Week 28 Belly Pic

This week marks the start of the third trimester. Feeling kind of large this week. Starting to get a little paranoid that someone is going to ask when the baby is due and then say, “OH MY GOSH? YOU STILL HAVE THREE MONTHS TO GO?”

IMG_20160906_103851_178000

Peter and I went to the doctor last week for the glucose test. Once again, I opted for fruit punch because it pretty much tastes like Hawaiian Punch. They took some blood, did some tests for vitamin D levels, iron, and diabetes. Hopefully all tests come back normal. I don’t mind having to take a little extra iron if needed. I know I had to do that with baby #1 so that’s expected.

I think I felt some hiccups yesterday. I have occasionally been feeling a rhythmic “thump, thump, thump” feeling, but because it’s so light I didn’t associate the feeling with hiccups until yesterday.

This weekend we sorted about 13 boxes of infant/toddler clothes so we can see the baby’s bedroom floor again. It’s so much better walking by a bedroom that doesn’t look like a mess.

Peter made a nice shelf last week from scratch and painted it white. He installed it this weekend. I will have to post some pictures of it up on the wall. It’s looks really nice.

14088429_10101843953684143_899326896855560446_n

14064111_10101843953754003_7711992652277370806_n

 

More things to come. Maybe that’s what I’ll do when I have pregnancy insomnia at 4:30am one of these mornings.

A Baby Room

If you asked me what I’m most excited about right now, I’d probably tell you decorating a room. There is something so fun about taking a room that you were never really happy with and making it your own. Or someone else’s own.

Our spare bedroom has always been intended for child #2. For the longest while, we just kept the door shut because it was this hideous dark blue/dark gray color, and the previous owners had this lovely habit of painting the ceiling the same color as the wall.

Once Emma got a “big girl bed” for Christmas this last year, we moved her baby furniture into the spare bedroom. It was funny to see it look like the beginning of a real room, but it still wasn’t right. It just felt like a dark cave with a crib in it.

0

You can see it in the real estate picture above. It looked good enough for buying a house, but obviously this is not in my color palette.

As soon as we heard that the baby was probably a girl, I was excited to start painting. Now, if you know me, it really doesn’t matter what gender my child is; I’m probably going to paint the room a neutral gray/beige or light aqua blue. Because that’s what I do.

I decided to go a bit out of my normal and pick a minty color. Yes, I know. CRAZY. 😉 It may look bluer depending on the monitor setting, but it’s got a slight minty feel to it.

b2339f36a894f444eab56e66258adea2

Peter was very quick to run out to Lowe’s, buy paint, and start getting rid of that dark cave. It took him four coats of white paint, but the cave is gone forever! He also added a nice ceiling fan.

IMG_20160710_104832 IMG_20160710_104841
IMG_20160710_104845

IMG_20160710_104847


This room below was kind of my inspiration for the baby’s room. I loved how colorful it was.

inspire

 

I found an adorable banner at Babies R Us and decided to buy it. I figured if the baby ended up being a boy, I’d just return the banner. It has a similar blue-ish color, some coral, green, and brown. This was perfect because a lot of Emma’s crib sheets and hand-me-down bedding stuff is in this color scheme as well.

pTRU1-23829339dt


For the walls, I created some custom art in Photoshop and printed them. These colors pretty much give me the option of adding any color to the room, and it will fit in. The middle picture is a song that I sing to Emma at night before bed, and she absolutely loves it so it seemed appropriate to welcome baby #2 with this song as well.

123 ABC
small


I am hoping to get one or two crib sheets to add to the mix, but other than that, we really don’t need one of those big, fancy bedding sets. I realized just how little we used most of the stuff inside the bedding set for a year. You’re only allowed to put a sheet on the bed so all of the other bedding doesn’t really get used until the baby is at least one year old.

bed bed2


I also got four really cute organization bins from Target in the dollar section. They were $3 a piece and are pretty nice quality. I will post more pictures as I start to clean up the room. Right now, there are about 9 million bags of baby girl clothes that I have to sort through and organize.

Home Improvement Project – Shelves

We have a nice 3rd floor loft in our bedroom that we have been trying to figure out since we bought this house. It is a pretty sizable space, and you have to walk up stairs in our bedroom to get to it. There are these 2 cute windows, and each window has a little alcove which is about 30″ wide and 6 feet deep. So the question (for years) has been, “What do we do with these little window spaces?”

IMG_20140214_132229

We have tried putting sheer curtains in front of them, so we could hide junk behind them, but it just wasn’t working. For Valentine’s Day, Peter decided he would build me Valentine’s shelves. Yep. Ok, they’re really just shelves, but they were built with love on Valentine’s Day.

IMG_20140214_132300

I also went to Joann’s Fabric and bought some cute, trendy fabric to create little curtains for the shelves–that way we can store a bunch of stuff underneath and it still looks nice. And our 1-year old won’t be tempted by things if they are covered up.

IMG_20140217_174637

They look really nice, and I am very happy with the usable space. Now the next project is to make the same little curtains for the changing table, so I can hide the diapers, wipes, and other stuff under there.

37 Weeks and 4 Days

Well, sleep is getting difficult. Twice this week I woke up waaaay before my alarm went off and couldn’t get back to sleep at all. My mind just goes crazy with weird thoughts. I am not actively worrying or thinking about something, but as soon as I fall asleep, my mind decides to fixate on something. Anything really. If I watched it on TV before bed, I dream about it.

This week’s doctor appointment was pretty uneventful, which is a good thing, I guess. The baby’s heartbeat was 138 (normal). I didn’t gain any weight this week, but I honestly think it’s because my stomach feels more squished this week. The doctor asked me if I was having any symptoms or complaints this week, and I told her, “No, it’s been a pretty bland week for pregnancy.” She thought this was really funny. *shrug*

This week has been an abusive week for my hips though. It feels like she is pummeling me from the inside. I would swear sometimes she is trying to punch her way out.

I have also noticed an increase in my fatigue. I get exhausted sooo easily. If I get up and walk into another room, I feel like I carried a 200 pound man on my back. Needless to say, I have been spending an increasing amount of time on the couch. My heart beats a million beats a minute from just sitting. It’s crazy!

Hiccups are still happening daily. Also, I think my child is part golden retriever. Every so often I feel this spastic shaking inside my stomach, and it feels like the movement a dog makes when they scratch their ear really fast. Sometimes I think it’s the dog on the couch or on the bed, but then I realize it’s coming from inside my body. I have no idea what’s going on in there.

We got new carpet! It is so nice and soft…and hopefully not as much of a dog hair magnet as the crappy carpet we had before. Bonus: this carpet is not 20 years old AND is not green, so these are giant pluses.

We went to a parenting class this week, and it was pretty useful. A pediatrician was there, and she answered all of the questions everyone had. We also got a fancy poster of baby poop. Peter couldn’t look at it. Ha.

I was talking to a friend today on Facebook. We are both actually due on December 23rd, so it’s nice to compare stories. I can’t tell you how hilarious and comforting it is to hear that someone else doesn’t realize they have crumbs and stains on their clothes. These boobs…they hide the view of all the junk that lands on the belly.

I’ve been trying to wrap all of the Christmas gifts this week. It has been slow going, since I get tired after wrapping 4 gifts. Wrapping involves lots of leaning and stretching. Tough stuff!

A New Coat of Paint

We picked out some paint from Lowe’s, called “Winter in Paris.” It is a light gray blue that is just girly enough without being pink.

This week, I taped the trim up, and Peter painted the walls. It looks really nice. We’ll have to do a little touch up work here and there, but I am pretty happy with how it turned out! Nice job, Pete :).

Before Paint
Before Paint

You can kind of see the color.

Peter spent pretty much all day today putting the finishing touches on the room.
This includes:

  • new electrical plates that are baby proof.
  • new door stop.
  • new ceiling fan.
  • new light switch with fan speed control.
  • new closet kit in the other spare room, so I could move my stuff off the floor.

I napped. I honestly tried to do something, but he is having a good time bossing me out of the room, so he can take over and do these activities. I think he is enjoying himself.

Old Light
New Light/Fan

What a Pain in the Ass

I have been reading that women might experience leg cramps for the past month or two, but I was excited by the fact that I’ve made it to 22 weeks without getting them…until 2 nights ago. Aaaaah!

I literally woke up screaming from a huge pain in my ass cheek. That’s right. Not LEG. I thought Peter was going to think I went insane, but luckily I did not wake him up. At least somebody slept through the night.

I have decided today that I haven’t really had “cravings,” (at least not like the ones you see on TV), but I could eat a sausage biscuit any time of the day.

Since I am not allowed to paint or lift heavy objects, the only thing I can do is window shop on Pinterest. I saw a few cute ABC and 123 poster prints, but none of them have the right color scheme. I am looking for a mix of blue, green, orange, pink, and purple. Since I couldn’t find something just right, I made my own. What do you think? Should I print them?

Also, I noticed last night that the little kicks and flips I feel inside can actually be felt outside, too. It feels like an alien is trying to escape from my gut.

Just to note, Peter hates painting, but he is doing a great job :).

Guest Room Re-Do

I’ve tried several times to rid myself of my love of blue, but I am never happy with the final product. I tried painting my bedroom green, so we could do the “earth tones” look with magentas, greens, and browns. Bleh. I hated going into my bedroom. Even though it looked presentable, it just wasn’t me.

I tried doing maroons, golds, and yellows in the guest bedroom, but I never really felt that the guest room was anything to be proud of.

Once I realized that blues are just really calming to me, I decided that it’s my house, and if people want to say, “Wow… that girl sure likes a lot of blue,” then so be it. Because you know what? I am the one who has to live here and has to try to destress here. So blue it is!

Here are some befores of our guest room:

Today I decided to paint the room a new, cool color that has a slight blueish hue to it. I also repainted my picture frames, shelves, and mirrors. Here’s a sample of what is to come!

Evercare Pet Hair Sweeper Review

We adopted Lennon, the Australian Cattle Dog mix, because we wanted a pup, and she was just too adorable. White and brown hair, white stripe down the nose, white socks, 2 different-colored eyes, peed out of excitement when they put her in the little room with us. She didn’t move from the puppy fetal position for about 20 minutes, but then eventually she crawled into my lap. I was sold.
Lennon needed a friend, and I have always been a “everyone needs a friend” kind of person. We found a newspaper ad that said someone was selling a litter a black lab mix puppies. On our trip to the seller’s house, we soon realized we just had to adopt a puppy from them, because leaving a dog there would just be cruel. They were drunken, sloppy people who were amused by feeding the puppies beer and screaming at them. The puppies were all well-behaved and cute, and Peter really seemed to fall in love with Lily, her one white foot, and her whiny nature. 
Now that you know the background, you can see that it never occurred to us that having 2 dogs with different -colored fur would be a problem…until about a day later when the light tiled floor was covered in black hair and the dark wooden floor was covered in white and tan hair. And since then, our floor, clothes, couches, car interior, etc. are all covered in hair of one color or another. Lennon’s hair is the worst–it is like little needles that are impervious to vacuum cleaners or lint brushes.
Just as an example, here was my dark brown carpet with Lennon’s white hair before.
Today I decided I would try one more thing–the Evercare Pet Hair Sweeper–and I am seriously glad I spent the $7.99. It cleans the black and white hair up sooo well! I cleaned my sofa, the front seats in the car, my ottomans, my coat! 

After a swipe of the Sweeper, here is the carpet after. Yahoo!

Yay, now I don’t have to look like the only person in a business meeting with a suit covered in dog hair!

IKEA: Part 2 (with some sneak peek pics)

We decided to go for it and ordered IKEA furniture online. They make you pay a shipping fee, but let me just say that, with our small cars, it would have taken at least 2 trips to get the stuff anyway. So we saved on gas money, food, and time.

Peter was going to go to DC on a work trip, but things got a little crazy with the weather, and it ended up being cancelled (–I know some dictionaries say it’s spelled, “canceled,” but I am of the phonics rule that if you have a syllable with a short vowel sound, when you add -ed, you need to have a double consonant. Ex: sun-ned, rub-bed, surpass-ed [has 2 double S’s at the end already, so you can just add -ed]. You get the idea. I’m an English nerd). Therefore, we didn’t end up getting the panels and coffee table. We are still debating the coffee table, but we found an alternate draping for our window nooks.

The bookcase that was going to go horizontal over the desks is absolutely way too heavy, so that is just not happening. We have another idea for it.

You can see the gray wall color we picked and the new door handle that we added to our tiny, minidoor.
Now we won’t bang into a doorknob all the time. Yay! The white trim makes such a difference. LOVE IT.

We searched high and low for a cute, white, minifan.
The loft has an angled ceiling, so a regular-sized fan just won’t do.

This is my joyous couch. I will let my dogs on this one. For $150, it’s not too shabby.

Here are some sneak peaks.