More nursery progress

This weekend I went and got a bunch of the stuff that we needed for the nursery.  I would say it's 95% finished now.  It still has the guest bed in it and that will be gone eventually, but not until he starts sleeping through the night in his own room, which didn't really happen with Elijah until he was like 9 months old.  (I really hope it doesn't take that long the second time.)  At that point a lot of the furniture will get rearranged.  Also, I need to put some stuff up on the walls and finish the toybox, so I have a couple more projects in the works.  But we did get a lot done on it this weekend.

Toybox acquired and put together.  I need to find a way to put his name on the top of it.  I don't think I can paint on it.  I think the paint will flake or chip right off so I'm working on an idea to either make or buy sticky letters in some form.  It's still in planning mode.

 New hamper.

This is a picture frame we found at Buy Buy Baby.  Mike's mom bought it even though I told her she didn't need to.  She also bought us another diaper pail, which I didn't take an individual picture of because who is all that impressed by the diaper pail?  It's not a big decorative item but it was very necessary so it was helpful of her to buy it for us.

And I also found this cute nightlight at Buy Buy Baby.  I got most of the stuff I needed at Buy Buy Baby, but only spent $72 because I had coupons. BAM!

Another huge deal was getting the curtains finished and hung up.  I worked on them last week and got them made.  Since I put a muslin liner in them, they are really good at blocking out most of the light for naps.  However, I guess I mismeasured or something because they just barely cover the windows, rather than having any extra gather, like I meant for them to.  Oh well.  I'm not redoing it.  And, of course, I got Mike to hang them up Sunday evening at like 8 o'clock because it would be driving me nuts all week if they sat around for longer.  So pretty much the only thing I have left (other than completing the toybox) is wall art.  I do have a plan for that, though.

This wall is too long and bare so I'm going to have to find some wall art.  (Oh, and you can see the diaper pail. there in the far bottom right.)  I have a plan for an art project for this wall, but it will require another trip to the craft store and an afternoon working on it.  So I probably won't get to it next week.

I also think I need some stuff on this wall around the window.  On one side I will probably put that frame that Mike's mom bought us and on the other a small clock.

Now the wall above the crib is where I am putting the baby's name.  It will be the project I'm working on this week.  I did it in Elijah's room when he was born.  You need letters from the craft store and then you paint them whatever color(s) you want.  Then you need an electric drill.

If you're not a drill person, don't worry, you just need it to drill holes in the tops of the letters.

You need scissors and a lighter and string or twine.  (If you're having a girl you could use ribbon.)  I did Elijah's with twine but this time I'm using string because that's what I had in the drawer.  Obviously the scissors are to cut the string.  The lighter is to burn the ends of the string so they don't unravel.  (Obviously be VERY careful when you're doing the burning.)

Then you thread the string through the holes and hang it up on nails on the wall.  Here's what Elijah's looks like in his room.

So going to try to get that and the toybox finished this week.  Then I will just have my giant art project for next week.  And since I know what you're really interested in is the cute things Elijah has been doing, here's his latest thing.  He likes clicking his snaps on his high chair together and on the baby swing.

It requires a lot of concentration. ;)

Donating my baby's cord blood

When I had Elijah I saw a bunch of information and stuff about banking his cord blood.  The purpose being, if he some day contracts leukemia or something similarly horrid, the stem cells in the cord blood could be used to treat him.  You see advertisements on TV for it all the time.  However, it costs a buttload of money that we don't and didn't have.  So we didn't do it.  His cord blood essentially got thrown in the trash.  It was only recently that I heard about donating cord blood.  As I understand it (and my understanding is from hearsay and online research, so don't necessarily trust it), the cord blood goes to a public bank like when you donate bone marrow and can be used to treat anyone who needs it who is a genetic match.

When I heard about this I started thinking why doesn't EVERYONE donate the cord blood?  It doesn't hurt mom or baby one iota, if you don't do it the cord blood gets tossed in the trash, and it doesn't cost you any money.  In fact, in an ideal world, if everyone donated their baby's cord blood, there would be a donor match for everyone who needed it (in theory, of course, I'm not a medical professional).  However, as I began to do more research I learned the answer to my question of why everyone doesn't do it.  It's because it's nearly friggin impossible to do!

For one thing, if your hospital doesn't do it, you have to find a public bank that will send you a kit to give to your doctor when the baby is delivered.  In Kansas City, the only hospital chain that does it there is St. Luke's and I am delivering at Shawnee Mission.  Another problem that I've seen other people run into in my online research is that some doctors will charge you a fee to do it.  It seems rather petty to me for them to do so and, fortunately, my doctor doesn't charge any extra fees, she just needs for me to get the kit for her.  She said that Mayo Clinic does it, but when I went to their website (http://www.mayoclinic.com/) I couldn't find any information on how to donate to them.  (If anyone knows how, please let me know.)

The two most helpful websites I found are these:

http://marrow.org/Get_Involved/Donate_Cord_Blood/How_to_Donate/Where_to_Donate.aspx

https://cordforlife.lifeforcecryobanks.com/public-donation.html

It was through the second one that I finally found an online application for donating.  I'm going to (hopefully) fill it out today and get my doctor to sign off on it next week when I see her again.  I'm kind of pushing the deadline since you have to be less than 34 weeks to start the process and I'm almost 32 weeks, but I guess I can just barely start it.  I hope it's successful, although I don't know because I've never done it before and this is pretty much my only shot (because I'm too far along in my pregnancy to try somewhere else).  I will update everyone on how it goes as it progresses.

Easter

So it's not my normal thing to talk about Easter bunnies and egg hunts.  Mostly because when I was a kid we didn't make a big deal about them.  I think my church had an egg hunt and I think we participated when we were kids but it was never the big Easter event.  From what I recall, Easter was always about the resurrection and we commemorated it by getting new clothes.  I'm not sure how that coincides with the resurrection but I liked getting an Easter dress.

Since I have a boy (soon to be boys) and he doesn't care what he wears (and probably never will given that he has his father's personality), I didn't see the point in getting him a fancy Easter outfit, at least not this year.  But we, of course, went to church and celebrated Jesus' resurrection since that's what Easter is really about.

Mike's family, though, does do Easter baskets and dyes eggs and talks about bunnies.  I suppose these things are harmless even though it's my natural inclination to recoil from them.  Moreover, I thought Easter baskets were supposed to have stuffed bunnies and eggs and maybe a bit of candy in them.  Mike's mom got Elijah a bubble-blowing lawn mower...

And a Thomas the Train ball...

To each his own, I suppose.

After that we did an Easter egg hunt in the backyard.  It wasn't much of a "hunt" per se.  It consisted of Mike tossing the eggs around the yard and me following Elijah with his Easter basket to allow him to pick the eggs up and drop them in.

(This is why I haven't done many belly shots of me this pregnancy.  I'm not just a belly, I'm a whole cow.)

And since there were goldfish in the eggs, we also got a snack once we figured out how to open the eggs.

Happy Easter!

Gotcha!

So Elijah has had this cough for awhile now and the past couple days he's felt kind of warm when he got up from nap or in the morning.  So I took him to the doctor on Thursday instead of storytime like I wanted to.  They checked him out and said it was just another virus. Yahoo.  I hate driving all the way out there and paying the $20 copay for a virus since there's NADA they can do for it.

Then that evening towards the end of our Gospel Community meeting I started having some mild abdominal cramping.  When everyone left I tried to lie down on the couch for awhile and relax so it would go away.  Eventually I headed up to bed but was still cramping.  Around 10:30 we decided to call the on call doctor from my OB group.  She advised us to go to the hospital and get checked out just in case.  So we called Mike's mom to come over and stay with Elijah (Mike's sister came over and relieved her a bit later) and headed out.  By the time she got there I was starting to have some major pain.  I was leaning over praying that God would either make the cramping stop or if I had to have this baby tonight, that he would care for him and help him to be healthy and survive.  Fortunately, I am 30 weeks so at least even if I had a premature birth, it was likely that the baby would be okay.

By the time we got to the hospital, the cramping had lessened and I felt almost stupid going in there to get monitored but we were already there and I was afraid if we just went home that it might start up again and then we'd have to drive all the way out there again.  (The hospital is about 20 minutes from the house.)  So we got all hooked up to the belly monitors and I fell asleep in the hospital bed for about an hour while Mike tried to snooze on the tiny couch they have in those rooms.  It turned out everything was fine.  The nurse said I was probably a bit dehydrated since I know I haven't been drinking enough water.  It's odd because when I'm not pregnant I drink tons of water, but when I am since I'm nauseous all the time, water upsets my stomach so I can't make myself drink as much of it.

Anyway, we got back home around 2:30 in the morning and told Stephanie she could head on home.  (Fortunately she works nights as a nurse so sleeping during the day, rather than at night is not new to her.)  We both went to bed around 3:00 a.m. but were awoken at 6:45 by Elijah having a coughing fit.  Mike went in to comfort him and it took a little while but he did go back to sleep finally and we all slept until about 8 or 8:30 this morning.  I was still exhausted but Mike had to go to work so we all got up.  And now Elijah woke up with no fever at all.  So maybe he's all better.  So we both made everyone freak out for no reason. Oops.

I've been trying to take it easy today and force myself to drink more water, but since Elijah no longer feels sick, and since he decided not to take a nap today, I haven't gotten much rest.  But this afternoon, we went over to Mike's parents' house and dyed eggs for Easter.  Here are some pictures to prove it:

Eventful Weekend

This weekend Mike went to Dallas to pick up our new car and my mom and stepdad came to visit us again and help with some more nursery decorating.  On Friday we took Mike to the airport and he flew to Dallas.  My dad lives there and he does inventory for a car dealership down there so he found us a really good deal on a Nissan Rogue, so Mike went to pick it up.

Meanwhile, Elijah and I waited for my mom and stepdad to arrive.  They got here Friday afternoon and we went to pick up some paint and other stuff from Lowes.  (My stepdad is handy and, though I love him, Mike is not, so when my stepdad comes to visit I usually have a zillion things for him to fix.)  Saturday we began working on the stencil border for the new nursery while my mom watched Elijah.  It has two layers.  The first was the frame of the car and the wheels.

I actually did most of the painting on this part of the stencil.  Here is me in all my whale-like glory to prove it.

After this part was done, Elijah went down for nap and we took a break from painting so that it could dry and my mom and I went shopping for baby things.  We went to JoAnns and I got material to make curtains for the nursery and letters to put baby #2's name up in the room.  My mom got us a new high chair for baby #2 and also a swing for our backyard that is mostly for Elijah.  My stepdad hooked it up to our tree but Sunday Mike tried to push Elijah in it and one of the chains broke off the tree.  Fortunately, he managed to catch Elijah and he wasn't hurt but now I'm not really sure how to put it back up so that it won't break again.  But that's a problem for another time.  Back to the nursery.

After painting all morning my back was hurting severely.  I thought the afternoon break would allow me to recover but it did not.  And I didn't think I should push it.  So instead while Elijah and I went to church on Sunday, my mom and stepdad stayed at my house to finish the stencil.  The second layer added the windows, the center of the wheels, the road and the fenders.  Here is the completed look.

I'm very glad it got done this weekend because I'm starting to get overwhelmed with all the stuff I feel like still needs to get done in the nursery.  Most of it involves acquiring things like a toybox, a hamper, a diaper pail, etc.  But there are a few more decorating things that need to get done, like the curtains, which I plan to work on this week.  I got the material cut and some of the pinning done on Sunday while Elijah was napping and Mike was driving home from Dallas.

And, of course, when Mike did get home he brought with him our brand new Nissan Rogue!

So that was our weekend.  Some of the stress of preparing for the second baby is alleviated but there is still plenty left.  Time to go take a tums...

Saying Goodbye to an Old Friend

Maybe people will think I'm weird for feeling a bit sad and nostalgic about this but since we are having a second baby, we are buying a newer, bigger car for dual carseat purposes and, as a result, today we sold our older car.  It is my old '98 Chevy Prism.  I have had it since my first year in college and it has been a great car for me.  Very rarely did it break down and I made many memories in it.  I remember back in college, I was the one with the fancy, new car.  Now it's like ancient but I still have always liked it (which I guess also makes me ancient since it's a 98 and that's the year I graduated high school, but I digress).

Anyway, I'm glad it will be taking someone else around safely.  *sigh*  My last hold to my college years is now going bye bye.  Got a bit choked up watching it drive away.  Goodbye, Old Friend! *sniffle*

Fingerpainting, Take Two

Okay so we finally got some nice weather so we gave the fingerpainting another go.  Elijah seemed to really like it.  It only lasted about 30 minutes before we were trying to paint things other than the paper (i.e. shorts, the chair, our own legs, etc.) but it was fun while it did last.  (I used spray and wash on the shorts so we'll see if the stains come out.  If not, we'll just make those the painting shorts from now on.)  Unfortunately, I have a lot of unusable paint left over.  Next time I'll probably make half of what I made this time.  It kept in the fridge for awhile but I had to really stir it up to get it to mix again.  Anywho, here is the chronicle of the experience:

I am very glad that I made the paints with edible stuff because some of it did end up in the mouth.  And he got a little overzealous with some of the paper so it got torn, but here is the final masterpiece: