It's a.... (and other stuff)

BOY! I'm sure all two of you who actually keep up on reading this already knew that, but I just noticed I kinda left a teeny cliffhanger with the last entry. I wasn't sure if I really wanted a girl or boy because both really had their pros and cons. However, as much as I really wanted a girl to share all the girly stuff in life with, I've gotten quite used to the idea of having two boys. For one, their birthdays will be close enough that all the clothes I had for Tyler will probably do just fine for this one... which means hardly any clothes to buy! Also, Tyler has a TON of boy toys, so we really don't need much for the next one in that aspect. All-in-all, we'll be able to save our money to spend on diapers and formula down the road. I'm planning to take more time off than I did with Tyler this time around. With Tyler, I was off a total of 7 weeks (1 week prior and 6 weeks after) and this time I'm hoping to take 12 weeks - assuming the baby comes no earlier than my due date! So far, I have just under 6 weeks of time saved up with absolutely no hope of having the whole 12 weeks paid... however, I'm trying to save it up and hopefully will have another week or so collected in the 18ish weeks I have left! What's different this time around is that a week's pay is 32 hours instead of 40 hours like it was with Tyler, so my time is actually going farther for me.

On the aspect of planning and preparing for the new baby:

There's a whole lot of laundry to do (the car seat cover, receiving blankets, clothes, bedding).
We need to gather up stuff we've loaned to family members.
We have a storage shelf to make for downstairs so I have a place off the cement floor to store the mattress and box springs for the double bed.
We have to put together the crib (which was only taken apart partially, so it's just a matter of a few bolts).
We aren't planning to take down the double bed and put up the crib until after the baby comes since he will be in a bassinet for several weeks and it would be nice to have the double bed for intial house guests.
I still have more organizing that needs to be done before the baby comes - I'm purging things that haven't been used and is just taking up space and trying to get rid of any clutter around the house. I'm a big fan of empty or nearly empty horizontal surfaces. Less is more in my book, but you probably wouldn't think that if you saw the amount of things sitting on said surfaces. Most of it is to keep important things from tiny hands and other stuff is just because I can't figure out a proper place for it all. Then, you've got the "decor" items like candles, picture frames, and figurines. We just got a new storage cabinet for down by the garage door and i love it so much that I want to get another to house my crafty stuff. I'd really really love to have it all organized and stored in one nice "behind closed doors" place. The really cool thing is that it's deep enough to be able to put my plastic rubbermaid tub of scrapbook stuff in it (which I'm dying to finish the scrapbooks I started so I can get rid of it all!) I'm also starting to collect quite a bit of yarn leftover from projects that I just can't bare to part with. Someday I'll crochet it all into a hodge podge afghan like I remember having when I was a kid. That blanket was certainly nothing fancy, but I loved looking at all the different colors and picking out my favorite parts as I drifted off to sleep. I guess that's what you did with your leftover yarn "back in the day".

Speaking of crafts...
I have finished a "v-stitch" baby afghan last weekend and am in the process of making a hat out of the leftover yarn. I initially wanted to make it gender-neutral, but once I started to crochet it up, it really said "girl" to me. So, unfortunately, as much as I just LOVE the way it turned out, I won't be keeping it for myself. With the "millions" of people I know having babies in June, I'm sure one of them will end up being a girl, and I hope she likes the afghan and hat I made for her!
I started on a afghan for my baby boy today. I had a pattern all picked out, but when I started working on it, it just wasn't right. It was a wave/ripple pattern and was looking really good until I realized that with each row, the pattern was just decreasing stitches without a means to add them back in at the peaks. So - I canned that pattern and went looking for a new one. I found one that I actually like even better and it seems to be going pretty well. (Even if I ripped out a whole row because I failed to put a slip stitch in each wave. Yes, another ripple/wave pattern.) This afghan is also my first experience at using the puff stitch. While not a hard stitch to crochet, it took a little bit to get a good feel for it. I can now crochet one in no time!
I also have a crib-sized quilt in the making. It's a rail fence pattern, which looks rather fancy for how easy it was to sew together. I bought the fabric on Monday and had it all pieced and pinned by Wednesday night. I attribute my success to only having to rip out two small seams out of all the sewing I did. I would probably have had it done a bit sooner if I didn't have a mental drain and cut some fabric wrong - leading me to head back to the store for more. Now, I just have to cut the backing down to size, sew on a binding, and then start on my first attempt at free-motion quilting. I ordered a darning foot and some thread to complete the project, but if it doesn't really work out, I may end up just knotting the layers together. Everything I've read said that it takes a bit of practice to get very good at free motion quilting, so I'll have to do quite a bit of practice before I even put the quilt under the needle.
After the two in-progress blankets are done, I have another afghan to crochet that I'm pretty excited to get started on, but I have to have my priorities in order... I only have a little over 18 weeks (God Willing!) to get these two blankets done! I hope I'm not still crocheting on the way to the hospital!

Well, I guess one could say I'm nesting, but I prefer to consider myself smart. I don't anticipate having too much time to accomplish much once the baby comes... at least not right away. I'm planning to sleep as much and as often as I can... which isn't going to be as often as I'd like with Tyler not taking naps anymore. However, my sitter is still willing to take Tyler whenever I need to take a break and get some sleep. She is such a GOD SEND, and if anyone in the area needs a babysitter, she is certified with the county, very well qualified, super with the kids, reasonably priced, and has openings!

Tyler is fighting a cough/cold and his poor face is chapped from drool/snot/what-have-you. He looks pitiful and I think he feels pitiful, too. He took a little nap today while he was watching his Cars movie... definitely a daily viewing in our house. It's a good thing it's a cute movie, but sometimes even the cutest movie gets annoying after the third time in a row.... ;-) He's been big into playing with his Cars cars. His favorite continues to be Lightning McQueen, but I'm not sure if Mater or The King comes in second. He loves putting his little tractors on their backs like the tractor-tipping scene in the movie... he even makes the distressed noise they make while doing so. Such an observant little man! On a side note - his speech has completely taken off... you can actually carry on a small conversation with him. It's still a little one-sided, but he contributes to the conversation with more than just "yes" and "no". My little man is growing up!

Alas, I am all out of steam for one night... till next time....

Next week, we go for our next ultrasound. We're not 100% sure, but we are leaning towards finding out the gender this time around. Hopefully the little one will cooperate with us! The pregnancy is going along pretty well. I've started feeling relief from the nausea a few weeks after Thanksgiving. It just gradually became less and less. I have also not had much heartburn lately, either. However, I'm still fairly tired and LOVE to go to bed early and sleep in as late as possible. It's just a big shame that Tyler doesn't really take a nap for me anymore, because I used to look forward to getting an afternoon nap. He still takes a little one at the sitter, because I have to get him up early on those days.

Tyler had a big Christmas this year - lots and lots of toys. We have pretty much put away everything else he had and has out just the things he got for Christmas. When I get the chance, I'll have pictures posted on our website of Tyler and his loot!

Also, I've been having to put away some of his 24mo pants. There is a great discrepancy in the length of the pants, so only the longer pairs remain in the closet. We tried putting some 3T jeans on him and they just fell off. I even had the little adjustable straps pulled pretty tight. They were also much much longer than the 24mo/2T pants he has. For now, he's going to wear a bunch of sweats since they have elastic cuffs to keep him from dragging his pants. I also got out some 24mo long sleeve shirts from the tub that I didn't think would fit him this year... They are a little shorter than the 3T shirts he's been wearing, but they aren't bad. Again, discrepancy in lengths again - I just got out the longer shirts. SO - his wardrobe got bigger by about 4 shirts. Not sure what he'll be wearing this summer - I put away the 24mo shorts, but the length is not really a problem there - it'll be moreso the waist size. They make little boy shorts way too long anyway! They are practically like wearing capri pants!

Tyler's potty training has been in a serious stand-still. He peed on the potty once (I think by accident) probably a month ago. He thinks the toilet is for farting - which he does pretty well when he's on it. Just last night he got out of the tub and was making grunting noises and said "too stuck" which he says when he's trying to poop on the potty.... I had him sit on the potty and all he did was fart. Oh well - at least he gets THAT part of it. When we forget to change his diaper for awhile and he overflows his diaper, he asked to be changed, so we're thinking that putting him in the washable training pants might be worth a try to get him going since he apparently doesn't like to be wet! I'm waiting to have a free weekend to give it a try, so Josh can help out with it, too. We'll see how it goes! I'd LOVE for him to be out of diapers by June.

We are on probably day 7ish of snow. We don't have a whole lot of accumulation for having 7 days of snow, but I think I heard on the news yesterday that we had around 8 inches of the white stuff on the ground. I would like to take a ruler outside to verify that, but it's just not high on my priority list!

Just a few days after Christmas, Daisy turned 4 years old... it's amazing she's been with us that long... which also marks that we've been in our house 4 years this coming March. THAT really surprises me that it's been so long... AND I graduated 4 years ago this coming May with my bachelors. It felt like I was in school FOREVER and I hope I don't ever have to return! And while we are dating things - Tyler will be 3 in July and we will have been married 8 years in August! (I skipped over my birthday on purpose! I don't need to point out that I'm getting older! haha!)

We rearranged the living room furniture this past week after taking down the tree. Basically just switched the TV and the big red chair, so I can't say it was a massive re-arrange, but it's different enough to make it feel like a whole new room! No, I didn't do any of the heavy lifting... just directed where things were to go!

I'm looking into getting a digital SLR in the coming months - leaning towards a Sony Alpha 300. I'm looking for something that has an ISO of at least 3200 to give a better chance at getting a good picture in low-light situations, I enjoy the tiltable viewing screen, and I like the feature of them using a different sensor for the live-view so it doesn't make the auto focus slower when taking a picture (others need to move the mirror inside to take the picture using live view). The only feature I wish it had was the ability to record video, but that's not a huge requirement since we have a video camera already, but I don't like the recording media (the little tapes) and I found it convienent being able to use my point and shoot for pictures and video (which is how I took most of my video clips of Tyler) Oh well - I still have some more research to do, but if anyone has suggestions and/or things to think about - then let me know!

Hopefully it won't take me 2 months to post again - but I'm not making promises!