating out for the next several years.

I'm Going to be a Big Sister

We've been building it up for months now, so I hope some of it is sinking in... but Nola will have company in the little Akl department at some point in December. More pregnancy rants to follow.

I'm (Almost) One!

Nola's not yet one, but we decided to celebrate while we had most of Kristie's family in town. We had a great time, even though Nola slept through most of the day's events.

Rocky, the "DAH!"

Quick disclaimer: We do have a dog (or "Dah!" if you ask Nola). Yes, he's part pitbull, but he really is the greatest dog on earth. Even so, he's never, ever left alone with Nola.

I figure I had to get that out there for anybody who shares the same fear of the breed that I had (and still have). I wanted to honor our Rocky dog for just a moment, as he's a big part of our family and our daily life. Nola, Rocky and I are pretty much attached at the hip during the day, and Rocky has been wonderfully tolerant of Nola's frequent eye pokes, ear inspections, and attempts at an open-mouth kiss (he actually kind of looks forward to those).

I thought I'd take a moment to show off some of Rocky's extreme talents:

Rocky is very good at watching television. Here, he's catching up on the "Planet Earth" series, but his current favorite thing to watch is "Baby Einstein." Seriously. He's really into the puppets.

Upon returning from a walk, Rocky sometimes opts for alternative sources of water...

...that is, if I haven't discovered that his water bowl is empty... poor Rocky!

Rocky looks like he's telling the paparazzi to back off. I think he's yawning... well, that, or thinking about eating our child.

You didn't think that we could just put one picture of Nola in her fancy headband in here, did you? We all just love her, and "dah" does too!

No No, Nola

As Nola's horizons broaden, with crawling and cruising, she has been increasingly exposed to the words, "No No!" Just writing that makes me sad, as I would love to say that our house is completely baby friendly and 100% baby-proof, but it's not, hence the numerous "No No!"s. And even though, a few months ago, everything was "DaDa," and then everything was briefly "MaMa," everything nowadays is, you guessed it, "No No!"

What's nice is this is the first term that seems to have the actual concept attached... and what's even nicer is that Nola consistently outs herself when she's up to no good. For instance, you could be right in the kitchen, just out of sight, and if you hear a resilient, "No No!" coming from the other room, you know it's Nola up to no good.

We didn't have any specific pics of Nola's ne'er-do-welling, so we thought we'd share some of her silly antics instead. Man, she's so great... even when she's being bad.

Going to the Pool

Rather than enrolling in the summer session of swim classes, we decided to practice our skills at our little community pool (particularly the ones that our swim teacher gave us failing grades for -- which was pretty much everything swim-related other than floating).

Yes, we know that the floaty won't help improve our head-bobbing-underwater-skills, but we're just not sure that mommy's ready for that skill to practiced yet anyway.

Who needs head-bobbing-underwater-skills anyway, when you look so cool in your hat and shades?

Um, mom, I meant that I looked cool in my shades... you just look ridiculous.

Happy Memorial Day

These are some pictures from Nola's calendar shoot. They're not from the month of May, but I was feeling extra patriotic at the time of posting this entry, so I thought we'd jump a few months ahead and show off Nola's pictures from July.

Happy Memorial Day, Everyone!

May Flower

Nola's sweet little photo shoot for the month of May.

Sid, the Most Loyal Cat We Would Ever Know

Sid (pictured above), hanging outside the house, most likely waiting for his next meal.

We've been back from Louisiana for some time now, but life's been slower here without the daily guided tour of a swamp or near-safari, so I haven't found much home-life material to be blog-worthy, that is until our cat, Sid, disappeared.

To be honest, Sid disappeared before we even returned from Louisiana. We had been back for about a week, when Nick came back to the house from taking a walk with Nola one evening and saw the "biggest coyote" he had ever seen.

That night, we mourned Sid's inevitable loss. We knew that he had become part of a food chain that saw him on the winning-end of things most of the time. We got out his kitten pictures. We cried, and ultimately came to the conclusion that he had a great life, and will always be remembered as the most loyal cat we would ever know.

The next day, Rocky was batting at the door and whimpering. Nick checked to see what Rocky was so upset about, and lo and behold, Sid was sitting outside, just staring in at the house.

When he realized he had been spotted by us, he started to bail, so we had to entice him back with a special treat of tuna. He stayed long enough to eat, then left again.

Nick was very seriously convinced for about a week after that we had just encountered Sid's ghost. Turns out, it wasn't his ghost. It was all Sid. He just moved up the street to somebody else's house. His new owner came by just a few days ago and apologetically explained to Nick that they "didn't mean to take Sid, he just chose them."

Oh well. What are we going to do? I've had Sid as a pet for 13 years, and due to his temporary break from 3 cans of Fancy Feast a day, he decided he had to move out and find somebody else. I have yet to meet the new owners, but did stop by their house to bring some catnip toys, a hairbrush, and a box of Fancy Feast, just as a way to say, "No hard feelings." (Well, to say that to the humans, but to make Sid feel really bad about totally ditching us.)

Anyhow, the people weren't home, but I did see (I swear, no creepy voyeuristic peeping required to catch this, as you could see it through an open window right next to the front door), but they had a huge cat calendar on the fridge, and I realized that Sid, while loyal he may not be, is one smart cat.

Here's Sid with Jon Thomas (our other cat) when things were still going well. Apparently, according to our neighbors, he still visits Jon Thomas when we're not at home. Ouch.

It's the Humidity

Check out Nola's glorious curls! My hair gets frizzy down here, while Nola's gets stylish!

Global Wildlife

Another cool attraction near Nonnie and Papa's is Global Wildlife, a preserve with hundreds of various animals who really, really like corn. I'm sure that's not what their website boasts, but it was pretty awesome to head out on our own ATV and feed these fairly friendly beasts straight from our hands.

Allyson, with Rhys, Emma and Declan joined us along with Aunt Jaimee and Nonnie. Here we are in front of our ATV.

Jaimee is feeding Sally, the very stinky camel, while I mentally go to a much safer time and place -- before I ever let my nine month old near a camel.

While most of the animals were seemingly more exotic, there were cattle on the preserve, who liked to lob their ginormous tongues to one side to better allow entry of the corn.

Apparently, Food Inc. had very little impact on Nick, who readily contributed to the corn-fed beef.

Emma's checking out her food stocks, while Nick cozies up with a llama.

The giraffes bypassed the cup feedings and went straight to the bucket at our feet, just because they could.

Nola definitely dug this outing.