Lucy, fresh from a free BBQ at our local legion with my parents. She came home covered in ketchup (what a surprise, being my daughter), carrying Canadian flags for Eric and I, and Canada stickers on her red shoes.

When I put her down for nap, she spent a good 45 minutes in her crib singing various renditions of Oh Canada.

The sporadic fireworks popping off all day mean poor Spencer Dog is a wreck. For the past six months or so, he’s become terrified of them and thunderstorms. So the past few weeks of incessant afternoon showers, and the last few long weekends he’s spent either stuffed between the toilet and the wall in our downstairs bathroom (WTF? Small space = comfort?), hiding behind the furnace in the basement, on my feet under the computer, or in a closet. He shakes and pants and his eyes bug out of his head. We feel so bad for him.

Eric and I have spent the day cleaning and packing and doing laundry in prep for the cottage. It’s so much work to go, but so worth it once we get there.

Posts will be light for the rest of the week, as Internet access is almost non-existent (translation: it depends on if we can hijack borrow a nearby wireless signal) — but tune in for the obscene popcorn recipe and the top 10 things kids stick up their noses.

This weekend, Lucy discovered dolls. Specifically, she zoned in on my beloved Cabbage Patch Kid, Alexabell.

I can’t explain how surreal it was to spend half an hour sitting in my daughter’s room, my favourite childhood CPK clothes strewn around us, putting outfits on my once-favourite doll. It was a time warp, one that still leaves me sort of disjointed. I’m so thankful to my parents for saving my Kids, even if they were stored naked in a garbage bag for almost 20 years.

Lucy calls Alexabell — an admittedly hard word for a 2.5-year-old — Alexabot. Which just cracks Eric and I up, as it sounds like some sort of cyerborg/robot. We keep waiting for her to stand up and walk towards us with her arms swinging stiffly by her sides, mouth opening and closing like a nutcracker.

We spent another half hour Sunday putting every single “pretty” into Alexabell’s hair. She looked like a pimped-out Amish girl, what with her hair bling and prim dress.

Saturday I scored a Little Tikes stroller at a garage sale up the street for just 50 cents (!), and Sunday we took Alexabell for a walk. We’re thinking of nominating Lucy for Canada’s Worst Driver: Toddler Edition, as the child cannot walk in a straight line while pushing. While she was heart-attack-inducing cute with her ponytail and dress and light-up shoes and plastic beads and pure glee at her new toys, holymother was it tiring going 3 ft.-stuckonthegrass-3 ft.-stuckonthegrass, repeat alll the way down the sidewalk.

Which is why the weekend ended like this, with Eric earning yet another fatherhood stripe.

• I am mid-tea swallow here. Thanks, Eric
• Need hair cut, stat
• Anne of Green Gables rag doll (which Lucy carried all the way downtown for the 100 Years of Anne festival last Saturday) is most definitely grabbing one of the Girls. Bad, Annie!
• So glad to look officialy pregnant, and not lumpy or like I’ve eaten too many bowls of Corn Pops (not that that’s happened *cough*)
• Still 19 weeks to go. Help.

Just before klunking Lucy into her crib before nap or bed, I often cradle her in my arms, her head in the crook of my left arm.

I do this mostly to embarrass her, and to entertain myself — jokingly crooning, “Look at my Lucy baby! Are you my Lucy baby?” while she frantically pummels me with her size 8 flailing feet and laughs. She now looks ridiculous in this pose.

My baby is no longer such — she’s almost 3 ft. tall (!!) and weighs more than 30 lbs. I remember the way her body used to perfectly curl around my belly when I breastfed her, how I belted into my bathrobe. Eric always tells Lucy how he’d carry her around in the Football Hold.

Eric snapped these pics this past weekend when Lucy and I were reading books and sharing a bowl of popcorn. When I downloaded them off the camera yesterday, I could not get over how grown up Lucy looks. Despite her double chin and the baby fat that still clings to the tops her her thighs, she is becoming a little girl.

But Sunday, while driving, I kept catching glimpses of her in the side mirror, she positioned in her car seat behind me. Lucy was opening and closing her mouth in experimental Os, softly singing to “I Like to Eat Apples and Bananas,” and staring out the window at the passing clouds. The light was reflecting off her still rotund cheeks and baby-flat nose, and she looked so young and innocent and small. I saw her baby face again, clearly.

It makes me wonder if this will happen for the rest of her life. Will I always carry that baby image with me? Catch snippets of it as she grows into a girl, a teen, a woman?

I hope so.

…she’s pushing inanimate objects in the swing.

Eric’s Mom took this photo when we were visiting her in early May. Eric and I were both so startled when we saw it, because we can totally glimpse what Lucy is going to look like grown up. Her face is turned up, so what little baby fat remaining at just over 2 years is pulled away, and just her natural features remain.

It’s eerie to see. And beautiful, too, in our rose-coloured parental glasses. It also makes me a little sad — I’m so not ready for grown up, not-as-dependent Lucy. As much as I’ve been waiting for these talking, walking years of exploration and interaction, let’s just sloowwww down a bit, hmmm?

From the time Lucy was three months old, she’s been out in the garden with me.

We’d strap her in her bouncy seat, and stuff abandon place her gently under a tree or in the shade, and chat to her as I dug and planted and weeded and Eric did man-chores such as mowing, edging and mulching.

The early influence — combined with similar experiences in my parents’ beautiful gardens — means Lucy now loves dirt and flowers and stomping around in her rubber boots. Any time we read a book that features any sort of growing, she says, “Cee-Cee help Mama in the garden!”

I recently spent a morning filling our planters at the front of the house, and Lucy was practically exploding with excitement to help. Wearing a pair of my garden gloves, she carried plants, dumped soil and poured water, and was quite proud of herself when we nestled them on the porch.

I hope she continues to love gardening as she gets older, that it’s not just a passing adoration because her mummy likes doing it. With that in mind, I’m enjoying every second we dig around in the dirt together.

One of the worst — and most visible, unfortunately — side effects of this pregnancy has been acne.

Since the fourth or fifth week, I’ve had red, angry, big bumps on my neck and back. They often don’t even fully form, just sit under the skin puffy and lumpy and make-up resistant and eye-watering sore. My back…well, if you connected the dots, you wouldn’t be able to see much skin. At least nothing really touches my neck — but it’s just ridiculous how much it hurts if a bra or tank top strap sits on top of one of these lovelies.

Truthfully, it’s been embarrassing. For the most part, at 29, I’m past that self-conscious stage of life. But these have really bothered me, mostly because of their location. They’re oddly not on my face at all, but at least facial acne is more…normal and accepted and coverable. I feel like a teenage boy who’s shaved with a dull razor. Or maybe shot with poisonous darts.

(It hasn’t helped that, around 10 weeks pregnant, two people I don’t see very often said — within seconds of seeing me — “OMG, what’s that on your NECK?!”)

I keep waiting for the acne to go away, but six weeks into the second trimester it’s allll still here, and I’ve resigned myself that it’s just gonna be until this baby comes out. My doctor, during my last prenatal appointment, saw how bad it was, and gave me a prescription cream with an antibiotic and anti-inflamallatory. Thankfully, it’s really helping to knock down the little bastards once they appear, although there doesn’t seem to be anything I can do to fix the hormonal pregnancy cocktail that’s bringing them on.

My body, however, seems to have its own sense of humour about the whole thing:

A red bump has appeared right in the middle of my bulging belly, directly north of my bellybutton and exactly between it any the centre of my chest. Which means when the bra is off, my torso has two, um, pointy eyes, a bright red bump of a nose, and a wide, stretched-but-not-yet-popped O of a mouth. If I place my hands on the sides of my stomach, it does look very much like him.

Yes, dear lumpy front, exactly my sentiments…

…the creepy Potato family comes out to play.

 …when one has ribbon?