20 days…and counting…

So here we are, 20 days from our scheduled c-section to bring little Liam into the world. I am very eager and on the border of impatient waiting these last few weeks. There is a constant To-Do list running through my head and I can’t seem to accomplish anything on this list. There are 3 main reasons this list is not getting accomplished:

1. I am getting VERY large, I look and feel like I am smuggling a bowling ball around under my shirt. This makes getting things done very awkward and often times painful. For all of you whom have never been pregnant, try strapping a 12lb bowling ball to your stomach and do things like laundry and the dishes.

2. Bella has become a very clingy child. It is driving me insane! She insists on spending her whole day sitting on my rapidly disappearing lap. Somehow she knows that her world is about to be turned upside down and this is how she is protesting. She cries all day and pulls at my legs making it difficult to accomplish anything.

3. I am trying desperately not to go into natural labor. It seems counter-intuitive but if I do go into labor they will do an emergency c-section immediately. I don’t particularly want to have a c-section while in labor because it can make for a longer more painful recovery. I also don’t want him to come before the 6th because Clint has a business trip to St. Louis next weekend and he’d like to be here when Liam arrives.

So we wait, and pray, and wait some more. Hopefully I won’t go insane that I am home all day but can’t seem to accomplish anything. Maybe the time is truly best spent reading the same books repeatedly to Isabella.

Here are some recent pictures of the 17 month old Isabella…

Isabella sleeping for the first time in her “Big Girl” bed

…notice that she found a pair of jeans to snuggle with

This is Bella’s attempt at helping me cook dinner

feeling a bit creative…

So I am feeling a bit creative. I am yearning to get my hands on a project. I’d love to paint the image I’ve been longing to put on canvas for a bit but I don’t know how I’d actually accomplish that. I am actually in a bit of a sewing mood. There are some practical things I need to sew like drapery for our new place. I would like to sew Liam a baby blanket because I had sewn one for Bella. I really want to make Bella a few dolls to play with because she is constantly walking around saying “bebee, bebee” which is her letting me know that she would like to wrap what ever stuffed animal she is curently holding in a baby blanket. I’ve been dinking around etsy looking at all the amazing things people are creating. There is a project that I have started that needs to be finished since it was supposed to be a wedding gift for some friends who got hitched in May. All of these ideas and aspirations are floating around in my head and the biggest hurdle is that I don’t own a sewing machine so I have to wait on the graciousness of friends who will loan me theirs for long periods of time. Oh well, I’ll have to be patient.

seattle, bed rest, and a move…

So the last month has been quite full. In the middle of July we flew to Seattle to spend a week with my family. It was so refreshing! It was nice to be able to just rest and Clint really enjoyed time with Bella and time away from work. We were slightly dreading coming home. We really didn’t want to leave the beautiful weather. Nothing quite compares to Seattle in July. Unfortunately, nothing quite compares to Texas in July but it isn’t a positive.

The boy has banned me from ever picking another moving date. I actually agree with the ban. I have been pregnant for 3 of our four moves. 2 of our moves have been within a few days of Christmas. I wasn’t physically present for one move. And I was on bed rest will Bella for one move. This has resulted in my husband becoming a moving PRO! So I couldn’t help much with this move because I am still prego. I did feel the need to unpack EVERYTHING in the week following our return from Seattle. Needless to say I stressed my no-so-little pregnant body out resulting in cramping. Well cramping can be caused by several things but it can also be a sign of pre-term labor. Oh joy. Since pre-term labor is nothing to mess around with I got a large dose of humility in the form of 2 weeks of strict bed rest. Thankfully the cramps subsided a few days into my prison sentence and the Doc felt comfortable putting me on “restricted activity” for the remainder of my pregnancy. So no roller derby for me. I will be taking it as easy as one can while chasing a 16 month old around.

Bella is doing well. She had a rough adjustment to me not being able to pick her up. This has proved providential because her brother is coming 2 months from today. We are also working hard on discipline right now. She is still a really laid back and content kid but she has her moments of defiance and she is proving to be quite the manipulator and uses the water works to her advantage. We are hoping to get a handle on some of her more defiant attitudes before Liam arrives. We are just striving to be consistent in disciplining her.

Here are some recent pictures of Bella.

excuses excuses…

So a dear friend of mine Shay recently wrote a post on his blog entitled So You Think You Can Blog where he drags not so consistent bloggers across the coals. Saying ultimately that blogging is a discipline of writing and that a lack of consistency, for whatever reason, are just excuses. So here are my excuses for not writing in the last month. We went to Seattle to visit my family which was marvelous. We arrived home early on the 20th and then moved into our new town home on the same day. I unpacked the entire house over the following week while chasing a 16 month old around from hazard to hazard. Then I landed on strict bed rest for 2 week because I stressed my body into potential pre-term labor. I was put on restricted activity for the rest of my pregnancy last Friday and so resumed (with much less fervor) the organization of our new home. We finally got internet and cable installed this Tuesday. So those are my excuses for not blogging. It hasn’t been a priority.

lots of packing…

So I am writing this post because I am currently overwhelmed and this seemed like a good distraction. I am overwhelmed because tomorrow we are leaving for Seattle for a week to spend time with my family. I couldn’t be more stoked about this but getting to tomorrow is daunting. Normally I am a pro at packing for trips. The reason I am overwhelmed is that the very day we return from Seattle we are moving into our new (new to us) townhouse. I tend to schedule travel around moving. It is never really intentional, but out of our 3 moves together as a married couple 2 of them have been amidst major traveling, the third occurred days after I landed on bed-rest with Bella and a few days before Christmas.

Part of the reason we scheduled this move for when we did was because I would much rather have as many transitions as I can overlap. So in the case of this move we will be moving out of our temporary housing with my in-laws, vacationing at my parents home, and then moving into a new home. The other big reason we decided to move on that specific date is because they wouldn’t hold the townhome for us any longer. So the 20th it is.

So now I am packing for vacation, and packing to move and trying to organize everything associated with travelling and moving. This whole scheme wouldn’t have worked if I actually had to pack a whole household. We have two rooms to ourselves at Clint’s parent’s house full of necessities and some kitchen and bathroom items. Thankfully all of that can be boxed rather quickly without much pain. The rest of our belongings occupy a storage unit down the street.

I am kind of at a stalemate of packing. Everything that isn’t currently packed is either too big for me to pack in my very pregnant state, or something we will need this evening and will pack just before bed. It’s that stalemate that leaves me a bit overwhelmed by the whole process.

More to come I’m sure…

my fridays…

Well this is probably the least typical Friday I could post about, but I thought I’d follow through on chronicling the whole week.
Bella slept in this morning which means we slept in. Clint had the day off which is the first holiday he’s had off in a while. So Bella woke us up via baby monitor at 9:15ish. We all got up Clint had a shower and I fed Bella some yogurt then made some breakfast for the big kids. We ate breakfast and then we cleaned up breakfast. Bella then got bathed and then I took a shower all so I could lounge around with my family all day.
Around noon we made lunch for Bella, she ate and then we put her down for a nap. I then started up the grill and with a little assistance from Clint got the ribs on the grill for their nice slow cook.
We lounged around some more, got caught up on a couple of t.v. shows we enjoy. I did some dinking around the internet researching cloth diaper pail methods and how to make your own laundry detergent. Yes, I am that extreme, I find it fun, and creative and it saves money.
Around 4:30 PJ and Amanda Berner came over to hang out with us for the 4th. Bella woke up right before dinner and there was some more relaxing and lounging. The Berners are our go-to friends to sit, laugh, talk, and in general do not much of anything. They just moved closer to us and we are about to move closer to them.
We then watched a movie and put Bella to bed and decided against driving all over town to find fireworks. I did a couple of loads of Bella’s laundry since today seemed to be the day that she felt the need to dirty 4 different outfits.
Unfortunately we have to get to bed at a semi-decent hour because Clint has to open his branch for 3 hours tomorrow. So here I am, updating the bolg, about to do some reading, and hit the bed.

diapering like a tree-hugger…

So my friend Jen asked about our diapering system in the my thursdays post and to save the worlds longest comment I decided just to post about it.
I use a modified version of the gDiapers system. Their system involves the otter pant (little g pants), a breathable nylon snap in liner and a flushable insert. Although this entire system appeals to the greener part of me it isn’t cost effective on its own. So to win both battles I did a bit of research and found a company Cottonwood Baby who makes organic cotton inserts specifically for gDiapers. I also use a biodegradable diaper liner by Kushies so that when #2 occurs I can just flush it.
So when we are out and about close to home I’ll use the flushable inserts and when we are home I use the cotton inserts. The reason I typically use disposables when we aren’t home is that other than errands we typically are gone for 6-12 hour stretches of time because we live so far away from church and most of our friends. I am not opposed to carrying around a soiled diaper, but we chose to have a high maintenance diapering system and don’t feel like we should have to impose that on your average rotating nursery worker. So we end up buying a box of disposables about once every three months. That and our favorite babysitter Grandma tends to struggle even using a disposable on Bella so its not worth the hassle to try and make her use gDiapers.

the 15 month old isabella…

Bella turned 15 months on the 2nd. She is definitely a toddler now. She is constantly up and about. Very independant and even has three teeth. Her 15 month check up isn’t till next week so I don’t know her current stats. But here are some pictures of Bella from the last month or so…

my thursdays…

This morning Bella woke me up at 8am (via baby monitor) I then lazily refused to get her out of her room till 8:30am because I was still exhausted. She just sat there and talked to herself which is always fun to listen to. I got Bella up, gave her a bath, no shower for me and started our day.
At 9am I made breakfast, we ate breakfast, I cleaned up breakfast. I started to miss coffee because I was rather sluggish.
Bella then played in her room from 9:30 till lunch. I love that she will play by herself for hours. Whilst she was in her own little world I did a load of her laundry including her cloth diaper inserts. I use a diapering system when we are home because it saves a TON of money and it satisfies the tree hugger in me. I did my zone of the week deep cleaning which was the entryway and the dining room. This is by far the least stressful of the zones. Also in this block of time I attempted to make a list of all that needs to be done this weekend and next week before we leave for Seattle to see my family. We leave the 12th and return before the sun rises on the 20th. The 20th is also the day that we move into our new apartment/townhome. I might regret this decision later, but at this point in my life I feel like a professional mover and it will be SO nice to get our life out of storage.
At 11:30ish the mail came including a package from one of my favorite people Esther Ko Dennis. I love that she kept her Korean maiden name as a middle name.
Noon rolled around and I made lunch, we ate lunch (including Bella’s strong attempt to feed herself with a fork which took 45 minutes) and then I put Bella down for a nap. Then I cleaned up lunch and thought about what I still needed for my BBQ for the 4th of July.
I totally took advantage of Bella’s nap and made my very pregnant self take a nap as well.
At 3:15pm Bella woke me up via baby monitor. I rescued her from her crib, we played and read books in her room for over an hour. I then cleaned up her room only for her to destroy it within the next few hours.
I read my book in Bella’s room from 5-6:30ish grateful that I didn’t have to make dinner since Clint’s mother is making tacos. I love to cook but will not compete with Clint’s mother’s tacos or mole.
Bella and I then played outside in the water and ate Otter Pops (which have been renamed to Freeze Pops).
Clint got home really late (almost 8pm) we watched a bit of the history channel and then met our friends PJ and Amanda’s to pick up some boxes and take an outing to Cold Stone.
We headed home at 9:45pm (which took forever because we forgot our TollTag and had to take the service road). We arrived at home and put Bella straight to bed.
I then employed Clinton to help me prep the baby back ribs for tomorrow and put the dry rub on them so they can marinade over night. We are now going to read a bit and head to bed.

my wednesdays…

Well this Wednesday was anything but typical. Bella slept in, I had a long meeting this morning and left Bella with Grandma. I came home to a vomiting child which pretty much dominated the rest of my day. Oh the joys of parenting. My day did end well with a trip to a student ministries get together hosted by one of our upcoming seniors. It was awesome to see all of our students choosing to be together in fellowship even though the ministry itself is taking a month off of formal meetings. I love being able to serve with such amazing teenagers.