Still Pregnant

At the time of writing this, I am 27 weeks plus 5 days pregnant with our little boy!  The tables have really turned for this pregnancy during the last three weeks.  I've gone from feeling great and almost forgetting that I'm pregnant most of the time, to being really ready birth this baby and have my body back to myself.  On the one hand, I'm shocked that I'm already in my third trimester (probably because we haven't done a single thing to prepare yet!) and on the other, how is it not over yet??

Here are some bullets about what's going on these days:

• At my last appointment, the baby's heart rate was around 145, which is good.  I got the very dreaded glucola drink for my next appointment.  The big day is this coming Wednesday and I have pretty much been dreading it since I left the last appointment.  I really do NOT want to have to drink that stuff again!!  I am trying to prepare myself by reducing the amount of sugar I eat for the next few days.  NOT an easy task for this candy-holic!

• I feel like I am enormous already.  Last Sunday, I finally had Matt take a picture so I could compare to the same week with Katie Wynn.  Of course, that's the week I skipped with Katie Wynn.  Oops.  :)  But, for comparison's sake, here I am last Sunday (at 26 weeks) compared to 27 weeks last time.  I don't think I look much bigger in these pictures, but I feel bigger!  I also feel like I am carrying higher this go-round, which is backwards of the old wives' tale that says you carry boys low and girls high. 

• There is no hiding my belly button.  It's sad.  I swear, it's like a headlight everywhere I go.  I watch everyone's eyes go down and look at it when they're talking to me.  And Katie Wynn is obsessed with it so that's fun.  She's not satisfied with just seeing it through my clothes, though, she'd rather pull up my shirt to get a good look which isn't awkward at all in public.

• Speaking of old wives' tales, there is one that has been ringing true every single night.  One of my friends told me that you crave citrusy juices when you're having a girl and milk-based things when it's a boy.  I ate popsicles like crazy when I was pregnant with Katie Wynn, and this go round?  I have a chocolate milkshake every night before bed.  (Um, hello!  Maybe that's why I feel enormous??)  I also want cereal with milk for breakfast every morning.  
• My tailbone pain has returned.  It made an appearance early in the first trimester (I thought it was sciatica at first) and then went away.  Last weekend it returned with a vengeance, making me cringe every single time I transitioned from sitting to standing.  I had one full day of intense pain but since then, it kinda comes and goes throughout the day.
• The restless legs are back in full force too.  I wish I could just cut them off sometimes.
• I have started trying to pick up tiny boy clothes any time I'm out shopping.  It is so hard because I'd much rather look at the cute girl clothes!  Since we don't have a closet (or name!) for him yet, Katie Wynn's closet is slowly getting filled with blue things too.  We have purchased a couple coming home outfits (one looks big) that I can't wait to see him in!
• When I was pregnant with Katie Wynn, I got choked up every time I heard Jason Mraz's "I Won't Give Up" come on the radio.  I'm not sure why - blame it on the crazy hormones, maybe?  This time it's Avicii's "Hey Brother."  It gets me every time.  I have not yet figured out how my heart will grow enough to love another little person as much as I love Katie Wynn (I know it will just happen), but I do know already that there's nothing in this world I wouldn't do for our little brother.
• About his nursery: it's currently still an old office that's holding a bunch of junk.  We have done a lot of brainstorming but no actual work.  Because it used to be an office, it has zero closet space so we are actually hoping Cesar (who did our mudroom built-ins) will come build us a wall-to-wall wardrobe.  He's agreed to the job but can't get to us for a couple weeks.  Now that we have a plan, I'm ready to get started!!  Here is what we have come up with - a sketch on paper is on the left and then we actually tried to draw it to scale using chalk on the wall (shown on the right).

• In other nursery news, we finally have fabric!  Which means there's a color scheme!  I waffled back and forth between about three different ideas but finally settled on this collection of khaki and denim stripes that I had to custom-order.  We were nervous it could take months for it to come in so we quickly pulled the trigger and then bam, it was here the very next week!  Guess that means someone (ahem, Mom....) has to get busy sewing! :)

• We have a stationery chair that we plan to use for the nursery, but have ordered a swivel glider attachment to convert it to a rocker.  As soon as that comes in and we see if it works, we can send the chair off to get recovered.  I still need to shop for a crib and something to use as a changing table.
• I have one old piece to use as storage that I plan on refinishing.  The first step is stripping off some old paint and since I can't do that, I need to sweet talk my husband (or Mom?) into doing it for me so the transformation can get underway.  

That's all I can think of to update on.  Plus, I have a little lady who wants to play, so I better go play!  Cross your fingers for me that I pass the gross glucose test this week...

Saturday to Saturday

I had good intentions of cranking out some blog posts this past week.  I had four topics lined up in my head and everything.  But then we had the craziest weather week EVER and I got sidetracked and didn't get them done.  So instead, here's a recap of this bizarre week.

Last Saturday, the weather was glorious!  After too much cold weather, the sun was finally out and it was warm enough to actually enjoy being outside.  Matt was not feeling well so Katie Wynn and I left him alone and spent every single minute of the afternoon outside.  We got out the garden cart she got for her birthday and she pushed that thing around EVERYWHERE! 

She worked hard on repotting all of her plants, stopping only to watch the "choo-choos!" as they went by.

She also spent some time doing some serious coloring.  The only thing I had for her to color on was a scrap piece of beaded board!  Sad, isn't it?  She doesn't know any different though...

Sunday after church we had a very lazy day at home.  Had I known we were about to be cooped up in the house for a few more days, I would've made sure we got out of the house for a while!  Instead, we bummed around and did laundry and watched movies and played all day.

We knew that bad weather was in the forecast but we honestly didn't think twice about it.  We've had bad weather in the forecast every other week, it seems like.  Sunday evening, the sleet started coming, though, and it piled up quick!  We went about our nighttime routine, laid our clothes out for work the next day, and got in bed.  Shortly after 10pm, our power went out.  It's amazing how quiet it is in your house when nothing is on, no humming or buzzing or anything!  I could not sleep at all; I just kept listening to branches popping outside from the ice and worrying about whether or not Katie Wynn was warm enough.

Around 3:00 am, after a freezing cold bathroom break, I decided to get Katie Wynn out of her bed and put her in between us to try to keep her warm.  At 6:20 in the morning, I got the automated call from my office announcing that it was closed.  It was about 58 degrees in our house and I was freezing!  After four unanswered phone calls, my mom finally picked up her phone and we found out they had power.  Hallelujah!  We hit the road as fast as we could.

As we drove to my parents' house, we found the reason for the power outage.  We knew pretty much immediately that the power wouldn't be on any time soon.

Obviously we were extremely grateful that my parents let us spend the icy/snowy day with them!  I think we had about 4 inches of ice with an inch or so of snow on top of it.  On Monday, Matt braved the roads a couple times to go check on our house and, even with a fire burning, it got down to 43 degrees!  Around 5 in the afternoon, I went with him to pack our bags and I could see my breath in our living room.  Not ideal!

Do you think any of us got a little stir crazy staying in the house all day?  That's three adults, one toddler, two dogs, and a million toys all on the same couch.

Our power did end up coming on late Monday evening, but we were already putting KW to bed at my parents' so we stayed the night.  The plan was for Matt to leave early Tuesday morning to test out the roads, and then I was going to hitch a ride into work with my Dad.  Matt left before 6am and, after a looong, slow drive, finally made it to work.  Dad and I were not so lucky.  We left after 8am and never even made it onto the interstate.  The roads were really backed up and we didn't want to get stuck in a standstill!  That meant I got to spend another day hanging out with my girl (and my friend Emily and her twins who were now without power).

Wednesday morning I was going to work, no matter what!  Matt got up early and took KW to daycare and then came back so I could follow him on the icy roads.  Day three of the Ice-capades and this was still the view from our garage.  You should be able to see two roads intersecting out there, but instead it was all covered in ice and snow! 

It was a white-knuckles-gripping-the-steering-wheel kind of drive, but we made it to the interstate and then on to work.  I'll be honest, after three straight days of staying in the house, I was kind of glad to be at work!

But then I was glad to see my favorite girl later that evening!

I saw on Facebook where one of my friends had let her kids go sledding in laundry baskets.  Brilliant idea!  I hadn't even taken Katie Wynn out to play in the snow yet, but I figured we could at least do that.  So we joined her Daddy on his way to check the mail and got in a few rides before dinnertime.  

She did NOT want to go back inside; she loved sledding!  You can see in the picture above on the left that Matt was still in his suit and his foot is completely covered in the snow.  We weren't able to stay out for too long.

One good thing about the two snow days this week is that Mom and I were able to make several new outfits for Katie bug!  (Mostly her, I just did the appliques.)  Here's our little model in her new hedgehog outfit before daycare.  She looks so old to me in this picture!

Thursday and Friday were pretty much back to normal.  The snow and ice have slowly started to melt away, though there is still a good bit of it in our flower beds.  Go figure that today, Saturday, the sunshine was back out and we were treated with another great day of weather!  A complete repeat of last Saturday.

Katie Wynn is so full of personality these days.  She started her day today by insisting her pjs come off, putting her shoes on the wrong feet, and hanging out in Lolli's bed.  You know, like you do.

We enjoyed a delicious breakfast with friends this morning and then ran lots of errands.  This afternoon we were able to do yardwork and even walk to the park to play for a little while.  And Katie Wynn took Lolli for a walk.  Or Lolli took Katie Wynn for a walk.  I'm really not sure.

Let's all pray that this nicer weather sticks around for a while.  I'm so over the cold!  And, we get to spring forward tonight.  Aww yeah!  I'm sure we'll have a rough day or two to recover from the lost hour, but it will be so nice to have more daylight hours after work.  Finally!

Chairs for the Dining Table

We have lived in our "new" house for 18 months now, and we've just now made our dining room look like an actual dining room.  It has been the slowest room to transform, mostly because we didn't want to spend money (or time) on a room we didn't even use.  I took some pictures of it yesterday to finally show it on the blog, but first, let's talk chairs.

I fell in love with a table a few months after we moved in and after about a year of pining for it, Matt finally let me purchase it.  He did give me one condition, though: "There's no point in us buying the table if we wait another year to get chairs for it."  I promised that I would not only look for chairs immediately, but I would find chairs I could buy on the cheap.  While I would love some fancy cloth chairs for our table, they would be a silly purchase to make while we're in this toddler-with-sticky-hands phase of life.  Add them to the wish list for later.

SO.  Right after buying the table (in September, I think?), I began the hunt for chairs.  Our table sits one inch higher than a standard table (thanks a lot, China) so it was important that I found chairs with a high back so they didn't look dwarfed compared to the table.  I decided maybe Queen Anne-style chairs would work if I could find some to make over.

After lots of antique store and thrift store shopping and more than a few sets of too expensive chairs, I finally found a set of four chairs I could buy from the Habitat for Humanity Restore.  Of course, I had to buy the table too, but the whole set cost me less than $100 which was a steal of a deal compared to the antique store prices.  Only problem was that four chairs were not enough!  

So I hunted around some more until I found another table and chair set - this time at a junk store - that was similar.  Once again, I had to buy the table but it was even cheaper than the first set so that was good.  This set only had three chairs though, so my chair count is stuck at seven.  Even though the two sets were not identical, they were a pretty close match.  In the pictures below, the one on the left is from the set of four and the one on the right is the set of three.  Love those vinyl covered seats!

As for the two tables, we donated them to our church's rummage sale in October since we had zero use for them and they were just taking up space.  

We got to work right away, taking off the seats and coating them in two layers of Annie Sloan Chalk Paint in Old White.  Thank heavens for chalk paint because there was no part of me that wanted to have to sand those chairs!  

This is when things stalled.  Well, sort of.  I knew I wanted to add a glaze to the chairs so my mom got to it one day and got three of them done.  Then I made her stop because I didn't like the way they were looking (not her fault, just didn't like the method we had chosen).  THAT's when things really stalled.

Fast forward about four months and we finally got around to finishing them.  So much for keeping that promise to Matt that I wouldn't drag my feet on getting chairs around the table!

We repainted all the chairs in Old White again (we had already added a clear wax to all of them and brown wax to three, so we had to paint them all again to get back to our blank slate).  Actually Mom did all of this step because she's such a rock star.  Then together, we spent an afternoon reglazing all seven of them.  I liked the method we used this time much better!

The next step was to recover the seats.  But, I wanted to alter them a little bit first.  Remember how I said our table sits an inch higher than a standard table?  Well, I wanted to raise the seats of our chairs an inch too so that it felt normal when we sat at the table.  (I know an inch doesn't sound like much but it was noticeably high when sitting in a normal chair.)  My solution was to cut another seat out of 1" thick plywood (technically 3/4" but whatevs) and add it to the bottom of the existing seats.  The two pics below show the new plywood piece screwed to the bottom of a seat (I did not remove the old fabric, figured it'd just be extra padding).  My cuts are really wavy but I knew they wouldn't show.

With the seats officially thicker, we could finish them off by wrapping them in a new layer of batting and the fabric I had purchased.  We pretty much wrapped them like a package, but the curved corners in the front were a little tricky to get smooth.

Finally, we just had to reattach the seats to the chairs!

Here is one of the finished chairs sitting in our dining room (more pics of the whole room coming soon).  

I'm really glad I hosted Henry's shower because it gave me the kick in the rear I needed to finally get these chairs finished (about five months after I bought them...).  And I'm super pleased with how they turned out!  Now we just have to have some friends over to enjoy a meal in our dining room so we can break them in!

A Shower for Henry

This is my parents' dog, Henry.  He's lazy and overweight but the best cuddle buddy you'll ever find.  He enjoys walks on the beach (seriously), wet dog food, and licking babies from head to toe.  He dislikes exercise, haircuts, and pottying outside when the ground is wet.  He may drive us all crazy occasionally, but we love him!

But that is NOT the Henry we threw a shower for on Saturday.

Instead, we showered the baby Henry my friend Jenny is about to have.  You may remember his airplane-themed nursery from here.  Jenny is just five weeks out from her due date so it was high time we gifted her with all the things she'll need for Henry's arrival.  Allison and I chose to copy his nursery and carry the airplane-theme out for the shower.

Easy peasy name banner made out of scrapbook paper.

I used scraps of fabric leftover from the nursery to make the bunting for the mantel.  I sent it home with Jenny so she can use it to decorate her hospital room when the big day comes.

I made tiny airplane decorations out of Lifesavers, Smarties, and sticks of gum (an idea we found via Pinterest).

The coffee table had bowls of traditional airplane snacks: pretzels, peanuts, and Biscoff cookies.

Since the party was from 10am to noon, Allison and I decided on brunch type dishes.  Brunch is pretty much my favorite meal ever, so I was especially excited about all the food!

The food table all set and ready to go!

The best monkey bread ever, if I say so myself.

Ham and cheese puffs, also very delicious.

You can't go wrong with Sister Schubert's sausage-filled rolls.

Individual servings of fruit parfait.  These were quite tasty!  Katie Wynn gobbled one up as soon as she got home.

Red velvet cupcakes with handmade (by Allison) propellers on top.

Since it's been an exceptionally cold winter, we decided to have a hot chocolate bar to go along with the food.  Go figure that it was over 60 degrees on Saturday!  Oh well.  It may not have been very fitting but at least it was still cute.  We named all of the garnishments to go along with the airplane theme.

Marshmallows = flotation devices

Crushed peppermint = red eye

Caramel pieces = jet lag

Whipped topping = turblence and Peppermint Schnapps and Bailey's = jet fuel

Tulips (and hydrangeas) = decorations

The arrival time for this party was set for Jenny's due date!

The best part of the shower was definitely getting to spend the day with some of my very favorite friends!  Some (including Lydia and Margot) traveled in from out of town to help celebrate baby Henry.  It was so good to get to see everyone!  (I'm realizing right now that I did not do a good job of getting a picture of everyone there.  Shame on me.)

Emily and Susan

Jenny with her mama, Janie

Casey and Meghan

Sarah, Susan, and Dana

Meghan and Emily

Lydia and Margot

Jenny insisted that I take a picture of every gift that had pretty wrapping.  I should probably be offended that she didn't want a picture of my present.

With all the great stuff she received, Jenny should be just about set for Henry's arrival.  And let me tell ya, that is gonna be one well-dressed little boy.

We couldn't let the party end without a picture of the guest of honor and hostesses!

Cheers to Henry! (The baby, not the dog.)

Overnight Guests

Friday night, Katie Wynn had her first overnight guest!  We hosted Margot, who is just two weeks older than Katie Wynn, and her mama Lydia, one of my college roommates, for the night and had so much fun playing with them.  Well, Margot and Katie Wynn did most of the playing while Lydia and I chatted and caught up and soothed toddler meltdowns.  

Katie Wynn and Margot had met once before, but I think it was back when they were just a couple months old.  I was excited to see how well they would play together.  I think if Margot and her family lived closer, these two could be best friends!  

This was the first time Katie Wynn had ever bathed with a friend and I'm not sure she knew what to do!  I think between the two of them, they pulled out every single bath toy that we own.  :)

I know this picture is blurry but I just couldn't delete it.  As soon as they had been dried off, these nekkid girls took off running through the house like two college coeds streaking through campus.

We tried for a pj photo shoot but, you know toddlers...they aren't going to smile at the same time no matter how hard you try.

"Margot, quick!  Get all the books!"

"I'm on it!"

Clean ears for everyone!

The next morning, these girls had some shopping and cooking to do.

Even the best cooks have to taste test their sauce before serving it.

Sadly, the girls didn't get to play long.  Katie Wynn had to hit the road with her daddy while the rest of us got ready for a baby shower.  We hope Lydia and Margot will visit us again sometime!