Thanksgiving, Christmas Decor and Playing In The Leaves

We had a great Thanksgiving again this year. I was worried that I was going to go into labor and miss the turkey, but that did not happen.

We had a lazy morning around the house. After Little Mans nap, we headed to my moms for dinner. Little Man and Gram (my mom) played for a while when Grandpa (my moms husband) was finishing up dinner. Stephen was watching the football games and I was between the games and Little Man.

Dinner was AWESOME! Grandpa made turkey, stuffing, asparagus, spinach casserole, sweet potato casserole and two pies. Did I remember it all?

After dinner, we played some more, and I installed Little Mans extra car seat in my moms car for when we are at the hospital with Little Miracle.

I am a firm believer that Christmas decorations should not go up until after Thanksgiving. Actually, they should not go up until after my birthday, which is December 4th. We decided this year, that with Little Miracle coming any day now, we should put up the tree after Thanksgiving, and before my birthday.

So when Little Man was napping, we pulled out the tree. He woke up shortly after we got it up, and decided to help daddy fluff it.



I decided to only do tinsel this year, we have a pre-lit tree so there is lights, but no ornaments this year. All of mine are sentimental to me, and with a toddler around, and a newborn almost here, I thought it best they all stay in the box!

Little Man LOVES to point out the tree to us. He points to the lights, and to the star on top.

This afternoon, we decided to start on some outside lights. Stephen wanted to get rid of all the leaves in our front yard while I was putting lights around the bushes and garage doors. Little Man LOVES to act just like daddy, and had to help. Well, we have two blowers, so he grabbed the one that was not plugged in and helped!



After they blew the leaves into a pile, Daddy showed Little Man how to jump in the pile of leaves. Oh My he had so much fun playing in the leaves!! I did not get any pictures of that, I wish I would have!

Little Man is still loving his room, but he has found his freedom from not being in the crib. He likes to read now during his nap time, instead of sleeping. He has skipped his nap for 4 days now. I hope he is not giving it up! Mommy still needs her quiet time! He likes to read a book, then push it out of his door. This is what I see when his "quiet time" is over.



See the shadow at the bottom of the picture? Yeah, that's a shadow of my massive belly...

Well, today Little Man played for almost 2 hours in his room. He got quiet 10 minutes before his "quiet time" was up. We went up to check on him, and sure enough, he was passed out! But, not in his bed... RIGHT behind the door. I had to put just the camera in the door to get this picture. Silly Man....



We are at 39 weeks with Little Miracle now. Officially the longest I have ever been pregnant. Little Man was born at 39 weeks, so I was halfway hoping Little Miracle would follow in his footsteps. I really want him to come in December though, so a few more days and he is really good to go!

As Ready As I Am Gonna Be

38 weeks.WOW. If Little Miracle is anything like his older brother, he will be here soon. Little Man was born at 39 weeks on the nose. Kinda surreal to think this time next week I could be a mom to two!

This week I have done TONS around the house. I have mad nesting skills and that burst of energy you get at the end of pregnancy that allows you to get things done.

Little Mans room in the new house was pink. Pepto Bistmol pink. Like someone opened bottles of the stuff and threw them in the room. Not just the walls either, the trim, baseboards, windows, shutters and closet doors! This had to go this week. I painted it blue. Little boy blue. That pretty shade of bright blue. Not baby blue but bright, toddler blue.

Today, with Stephens help, we got his room cleaned out. It was the catch all room from moving. You know, a room that everything that you have no idea where it goes, goes? I found a dresser on Freecycle, and we repainted it white and made the blue knobs red to match his shelves that I painted.

When Little Man was sleeping we cleaned out the room, and when he woke up, we hung shelves and moved his bed in. He is now officially out of the nursery! Little Miracle wont be in the nursery for a while because we co-sleep for at least the first 6 months, but Little Mans bed was in the nursery, and was blocking the closet!

Here is his room. It is a crappy cell phone picture. I will try to get a better picture soon. See the painting on the wall? I did that! It has his name in red letters in the grass of the painting too. (photoshoped that out)


And his dresser. It was already white, just was really beaten up, and had blue knobs.


Again, sorry for the crappy cell phone pictures.

38 weeks. Did I say that already? I still can not believe it. Stephen works Monday and Tuesday of this coming week, then Monday of the following week, then is off till mid- December. I am hoping Little Miracle holds on until December, but I really want to meet him!

Big Changes

With a new baby coming soon, I knew it was inevitable that Little Man gets out of the crib. I was in no rush, since Little Miracle will sleep with us for at least the first 6 months, but I knew I needed to either find a toddler bed or find some kids sheets for the double we have.

Well, the other day during Little Mans nap time, I was endlessly searching Craigslist for a desk for our bedroom. I came across a super cute car bed, and thought to myself "do they make train beds?". Little Man loves his trains, and we plan on doing his room in them. A quick Google search and I found this one.


(manufactures image)

I went to the website for it, and found out they no longer make this bed. They replaced it with Thomas the Train. I do not want to get him a Thomas the Train bed, I don't really want any characters in his room. Kids get too obsessed with one certain character in my opinion, so I am not pushing one on him. When he finds a character he likes, we will embrace it.

So I decided to go back to Craigslist. I typed in "train bed" and came up with three posts. Two were that bed!! I was SO excited to learn that they still had it, and we were already planning on going to the town that the seller lived in the next day.

When we got the bed home, Little Man was not too sure what to think. We got it cleaned, and put together, and put the crib mattress in it, and he grabbed a pillow off the couch and laid down. It was already almost his bedtime, so I told Stephen to get the crib mattress back into the crib so he could go to bed. I was not ready to move him into his "big boy bed" yet.

Little Man was heartbroken! He laid down in the frame of the bed, and said "I need chalk" (which is his word for chocolate milk, which he gets at bedtime). Well, ok, lets get the bed upstairs in the nursery and see how he does. I was fully expecting him to jump and play in the bed and be up all night.

We got him his chocolate milk, put him in jammies and laid him down. I told him if he gets out of bed, he will go back into the crib. We turned on his radio, turned off the light, and kissed him goodnight. To my shock and surprise, he only woke up once that night, and stayed in his bed all night.

His nap yesterday went just as well, and last night he fought bedtime a little harder than he ever has, but he stayed in his bed while fighting it. I have told him if he gets out of his train bed, he goes to sleep in his crib. I can tell he really does not want to sleep in the crib, so he stays in his bed!

I am working on teaching him to stay in bed when he wakes up in the morning, which is actually going well. I told him that he needs to stay in bed until Mommy or Daddy comes to get him, and he listens quite well. Yesterday he was up playing, but that was the first time waking up with his new found freedom. This morning, he called for me, and was still in bed when I got to him.

I still can not believe that my Little Man is big enough to be in a toddler bed! It seems like just last week I was 36 weeks pregnant with him, and getting the nursery ready for him! Now I am trying to get the nursery ready for Little Miracle, while trying to get Little Man out of the nursery and into his room. (That will take some more time, the walls are still pink, and it's our catch all room with the moving)

Halloween

I love Halloween! It is one of my favorite days of the year. Now that I have kids, it is even more fun!

I started the search for costumes a few weeks ago. I waited till after Little Mans second birthday, which is just three weeks before Halloween. I looked everywhere and had no idea what I wanted him to be. He has no favorite characters, because he does not watch much tv.

I LOVE to dress up too, so I was trying to find something for both of us to be. I finally convinced Stephen to dress up too, so it made it even more fun, looking for costumes for all three of us! Everywhere I looked had something for Stephen and I, but not Little Man, or had a toddler costume, but not adult ones. I looked at every character!

I finally found the CUTEST Tin Man from Wizard of Oz for Little Man. I looked around and ended up at another store and found the Scare Crow for Stephen, and Dorothy for me. Now came the fun part, would the costume fit over my 9 month pregnant belly? I tried it on in the store, and it did, so we were set! I also found some kick-butt shoes! They were about 3 inch platform heels in glittery red. (Yes, my 9 month pregnant butt wore 3 inch platform heels for most of the day. I did have tennis shoes I put on for a little bit too)

We got all dressed up Saturday morning to go to a local square for trick-or-treating at the businesses. We had a long day of fun planned, but the weather did not want to cooperate. We got to the square and it was drizzling. Not too bad, but half of the businesses were not doing the trick-or-treating. We decided went to most of the stores then decided to eat lunch down there.

After lunch we headed home to let Little Man nap. It was already 2 hours past his usual nap time, so he did not want to sleep. He played in his crib for almost an hour before he passed out.

We had to wake him up about 30 minutes after he fell asleep to head out to another town square for their kids fest. We got back in costume, and headed out. The rain had finally stopped, so we thought it was going to turn into a good night. We met some friends at the square and let Little Man play the games and get candy. Right as we went to get some dinner there, it started raining again. We piled into a tent they had set up there and waited the weather out.

While we were in the tent, one of the people in charge of the kids fest asked us if we had entered into the costume contest. We said no, and she asked us for our names so she could enter us. A few minutes later they were calling us to the stage. We won!! We won "best costume". Little Man LOVES his trophy!

After that we decided that the weather was not going to let us trick-or-treat too well, so we would head to the mall because they were having trick-or-treating there too. We got to the mall, and it was PACKED. The adults all went to get coffee, then we started going to the stores, only to find that NONE of them had candy left!!

At this point it was getting late, and we were all getting tired of trying to trick-or-treat. We all decided that we would skip trying our neighborhood and just head to Walmart to buy candy!

Five adults and three toddlers headed to Walmart to buy Halloween candy and beer! After Walmart, everyone headed to my house to open up our candy bags, switch some around, and enjoy the night. We put Little Man to bed, and the other two toddlers played downstairs. They have later bedtimes than Little Man, and by then he was SO tired from his short nap.

All in all it ended up being a good night. I am glad Little Man is not old enough to understand that he did not get to trick-or-treat. I make him say "trick-or-treat" when he wants a piece of his Halloween candy, and he says it like "treat-treat". Then he says "thank-you" and eats his candy.

Hopefully next year the weather will cooperate with us!

Life Got Busy...

Ok. So.... life got busy.

We closed on our house September 30th. The movers came the first week of October with all of our stuff. It was so nice to see our stuff again! Its amazing how little you can live on, but in 6 months, you being to miss your stuff. They set the big stuff up for us, and had all the boxes in the rooms they belonged in.

I started unpacking as soon as the movers left. The living room was first on my list. Then the play room and kitchen. Little Man played in his play room for HOURS while I unpacked the kitchen. He had not seen half of those toys in 6 months, so he thought they were all new.

I have slowly gotten most stuff unpacked. I still have to work on Little Mans room, but the nursery is done. For now, he is staying put there!

We found several unexpected things in the house. Gotta love a house that was empty for two years! We found mold in the basement, that had not been there a few days before we closed. Stephen had to rip up all the carpet from the basement, and then we noticed water coming in from the foundation. Stephen dug up the gutter pipe, and it had a split in it. So that was fixed. THEN he was down there making sure we were not getting water in and noticed sewage backing up into the shower and toilet. Thankfully it was in the basement, and we had nothing down there. The water company people came out and put a camera in the sewer pipe, and we have tree roots growing through them. OH the joys of home ownership!

We also found when replacing ceiling fans that none of the ceiling fan boxes were actual "fan" boxes. They were the plastic, "not for ceiling fan use" boxes. Also, they are not properly braced. Its amazing that the fans that were up lasted this long! We are still working on bracing the new boxes so I can install the fans.

We got the trees cut down that we wanted to, got the whole house re-piped (had old pipes that were the kind that are known to break), hot water heater replaced, new appliances in the kitchen, and just bought the paint for Little Mans room. Right now it is a beautiful shade of Pepto Bismol... you know that pink stuff! It will shortly be a shade of blue!

We still have a ton of work we want to / need to do to the house, so it will be a work in progress for many years to come.

My pregnancy is progressing well. I switched to a new doctors office for my pregnancy. It is the only midwife practice in Georgia. Meaning, the midwife is the boss, and the doctor works for her. All of the other midwifes in this state work under doctors, and he has the final say. I am very excited to be using them! They are awesome with natural births, and have been doing water births for years.

Now begins the waiting game. I am 35.2 weeks pregnant. I had my first son at 39 weeks, so there is a good possibility that Little Miracle will come early too. My midwife today said there is a possibility that I could have a baby this month! ACK, I am NOT ready!! I feel pretty good, but I do have that "end of pregnancy" tireds that every mom to be gets, and chasing a toddler around all day does not help that.