6 months prego

Today, I'm six months pregnant. This also signifies the beginning of the end. This month starts my 3rd trimester! How exciting and scary at the same time. Okay, really maybe not that scary. I know exactly what's coming, if this is anything like the other two. Every time I start thinking about the endless nursing and extreme fatigue, I remind myself that it will go quickly and that it won't last forever! I personally feel that mentally, each pregnancy is so so so much easier. Anyway, to celebrate the start of this last trimester, Shawn painted the nursery today. Here's a sneak peek. We all love the colors!!! We need to get the chair rail and install it and that should get done this week. Then it's a matter of putting everything back where it goes and putting those finishing touches on the room. I am so thankful that we've been able to do a personal nursery for each of our babies. I am always striving to do things that they will look back on and feel special about. I want each of them to know how important they are as individuals and not just as "three." This is such a wonderful and exciting time in our lives and every day I dream about what Levi will look like. I'm hoping he gets the cheeks of Ava, the eyes of Elle, a thick head of hair like his Daddy, and a nice "normal" size head.(Shawn's head size as a baby was unreal)lol! He moves ALL.THE.TIME. And I'm not talking about little gas bubble movements...I'm talking seizures and breakdancing. It's a sight to see for sure. I'll leave you with this last picture. Ava has the personality of 15 people put together. She always cracks me up. I asked her and Elle to get themselves dressed this morning and the only criteria was a long sleeve shirt, long pants, sock and shoes...they could pick the specifics. This was Ava's choice and she was so proud of it. Love that tooter.

Organizing the Scrapbook Room

If you know me at all, you know that I truly get giddy when I get to organize something. I have been considering making some organizational changes to my scrapbook room but haven't really had the umph to get it done. When my sister was down the other day she was talking about a picture in one of the scrapbook magazines where someone had used a curtain rod attached to a wall and used clips to hold some of their stuff on the wall. A lightbulb went off. I immediately headed to the store and got four wooden dowels, alligator clips, and book rings and got to work! Thanks to a late night run to Walmart last night, my hubbie attached them all to the walls and voila! I know have organization JUST.LIKE.I.WANTED and the best part of it was the price. I spent around $13 for all the supplies and it will pay off big time!

A Rare Event

Today, with it being just unbearably cold, I knew I was going to have to do something I just don't like doing with Ava...painting. You may be surprised to see that since I do love art...I just don't like doing it with a person that has a 3 second attention span. There is a lot of work that goes into the prep for painting and the clean up and when that takes longer than the actual time it takes to paint...then I start getting annoyed! But I was determined today! Ava hasn't done NEARLY as much painting as Elle did at this age so I need to make myself do this, plus I think it will be good for her because I'm going to make her spend a certain amount of time doing the painting, past when she wants to. We have got to work on her attention span! So, she actually did quite well. My very favorite part of painting with the girls is when I ask them to title their work. It is always an interesting thing. This painting is titled "Horsey, Triangle and Mommy."Then I tried to get her to paint a monster, but I was losing her at that point, so I tried my hand with the cruddiest paint brushes on the earth and I actually like this little guy. I might even hang him in my craft room.

Change is a Comin'

I had a regular appointment with my OB/GYN this morning. She's very liberal with her ultrasound machine so I got yet another picture of Levi...and he's still a boy :) Shawn and I both have been thinking for the last month...."What if she was wrong....." But today we had very distinctive proof that there is only one girl in this body and it's me! She looked at him for quite a while and said he looks so so healthy and everything is great! There is no better news to hear. On Sunday, the countdown began....only 100 days (or less) until Levi makes his debut. Sometimes that sounds like a lot, but mostly it immediately sends me to a closet or drawer and I begin frantically organizing and purging stuff. We are seriously going through every little piece of our home and getting rid of the unnecessary. It's a great feeling. The girls' bunk beds arrived a few days ago. We have them totally set up, but haven't put Elle's bed in place yet because I know once we do that, a lot of change is coming all at once and I'm not quite ready. I want Ava to get use to the beds first and she is adapting wonderfully! She really likes the bed a lot. Speaking of Miss Ava, she had been wearing pull ups at night for a long time and for over a month has woken with a dry pull up every morning. Monday night she used her last pull up. Tuesday morning we commenced with the panty party with no looking back. She is officially not going to be wearing pull ups any more at night...which means I have no kids in diapers.....for at least the next 3 months! woo hoo! Back to the bed discussion. It fits very well in their room, and I think there room is going to be wonderful once we are done with it. It's important that they be excited about this move so I want to do everything I can to get them there. We are going to be painting there room and doing lots of reorganizing. Levi's room will be where Elle is now. In my head it looks FABULOUS! I am slowly beginning to pull together the things he will need to have an organized cute room too. His room will also be painted so as we get the money we will get both rooms done and I'll start uploading pictures...it may be a while still. Life is wonderful, and God is blessing us with simplicity, health, and calm and that is all I truly need. I am soaking in these last few months and knowing that it's going to be chaotic in a few months, but also feeling the most calm and comfortable about what is to come, that I've ever been. I feel so much more prepared mentally for the difficulties of a newborn and that puts my mind at ease a lot! I'm sure I'll look back on this around the first of June and cry at how it was....and then I'll look back a few months after that and laugh! Okay enough rambling for today. Enjoy the bitter cold that's coming your way...I know this pregnant lady is...and it's exactly the reason I planned this pregnancy for this time of year. While everyone else is huddled by the fire, I'm barefoot outside putting ice crystals on my lungs!

Frustrating Parent Moment # 7,442

Today's agenda was simple enough. Head to Cedar Park and take back a toy that we got Ava that wasn't working. Also Shawn wanted to spend a little of his returned item money on whatever caught his eye. It was just going to be a nice lovely little morning of family fun. Enter firstborn. Before I tell you the story, I have to do a little recall of last night. We had Chicken Stir Fry last night. It consists of small pieces of chicken, rice, a few peas, and eggs with a delicious yummy kid-friendly sauce. We know it's kid-friendly because Ava eats it like it's ice cream. Anyway, we made that last night. Elle decided she didn't like the taste. (this was before she took a single bite, mind you) She was willing to forgo dinner as well as a pedicure which I attempted to bribe her with. So, she said that not only did she not like it, but that she wasn't hungry at all. This happens fairly regularly in our house and I refuse to make her something else when what I've made is "normal." So, she went to bed last night without dinner and didn't seem bothered by it at all. Shawn and I knew exactly how this morning would go and Elle did not disappoint. She woke up crying and saying that her stomach hurt really bad. We then forced her to eat a couple of crackers and a few cheerios because I know from many past experiences with her that if she'll just get some stuff in her stomach, it will calm down within about an hour. She continued to be stubborn saying she couldn't stand the crackers (it's not like they were sushi/raw spinach/artichoke/poop crackers....they were plain salted crackers) and wouldn't eat them and drank very little of anything continuing all the while to complain of her stomach hurting. Here's where the frustration level begins to rise. Anyway, we tell her that she is not going to thwart our plans to go shopping just because of her stubbornness so we pack her in the car with some crackers and head off. In the 20 minutes that we were in the car, I spent the whole time commanding her to eat one.whole.cracker. Twenty minutes for one cracker. (Lord, please use her stubbornness for Your glory one day...) So, about 20 minutes out, and about 5-10 minutes from the mall, she starts moaning and complaining of her stomach hurting which is really nothing new. I give her a Walmart bag to put up to her mouth in case she pukes and about 10 seconds later she does....except she misses the bag....all. three. times. It goes all over her, her car seat, the floor, and her beautiful jacket that happens to be on the floor at her feet. Chaos ensues. We pull over and clean it up the best we can and turn the car around. (I just left out a lot of bad details of mean words spoken and ugly faces made but you can use your imagination here if you want.) So, I look at Shawn and say, "We have three choices...1. We can have the car detailed. 2. We can go buy an upholstery cleaner/carpet cleaner 3. We can go to a do-it-yourself car wash and see if they have anything for puke." Shawn attempted to add a #4 with go home and soak warm water and soap into the seat. I quickly vetoed that idea because as much as I love aroma in my car, I really didn't want puke smell in June. So, with all that being said, here is what we are the proud new owners of:Now for the positives of this story because I'm trying to think positive:

1. We made it 5 1/2 years with kids before having to buy an upholstery cleaner.

2. Most of the stuff she puked on can be washed in the machine.

3. The car seat really needed to be washed.

4. Now, I can clean all the spots in my carpet, the rugs in the kitchen (which REALLY needed it) and the La-Z-Boy which has never been cleaned in the 6 years we've had it.

5. We have plans for this evening...we are going to attempt the mall again.

6. We realized that if necessary, Elle can give herself a bath. Not sure how clean she is, but she did it all by herself.

7. I had one Walmart bag in the car and it did catch some puke and was useful for cleanup purposes when we were on the side of the road.

8. I had just yesterday bought a new thing of travel wipes because I had been out for about 2 weeks and had just put them in my bag.

9. We had leftover disposable diaper changing pads in the back of the mini van from baby Ava and those were invaluable today.

10. We at least hadn't made it all the way to the mall yet.

11. She didn't puke in a store...that happened a few weeks ago with Ava and it was pretty mortifying.

12. She didn't puke on her brand new cute shoes.

The last day of '09

I decided to do a scrapbook page about the last day of 2009. Here's the "bones" of that page:9 Blueberry muffins eaten for breakfast

80 minutes needed to finish putting up the trampoline

288 jumps on the trampoline

20 items returned

27 minutes in Claires
(the girls each got $5 from Grannie Caskey and I let them go to Claire's and pick out whatever they wanted for $5 or under)

6 pink hair extensions

5 dollars spent on pink fuzzy flip flops

12 dollars spent at Chick Fil A

6 people who played Marbles and Jokers

2 large cups of Coke

14 pictures taken to get this one good one

2 glasses of Sparkling Red Grapejuice

23 minutes past midnight before I went to bed

1 very blessed family of 4 1/2!

Christmas Craziness

Today, like so many others, we took down all the Christmas decorations both inside and out. It was an all day job but I truly feel euphoric right now as I look at my bare, spacious, clean, dust- free living room. Not only did we do that, but we are also building up for a monster garage sale sometime this spring. We are hoping to make enough money to pay doctor's bills, get miscellaneous baby items needed, and transition the girls into one room, which will require a few pieces of organizational stuff plus paint. Our house feels like it lost weight today. We are going through every drawer, closet, cabinet and box and looking at every single thing we own and deciding what can stay and what needs to go. Simplify. As life attempts to get more chaotic in the next few months, we are going to simplify. It's a wonderful feeling and it will be made even sweeter, if we can make a decent amount of money.

Onto other topics. Christmas was wonderful. The girls got a trampoline and they absolutely LOVE it! I think we have finally found an outlet for that endless energy! I suspect that it will get a lot of use out of it in the coming years.

We also went to Tyler for almost a week and had a wonderful time there. We stayed long enough that I feel like for once, we got to spend a good amount of time with everyone. The girls got lots of good stuff and are staying occupied with tea parties and new doll friends and that kind of thing.

Yesterday, we went to a New Year's Eve party at one of our member's homes. More on that in the next post. Had a wonderful time!

Enjoy a few of my favorite pictures from the Christmas festivities.

This was the 32nd year in a row to read from this book. My dad started it on my first Christmas!

The carnage after the girls tore into their gifts.

Even Levi got something. I saw this idea on etsy.com and replicated it for pennies on some old onesies the girls had. Now he's truly his father's son.

We were so excited to see our friends, the Campbells while in Tyler. We met them in Mineola and ate at The East Texas Burger Co....it was really good! And we got to see their newest addition, Jack, and oh my goodness, those cheeks!!!

Here we are at Papaw and Carolyn's. Carolyn is opening our gift and Paul was undoing wires. The girls kept them pretty busy while we were there.

Here's Gramme sitting with Elle and helping her read her new book she got.

The girls show off their new dresses that Gramme got them. They sure did look cute on Sunday!

Shawn found a kitty that snuggled right up on him and he loved it.

My mom's living room at Christmas is pure eye candy. I love all the colors and decorations!

Mesmerized by a new toy. This is one of the best things I've ever seen. All the fun of a "pet" with no real work! You plug it in when you want a pet!!! Good job Papaw and Carolyn!