Our current leading name choices

We were talking about baby names last night and I asked Barrett if he had any name suggestions.

Barrett: "Yes"

Me: "What name do you like for baby sister?"

Barrett: "Barney."

Me: "Hmm. I'm not sure that will work. Do you have a second choice?"

Barrett: "Yes"

Me: "What is it?"

Barrett: "Mommy."

So there you go. According to Barrett, baby girl should be named either Barney or Mommy. We may or may not take his ideas into consideration. I guess you'll have to wait and see!

HIgh low

The advantages of having babies that hang out up high - no serious pressure on my bladder resulting in using the bathroom 20x/day and night that so many pregnant women have to go through. Yay!

The disadvantages of having babies that hang out up high - major reflux and shrinking lung capacity. Bring on the Tums and the oxygen mask!

Sweet treats

My friend Joanna's birthday was this past week and her mother-in-law got her a cupcake-decorating class as a gift. She invited me over for the class and we spent a lovely afternoon today learning how to frost and decorate cupcakes. It was fun - and who doesn't love cupcakes?

The instructor works at a gourmet bakery nearby and taught us tips about frosting and decorating cupcakes. They were really good. Below are some that I brought home to share with the family - I guess I shouldn't keep all the sugary goodness to myself.


I made this rose - impressive looking but a lot easier than you'd actually think!
Elmo, for Barrett. Or as he calls him "Meh-mo"
I wish I could take credit for this one, but it was actually made by the class instructor. Adorable!
Cute, huh?

Pregnancy - 28 weeks

How far along? 28 weeks (84 very short days out from due date)
Total weight gain/loss: around 15lbs I think
Maternity clothes? yes, pretty much exclusively
Stretch marks? None
Sleep? too brief
Movement? oh, a lot! she is quite active most days and the kicks are getting so much more painful. Between her head, elbows, knees, feet, bottom and fists, she is getting very violent with me lately! She is definitely moving a lot more and with more deliberate movements than I remember Barrett doing.
Food cravings? no - I'm boring I guess!
Gender? girl
Belly button in or out? pretty much flat now. I'm hoping it stays that way because I don't want an outtie
What I miss: not having an underside to my belly - I officially can't see the bottom of my belly now and it is depressing!
What I'm looking forward to: I ordered nursery bedding and am hoping that it arrives this week so I can start getting little girl's room put together.
Milestones: hm, nothing major that I can think of, just plugging along here!

Baby girl is around 2 1/4 lbs - really packing on the weight these days! She is starting to get plumper as her little baby fat starts to fill out. She's about 14.8" in length and her feet are just over 2". She has eyelashes and is able to see light filtering in. She can recognize my voice now and it will calm her when she's born.

I had my gestational diabetes test this week. I wasn't nervous the last time with this but I'm nervous to get the results this time. For one thing, diabetes runs in my family, so knowing that, it increases my risks. Also, I am worried that this would lead me to be a higher-risk pregnancy and could make the doctors more leery of "allowing" me a VBAC. So I'm biting my fingernails and waiting for the results, which will hopefully be in by early next week.

So far I'm pretty happy with my current weight. I didn't track my weight gain from last time, but I feel like it's less this time than last. According to my weekly email, most women will gain an average of 11 pounds for the rest of the pregnancy. Even with gaining a pound a week the rest of the pregnancy, that still puts me at the lower end of the recommended weight gain guidelines for an average woman. I am definitely not worrying about my weight, but I remember how hard it is to lose, so I'm trying to make healthier food choices at this point, so I can hopefully avoid the stress of losing it later! Although- hmmm... thinking about it, I've got fall and then Halloween pre-baby so I may end up topping out that 1lb a week thing with all my favorite fall foods.

Of course Barrett had to get in on the picture taking action.

He was so excited about his shirt and the fact that it had a monkey on it, holding a banana. He loved showing everyone at daycare and when I asked him what was on his shirt, he would say "mon-ey" and "na-na." His little gal-pal at daycare knelt down and pretended to munch on the banana at his shirt, which cracked me up. The two of them are such characters.

And here's a picture of the normal action at our house - B leading me around the house. He's such a bossy pants! I am nervous how he'll do when I have another child to entertain and can't be led away all the time.

How big is belly? SO big!

I am entering my 3rd trimester this week. Wait, let me write that how I say it to myself in my head: IamenteringmythirdtrimesterholycraphowamIenteringmythirdtrimester?!?! Yes, that's more accurate.

Mentally, I don't feel as far along as I am. With the last pregnancy, we went away for a long weekend when I was 25 weeks and I remember feeling a lot further along that I do now. I had that first pregnancy feeling that my belly couldn't possibly get any bigger and that I was as huge as a house, I'd been pregnant forever, and so I must be quite close to the end. Now I know how loooong the last few months are so I still feel like I'm in the early stages and have a long way to go. For some reason, my head still feels like it's in the early stages of the pregnancy, like maybe the end of 1st tri, instead of the beginning of 3rd.

(Sidenote: isn't it funny how the first time around you also feel like you're the first person in the world who's ever been pregnant and no one else can possibly know what it feels like because it's so special and crazy what's happening to you and all you can think about it your pregnancy and your baby? Haha.)

Physically, though, I am definitely feeling every bit of third trimester. I am feeling a lot more uncomfortable than I did last time. Just bigger, more achy, etc. The best way I can describe it - like someone is blowing up a balloon inside my stomach and it's putting all this pressure on me from inside with the expansion and there's no room for it to get any bigger, but it's still trying. Yup, that's how I've been feeling. Tim brought up that maybe this baby could be bigger than B. I guess that could be, but it still seems early to be feeling sooo pregnant like I do know.

We still have a lot to do:
-pick a name (haven't even narrowed down to a list of choices!)
-get the nursery in order
-get Barrett into a bed or buy a new crib (I keep going back and forth on if I want to transition him into a bed or not)
-figure out the daycare situation while I'm on leave and after I return to work
-buy bedding and any other miscellaneous stuff we need for a second baby

And somehow I'm already less than 100 days out from the due date and entering the final third of the pregnancy.

I know that in a month or two, I'll be ready for this all to be over, but right now I just wish this pregnancy would slow down. As uncomfortable as I am, I would freeze time if I could now, just to make sure I have enough time to do all that needs to be done before baby #2 arrives!

The Great Basement Cleanout - 1

We spent a few hours each of the last few weekends down in our basement, otherwise known as the great black hole of junk that exists beneath our feet. After the 3 hours of breathing in dust and spiderwebs, I've come to the appalling realization that: I've married a HOARDER. Okay, this is no shocking revelation. I knew this from the beginning. Once, when he was living in his lovely old bachelor pad, I made him clean out his bathroom drawers and found 26 old toothbrushes crammed in them. His reasoning behind keeping 5 years worth of old toothbrushes - they're apparently very handy in cleaning car parts. Okay, one or two maybe, but 26?


So when we took on the task of cleaning out the basement, I knew it'd be no easy feat. We each inherited boxes from our parents when we bought our house that they'd been storing in their basements and were happy to finally pawn off on us. Tim had many, many more than me. Old art projects, photos, diaries, high school yearbooks, and college textbooks made their journey from their dusty basements into ours where they've sat for the last few years. But I've really wanted to get the basement organized and cleaned up before Baby #2 arrives, so down to the basement we go.

We had a huge laugh at my very dramatic junior high diaries. Oh the angst of a 13 year old girl! But I think Tim stopped laughing when I pointed out that he'll be experiencing it first hand in this house in 13 short years and a look of panic crossed his face.

Ideally, I am envisioning some sort of playroom down there to have another area for the kiddos to play. Toys are starting to creep into every inch of this house and we need another area to put them. A new baby means adding a swing, a bouncer seat, and playmat back to our family room. The same room that's already filled with a million other toys. So we hope to organize things better and set up some play area. I just hope we can get all the stuff sorted and organized down there so we can set it up in the next few months. Our basement isn't finished right now, unfortunately, but I think we could still make do with it if we got some carpeting and did some decorating to try to make it more homey. We'll have to see what we can manage to do in the next 3 months.

Bouncing baby boy

A few weekends ago we had my annual company picnic. It's definitely geared towards families/kids so we've never attended before - bouncy houses and alcohol-free mingling with co-workers on a Saturday afternoon? Um, no thanks!

But now that we've joined the With Child Club, we figured we'd try it out and see how it went. It was pretty fun - but sweltering hot. It made socializing difficult with our little adventurer running all over the place, bringing us ice out of the drink buckets and trying to snatch cookies off the table. Once he figured out where the cookie tray was, the little fingers inched up over the edge to try to swipe a cookie, so he needed constant supervision.

Anyway, despite the heat, he had fun in the bounce house. He wasn't sure what to make of it at first - he watched all the other kids, wanted in, then scrambled out as soon as we let him in. But he got the hang of it and eventually had a great time running around the house. Here are the pictures, red-faced, sweaty and all!

this week's randomness

1. I took the day off work yesterday and spent the entire day running errands - Payton to the vet, drop offs and pickups at the library, returns at Kohls (love their return policy btw) and Joann Fabrics, groceries at Target, bedding shopping at the Land of Nod outlet, etc. I went to 11 places. Whew! By the end of the day, the bottoms of my feet were burning and I was exhausted and sore. You'd think I'd run a marathon. And this is someone who usually is able to shop all day. This pregnancy is definitely starting to wear me down a lot more. I came home and slept from 4-5:30pm. I woke up panicked that I slept so long, threw together dinner and was nervous about tossing and turning that night from such a long, late nap. Nope, didn't have a hint of trouble, I fell asleep very easily that night!

2. I bought Barrett a potty chair. I know he's not even remotely close to being ready, but I figured I should have one on hand for when he is. It's very strange to acknowledge that he could possibly be getting to that point in the next few months and isn't such a baby anymore! The other little girl in his daycare his age is already showing a lot of interest in it and is starting. I know boys take a lot longer, but hopefully the peer pressure of daycare helps the process go a little smoother when we start.

3. I made a pasta dinner on Thurs night using cilantro, zucchini and squash from the garden. I got the recipe from Better Homes and Gardens magazine. It was kind of a disappointment. Bummer. Their recipes have been kind of hit-or-miss for me. I like cilantro in small doses but it leaves my hands smelling cilantro-y the rest of the day - yuck. And no, Barrett still won't have anything to do with 90% of what I make. Picky child, that one. Because I've heard that babies can taste everything that their moms eat while pregnant, I wonder if I was too limited in my diet while I was pregnant. He did inherit my sweet tooth. He likes to point at the pantry while eating breakfast and say "cookie," as if he thinks we'll fall for that.

4. I have been scouring craigslist to find fun and cheap toys that we can use in a basement playroom. This week, I bought this one:It's the Fisher Price Laugh & Learn kitchen. I was a little disappointed when I picked it up to find that the shapes/balls that went with it were missing. I went ahead and got it, but that bummed me out. I guess that's the risk you take when buying used. Fortunately we have the Laugh & Learn House so we can use the same shapes with the kitchen. B made an immediate beeline for it and spent the rest of the night playing with it. These toy manufacturers really know how to suck kids in. The coolest thing is that when the kids crawl through the doorway, it somehow senses it and plays music. High tech toys the kids have these days, huh?

Well imagine my surprise when I made a quick trip to Goodwill during my Thursday marathon errand-running and found this:It's the Laugh & Learn farm. And for the low price of $0.99, it made its way home with me. That's right, a dollar. It worked, had all the pieces and is pretty darn cute so I'm pretty impressed with the deal I got on it. These aren't small toys though, so definitely will need to find their way to the basement to be played with. Yes, our house has become a plastic, garishly colored wonderland of musical noise. What can ya do?

I'm not sure yet what the plans are for Barrett while I'm on maternity leave, so I want to have plenty of things to keep him entertained in case he's home much more with me during the winter. Bored Barrett= unhappiness for everyone so I'm trying to prepare with fun things to play with just in case!

Pregnancy - 25 weeks!

Milestones from this week's email:
The baby is around 13.5 inches and weighs about a pound and a half - skinny minney! But she's starting to gain some weight and will begin to gain her baby fat and her skin will be getting more smooth and less wrinkly. Her brain is growing and lungs are developing and she's growing her hair. Her taste buds are developing (she's probably enjoying the chocolate chunk cookies that we got at Costco last weekend!). My uterus is around the size of a soccer ball - so that explains the big belly (not the aforementioned cookies, obviously!)

Barrett is funny because he loves pointing out our bellies. I ask him what is in mine and he says "baby!" although I know he has no idea what that means.

How far along? 25 weeks
Total weight gain/loss: not much in the past few weeks, surprisingly. I think around 10-12 still
Maternity clothes? yes, primarily. I bought some Paige maternity jeans and have made the switch from the non-maternity to maternity version. Love them!
Stretch marks? None.
Sleep? okay. I have started to really try to sleep on my side, rather than my back, since this is the time that it's recommended to change for improved blood flow. I do miss the back sleeping though...
Movement? comes and goes. She was so active for a few weeks but then was pretty mellow and is back to active again. I feel the movement high and low though, so she's definitely getting longer
Food cravings? no change, still fruits. Italian soda. not much else that I've noticed.
Gender? girl!
Belly button in or out? In. but flattening!
What I miss: being able to lean over and put Barrett in his crib without the pressure on my belly. I am still lifting him and carrying him a lot and just can't fathom stopping that.
What I'm looking forward to: getting the nursery started. But what I'm not looking forward to: cleaning out the guest room and closet!
Milestones: 24 weeks is considered viability week! This is a milestone for when doctors will make every reasonable attempt to save the baby if it's born. Obviously I want baby girl to stay cooking for at least 12 more weeks, but it's a milestone to know that we've reached a point where she would have a chance of survival if anything were to happen.