Year: 2014

It seems like a split second ago I posted about being 32 weeks pregnant and now here I am at 37 (well, one day shy). Eeeeeek! I had an OB appointment this morning and when I checked in, she said, “Ok, at this point in the pregnancy I am going to need you to sign this…” and handed me a sheet that said “FINAL INSURANCE INFORMATION” in all caps. And then when I was getting my weight (+33) and blood pressure checked, I got THIS scary piece of paper.

You can’t tell but it’s a nice shade of pink. Is that supposed to make it less sinister??

The check-up went fine, I’ve definitely noticed some changes in pressure the last week or so and was not surprised to hear that I’m already roughly 2 cm dilated (I was with Ashton at 37 weeks as well). There’s other info that reveals this baby does plan to come out soon but I won’t overshare 😀

My actual OB is on vacation this week but is typically in the office Mondays and Thursdays. When the NP wrapped up this morning she said, “Ok, see you in one week,” I replied, “Should I come Monday or Thursday next week then – for Dr. Konig?” and she said, with zero hesitation, “MONDAY.”

So that’s where we’re at. I’m hoping that I still have a couple weeks left – for some reason I keep thinking March 5 will be when this all goes down. Fingers crossed it’s not before that because people we are in a SCRAMBLE. We are trying to acquire all the bits of things we know we’ll need to bring the baby home and to that end, we took a trip to Babies R Us yesterday. What a difference 2.5 years makes:

Babies R Us while pregnant with Ashton:
Total trips: 5+, including one 3 hour one to create baby registry
“Look how cool this is! We should get it.”
“They’ve really thought of everything!”
“Look how tiny the clothes are! Awww!”
“Do you think we’ll need this one, this one or this one? Let’s get all three.”
“What if the baby likes this? We should get it.”
“Would this be a waste of money though? We should wait.”
“What if we wait but need it right away? Let’s get it actually.”
“I think I want this, too.”
“I read great reviews for this. We should get it.”
“Which color is cutest?”
“I heard this is a must-have. We’re getting it.”
“I like the one in the other aisle more. Let’s go back.”
“I wonder which one is better, this one or this one…”
“Gosh, what IS this? Look it up.”
“Do you think it would be easiest with velcro, snaps or zippers?”
“I don’t know… let’s just get it.”

Babies R Us while pregnant this time:
Total trips: 1.
“Yes.”
“No.”
“No, that thing is useless.”
“No.”
“Yes. That one is amazing and I need another.”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“No.”
“I can get a better price on Amazon.”
“Ok all done. We’re out of here.”

Much more efficient the second time around.

I know I owe you a final closet post and a nursery post complete with the before and after pictures that I love so much. We are wrapping all of that up as fast as possible. I’ll also be sharing the latest on names, thoughts on being a mom again, and everything in between…all by March 5 of course, perhaps March 1 to be safe 😉

Earlier this week I had one of those days with an impossibly long to-do list, both for work and for home. My list was divided between me and Jason, times of day and who was going to what. That’s just how I roll when I need to get things accomplished. On Jason’s list, when he was at CVS, was to “Get Valentines.” Ashton’s daycare was doing an exchange and I had meant all weekend to do something cute and homemade from Pinterest. Alas, I had not. So I told him, “Just get some paper Mickey ones or whatever.”

He got these.

We have finally started to get things moving at our house in preparation for, you know, having another baby. We still have a lot to do, but a couple weekends ago we finally went down to the basement to organize Ashton’s clothes. Even though we don’t know if we are having a girl or a boy, and the last time we had a newborn we were in the exact opposite season (August), I wanted to see what we had for stuff. We dumped out all the bins we had been haphazardly shoving things into as Ashton grew and the pile looked like this.

We wrote out some labels and started sorting. Most of the things we picked out to wash and put away for this baby were, not surprisingly, plain white.

I do admit the extreme littleness of these onesies (and daydreaming about when Ashton wore them) slowed me down considerably as I “awwww”-ed and “oooo”-ed and “oh honey remember this one??”-ed. Ahhh memory lane. So much better looking back on it than traveling it, at least when it comes to newborns 😉

We made pretty short work of the pile and in no time, ta-da!

Of course if we have a girl this whole exercise will have been a bit pointless. But for now, it was a major thing to get checked off the list and should at least serve some hand-me-down purposes 🙂 There’s a ton of gear down in the basement as well and we took stock of where the carseat was, what needed to be washed, etc etc.

Next! Upstairs. We have three bedrooms and an office on our second floor. We decided, since babies are so little, to keep the guest room and turn the office into the nursery. Since we moved in a year ago, the office has been home to our computer desk (imagine! a computer in an office) and two racks for my clothes since the closet space in our bedroom is grotesquely minimal. So, in order to make a nursery, my clothes needed to come out. And in order for my clothes to come out, they needed a closet to go into. And in order to have a closet to go into, Jason needed to build one. And in order to build one, we needed our bedroom radiator moved. There are a few poor people that have listened to me drone on and on about this damn radiator for months. Let me introduce you:

This radiator is sitting in the corner of our bedroom. In order for me to get the closet of my dreams, it needed to be moved roughly 18 inches to the left because the closet was going to run the entire length of the wall (where the dresser currently is). Without boring you with the details as to what took so long and why, finally (FINALLY!!) it was moved last Friday, leaving behind this lovely scene.

So nearly a year ago I posted about our first real snow day. I don’t know what it is about this particular season, but the threat of a new snowflake has people sprinting to the store for bread and milk while calling their relatives to say farewell. I personally subscribe to the “We live in New England, it’s winter, what do you expect?” line of thinking. But I do work at a university and understand why schools want to be better safe than sorry. So we had a snow day yesterday. Accumulation totaled 10-12 inches and it really didn’t stop all day so it was a good decision to keep people off the roads.

As I mention in the post linked above, snow days don’t hold the same excitement value that they used to. All my energy goes into entertaining a certain someone and if I fail, boy do I know it. Luckily, Jason was home too so this is what we did together to survive the day.

We painted.

We watched the plows go by.

And that, my friends, was our snow day. I’m hoping to share some house updates in the next two weeks so I can stop with these kinds of posts (“Here’s Ashton doing this: {INSERT PICTURE}” and “Here’s Ashton doing this: {INSERT PICTURE}”. My deepest apologies – that’s just all I’ve got lately  

Yesterday was a wonderfully abnormal day for me. Instead of playing trains, first I got to go to brunch with my girlfriends, and then later that day we headed out to Berg and Karen’s for their annual Superbowl party. What does this mean? Well, it means that I got dressed in an actual outfit, with real jewelry, skinny jeans, boots, the works. And I stayed in it all day. Why change when I looked so fabulous? Anyway, that’s not the point of this post.

We got back from the party after halftime and were in the process of putting Ashton to bed. I guess because I had my hair down all day, Ashton had failed to spy my earrings:

I walked into Ashton’s room this morning to get him up and out of his crib. I do this incredibly frequently (as in, every day) so I knew from the second I opened his door that something was amiss. And it didn’t take long to figure out.

Minus Ashton, the scene looked like this.

There are three distinct things in this picture that were in his crib last night when I put him to bed that were not in his crib this morning. Let’s zoom in, shall we?

The blanket doesn’t bother me. But you guys are smart: if his pajama pants and his diaper were on the floor, and there was no magic fairy that changed him in the middle of the night…

I approached his crib cautiously. How long had he been naked from the waist down? Was there a #1 or #2 waiting for me? Was Ashton even going to be there in light of the carnage on the floor?? So many unknowns.

As a quick aside, Ashton likes to sleep on his front with his butt up in the air. Kind of like this:

(That’s not Ashton OR our dog, but the only picture I could find to illustrate his position.) Anyway, I approached his crib from the rear and found him like this, sans pants and diaper. Suffice it to say, I was treated to quite the view. Good morning to me. And then, my darling two and a half year old popped right up and said proudly, “Ashton take off diaper!!” I tried to ask him why he did it and when he did it but he didn’t give me much of a reply, which was fine. All I really cared about is that there was not a huge mess to clean up and a kid to throw in the tub. He continued to show me he had taken off his pants and his diaper, smiled and said he wanted to see Daddy, presumably to brag some more about his heroic feat.

Crisis averted, this time. I will be sticking to one-piece pajamas. That’s all.

(p.s. if you did not see the series of viral photographs of the toddler that naps every day with his puppy (from which the above one was taken) I highly encourage you to take a peek for your daily dose of omg-that’s-so-cute-it-almost-hurts.)

Have you heard the latest update? It’s cold here. What else? Oh, it’s cold here. Did I also mention…it’s cold here? I woke up to these very large frost crystals on the window the other morning…

Which were kind of pretty I guess. But *siiiiigh*, this is such a tough time of year. We spend a lot of time at home where nothing really happens and this blog is suffering as a result. I’m sure I don’t need to point that out. So I figured if we are bored, it’s only fair to pass it on and let you be bored too. This is how bad it gets around here:

1) We make hats out of pipe cleaners and a colander.

2) We practice putting our shoes on in various yoga poses. We’ve agreed that downward-facing dog is the toughest.

3) We take long baths with bubbles. Honestly, Ashton was in the tub for nearly 45 minutes the other day. Why? Because what else are we doing??

4) We watch a little too much TV. This temporarily alleviates the boredom but causes dry eyes due to complete cessation of all blinking activity (otherwise known as “Mickey Mesmerization Syndrome”).

Well we’re roughly 8 weeks out folks. Some days this baby can’t come soon enough, and some days I’m glad it’s going to be in there another couple of months because what-in-the-HECK-am-I-going-to-do-with-two? And two in diapers!! ACK!

Okay I’ll save the freak out for later. I still have 8 weeks after all and there are lots of positives to focus on.

First, I’ve had an almost easier pregnancy this time than I had with Ashton. My weight gain is about the same (right now I’m +27 pounds as of my appointment yesterday, my OB expects I’ll put on a couple more but should be roughly +30 in the end, my goal) but I’ve been less achy and have had far less discomfort. Going into my pregnancy with Ashton, I was running every day and getting lots of exercise walking around the city because I worked downtown. I was in good firm shape and the “growing process” was a bit painful with him. This time around? Well don’t you know, everything is just already stretched out. I am not sore at all! Knock on wood.

Second, I’m told the baby is head down and facing back, which is good news for D-Day (D for Delivery). The funniest thing I will never forget: we took an all-day baby class at my hospital, Newton-Wellesley, before Ashton was born. Our teacher was describing the labor process, and she said with your first baby, the birth canal is basically this:

A dense, overgrown trail that the baby has to bulldoze down through  – an arduous process that can make first deliveries long and difficult. But due to this baby’s efforts, any subsequent babies are treated to a birth canal that looks like this:

It’s just an open road. The sun is shining, the pavement is smooth and there are signs that say “EXIT THIS WAY”. Babies traveling this route enjoy a much higher speed limit and it’s often easier-going for the mom as well. Here’s hoping.

I’ll post again at 36 weeks and answer all your burning questions about the nursery, whether we have names picked out, etc. but for now, all is well! And because I love a good before-and-after/comparison photo/whatever, I’ll leave you with my roughly 32-week selfies (I really hate that word) from both pregnancies. Voila!

You know, that’s the first time I’ve put those side-by-side. I think my Ashton photo was taken more like 30-31 weeks (at this stage that makes a difference) but I really am bigger with this one. Oh well, refer to #3 above. 

Mother Nature threw us a bone yesterday. It was 45 degrees, sunny, and dry. Even though it was a bit windy, we woke up knowing that we would be doing something outside. Thank god. It’s been a long winter and it’s only mid-January. We’ve been able to take a handful of walks around the neighborhood, but they’ve required boots and other snow gear and well, it’s just not been nearly enough.

So off we went! The rink in real life:

They weren’t lying about the milk crates. Perfect 🙂 The little hut behind the rink had skates and helmets to rent and the boys laced up…

Took in the scene…

and hit the ice! Um, literally. As expected, Ashton had no idea how to skate haha. So Jason pushed him around, held his hands, guided the milk crate…you get the idea. It looked a lot like this.

Phew. Break. There were lots of breaks.

Then time for the real milk crate action.

All told, ice time was about 22 minutes total 🙂 But afterwards, we got our picture taken,

Ashton pondered his future at the Winter Olympics,

And we went for some hot chocolate, because that’s just what you do after you go ice skating.

But the story does not end there, dear readers. After naptime, we were still in gold-star weather territory so we took Ashton down to the tennis courts to ride his scooter. He is much more adept at this than skating and smiled basically the whole time. 

Here’s the last video.

So, to sum up, we basically spent our Sunday exercising our toddler. It worked; he slept til 9 AM this morning 😉

Oh P.S. on Diapergate 2014: a two-day investigation yielded no positive results. As in, the fate of that desiccant packet from Friday night is unknown and probably always will be. I’ve decided to get on with my life.  

Ashton’s napping and it is a rainy, gross Saturday afternoon. So let me tell you what I have going on today. Mainly, I’m watching Ashton’s diaper output. Fun! Here’s why.

Ashton loves eating the freeze dried strawberries out of the Special K red berries. I was alerted to the fact that Trader Joe’s sells these on their own in snack bags, so instead of continuing to waste boxes of leftover flakes (or force-feed them to myself), off we went last night after work. Delightfully, they were $3.49 a bag and I bought three. Now, Ashton is no dummy. He knew exactly what I had bought and asked me and asked me for “staw-beh-wees” on our way back to the car. So when we got there, I ripped open a bag, poured some in his snack cup, handed it back to him and off we went to the indoor playspace for an hour. It was 5 pm and it was dark.

When we got home about 6:15 pm, I unloaded the groceries and took a look at the strawberry bag for the first time. A nice little text box on the back told me:

I was like, oh my god. I dumped the rest of the bag out into a bowl – no packet. Ashton was watching Mickey so I ran out to my car, hoping to find it on the floor or next to his carseat, sure that if the packet had made it into his snack cup, he would not have eaten it. No packet. Naturally, I started to panic. I called the pediatrician’s answering service and asked for a callback. Then I checked Google to see what people said about if you ate one of these things. I couldn’t focus on the search results so I called poison control. The nice man instantly told me that if Ashton had indeed eaten it, it was nontoxic and no more harmful than eating beach sand. The worst that would happen would be a stomachache and the reason they say don’t eat it because it is a choking hazard. Didn’t I hear Ashton cough at some point in the back seat on the way to the playspace? I did – I had offered him water.

I hung up the phone, still sobbing my eyes out obviously. I opened another bag of strawberries and sure enough located the packet they were talking about.

Could Ashton REALLY have eaten this? I offered it to him to see what he would do with it as there was strawberry dust all over it.

He instantly put it in his mouth, smiled and said, “Eat this! Staw-beh-wee!”

Well I fished it back out immediately. I did not need him eating two of these things! I called Jason at work despite the fact that Ashton was behaving as normal, eating his dinner, and pushing his shopping cart around. There was nothing he could really do anyway but sometimes you just have to call your husband in hysterics. You know?

So nothing has happened since then. Jason tried to find the packet in my car and could not. So, unless that one particular bag of strawberries did not happen to have a packet, it’s in Ashton’s body somewhere. Hence, the diaper watching. Weeeeeee. Stay tuned.