These Days...

These days, its been hard for me to live completely in the present.  I find myself daydreaming about life a month down the road, a few months, a year... I am so curious and excited about the future that I have to keep reminding myself to live completely in the present.  These days, I've been feeling stronger and stronger jabs inside my ever expanding belly. Last night as we layed in bed I felt the strongest kick and looked down to realize that it could actually be seen, as a brief little bump, from the outside.  I seem to remember this happening far later in pregnancy the first time around. This must be one strong baby.  These days, I've been feeling an overwhelming urge to purge our apartment, and our lives, of all unnecessary baggage.  Call it spring-cleaning-in-the-fall if you will, but I find myself eagerly filling bag after bag of stuff- stuff we could live without- and getting rid of it.  It feels so good to walk through an uncluttered room and to know that each and every thing in that room is meaningful and important in some way.  I am striving to work through our whole house- simplifying, paring down, and donating- until we have a completely clutter-free home. Of course a home with a toddler can never be completely clutter-free, but I know we can get close.  Perhaps its recent the crispness in the air or the unveiling of a new season,  but these days I've been in the mood to get things done. Our jackets have been  unpacked and our hats have been hung and our boots have been cleaned, all ready for the chilly autumn weather. We're squeezing in as much time as we can getting out and about the city as a family of three; enjoying the tepid weather and the falling leaves. Then we'll come back home and indulge Biet in her new favorite pastime- ticklefests on the big bed.  I remember being so annoyed as a little girl when people would tickle me, but Biet LOVES it.  She could literally spend hours being tickled- it never gets old.  She's so funny.  I have a feeling we will be doing this a lot throughout the winter. These days I keep finding myself thinking about how soon it will begin to get really cold, and about how then it will be freezing, and by the time it thaws and warms up again, we will be a family of four.  And then I remind myself, once again, to live in the present, where the leaves are just beginning to change color, and where I have a beaming little girl on my hip and the whole city on my doorstep.  These days, our lives look a lot like this: