Tyler and Baby Bump News

Tyler was all set up with a sandbox on Wednesday and he very much enjoys playing in it. As a matter of fact, it has been one of the first thoughts he has when waking up in the morning. It's a brown "sandcastle" style plastic sandbox. Not exactly what I envisioned when I thought of a sandbox for Tyler, but it has a lid which hopefully will keep the stray cats in the area from using it as a luxurious litter box. It is nice to be able to just sit in my lawn chair and watch him go to town digging in the sand instead of having to chase him around the driveway/yard at this point.

He has gotten a lot of use out of his tricycle lately as well... he has discovered that it's much easier to ride in the barn or the garage on cement than the stone driveway. He keeps saying he needs "four wheel drive" because he's "stuck". It's too funny at times. He really likes it when Daddy rides with him on his bike. We just might have the next Lance Armstrong among us!

I ordered a "cheap" toy box for Tyler earlier this week and I'm hoping it's not too cheap to make me hate it. I just needed something bigger and aesthetically pleasing to the eye to hold all his toys out of sight when he's not playing with them. His large open basket was no longer getting the job done. It'll be passed down the line to hold his little brother's baby toys.

Speaking of which... Tyler appears to be having trouble letting go of his baby things. He saw the baby carrier/car seat that I washed up a couple weeks ago in preparation and he said it was his and then tried to sit in it. I should have taken his picture, because it was funny how BIG he is and how little he used to be in that seat. Then, just the other day, his eye caught sight of his high-chair and he cried because he wanted to sit in it. I told him it was a baby seat and he's not a baby anymore. He didn't like the sound of that. Oh boy, will we have some fun keeping Tyler from taking away "his" baby toys from his little brother...

Today officially marks the 32-week point for this pregnancy. Just this week I advanced into the next size up in scrubs at work. Big bummer, because I never had to wear this size when I was pregnant with Tyler. However, I don't even weigh as much as I did at the end with Tyler. I was 185ish with Tyler (yikes!) and still fit into the medium scrubs. I'm not going to say my current weight, but it is NOT that much and I'm too big for the mediums. I think it's because I seem to be carrying lower this time around, and also because my body is just "letting itself go" since it's done all this before. I've had to buy new shirts for this spring/summer since the ones I had with Tyler do not attempt to cover everything this time around. The silver lining here is that I bought more regular-looking shirts so I can wear them afterwards and not feel like I'm still wearing maternity clothes. I'm trying to enjoy all the last special moments of this pregancy and not focus too much on the uncomfortableness. To tell you the truth, I'd really like to exploit the uncomfortableness more and shove off all my work on others, but I just can't seem to find it in myself to be THAT lazy! Don't get me wrong - if you offer, you bought it... I'm not going to turn down help if I can help it! haha!

Anyway - This next month is going to bring lots of last minute prep. I'm going to start looking for some different freezer food recipes to cook up. A couple of the recipes I made need some tweaking, and some I'm not sure I'm going to make again. I also need to make my super-double batch of freezer strawberry jelly this year. I only have maybe one more in the freezer right now. I need to defrost the freezer before I get all this frozen stuff piled up in there... should only take a couple hours, but it's just another thing on the to-do list!

The crafty end of things haven't been too productive lately. I can't remember what I finished up on last post, but I sewed up a 4T footed fleece PJ for Tyler next winter (or the winter after that) and also sewed up a 1T/12mo footed fleece PJ for a girl... just don't know of any that can use one in that size at that time of year just yet. It turned out really cute, so I hope to find someone that can use it! I started painting the last of the animal shapes for Tyler's big boy room wall decor. They are almost all done, but I still have some leaf shapes (13) to trace and cut out with the scroll saw. I hate using that thing. It's fun as long as the blade doesn't break. It scares/startles the crap out of me whenever it does it. At least I don't have much more to cut out and then I'm DONE with it. I've only been working on this project for a year now... hahaha!

AND speaking of Tyler's big boy room... I re-bunked the beds in there and he seemed to really like having his bed in "the cave" - so much I had hopes of him sleeping in there all the time. That didn't happen like planned. He only sleeps in there when we put him in there asleep and when he wakes up, he's back in our room. Bummer. BUT good news is that he's spent a few nights on his daycare-style cot on the floor in our room. He said he likes it, but last night insisted on being in our bed. Great. It's the one parenting thing that I'm not proud of... but it all started with Josh going to work at early hours in the morning...therefore was really tired at night and ready to go to bed early. I was in the midst of my "morning sickness" that only hit me in the evening/night hours and the only thing that made it go away was just to go to bed and sleep it off, so I was wanting to go to bed early, too. Since Tyler was the only remaining night owl, we took him into bed with us so we could go to sleep and know that he wasn't getting into trouble. He would just lay there and snuggle until he fell asleep... I guess we'll have to start getting a little more serious about kicking him out of our bed. If only I didn't like snuggling the little man so much!

On a side note... I just got a new camera (for my birthday, anniversary, mother's day, christmas, halloween, etc) that should serve us well for many many many years down the road. It's a Nikon D5000 with a 18-55mm lens and a 55-200mm lens. When I get the chance, I'll take some pictures around the house and post them to the photo website. I've retired my Sony camera for the time-being, but it'll still get some use in outdoor photography since it still does a nice job - just too slow for flash photography.