Blown Away!

Everyone knows that Micky and I are BIG Carolina fans. Always have been, always will be. Now, that's not saying we're psycho about it. We don't paint our chests garnet & black (although I'm sure that would look great on me right now!), and we don't pick fights with people who happen to pull for other teams. We do enjoy cheering for them, and I can't tell you how excited I was when I realized our season tickets were on the side that gets to yell Cocks during the Gaaame--Cocks chant! Where else can you just shout that word out?!? Just teasing, but we will always pull for them and hope that some day we'll get to see them achieve sports greatness! I compare it to my family--who have always pulled for the Braves, even when they were worst in the league (late 80's), and then we finally got to see them win a World Series and they still remain pretty darn good!

Anyway, what I'm about to tell you may not come as such a shock to you, but you can imagine why it blew us away! Last Friday, I picked Chloe up from school and we were on the way to meet Micky for lunch when this conversation took place--it was initiated by Chloe out of the blue:

Chloe: "I like Clempson Tigers."
me: "yeah, they're nice. I like the Gamecocks too."
Chloe: SILENCE
me: "yeah, I really like the Gamecocks."
Chloe: "I don't like Gamecocks, yeah I don't like 'em."
me: SILENCE

So, I was a bit shocked, but figured this would pass. We've been talking a lot about Clemson since Chloe's Aunt Christy started going there. And for awhile, she didn't like Tigers (thanks to the mean tiger on The Jungle Book), and we've been convincing her that Clemson Tigers are nice. Apparently, we did too good of a job on that! I didn't tell Micky about it right away. I actually forgot about it until later Friday afternoon when we were checking out at K-mart--the home of the huge pumpkin we had to purchase for Chloe to stuff all of her crayons and magnet letters in later that night! At the checkout they had a ton of Carolina/Clemson "stuff" on display. I chose this time to break the news to Micky. I repeated the above conversation to him while he looked on in utter disbelief! He finished paying then pushed the buggy to me and scooped Chloe up to go look at the Carolina stuff. He handed her a squishy, soft Carolina pillow (the kind we know she loves), and asked her what was on it.
Chloe: "A Gamecock. I don't like Gamecocks!"
Micky: "Well, then, put it back."
She DID! WITHOUT A FUSS! We knew we were in trouble then!
So, we spent the rest of the weekend walking around the house periodically shouting GO GAMECOCKS!--Just to see if she'd repeat it. Luckily she did and seems to have come out of her temporary insanity :-) But, hey, we'll love her just the same if she grows up and decides to go to Clemson--we just won't pay for college! :-)
(JUST KIDDING Nonnie!)

SC State Fair

Last Monday, Micky and I took Chloe to one of my favorite places on earth-- The South Carolina State Fair! Where else can you get a Pronto Pup (corndog for you laypeople), cheese pizza, Fiske french fries--soaked in vinegar, cotton candy, elephant ears, gyros, and of course Trudy's soft serve ice cream?!? All things that I indeed ate during my 2 trips to the fair (we went back after the Carolina game Saturday and ate our way from one entrance to the other side exit!). It's probably a good thing that it's only here for about 10 days or else I could have my own booth there as the largest human being ever! Then again, I could probably get all the pronto pups with mustard that I wanted!! Anyway, we took Chloe last Monday and met up with her best friend Nina and her parents and little brother. I'm the slack mom who forgot my camera, so let me thank Carla for sending me some of the pics she took.

Just chillin' on the firetruck!










Contemplating riding the swings










They decided on the swings, and let me say--this was the best part of the ride for Chloe...before it started. I like to refer to this pic as The Calm Before the Storm! I've never seen her so scared and hope to never again! I was about ready to leap the barricade and push the big red button for the carnie worker so I could get her off. Unfortunately, my belly was in the way of me lifting my leg high enough to jump the fence!










Girl after my own heart--Fiske fries AND cotton candy--yum!!










Chloe's favorite part--petting the animals :-)









If you could see my hands, you'd probably see a pronto pup in one hand and fried mushrooms in the other!

Little Slow Today

So~it's only about 3:30pm, but I feel like I could go to bed now and sleep for at least a day. I know a lot of pregnant women get tired easy and all that, but today I actually have a reason--it's name is CHLOE! Now, to be fair I haven't been sleeping that well for a while now--with all the bathroom trips during the night and 3:30 Fudge Round cravings (gotta love Little Debbie!). Last night I was especially tired--I think because I so wisely decided yesterday was a good day to try to play golf again. The weather last week psyched me out--see I thought it might actually stay in the 70's, boy am I dumb! But, hey, my doc said I could play as long as I could swing my clubs and Micky had the afternoon off so I was ready to give it a shot. The temp at our tee time (2pm) was ~86, which on the pregnancy thermometer equals ~190. So it was a little hot, but not unbearable. It took a few swings for me to figure out how to hold everything with my new belly in the way. Putting actually proved to be the most difficult thing, and if Micky's laughter was any indication--it was quite comical to watch. Anyway, by the time we picked Chloe up and made it home my back was already screaming at me and I just wanted to soak in the tub and get into bed. Of course, it was only 7 so Chloe felt we all needed to play together for a couple of hours! Fast forward to bedtime. As some of you know, Chloe has taken to sleeping with just about anything that will fit in her bed--stuffed animals, umbrellas, small (soft) baseball bats, golf clubs--you get the idea. Now, it's about 2:30am and during one my trips to the potty I look at the monitor and there's no Chloe. After a moment of panic I prepare to dart upstairs only to find her sitting on the stairs (about halfway down) surrounded by 4 stuffed animals, a princess bat, and her Dora umbrella. She's just sitting there staring straight ahead, half asleep when she notices me. She explains that she was trying to come down, but kept dropping all her "stuff". She just looked pitiful, so I told her I'd help her and that she could come sleep with mommy and daddy now. BIG mistake. The rest of the night I spent dislodging kids size 9 feet from first my legs, then my back, and even my shoulders. I swear that kid must play Twister in her sleep and when she landed on right hand yellow that was apparently right where my left kidney is located! So~ I'm a little tired today and let me tell you, I look GREAT!!! Do you remember those afternoon specials that used to come on that Tracey Gold seemed to always star in, dealing with life issues (drugs, eating disorders, abuse, etc.)? Well, I look like I could be the ghetto pregnant mom scrounging for food. I'm sure Micky can't wait to get home to see this!!

The ORANGE Sea

As most of you know, Chloe's Aunt Christy is a freshman at Clemson this year. Chloe has been dying to go see her and find out what "college" is all about--so~ last Monday Chloe, Nonnie, and I drove up to visit. Chloe was super excited about wearing her purple shirt with a tiger paw on it, and she couldn't wait to see TigerTown. We got there around 2 on Monday--just as Christy was finishing class--and got a chance to walk around some of the campus. It's a beautiful campus (once you get past all the orange :-)), and if it hadn't been 90,000 degrees we probably would've walked a little more. What was up with temps in the 90's, in the upstate, in October?!? Go figure! Chloe absolutely loved Christy's dorm room and the loft beds. We took Christy and her friend Sally Anna to dinner--all you can eat crab legs yum! Sally Anna was very nice and I'm so glad Christy's already made some great friends up there. Our stay in a hotel room was another exciting event for Chloe. She thinks of every hotel as a beach house--not sure why-- and her first words upon waking Tuesday were, "Can we go to Nonnie's beach now?" The only down side to the trip for Chloe, besides there being no beach, was that there were no REAL tigers to see. The statues weren't cutting it, she wanted a real tiger to roar with and pet! We helped to ease this pain by purchasing a cute "baby" tiger from the bookstore that has already joined the ranks of the special stuffed animals that get to sleep with her!
It was a great trip and hopefully we can make it up there again soon--after the little one comes of course!

Future Fashion Designer

If you've ever wondered what would happen if we let Chloe dress herself... wonder no more! She put this lovely ensemble together all by herself. We got home from church Sunday, and Micky and I were changing to go to Nonnie and Nano's for lunch when we realized Chloe had gone upstairs. I called up to her to ask if she needed any help getting out of her dress and she replied, "No thanks, I got it done and I'm dressing myself for lunch." When she came downstairs we could tell by the way she was prancing that she was extremely proud of herself--so we suppressed the urge to laugh and instead told her how beautiful she looked. Let's face it--even in a pink princess shirt, too short black leggings, white socks,garnet Gamecock Crocs, and last years winter hat--she still looked adorable! She wore the outfit to Nonnie's for lunch and then to Grammy's house for dinner. She just had to keep the hat on, even though it was about 90 degrees outside! The outfit was made complete when Aunt Beka and Uncle Scott gave her a killer pair of pink boots they had bought for her! She loves the boots and I'm sure we'll be seeing plenty of them this fall!

Pink Ladies

One of Chloe's new favorite things to do is to figure out everyones favorite color and then show them as many things as she can that are that color. This got interesting on one of our many trips to Food Lion last week when Chloe spotted a rather large woman wearing a purple dress, (think of a Wilma Flinstone type dress--only purple and about 20 sizes too big for Wilma) and proceeded to point and shout, "Mommy, Mommy it's your favorite--a whole bunch of purple..." I moved as fast as I could from the Little Debbie section, praying this woman hadn't heard. The whole time, Chloe was baffled as to why I wasn't enjoying this display of purple and kept saying, but it's your favorite color mommy--look! I'm pretty sure we made a clean get-away and pray we didn't hurt the woman's feelings, but a 6 month pregnant woman can only push a loaded down buggy with a 3yr old in it so fast!
Anyway, (that story took a lot longer to write than to tell verbally!)Chloe's favorite color is pink--and it just so happens that's the color we decided to paint the new babies room. Chloe woke up Saturday morning, and as usual, her first words were, "Is Daddy at work?" I told her no, that he was getting ready to paint her sisters room. That kid moved faster than I've ever seen her, and without even asking for a cup of juice, she was in there asking to help. We let her help us tape the trim work--she did some great work on the closet door :-) And then we let her help stir the paint.

That's when she realized she needed a brush to get started and we realized this was not going to work!!! I called my mother, who was on standby for this call, to please come get Chloe before the whole house was pink. Lucky for us, being with my mother and her cousin, Kristin, is another of Chloe's favorite things--so she didn't even put up a fuss over leaving while there was still painting going on. Scott and Rebekah, future Godparents :-), were nice enough to come help--and they brought doughnuts!--so we were done by lunchtime.
Chloe loved the finished room and has decided that pink will definitely be her sisters favorite color too!

Sweet old ladies!

Due to the recent break in the heat,(it no longer feels like 103, just 93) I decided it was time to visit the zoo again. This is one of Chloe's favorite places, and it's always good for an hour or two of entertainment. So, we decided to go Thursday and we took one of Chloe's best friends, Iris, with us. We met up with Chloe's other best friend, Nina, and her mom(Carla) and little brother. The zoo, as always, was a hit and the girls had a great time looking at and talking to the animals. There was a moment of disappointment when Chloe realized there were no pumas or baby jaguars, (like on Go!DiegoGo!) but that quickly passed when she remembered they do have penguins at the zoo and she recently saw Diego and Dora rescue a baby penguin!
Watching the girls talk and interact with each other is always a treat and usually proves to be quite comical. The funniest part of the day, for me, was on the car ride to the zoo. Chloe and I picked Iris up, and before I could even back out of the driveway--they were busy comparing boo-boos! Our little nurse Chloe started it off with showing Iris her bandaids on her heels. Keep in mind--there was nothing wrong with her heels, but she has decided that she always need bandaids on them when she wears her Crocs, due to the one blister she had 6 months ago that cleared up in a day!:-) Then Iris had a boo-boo on her knee to point out, and Chloe, not to be outdone, had to point out her "awesome" ant bite on her ankle. They went back and forth like this for a few minutes and I found myself actually laughing out loud. I think if I had closed my eyes I could have easily pictured two sweet old ladies comparing their ailments! My sudden laughter broke their chain of one-upping each other with the boo-boos, and they decided to move onto more important conversation--deciding which DVD they "had" to watch for the 4 minutes we had left before we reached the zoo! (F.Y.I. they decided on "Lady and the Tramp") These 3 girls are some of the funniest (and for their age, smartest) people I know. If you're ever searching for something to make you smile or laugh, I strongly suggest listening to some sweet little ladies' conversations!