28 Weeks!

You guys. I’m in the third trimester! WOO HOO! The countdown hasn’t really started, but we’re getting close! Still can’t quite believe how close though! But I love that this pregnancy is going by so much faster than my first one. And I clearly need to look up what a chinese cabbage is. Is it different from a regular cabbage? I had to look up rutabaga the the other week. Weird.

And I’m about 95% sure I’m having another wild child. Spencer moves and kicks soooo much. He even made me a little queasy yesterday evening with all his movement. But I guess that means that Nathan will have a little buddy that can keep up with him. And I’ll have two major mischief makers. Oof. I’m tired just thinking about it. ;)

Things are plugging along the same as they’ve been for a little while. I’m sleeping even worse, but that’s pretty normal these days. I’m really trying to clear out the stuff we’ve been storing in Spencer’s room and to start getting ready for him to come. Which means I have to get pretty much all of my framed pictures up on the walls (I’m working on some picture ledge ideas – I think it’s going to be good!) and I’ll need to bring up the baby stuff that’s in storage at my parent’s house. I finally found a dresser for his room that I’m really excited about (I’ve been looking all over craigslist and facebook yard sale groups/sites for weeks!) and I’m trying to decide on a theme. I was thinking of keeping with a nautical theme, since that is what we are doing for Nathan’s room. But dinosaurs would be fun too. ;) Hmmmm…

23 Months!

I can’t even believe we’ve got a 2nd birthday coming up in ONE MONTH!

*Starting to talk so much more these days! Right now his favorite word is (3 guesses…) NO. Says it to just about everything, even if he might actually mean yes. Just in the last week has he started to say “yeah” to answer in the affirmative. But many times he’ll still nod and then say no. I’ve learned to ask him the same thing a couple of times to really be sure of what he means. And not that he understands it, but we’ll also ask him “Are you sure?” and he’ll say “sure”, which is pretty funny. He doesn’t really say “I love you” any more, but when we say it to him, he’ll say “too!”, as in ‘I love you too’. It’s really sweet. I can’t think of them all off the top of my head, but he’s added several more words to his vocabulary (though one of my favorites is that he calls his sunglasses his ‘eyes’) and sometimes he’ll start pointing at things and looking at us expectantly until we tell him what the item is called. It’s cool he wants to know the names of things even if he can’t say them just yet.

*This kid is obsessed with music still. We have Pandora on the Roku going all. the. time. One of his new favorite stations is Hawaiian Reggae (okay, is he a mini-John or what?!) but since I can’t listen to that allllll day we still listen to the Disney station and piano music quite a bit.  But he’s cool with anything as long as it’s music. He even kind of lip-syncs to the music sometimes (I think John taught him that) and it’s so funny to watch.

*Speaking of music, his favorite songs are from the movie Frozen. I think it’s hilarious that he knows nothing about it and somehow Let It Go and Love is an Open Door ended up being his favorites. Maybe because they are easy to sing along to. Whenever they are on, he’ll sing “go!” or “door!”. When we clip his nails we let him watch something on the TV to keep him still and one time we let him watch the movie clips of those songs on YouTube and since then every time he sees a Frozen character when we’re out (because they’re still everywhere) he points at it all excited and says “let it go!”.

*Eating is still going well – thank goodness! He even voluntarily tried a kumquat yesterday but quickly spit it out once he got a good taste. They are soooooo sour!

*Loves puppies! He still always wants to see them when we facetime with my parents, and he’s started to sleep with a little stuffed puppy that he got for his birthday last year. We also discovered we have a neighbor that has two dogs and will take them out to the hill behind our apartment. Every time Nathan hears them he runs out to the balcony to watch them play.

*Doesn’t dance as much as he used to, but when he’s in the right mood he’ll dance and it’s hilarious. Half the time he looks like a ballerina and the other half he looks like he’s going to do the Haka. And there’s always a lot of jumping involved. Our neighbors downstairs must totally hate us.

*He loves going to stay at Nana’s house. Probably because they give him snacks all day, he gets to see puppies, and they let him play with all their screens pretty much whenever he wants.

*He’s not a fan of large crowds, especially if there are a lot of kids. Lots of grown ups don’t seem to faze him as much, but then adults aren’t usually running around and screaming… He definitely needs time to observe and warm up to new surroundings before he’s willing to venture off my lap.

*He had his first Easter egg hunt this year. Was totally confused when we were having him pick up eggs and put them in a basket, but he was alllll over it when he figured out what was inside those eggs. He thoroughly enjoyed the kit kats and jellybeans. ;)

*Loves cars and trucks and trains. He still totally loves his Thomas the Tank Engine trains we’re borrowing from Nana and plays with them every day. He calls them his “choo-choos”. He’s going to be getting some of his own for his birthday this year! (And that’s a story in itself!)

*Loves to be outside! We have a sliding glass door that goes out to a balcony in our new place and he wants it open all day so that he can take his toys out and play on the balcony. It could be 30 degrees outside and he’ll still want to have the door open. Thankfully it’s getting warmer. (Sort of)

*Has become preoccupied with trying to put clothes on, even when he’s fully dressed. He’ll open up his pajama drawer and spend several minutes trying to get his legs into whatever he ends up pulling out, whether they be pajama pants or tops. He also can’t ever decide whether he wants his socks on or off. They go on and come at about 5-6 times a day.

*He’s becoming quite his own little person and while I’m kind of nervous about the twos, I think it’s going to be really fun! Love you Little Man!

Pegboard Craft Organization

So far we are really enjoying our new apartment. I think we have a little under 200 more square feet here than we did in our last place and it’s making a HUGE difference. We just seem to fit better here. Thank goodness!

One of my favorite things is that I actually have a designated space for crafting (that doesn’t involve taking up half a bedroom – YAY!). So the apartment comes with a dining area and an eat-in space in the kitchen. Since we only have one table and really only need one space for eating, the eat-in area in the kitchen has become my crafting space. But between my fabric stash, my felt stash (yeah, I have enough felt for its own stash), my serger, sewing machine, patterns, pattern books, paints, papers, and all the other random craft items, I really needed to get creative to make everything fit into this little eat in-area, which is made smaller by the necessity of a gate to keep little fingers away from scissors, craft knives, and pretty much all of the aforementioned crafting items.

I scoured Pinterest for ideas and my favorite was making use of vertical wall space using a pegboard. So that’s what I did! I bought a big 4’X8’ piece and had them cut it down for me at Home Depot. My table is in a corner, so I ended up putting two pieces of pegboard up on both walls of the corner. My goal was to get as much storage as possible from these two pieces and it has worked out magnificently.

The pegboard itself was pretty inexpensive – about $18 for the 4X8 piece. (you also need 1” X 2” pieces to mount it on the wall) It started adding up with all the hooks and baskets to actually hold stuff on the pegboard, but so far I think it has been totally worth it in getting allllll my craft stuff organized.

So here it is! I lurrrrrrve it! It keeps my table completely clear (which was a must) and it’s so easy to put everything back when I’m finished with it. For the shelves I just got a 1X6 board and had them cut it down for me at Home Depot and then I used the shelf mounts that came in the box of assorted pegboard hooks that I’d purchased. Maybe at some point I’ll paint them a pretty color, but I was so ready to just have everything up and finished.
The metal buckets are from the Target dollar section. I placed them backwards, so that you can’t see the chalkboard shamrock on the front of them (it was March and they didn’t have any completely blank ones.. ;) ). I still have two empty ones, but I like that I have some empty space as I’m still going through my stuff and might decide to store something else on my pegboard wall. Or, you know, buy more craft stuff…hee hee

I’m really glad I did both walls. I was worried it was going to be a little much, but I’m loving that everything is off the table and off the floor! I’ve done a couple of projects already and it’s seriously so easy to put everything away, which is soooo important in an organization system! My machines sit on shelves beneath the window and it’s nice that I have the space to keep them out now and I don’t have to lug them out of their boxes every time I want to use them. Then when I’m finished, they go back to their spots on the shelves and I have a clear table for the next project!
Even John was impressed! (You know it’s good when the Hubs is impressed :) ) This has definitely been one of my favorite organization projects!

26 Weeks!

Well, I’m finally in maternity clothes. I was trying to put it off as much as possible, but with the weather (kind of) starting to get warmer and I definitely don’t fit most of my short sleeved shirts (and I’m kind of sick of wearing sweatpants), it was time to break out the bump wardrobe. I only have a couple of short sleeved maternity shirts because most of my really big months when I was pregnant with Nathan were during the winter months. But thankfully my mom helped me out and bought me a few more cute short sleeved shirts to get me through the summer. Thanks Mom! I need to get a little bigger for my jeans, so right now I kind of rig them with a belt (with the maternity panel there are no belt loops) so that they don’t slowly slip down during the day. Super fun.

Spencer is already a little crazy, I feel so much movement most days. And a lot of it happens between 9-10pm. Oh dear. ;) John was able to feel him move last night, so that was really fun.

I’m feeling very big these days. I’m not really looking forward to getting bigger, but onward we go! It’s getting harder to hold Nathan and to bend over and put my shoes on. Or, really, bend over at all. Oof. Thankfully flip flop weather is coming (hopefully) soon so shoes shouldn’t be too much of a problem in a little while!

I can’t believe I’m already at 26 weeks! I’m still trying not to think about labor and delivery just yet, but I find myself thinking about it anyway. And then it stresses me out. ;) I’m so grateful though that things have gone so smoothly thus far! Just a few more months to go!