Taylor Online has a booth every year in the massive exhibit hall at a homeschool convention that takes place every April in Cincinnati. My coworker and close friend, Cassie, and I work the convention each year. It’s a long weekend, stretching from Thursday evening through Saturday evening (not including the drive to and from). Last year we kept our girls in the booth with us the entire weekend. They are 19 days separated in age, so they were both around 4 months old at the time. It was a very long weekend. 🙂 We took our daughters again this year, but this year we had childcare lined up. Cassie has good friends who live in Cincinnati now, and they took care of her daughter while we worked. My mom went with us and took care of Aria. It all went very smoothly this year, though nothing will make it a relaxing weekend. I always enjoy it. I like the energy of the convention, and we get a kick out of representing Taylor, because we’re proud of our school. I love spending the weekend in conversation with Cassie, as well. We get a lot of girl time between chats with parents and prospective students.
The construction crew left while Aria and I were in Cincinnati. They’ll be returning some time next week to put on the last small amount of siding (once it arrives), and a subcontractor will be here in the next couple of weeks to install the gutters. The siding will probably take less than a half day, and the gutters should also be a short job. I’m looking forward to seeing the finished product (the mostly finished product is already beautiful!). Next weekend Jim and Andy will start working. We are kicking around the idea of putting on a back deck as one of the first tasks. The guys also have to fix a foundation problem in one corner of the house before we can move inside. It will be fun to watch it all come together, but I’m in no hurry. (Which is a good thing, because it’s going to be a while before any of the progress inside is cosmetic. There’s still some demo to do, and all of the wiring and plumbing needs run.)
Aria is officially her own person. One of her favorite words is “no”. She will now tell us when she is ready for bed. As of last night she can crawl on and off the couch on her own (I don’t care for that one at all). We discovered this past weekend that she loves my mom’s umbrella stroller. She repeatedly asked to be put in it. She also loved being wheeled around the exhibit hall at the convention. Mom told us amusing stories about her loud talking to everyone they passed (which largely went ignored, because it’s noisy in there and homeschool parents are experts at tuning things out).
Yesterday we went on our first walk of the spring. It was LOVELY. Occasionally my right hip gets out of whack, and yesterday was one of those days, so it was a slooow stroll – but whatevs. I’ll take it. I was hoping to go on another today, but the weather has not been conducive. I am looking forward to many, many more strolls around the neighborhood this spring. My goal is to go on 1-2 walks five days a week, as the weather allows (Stephanie would also like to see us going on one or more walks each day as we enter the third trimester).
Week 27 is the final week of the second trimester. Today it has really been hitting me how little time we may have remaining before Noah arrives. Since Stephanie is hoping we will be able to convince Noah to come a little early, we may only have another 10ish weeks before he arrives. (I am not assuming he will be amenable to our plan, but to be prepared I need to act like it will happen that way.) There’s a lot to do! It’s nice this second time around that we don’t need much. I thoroughly enjoyed the process of researching and purchasing baby items before we had Aria, and am also enjoying not doing so this time. Cassie and I found the convention an excellent place to scope out double jogging strollers, for which we are both in the market (I can mention that now, as they have just made it public – Cass is 3 months pregnant…we’re doing a great job having our kids together). If you have a double jogging stroller, would you recommend it?
