time flies...mostly

We are just 72 days away from our due date (which also means there are only 72 days left in 2015!). I will be 30 weeks pregnant on Friday. This pregnancy has mostly gone by a little faster than my pregnancy with Graeme, but I still feel like I have been pregnant 

for-ev-er.  

It is pretty crazy to imagine going from having one child to suddenly having two. We already talk and think like Maisy is one of our children of course, but it will be different once she's actually here with us. Lord willing, we will go to the hospital with one carseat and leave with two.

I am curious how Graeme will react, and there's really no way to know. He is a complete momma's boy for one thing, so I'm sure it will be an adjustment for him. I don't know how he compares with other kids (maybe he's just a normal amount attached to me!), but some days I think my ears will fall off from hearing "Momma" one more time. He just says it over and over with nothing else to go along with it a lot of times. Ha! I will never really tire of hearing him say it though.

Typical conversation:  "Momma!" "What?" *silence* *wait a few seconds* "Momma?!" "Yes?" *silence* *repeat* 

Last Tuesday I took my one hour Glucose Tolerance Test. I wasn't too worried, but it is a little nerve-wracking to wait for the results. Thankfully, I got my results on Friday morning and everything was in the normal limits. That's pretty much the last thing to worry with until it's time to actually go into labor. Crazy!

Just like with Graeme, and in my case, forever (the result of not having a thyroid at all!), I have had my thyroid levels monitored throughout this pregnancy. They have changed my prescription once and we will check it again next week to make sure it has leveled out appropriately. 

Other than that, things are going well and I am feeling good, thankfully!

My birthday is next week and I will be 28. Age doesn't really bother me too much, but I do realize I am right on the doorstep of 30 basically. So that's weird. Wasn't I just in high school?

Shortly after high school. With my brother. So young. And still had a thyroid to boot (giant lump in my neck!) :)

Speaking of time flying, Aaron and I have our seven year "dating anniversary" coming up on November 2nd. We have said a couple of times in the past week, "Seven years ago we weren't even together...and now we have two kids and have been married for 5.5 years." 

From the beginning...we had no clue what was in store!

Well, I'll stop rambling now. Oh, but I will mention how we are about to have a 19 month old on our hands in just two days. We will then have a little boy just five months away from his second birthday. Only five more months of saying his age in months. Then he will be two. And no one goes around saying 24 months. Aaron will be glad for that. He wanted to stop saying Graeme's age in months after he turned one. 

You can't really say "one" for the whole year when this is at the beginning of being one and...

...this is just seven months later!

Pregnancy goes by pretty slowly. 

My own age goes by a little faster. 

My time with Aaron has gone and goes by quickly. 

But surely our children growing older goes by the very fastest.

Time is funny that way.

finishing the crib

A lot has changed in a week as far as my last post. We were still waiting on the crib hardware when I last wrote, and it came in within the next day. Rodney texted that he was free to come over Saturday morning to finish setting it up. He and Aaron ended up having to make a run to the hardware store to get some Gorilla Glue (some of the holes in the crib had been a bit tampered with a bit...oh, Craig's List finds...).

They were able to get everything put together except the little gate on the top. When they got to that they were missing a few little wood screws. Rodney left Aaron all set up to be able to screw that part in himself. After Rodney left, I asked Aaron how it went since I had been entertaining Graeme and Bensen mostly. He said, "Well, as it is whenever I help someone who knows what they are doing, I basically just hold things and hand them things."

Our one job to accomplish on our own.

We picked up the screws we needed when we got groceries that afternoon, and then I helped Aaron hold the gate in place while he screwed them in. We were pretty proud of ourselves for this accomplishment until we went to close the crib and, of course, it wouldn't quite close. This was not due to our lack of handyman skills, thankfully. The latches that the crib company makes now are different than when this crib was originally made so they no longer worked in the original holes.

A little unsure of moving the latches to a new place by ourselves, we troubled Rodney to come over for the third time. (Thankfully he doesn't mind!)

Finally, on Sunday afternoon after just a few more minutes, the latches were shifted, the crib closed perfectly, and it was FINISHED! Rodney and Aaron pushed and pulled on it everywhere and it's perfectly safe and looks great now that we finally got it together! Again, we are very thankful for such great help in figuring out this crib! We love it!

Graeme checking it out. He's still pretty clueless about what's happening.

Her room is coming together now and has all of the major furniture pieces. We have decided on a pink, gray/silver, and gold color scheme with princess accents here and there. After some debate, we decided the cheapest option that made the most sense was giving Maisy Graeme's chair. We felt bad about this because we all love to sit and read in his room. To make up for it, we created a cozy reading corner. He doesn't mind at all.

It just needs things like a mattress and sheets and things hung on the wall and a changing pad and diapers and oh my...there's still some work to do.




Anyway, in other news, we celebrated Aaron's birthday yesterday! Graeme had fun coloring his birthday card to Daddy and picking out some balloons for him. He refused ice cream, per usual, but did eat a little bit of chocolate chip cookie for birthday dessert. And he wanted Mommy to sing the "Happy Birthday Song" twice.

I had a doctor's appointment yesterday morning and had my glucose screening test. I should hear back in the next couple of days if I passed or not. I passed the one-hour test with Graeme, so I'm hoping it will be the same this time. Fingers crossed!

Maisy Kate is doing well and her heartbeat is strong and steady. She gave a big kick while the doctor was listening and he said, "I felt that one!" She's a pretty active little girl. We are already to the point of having appointments every two weeks now, so that's crazy. I have a feeling the end will fly by pretty fast.


Aaron's younger brother is getting married this weekend so we will see how Graeme does at a wedding now that he's older. Thankfully it is outside and should be a super short ceremony.

I'll let you know. Until next time!

the crib saga

We are already a whole week into October (best month ever). It's been a few Wednesdays since I have actually had the free time to try to get a blog post written out. I am winding down my time at my part-time job, and since Wednesdays are my only full day to work, they've been busy.

Plus, we are about 12 weeks away from Miss Maisy Kate, and there are only about a few hundred things to do. Goodness.

What's been going on?

My last post mentioned how our due date is moved to New Year's Day. We are super excited about this and it's made things speed up just a little bit. I am in the third trimester, I will be 28 weeks on Friday, and Maisy is moving around a lot. We can feel her and see her move. Baby kicks are my favorite part of pregnancy.

We have had a slight debacle with her crib. What had happened was...

Before we were even trying to get pregnant the first time, I was still nannying and the lovely family I worked for mentioned they were selling their very nice crib and crib mattress. Not wanting to seem crazy, I asked if they would be willing to sell it to us. We knew we wanted kids in the pretty near future and it was a very nice crib! They were overly generous and gave it to us for a fraction of what it was worth. I wrote about this here.

The crib is pictured below. The first one was the picture I took of the crib in their garage so I could show Aaron. The next one is the crib set up in Graeme's room!

So, you may notice the folding down piece up top? In the first picture it's folded down. And in the one of his room it's folded up. For the past two years, I haven't thought much about it. I know other cribs don't typically have it, but I didn't think it made a difference in the size of the crib.

Oh, but it does.

When we began looking for Maisy's crib, I was very confused why all of the cribs seemed so small and short. After looking at Babies R Us and Target, I decided to dig out the papers for Graeme's crib and see if I could figure out what kind it was.

I found the name of the company and looked them up. They didn't make his exact crib anymore, but it didn't take me long to find a similar one. And then I realized the reason I wasn't finding a crib like his was because this company was the only company that made these cribs. They are called "safety gate cribs" and they add an extra five inches to the depth by latching the top gate. And I also realized that the pennies (exaggeration, but really, we paid a fraction of what it was worth) we handed over for his crib paled in comparison to it's actual cost and we in no way could afford this crib that cost more than most of the other furniture in our house.

I called my mom and told her about my first world dilemma. "Oh don't worry about it. We can help you if you need it." While this was a super generous offer and much appreciated, we still could not feel right about spending that much money on a crib. (Although it converts to a toddler bed and full size bed too!) The next day, we started browsing Craigslist for something else, and I said, "Hey, just type in that crib just to see if we get lucky."

Lo and behold, up popped a listing for Graeme's exact crib in white. And it was less than half the cost of a new crib from the company. It seemed meant to be. Aaron quickly emailed to make sure it was still available. The next day he talked to the man on the phone who gave him some more information and said he would hold the crib for us while he went out of town over the weekend. One slight inconvenience was that he lived in Winston Salem, but this was definitely not a deal-breaker as it would save us hundreds. Aaron made the drive to pick it up last week.

It was in great shape, but the "white" wasn't technically "white"...it was more of an "antique white." We decided we would like it better if we painted it. Since my parents were already coming to paint Maisy's room this past Saturday, we declared it "Paint Day," and Aaron set out to paint the crib.

It was a bit tedious, but it made a huge difference (you can see the white next to the not really white) and we loved it even more.

We are still extremely close with the family I nannied for and had been keeping them up-to-date with our crib saga. Rodney, who had now put this exact model together about three times (he put Graeme's together for us too!) generously offered to come put it together on Sunday afternoon.

In anticipation of helping him out, we retrieved the plastic bag of hardware the Craigs List seller guy gave Aaron with all of the crib pieces. We pulled out the directions from Graeme's crib to organize the hardware. And then we realized something was amiss. We dumped out the bag of random metal scrap parts and discovered not one of them went to the crib.

We are still not sure if we were purposefully duped or if it was an accident.

Alas, to avoid a trip to Winston Salem and out of the wonderful, kind generosity of our good friend Rodney, it is all being taken care of. Rodney made a list of what was missing (we did have some of the pieces that were still in the crib) and said he would just take care of getting everything for us. He is well aware of our total lack of handyman knowledge. We really can't thank him enough.

Hopefully, the crib will come together in the next couple of weeks and we can laugh at our misfortune/fortune.

Despite this slight setback, Maisy Kate's room is coming together. Her walls are "Charming Pink" and she has a dresser and bookcase. We are probably going to move Graeme's gray chair over to her room, but we feel a bit bad about this because he loves to sit and read so much. We will probably make him a cozy reading corner out of beanbags and pillows to make up for it.

In other news, I am still feeling great. So great that I am crazy and just might attempt to potty train Graeme this weekend in a three-day blitz. Yikes. We aren't going to push it, but we both think he can do it and it would be SO nice to not have to buy diapers for two kids. He picked out underwear at the store last weekend. To Aaron's dismay, he wanted Thomas the Train and not Batman. Uh oh.

I'll keep you posted!