Nora is obsessed with a kids cartoon called Caillou and wants to watch it constantly. To distract her, and keep myself sane, I bring her outside despite the fact that it's outrageously humid and already 85 degrees at 10 am. Have I mentioned that I loathe heat & humidity? . Despite that, this is becoming one of my favorite parts of the day.  I love listening to the bird songs and watching Nora play. Mainly she likes to sit in our driveway and dig in the loose rocks our walk around the yard holding my hand. I enjoy taking photos of her. Until now we haven't spent much time playing in the yard. Our rental house is on a busy dangerous street and doesn't have a fence. I worried all the time that she'd get away from us and dash into the road. Now that she's a bit older she listens (a little) better and so I feel safer having her outside. 

Have I mentioned that in a few months we'll be moving? Just across town to a new apartment. We've realized we don't want to spend all our time maintaining a big house & yard. We'd rather play with our kids. So we are down sizing to a smaller apartment. No yard, just a little enclosed patio. It's got a huge pool, great walking trails and is across the street from a big YMCA and a library. I'll be able to take walks with the kids every day. We will no longer be out in the country which means shopping & restaurants are more convenient. I can hardly wait!!! I am dreading the actual moving process though. It won't be easy packing & moving all our stuff just a month after having a baby. I know it will be worth it though!

It's ironic that the times I feel most creative are usually the times that it's nearly impossible to work on projects. Right now I'm supposed to be resting & doing nothing because my blood pressure has been too high at recent prenatal appointments. So of course my brain has been flooded with all sorts of project ideas to prepare for our move to a different apartment in two months. I've even had some ideas for art projects. Tonight after getting Nora to sleep I caved to my inspiration and instead of getting to sleep myself as I'm sure my doctor would like, I decided to work on making a collage of art images I've collected & clipped from magazines. I've got tons of gorgeous images clipped from magazines like Artful Blogger & thought it would be neat to collage them together and eventually hang the collage in the studio/office of our new apartment in July for creative inspiration. I managed to get a small layout done & mounted. It still needs a good border & embellishments but here is a photo of stage one:

This is what I'm focusing on right now, enjoying time with my beautiful girl. In less than a month we will have another amazing new soul to cherish in our family and Nora won't be our only baby any more. As excited as I am to have another wonderful baby it's a bittersweet time as well, knowing I won't be able to devote all of my time just to Nora. I hope we can make it an easy adjustment for her. She is such a joy to us.

Testing out Blogger mobile. One of the reasons I haven’t been posting much is because I’ve had trouble posting from my phone & since I rarely have time to sit at the computer I’ve been rather quiet here. Hopefully this works! It’s still not as easy as mobile posting was at wordpress but I’m giving it a chance. Wish me luck!