Remember

Aunt Jo came down from Goldsboro this morning to go with me to my ultrasound appointment. She brought me some Valentine's goodies with her - homemade candied nuts, tic tacs and a Willow Tree person. It was the "Remember" Willow Tree and the tag said, "Always I will remember." It was really sweet and I'm glad to know other people are still thinking of and remembering Nolan too. She said she had the Willow Tree person for awhile now and was just waiting for the right time to give it to us. As we are approaching the birth of our 2nd son, we are also approaching the one year anniversary of Nolan's birth. If Nolan was still living, most people would refer to the two boys as "Irish twins." Although originally a derogatory term, "Irish twins" refer to siblings born within 12 months of each other. I have found the term used less and less as a derogatory term these days and actually more frequently used by parents to describe their own children. I personally never realized it's original connotations were ugly but apparently it was used to describe large Irish Catholic families who rejected birth control and didn't have the foresight to try to space their children apart appropriately.

The baby passed his BPP ultrasound test really quickly, but we did get some pictures of his face and he was not shy at all about showing us his junk. First thing the ultrasound tech said was, "well, he's definitely still a boy!" Yep, definitely no doubt about that. His heartbeat was 147 and he is now 34 weeks and 4 days! Everything is still looking good. Since my appointment was over in no time at all, Aunt Jo and I drove around the corner to Port City Java to grab a cup of coffee (decaf for me) and sit and chat. We probably stayed there for well over an hour just catching up. We then went to my Mom's office to pick her up and go have lunch. We went to our favorite eatery down at Monkey Junction - Rucker John's. Lunch was great as always and the company was much appreciated. These days it's nice to just be kept busy. It keeps me from being too much in my head. After lunch Aunt Jo and I stopped at Barnes & Nobles to see if they had a book she wanted to get for Uncle Brooks - American Sniper. She lucked out for they had only 1 copy left! It was the first time Aunt Jo had been to Mayfair to do any shopping and she really liked it, especially when she discovered how close it was to my house. Once we got the book, it was time for Aunt Jo to leave so she could make it back in time to pick up Ashley from ball practice.

I spent the rest of the afternoon doing more "nesting" work around the house. I hung two shelves in the nursery closet and then hung the wireless lights in the closet and mounted the switch on the wall. Now when I get around to finally putting the closet doors on the nursery closet, you will still be able to see inside the closet. Our closets are probably the most poorly designed thing in our house. There is so much wasted space in the top of all of them that unless you install another shelf or two you will never be able to fully use the space and they are so dark you can't see a thing. Not a single closet in the house had a light in it. Years ago my Dad wired a light to my master bedroom's closet but I didn't want to go through the trouble with the nursery. So I decided I would try these wireless LED lights and see how they do. So far they work flawlessly with the switch and since they are LED lights the battery should last a good while. I think I will go get some more for our office closet and our kitchen cabinets.