Big Belly's Back

Once upon a time, many months ago, there lived a tired Mommy with a large belly. Despite her expanding abdomen, she did her best to keep up with the family blog--that is, until the E-mail of Doom. Now the author of the E-mail of Doom, who shall remain unnamed, did not intend for Tired Mommy to read the message. Nevertheless, Tired Mommy discovered the following text about the blog sent by Anonymous to a friend: "don't feel like you have to read the entries... they get rather lengthy, but there are some good pictures of us all..."

After a friendly marital spat, it was concluded that Anonymous should be responsible for maintaining the blog. Unfortunately, Anonymous has since been very busy, and many months have passed. Tired Mommy has grown impatient and finally decided to catch up before the Brooklyn Blog becomes the Brooklyn and Baby B Blog. Not to mention, why should you eager readers suffer because of our family feud? :) So please forgive my verbosity--at long last, here's What's Up with the Wheelers.

September: Jason and Kara both head back to school at the University of Illinois. Jason combines his sleepless life as an architecture student with work as a project manager for the Solar Decathlon. He's supervising the design and soon to be construction of a solar house to be displayed in Washington DC next October.

Kara joins the Masters Program in Teaching English as a Second Language, and now knows more about phonology than she ever imagined possible. She also enjoys teaching a TOEFL class at the Intensive English Institute.

Brooklyn decides that there is nothing better in the world than nursery. She zips out the chapel door as soon as the closing prayer is said, sprints all the way around the building, and starts playing with a puzzle before Big Belly Mom can even catch up.

October: Life becomes one continuous round of Toss the Toddler. Trading off Brooklyn between classes, meetings, and teaching is definitely hectic, but happy. There are many days when Brooklyn will ride on the bus to campus with Mom, only to come home on the next bus with Dad. Fortunately, our happy girl hasn't seemed to mind being passed around. Her favorite moments are when she gets to play with her Aunt Christy and wave to Pam, the bus driver. And of course, her first words every morning are now "Miriam's House!" as she asks about the next time she can go visit her friend.

November: Now that November has finally arrived, the Wheelers grow restless as they wait to meet the newest member of the family. Despite an abundance of unfinished papers and projects, they wish the baby were already here. Somehow everything else seems to pale in comparison. At the very least, childbirth makes a good excuse. Just an hour ago Jason told me, you know, if you went into labor right now, I wouldn't have to take this quiz. What can I say? I just couldn't "deliver."

***Note: Tired Mommy sends her apologies for the lack of photos in this verbose entry. All of the photos are on Anonymous's laptop, and Laptop rarely leaves Anonymous's lap. When Laptop is finally available in the evening, Tired Mommy is too tired to blog.