Thursday, April 25, 2013

Well, that was a mistake.

I made the mistake of looking for a crib skirt on Target's website. Now I'm pretty much obsessed with this whole setup:



Presh right? That's the same crib we have too... but ours is yellow. The skirt, sheet, and bumper aren't THAT much... only $86 altogether plus another $37 for the quilt. But since I only wanted to spend $150 on the nursery altogether. Plus we barely use the crib so it's a silly place to spend money... Part of me (the incredibly cheap part) says "oh, you could MAKE that for almost nothing!" Because I have some curtains that are a similar fabric I could use... then another part (the rational one) points out that I don't sew, and even if I did I have enough going on that it would never get done.

Still, cuteness.

Edit: Oh this one is cute too and only $64.


I need to hurry up and get off work before I start adding things to the cart... 

Finishing the 2nd Trimester - Weeks 25-27

25 Weeks

27 Weeks

Well, I'm now about 27.5 weeks and officially in the third trimester! According to my handy little pregnancy app, a few days ago the baby was supposedly measuring:



She's getting big! From here on our she won't grow very much longer, but will fatten up considerably. Both of the boys were almost the exact same size. Marshall was 8 lbs 3 ounces, 19.5 inches, 14 inch head, and Miller was 8 lbs even, 19.25 inches, 14 inch head so I'm guessing she'll be about the same? I hope so. They were both kind of short and fat which is a good look for babies:) On one hand, I feel like this pregnancy is FLYING by at lightening speed, and on the other hand it seems like a million years ago we found out I was pregnant again.

This is a frustrating time for me because mentally and physically I feel like I can do anything, so I do, then my body revolts against me later. I have the energy and willpower to take the kids places and run around, play with, and pick them up... or spend the weekend doing yard work... but the next day everything just hurts and pops and reminds me "hey, you're huge and pregnant and should slow down a little." I've started having sporadic sciatic nerve pain and some lower back and pelvis pain. Nothing too bad, but I'll probably start going to the chiropractor and doing prenatal yoga again. When I was pregnant with Marshall I'd get prenatal massages which was HEAVENLY, but I never had the time when I was pregnant with Miller. I'm hoping I can squeeze in a few of those too. The skin on my stomach is starting to feel really stretched and itch, which is unfortunate since I still have 11-15 weeks of growing to do. However, right now I'm sleeping fabulously and rarely waking up to pee during the night.

I had a midwife appointment yesterday and everything looks normal and healthy, measuring right on track.

We are currently working our way through the giant To-do List I came up with and I'll post an update after the weekend. I just told Jerad I really really want the nursery finished by the time I'm 30 weeks. Last night I took out all the baby clothes I've bought and people have been giving us and sorted them by size, and made notes of things we needed in which sizes. I'm getting really excited. Whoa man, are little girl things cute:) I've always had a great time dressing the boys but I'm really looking forward to having a girl this time. Hopefully we can come up with a name we agree on before she's born. Right now I'm leaning towards Emerson Eisley, or Emery. Or Maybe Emerson and call her Emery for short? I also like Lainey/Laney or Delaney. Jerad is leaning towards Piper or Paisley with Harper for a middle. I LOVE the name Harper... but it's much more popular (#54) than what I prefer. We'll see! 

Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Nursery Progress

We started working on the nursery! As I've mentioned before, even though we have a huge house, we're putting the baby in the closet. In all honesty, we don't need a nursery at all since we co-sleep the first 6-9 months, then put the baby in a floor bed, but since we did one for each of the other kids, I didn't want this baby to be left out. Plus we do need a place to put her clothes and stuff so it might as well be cute. Both of our boys sleep SO WELL right now... as long as they are alone and in their own rooms, that I don't want to put them together (or one of them with the baby) until we need to.

This is our bedroom looking towards the bathroom. The door to the left is the doorway out to the hall and kids rooms, and the archway to the right is the bathroom.


Once you're in the bathroom, the toilet closet is to the immediate left, and the walk in closet is after it to the left of the shower. I don't have a great picture, but you can get the idea.


Step one was to clear everything out.

 

I downsized our clothes a LOT. I think I donated about 5 trash bags full. I decided to put all of my non maternity clothes in the attic since I'm not due for another 3.5 months and it always takes me a few months after birth to fit back in them anyways. I bought new (to us) dressers on Craigslist, and 90% of Jerad's clothes are now in a dresser. I put his collared shirts and nice slacks in Marshall's closet since there was lots of room and be rarely wears them. 1/2 that closet is now Jerad's clothes, and the other 1/2 is clothes that Marshall has grown out of that Miller will be growing into, clothes that Marshall will be growing into, and clothes that Miller has grown out of that need to be sorted and put in the attic for any future little baby boys (or because I can't bear to part with them).

I moved all my clothes, shoes and purses to Miller's closet which is right next door to our room. Hopefully this forces me to pick out my clothes the night before, which has always been my goal but never happens, so that I avoid disturbing him in the morning. The kids clothes are all in a dresser under the TV in the family room which is the only way I can keep up with their laundry. So far it's been working out.

All these pictures have been taken at night, on my phone, so bear with me. 

So, empty closet/nursery:



After it was empty we took down the shelf. That peeled off paint and left nice holes in the drywall paper all the way around.


We plan on returning this to a closet once the baby is consistently sleeping in her bed for naps and nighttime and not waking up to nurse every few hours. If this baby follows the boys timeline, that'll be around a year. At that point we'll put whichever 2 kids together that seem like they'll sleep the best (or if I'm lucky, all THREE together and I can have a craft room!) and build nice built-ins and make it a more functional closet than it was before.  Hopefully something like this:


Simple, yet functional and custom looking.

It's not a huge closet, and I haven't measured, but I'd guess it's around 6ftx7ft. Since it's not going to be a permanent bedroom, we're trying to do everything cheap, and not spend money on things that won't be needed in a closet later. I'd like to not spend more than $150.00 total. For example, I really don't like that there's no natural light so we thought about putting in a solar tube... which we totally don't need in a future closet so we're going with natural light light bulbs and a new light fixture instead.

The walls were a horrible orange peel texture. Orange peel is bad enough, but they really did a hideous job plus the shelves pulled off a lot of the texture so we knew we'd have to do something. The options were to repair and match the existing texture, put up bead-board or some other type of paneling, or re-texture.


Repairing the texture that was there would have been super cheap, but time consuming and in the end it would still look like builder grade crap. You can't tell in the picture, but there are huge inconsistencies in the existing texture. Some places look like they were doing it with a rattle can and ran out, other places have huge globs. Not nice. Adding paneling or bead-board would have been the fastest option, and not too pricey (probably around $100 for bead-board and cheaper for board and baton), but in the end once it's a closet with clothes in it we won't be seeing the walls it would be a waste. 

So we decided on retexturing the whole thing. Since Jerad does this kind of thing at work all the time, he had all the materials. I think he had to buy a bag of hot-mud because he was out, but that was around $10 and he'll use the leftovers at work. We (meaning Jerad of course) decided to do a hand scraped mission-style texture which I LOVE. We've debated and debated doing the whole house which is orange peel and knock down, but especially with our vaulted ceilings he'd want to hire someone to do it and it would cost 2-4k. Which we'd rather spend on other things, so we just keep debating. 

Anyways, back to the nursery!

After the shelves were down, he mixed up hot mud and did one coat over the places that obviously needed to be patched. I think it took about 30 minutes.


The next night, he did another coat over all of the closet walls. He didn't do the ceiling because we are going to put up bead board or tongue and groove since that will still look nice in a closet. Marshall helped for a little bit before he went to bed. I think it took Jerad about an hour and a half by the time he'd cleaned up at the end.




The next night we were tired from spending the day at Gilroy Gardens took a night off:)

Sunday he put the drywall mud over the hot mud. The closet is so dark (maybe we should have upgraded the lighting FIRST?) that he couldn't tell where he'd mudded and where he hadn't so he added food coloring to the mud.


When it was wet, the color was actually really close to what we'll be painting!





Honestly, I took a few pictures then went to bed because it had been a long weekend and I was exhausted. I think that was around 10. He'd said it would probably take an hour, and Miller woke up at 12:30am and Jerad was in bed by that point, so it took somewhere in the 1-2 hour range.

The next steps are sanding, another coat or touch ups if necessary, the ceiling, adding shelves, then priming and painting. We're going to re-use Miller's yellow crib (which is why I decided to do the walls aqua and ceiling white instead of vice versa), and I bought a changing table on craigslist that I need to paint. Hopefully we can get all of that done this week so next weekend I'll be moving in furniture and making wall art!

I love love love it when the baby room's get finished. Walking into a room designated for the baby with all their little things in it is what makes it really seem real to me. Hopefully not long!




Monday, April 15, 2013

Marshall and his Snail

Marshall's preschool posted this picture today and I almost died from the cuteness:


Apparently the kids built "snail tracks" and this was his:) He's been going to a new play based preschool the past few months and LOVES it. One of these days I'll get around to blogging about it and sharing some more cute pictures. 

Gilroy Gardens

Saturday morning we decided to say "screw you!" to our to-do list, and surprise the kids with a trip to Gilroy Gardens. It's a family theme park in the middle of huge botanical gardens. There is a ton of stuff for little kids to do, almost no lines, and its only two hours from our house. The weather was BEAUTIFUL.










I took the kids to Happy Hollows last weekend with a friend and was amazed at how "easy" it was to manage both kids. Having Jerad there too was AMAZING! Having one parent per child, or one of us being able to stand in a longer line while the other took the kids on another ride etc. really made a difference.

At 16 months Miller is old enough to walk a lot of the time, and do almost everything that Marshall does. People kept mistaking them for twins even though they're different sizes... the matching outfits probably contributed:)













Miller fell asleep in the stroller a little after 1:00 so I walked him around while Jerad took Marshall on some of the rides that Miller was too small for. Then we switched and I took him on his favorite, the train. This is what happened when I said "show me your train face!"



Such a little weirdo.

Marshall is getting old enough that he's understanding how to be patient and wait in line. Miller isn't quite there yet, but the lines were all so short it really wasn't a problem.







We got there about an hour after the park opened, and stayed till they closed at 6. Walking back to the car Miller was zoning out and Marshall was wired and talking about how much fun he had and how we would come back soon so I was sure he'd be awake the whole ride home and that Miller would pass right out.

 

But nope, Marshall (who NEVER sleeps in the car) was snoring before we got out of the parking lot, and slept the whole way home, and Miller was awake and chatting the whole way.

 

Marshall started making this face at 14 months and just hasn't stopped.

Despite Miller not sleeping, the car trip both ways was great! We stopped once on the way there for a quick pee break and to get gas, and drove straight home. 

Its been hard on me doing these little theme park trips two weekends in a row. Aside from constant braxton hicks contractions while walking, I feel fine at the time. Then the next day my big pregnant body is like "oh no you didn't!" and everything aches. I need a day to just relax afterwards, which is pretty much impossible with 2 small children. On the other hand, I know I'll only get more uncomfortable so I want to get out and do as much as I can while it's still relatively easy.

I want to try to go a few more times before the baby is born for sure. Since our zoo membership gets us in to Happy Hollows for free (we just have to pay for parking), and we have a pass that includes free parking for Gilroy Gardens, if I pack food the only cost to go is the gas! Going there and back in a day isn't too bad, especially if Jerad is there too so one of us is able to pass back snacks and toys and dropped sippy cups. 

For Marshall's birthday coming up, I think we've decided to forgo a party this year and take a family weekend trip. We'll check in to a hotel and play in the pool one day, spend the night and go to Happy Hollows the next morning, spend the night, then go to Gilroy Gardens the next day (they're about 30 minutes from each other) and drive home after they close. I think both kids will have a blast and it'll be nice going back to the hotel at night instead of driving home!