New Item: SaraBear Diaper Caddy

Meet the SaraBear diaper caddy. Totally cool, awesomely stylish, completely practical. Bigger than the caddy I already have. They come in several colors, so finding one that fits with the style of my house shouldn't be too much of a problem. If it is, I can always make one, right? I'm thinking, a little fabric, a basket, and some iron-on hemming tape should do the trick.

But why, you ask, is this such an awesome thing for me to want several, or at least a few? Because, dear readers and friends, my baby's room is upstairs, and our room is downstairs. I know it's not practical. But that's the way my house is built. And it's not practical or feasible to move our room to the upstairs right now. Not enough time, too much stuff, you get the picture. Plus, my doctor won't want me to go up and down the stairs for the first couple of weeks or so anyway.

We already have one (not a SaraBear, and not this color), and I've already started putting stuff in it. (Mainly because we needed the extra space that big box of diapers took up. You know, so we could go buy more diapers.) I'm thinking, one for the living room and one for the bedroom. That way, I won't be sending my dear, sweet husband upstairs five times a day for diapers and wipes and diaper cream and...... Seems smarter to me. I could buy or make one (preferably buy, of course. We all know how this is likely to end if I try to make one now....) to match our living room. This one would kinda match, but not really.

The one we have already matches both the bay's room and our bedroom. By having two caddies, hopefully it will eliminate having to bring one caddy from bedroom to living room, then it's time to go to bed, and in the middle of the night you realize you left the darn thing in the living room. Kinda fits in with my motto: Work smarter, not harder.

Note to self: also need to buy two or three plastic rolling cart-with-drawer thingies for storing baby stuff in the bedroom the first few weeks. Since there's no need in even trying to clear out a dresser drawer. It won't ever happen, unless it gets done during my leave while I'm nesting. Also need one or two more under-bed storage boxes for our bedroom. Or some space bags. Either way, they're just going to be storing old sheets and stuff I really don't need right now, since they don't fit my bed. And don't forget to look for some kinda diaper caddy to match the living room, SaraBear brand or not.

28 weeks

T-minus 84 days and counting.....

Although I hope I don't make it 84 more days.... :) More like anything over 70 but less than 84 days.

Another way to look at this is, 12 more weeks or less (hopefully not more) to go!

My Week 28 milestone: I actually updated my registry and added almost everything we still need to it. I'm sure my family will be shocked, awed, and amazed. And there's still 2 shopping days left before my shower! LOL.

(For those reading who don't know me in real life, I only say this because all of my family and close friends have been calling and emailing to ask where I am registered at, what do we still need, etc. I'm not grubbing for gifts here. I'm making a joke out of my procrastinating self finally having finished my registry. I have only told those who asked directly about my registry, or what we still need. I have not done anything drastic and greedy, like emailing a list of requested items to people who haven't asked. Anything we get at the shower is fine, even if it's only a "Congratulations" card. Being thought of is better than nothing, and if a basket full of cards is all we get, then at least we know we are loved and our child will be loved by our family and friends. So don't go leaving me any snarky, idiotic comments calling me greedy and telling me what a horrible mother I am for fishing for presents. Again, for the reading-impaired, I only gave this info to those who DIRECTLY requested it. Hopefully, another fiasco like some of the comments left on this post, over a simple remark about circumcision, will not occur here about my registry. If it does, rest assured I will be here to curse someone out next time. Just kidding. Maybe.)

Another week 28 milestone: While I can still wear my scrub bottoms to work, I have had to abandon the matching tops, due to the fact that it is becoming really difficult to get them off once they're on me. And I only have 3 pairs of scrub bottoms that still fit me comfortably.

Also, my beloved Calvin Klein jeans my grandmother bought me for Christmas over a year ago, are about to be stored in the back of my closet. Even though they are low-cut, and were ever so slightly too big for me pre-pregnancy, tonight they feel like I may never peel them back off of my body. They feel so tight on my lower stomach. I had to wear jeans because I didn't wash any of my scrub bottoms for tonight, and I also didn't ask Michael to wash any, either. When I woke up, I found that they were all dirty. So I washed them, and he dried them. No blue jeans for me tomorrow night! Although the extra support under my belly would be great if these pants weren't just a little too tight.

A quick update

Since my seven days off were filled with out-of-town guests and drama, I thought I'd post a quick re-cap of what little I accomplished (that was planned) while off work.

*Menu was made, and groceries bought.
*I bought a shelf to go beside my freezer. I put all my paper goods, extra laundry detergent, etc. on it.
*The boxes that were stacked where the new shelf is were brought out. I went through the THREE boxes of bathroom stuff (makeup and OTC medicines that were several years old, bath gift sets I can't use that are several years old, etc.) and threw away two boxes of stuff that wasn't any good. I still have the one box of bathroom stuff I kept, and a box of lids to my Glad bowls and such that I have to go through.
*Bought a new file box, with a lid, and new hanging and manilla file folders. I have transferred all my files from my old crate to the new box. I used up almost an entire box of hangng folders and a box of manilla folders for this. I kept my old folders that were still useable. I'll be throwing out my old ones that are falling apart, which is mainly some of the old hanging folders. I still have stuff in piles and my office cabinet that I need to file.
*Got part of my kitchen clean (mainly stuff you could see).
*Crib is up and covers are on it. Still have wall art to hang, and a recliner to clean in there.
*Cleaned some pics, docs, etc. off the old desktop for transfer to the laptop or archiving.

I'll be working night shift this weekend, so not much will get done by me. I have my 26-week checkup Tuesday at 10:30 (after working Monday night), so nothing will get done Tuesday, either. After my appointment, it will be nap time.

Maybe Wednesday, I can get something else done.

Snow and illness

We woke this morning to snow! And not just a few flakes, either. Although the snow on the ground had already melted, there were still three and four foot high snowmen standing in my neighborhood at 1:00 this afternoon. Poor Chris, we didn't go out and play in it. That kid is seriously deprived. Instead, I made pancakes and bacon for breakfast. Then he played Wii.

While I was cooking, we went out and gathered up a huge bowl full of snow for making snow cream. Mmmmmm. Michael woke up, still sick, around 5 AM, and said it was snowing big, wet flakes at that time. Apparently, it came down pretty hard. At 9 AM, when he woke me up, it had already stopped and there were a few inches on the ground and cars. I'm not a cold-weather person, so I went out in it just long enough to gather up the bowl of snow. Then later, just long enough to make it into the car and take Chris home.

While we were gone taking him home, I was afflicted with what I presume to be whatever Michael and Bobby are/were sick with. My head felt like I had enough sinus pressure built up in it to explode. It started throbbing. So far, no fever. Michael said his fever broke very early this morning (like, 4 or 5 AM). Right now, we're both curled up on the couch under a pile of blankets. We thought we were both just sick, because we couldn't keep warm, even under blankets and comforters. Then some of Michael's friends came over, and told us that it really was that cold in our house. It seems our central unit is screwed again. We have it set on 75, and yet it's only 62 degrees in our house. So we pulled out the space heaters. Great. Sick, cold, and a screwed up heater. Lovely. We'll be calling the company that installed our unit tomorrow.

Hopefully, I won't progress to being as sick as Michael. If I am, I'll be calling in to work in the morning. We'll see.

And thanks to both of us feeling crappy, our baby bed, which we picked up Friday evening, is still sitting in the room upstairs, unpacked but in pieces. hopefully, next weekend it'll be put together. Maybe. I know there's no way I'm going to mess with it, the way I feel. At least we still have three and a half months to get it up. :)

Crib is in

Hopefully, it will be up this weekend. I will post pics of Mike's room when we get the crib put together. So happy! Now the only piece of furniture missing is our glider and ottoman, to be ordered later.

Armoire is up!

So, I convinced my husband (no big amount of convincing necessary) that we needed to carry the armoire up the stairs, piece by piece. So he carried it all up for me. We got it put together, and it looks great. The only problem is, the stupid holes pre-drilled for the cam locks were too big, so we had problems trying to get them to stay attached. I'm going to have to glue some of the pieces together. Mainly, the drawer fronts to the drawers. Then it should be good to go.

We're still waiting on our crib. And we still need to steam clean Michael's recliner, which is already in the room waiting to be cleaned. Other than that, we're well on track to get all this done before June. :) I may whip this procrastination thing I have going yet! Probably not, but it does make me feel better to think of all the work we accomplished while I was off work.

I had the coolest thought today. The baskets I bought at Babies R Us during our mega shopping session worked perfectly in the armoire. I had room left over on each shelf inside it, but not enough for more baskets that size. I have lots of little stuff already that I need somewhere to store. I have these little boes with drawers in them for my sewing stuff that I will use one day. I tried one, and it worked well.

So after measuring the space left inside the armoire, off to Big Lots we went. I wanted to get four more cases of the G2 type Gatorade, which Big Lots was selling for $6 each. No Gatorade in the store. They're out of it. :( But they DID have the little organizers with drawers, like you would buy from Walmart for your desk, etc. They will be perfect inside the armoire for feeding spoons, thermometers, nasal aspirators, etc. until we actually need them. So I bought 2 little ones and 2 big ones.

While there, I also bought more scrapbooking stuff (that stuff is addictive), a baby blanket, a few onesies, an infant toy that makes noise and such.... And to think, all I wanted was some Gatorade that they didn't even have! LOL.

Some of our friends asked Michael why we were doing a nursery when the baby won't be in there much. The answer is: BECAUSE WE CAN and BECAUSE I WANT TO! They think we're nuts for doing so much in there, when the baby will be sleeping in our room for at least the first several months. Whatever. My money, my house, my child. They can bite me. Really, I don't mind them asking. It doesn't really make sense for us to do all this. Until you realize that we will may be moving our room upstairs sometime in the future (according to my loving, incorrect husband). I would rather add on to our house, and then not have to worry about moving upstairs. We'll see.

Enough writing for now. Dinner should be ready. Tonight, chili. Mainly because I haven't frozen the ground beef we bought yesterday, so I didn't have to thaw anything at 6:00 to cook dinner. Love to all.

Belly pic - 20 weeks 2 days

Been meaning to post this for over a week now. Lori took it on Feb. 6 when she was at my house. I'm going to be huge by June! Makes me glad I haven't bought a bunch of maternity clothes yet. They wouldn't fit by the end of this pregnancy.

Without further ado, my glorious, already big belly. And don't even try to say it's not. I have already misplaced my toes. So don't even try to lie and say I'm not that big yet. Trust me, this picture does not do my belly justice. It's obvious to strangers, even when I wear a t-shirt, that there's more in there than Quizno's and chocolate cake. Lori's mom predicts a good eight pounder or more if this keeps up. At least it appears he'll be a good healthy weight at birth.


Today, I am 21 weeks and 4 days along. This leaves 129 days until my due date. This morning, my weight was 155.8. This makes a total weight gain of 11.2 pounds. According to the American Pregnancy Association, total weight gain so far should be 9 to 19 pounds, so I guess I'm right on track. I'm not holding my breath, though. I bet I make up for being in the lower half of this "normal" range before delivery. :) As long as I'm somewhere in this band, and Roberta says all is well, I guess that's good enough. This also means I can continue with my daily chocolate cake time, too.

Out of the last 8 days, I've worked in the baby's room for at least a few hours a day (most days, several hours) every day except Valentine's day. I was tired, so we took the day off. So far, we have washed the walls (Michael has become OCD about this. He's washed them once with me, and probably three more times solo.), cleaned the carpet I hate so much (want to put down hard wood if we have the money in the budget right now), put together a shelf/drawer set we bought at Lowe's, put together the changing table, hung new curtains and blinds, organized all our baby stuff in the furniture we have so far, put up a new ceiling fan and light in the dormer, put up a new light in the hall at the top of the stairs, hung a shelf in the bathroom upstairs, and painted shapes (circles, stars and ovals) to go on the walls. Today we hung most of the shapes. I kept several to use to fill in the walls after we pick up our armoire (waiting at Wal-mart right now) and crib (somewhere in "shipped" land, between the warehouse and store) and hang the wooden letters we bought to spell out the baby's name on the wall above the crib. Tomorrow we will go grocery shopping and pick up our 140 pound armoire that has to go upstairs before we put it together. Hopefully I can convince my husband that we need to open it and take it up a couple of pieces at a time. Michael and Bobby had a rough time with getting the changing table upstairs in the box, and it was 30+ pounds lighter.

Well, time for bed. I don't have to go back to work until Friday morning. 14 days off is nice. :)

A preview of the baby stuff bought today

Ok, so I jumped on the 'net to "approptiate" some pics as a preview of today's aquisitions. Without further ado, the pictures.

Our lamp.

We bought only the blanket from this set. We didn't bother with the rest. I'm creating our own set, from pieces from here and there.

And we got this blanket.

More to come later!

Bought stuff for our nursery today.....

So, we got our income ta refund deposited today. We used it to buy baby stuff. When we got to Babies R Us and Michael saw all the beautiful blue and brown stuff, he asked if we could change the colors of the nursery. SO guess what? Since I LOVE the color combination already (I want to do our bedroom in blue and brown), we changes our minds. So now everything will be blue and brown. We got blankets, sheets, baskets, clothes, stroller, carseat, high chair, playpen, swing, and I don't know what all else. We spent over $900 there. Three buggies later, the back seat and cargo area of our car were full. I'll post pics later, after I unpack everything and put it all together.

Then we came home, balanced the checkbook so I wouldn't forget, and ordered our furniture. Over $800 of furniture. Pics to come of that, too. I'll have to go swipe the ones off the website, since I have to wait for all of that to be shipped.

Michael had a cool idea for the walls. We aren't painting them. He wants to take 8 or 10 inch strips of wood and paint it blue. Then stencil on a brown pattern TBD. Then put it up on the walls about halfway up, kinda like a really wide chair rail. He thinks this will give the walls some much-needed color. I agree. So we'll be doing that, after I find stencils I like.

Since we changed the colors of the nursery, I guess the red carpet has to go. Yay! I hate that carpet. Later we'll be putting down hardwood like we already have downstairs. I want to do both bedrooms upstairs like that anyway, so this will be a good excuse to get one of them done.

Pics of all the new stuff to come later. We need to wash the walls and steam clean the carpet before we unpack everything and put it all together. Maybe a few days or more before we get all that done. Michael doesn't want to be tripping over everything while we clean. Can't say I blame him. And yes, we're going to go ahead and steam clean the carpet, because it'll be a few months before we rip it up, and we con't want all our nice, new baby stuff to smell from the smells trapped in the carpet. Stupid dog and his habit of peeing and pooping in the house at night. That room will now be off-limits to the little ankle biter!

Quick update - AKA my 17w3d "Almost halfway there" freak-out

I have almost reached the halfway point of this pregnancy. Wow. Halfway there. Five more months. Considering I will work one of those months in "outage mode", then that really only leaves me with 4 productive months to get EVERYTHING done... Oh CRAP! We've bought a few onesies and a couple of cases of diapers and a few other things we KNOW we're gonna need, but that's about it. I've picked out my nursery furniture. Then I checked and half the set is on back order, so I may have to pick out something different just to make sure it gets here on time. We know what theme we want to go with, depending on whether the baby has a penis or a vajayjay. I haven't registered, picked out bedding, painted, cleaned out the nursery, bought baby clothes, or anything like that. There's still carpet to clean, walls to wash, a glider and ottoman to pick out, a house to organize, clutter and "stuff" to go through and trash anything I can, boxes to unpack from when we bought our house eighteen months ago, Chris's scrapbook to work on, the baby scrapbook to start as soon as the gender is revealed to us.... OHMYGOD! Four more months is not enough time. Not with the way I work, days this week, nights next week...... For Pete's sake, I just ordered my first few pieces of actual maternity clothes today. I'll have to buy more ASAP. My scrub tops for work are almost too small in the belly already. I guess sooner or later I'll resort to wearing maternity jeans and t-shirts to work, just so my belly will stay covered.

OK, freak out over. I feel better. I know it'll get done, if I get off my butt on my days off and do it. Lately I have had no motivation to do anything other than eat and sleep. I'll have to change that. I think my work/sleep schedule has a lot to do with it. My poor body doesn't know if I'm coming or going, on top of being invaded by a foreign person with whom it has to share everything. I have to work nights next Tuesday through Thursday night, but then it's 3 weeks of day shift. Hopefully then I'll take on a more regular schedule and I'll feel like actually doing something during the day other than sitting on the couch watching TV and surfing the internet.

The good news is, as of January 6, I've only gained about four pounds the last 17 weeks. I want to gain a little more than the minimum recommended weight, but I want to stay away from the upper end of "recommended", and I definitely DO NOT want to gain over the recommended amount. I think 30 pounds, give or take one or two, would be good. I gained over 35 pounds last time, but I was a teenager, so it was recommended for me to gain a little extra then. Not this time. This time I get 25 to 35 pounds. Period. And I intend to aim for closer to 30 than 35.

Funny, four pounds gained equals a belly so big people at work are starting to notice it under my scrubs. Good grief! I'm going to be a lot bigger than last time, I think..... :)

Good news in my house...

I found out Monday that I am expecting. Michael and I are thrilled. I found out two days after his birthday. I'll be due in June sometime. My first prenatal appointment is November 6 at 10 AM. Last time (nine years ago) she did an ultrasound at every appointment. Maybe she will this time, too.

I have to say, I don't FEEL very pregnant. None of the usual symptoms. I've been so hungry the last week, that's about it. I gained 1 1/2 pounds yesterday (no kidding!) but surely some of that is water retention or something.... Although I did eat five (yes, five) times yesterday.....

The only reason I tested when I did was so I could say that I had to wait a few more days for my period to show. I tested on the earliest day possible, for some reason.

Guess Michael's gonna have to put up the swimming pool as soon as it gets warm enough next spring. Being in the third trimester in the summer in Alabama will not be fun. I think I'll have him put it where it'll be shaded in the afternoon. To minimize the sunburn and heat while I float around in it.

And of course, while we will be happy no matter what, I would prefer a girl and Michael is hoping for a boy. For a girl, I'm thinking either Winnie the Pooh (complete with murals painted on the wall) or blue-and-brown nursery:
(bed set and accessories by Amy Coe for Babies R Us).

For a boy, an Alabama crimson-and-white room. I'll hang my mom's autographed picture of THE BEAR in it, too.

Any thoughts from anyone?