Now it's time for my well-thought-out and college-educated plan!

My baby can read! Or at least he can point out with astonishing accuracy the letters "o," "s," and sometimes "x" and "z" in a block of text. It works both by saying "Where is the 'o'?" and "What is this letter?" (pointing at the "o," and he will tell you what it is). I note with interest that all of those letters and only those letters look the same both uppercase and lowercase AND upside-down. Babycenter.com will tell you that kids don't even recognize text as distinct from pictures until they're two years old. Lies. Elliot likes to point to letters one by one and pretend to tell you what they are (in monosyllabic gibberish), or he'll point at them and ask, "'S'at?" ("What's that?")

But he also thinks that elephants, Elliots, and medicine all make an elephant sound (a squeal accompanied by a raised arm for a trunk).

I'm just shy of 36 weeks pregnant. 37 weeks is considered full-term. 40 weeks is the official average length of a pregnancy. I take back what I said about this pregnancy being easier than the last. It probably would be if it wasn't for my inability to sleep at night and the unrelenting physical demands of a very busy toddler.   The tiredness of it all effects my mood and my ability to handle stress...the hormones probably help, too. Thank goodness I have a very understanding husband and supportive in-laws around to help out. Parenthood is totally not for the faint-hearted, and that's coming from someone with just one sweet, happy 17-month-old.

Thanks to our meddling, Fine Doodles has slowed down quite a lot. It's a good thing right now. The business is about to undergo some more changes, too. Over the next few weeks, Andy is going to be spending much more time and energy on marketing and getting the business to the next level - to debut after little girl is born and we're settled in California. I'm also taking some baby steps in the illustration direction, which is thrilling, but it's not going to amount to more than baby steps for a while. Pray for us, because I'm going to try to bring home pretty much all the bacon for the next several years. We're depending on our business endeavors to work out so that I can maintain my luxurious stay-at-home lifestyle. It is a pretty great luxury, actually. And hard work.

In other news, there are a lot of gnats in our room. A LOT. We keep the windows open almost all the time because it gets hot up here. I also work next to the window, and my lamp attracts a lot of bugs. The little guys can squeeze through the mesh screen. We set up one of those bright-lamp-over-a-bowl-of-soapy-water bug traps last night, and now we have a bowl full of soapy, dead gnat water in our room.

I love my little family.