Jackpot!

One of the American guys from church (there are 5 American families in our ward right now) was going back to the US for a few days. Nate gave him some money and a "wish list" of things we hoped he could get for us while he was there. Because he was only there for a few days we figured he might not have time. Or if he did have time we would be lucky if he brought us back a few candy bars. This is what he brought us!...


That is the biggest bag of Reese's I have ever seen! The only problem now is that every time I walk into the kitchen I want to eat a Reese's peanut butter cup.

Busy Weekend

I am so excited about all of the projects I finished this weekend! I can finally sleep at night because I made some little beanies for our girl. Because I only needed a 25 cm strip of the fabric it was super cheap and I even have enough to make 3 more if I decide these ones don't work very well.


While I was at the fabric store looking at beanie fabrics I noticed that the flannel was on sale for $5 (prints) and $4 (solids). That is insanely cheap for Australia! I picked out this polka dot and a (gender neutral) green (just in case the ultrasound lady was wrong). I love how big it is - almost a meter square.


After nursing children for about 25 months of my life you would think I would be good at it or at least know how to do it discreetly without flashing the world. In reality I am pretty horrible at it. I have never been able to hold the baby while keeping a blanket nicely over the both of us. I recently saw this tutorial for a nursing cover at one of my favorite quilting blogs and decided I needed to make one. This fabric is the cutest I could find in the clearance bin at the local quilt shop.


I am happy to have all of that done! And it only took not doing dishes, hardly cooking and not cleaning anything for 2 days.

I have another project I want to do involving this orange Salvos rejected chair:



and this fabric (my first ever Moda fabric!):


Since the Salvation Army didn't want it (the arms are a little frayed now) and I need somewhere to nurse upstairs at night, we decided to keep one of them (not sure what we'll do with the other one...). This will be my attempt to make the lovely orange thing fit nicely into a green and white striped room. I'll probably just make little arm rest covers and then find another coordinating fabric to make a comfy pillow for the chair. I think it will be a bit too deep for me to sit comfortably while nursing as is. That might have to wait until next weekend though. I'm not sure the family would appreciate mac & cheese and hot dogs for dinner for another night. :)

Now, I guess I better go do the dishes...

32 Weeks

She is getting bigger and kicking and punching A LOT! Sometimes she punches so hard I think my water is going to break. The punching is super low so I am assuming she's still hanging out in my pelvis. And sometimes I think I can feel her foot pushing out against my side.

Sometimes the pelvic and hip pain is really terrible. If I have been sitting or lying down for a while and try to stand up and walk my bones don't want to move. I usually have to stand there for a few seconds until they remember what they are supposed to do and then I can hobble around. I feel like I'm 80! Hopefully after she is born things will get back to normal quickly.

All of a sudden I have this urge to do lots of projects. I finally finished up some clothes a friend of mine asked me to fix, shorten and now there are tons of other things I want to sew (my Philippines quilt, a nursing cover, arm rest covers for the will be nursing chair, a pillow for the nursing chair, a sewing machine cover.) Now if I could only find time to sew all of those things. It is especially hard now that Jonas isn't having naps! I guess I could try to get them done with him awake but the last time I tried to do a project that required cutting fabric with kids around I cut off part of my finger. Not something I want to do again!

Along with these projects I feel like I need to get our furniture situation under control. Basically we have way too much and I need it to go away so the nursery can function as a nursery. The only place to put anything is in our bedroom but there isn't any convenient place for it to go. It stresses me out! I know we have a few weeks left but I want it done NOW! But its not like I'm going to start moving furniture around myself. Then my water probably would break.

For some reason I am also stressing out about baby items we need. The most important in my mind right now (and probably will be until I buy or make some) are beanies. Maybe it is because this is my first winter baby and I want to make sure she is warm enough, but I think about it all the time. I'm thinking of just getting a few different fabrics and making some myself. Also on my mind is an outfit to bring her home in. I know I could probably find something in the baby clothes we had already or have been given but I really want to pick it out. Is that weird that I want to be the one to buy it? Maybe it is but I haven't bought her any clothes yet (shocking, isn't it!? Trust me, its taken a lot of self control!) and I think that would be the perfect purchase for me to make. Not like its going to be anything fussy. Probably just a nice, cozy sleeper...but I want to buy it myself! :) Funny the things that seem so important in my pregnancy brain right now.

I have another antenatal appointment in a few days and I am looking forward to asking my midwife lots of questions like what exactly the process of having a baby is like in Australia, pain medication options, what a birth plan is supposed to include. And of course I'll get to hear her heart beat again, which is always nice.

Slowing Down

For some reason I am often in a hurry. There usually isn't any reason other than I just want to "get it over with"...whatever it is (grocery shopping, trip to the mall, cooking, etc.). Today I wanted to make some banana bread because I had a few browning bananas on my counter. Normally I would turn on a cartoon for Jonas so I could get it over with quickly but today I invited him to help me. This is kind of a big deal for me. I don't like having the kids in the kitchen while I'm cooking. Most of the time I am so flustered running back and forth trying to make sure everything finishes at the same time that I can't handle the kids in there as well. Today was a quiet, rainy day and we didn't have anything planned so it was perfect to do something together. I let him pour and stir while I mashed and measured. And I didn't even get frustrated when a cup of flour ended up on the counter rather than in the bowl! (also sort of a big deal for me...I've been having to work on my patience a lot lately). While he was mixing Jonas kept saying, "this is really fun Mom!" and after we put it in the oven he said, "Thanks for letting me help you." Totally worth the time and extra mess!

And as an added bonus he actually tried some of it (he normally wouldn't touch it) because he saw what went into it - "chocolate sugar" (brown sugar) and a handful of chocolate chips!

UPDATE: Just after this picture was taken Jonas informed me he doesn't like it. :)

30 weeks

I have been feeling the same as before and still trying to get plenty of rest. I had an antenatal appointment at 29 weeks and while the midwife was feeling around to figure out what position the baby was in she determined that her head is down. In my records book she wrote 2/5 (down arrow) meaning I guess the head is pretty far down in the pelvis. This explains some of my discomfort. From what I've read though it doesn't mean labor is coming any time soon (thank goodness! Not quite ready for that yet!). She also said that the baby could move in and out of the pelvis still.

She is super active lately and is getting much stronger (judging by the force behind those kicks/punches). I'm a little worried because her favorite time of day to be active is right when I get the boys down to sleep and lay down myself. I hope this doesn't mean that after she is born she is going to be wide awake and ready to play just after I get them to bed!

I get regular emails that tell me whats going on with the baby each week. At 29 weeks I was welcomed to the 3rd trimester and informed that now the baby would really start growing rapidly. I looked down at my belly wondering how I could possibly get any bigger (It's amazing how much you forget). Then I looked at the final pictures of when I was pregnant with Jonas and remembered I would be getting a lot bigger...

YIKES!!!

No More Naps...

Bedtime has been a nightmare lately. Liam and Jonas share a room and after we say our 'goodnights' and close the door they go wild. Mostly Jonas goes wild. He jumps out of bed, jumps onto Liam's bed, jumps off of Liam's bed, runs around like crazy - screaming and playing. It is very obvious he is out of bed and jumping around because of the way everything echos in this townhouse. We were having to go warn them over and over again to settle down. After 3 nights in a row of putting Jonas in the extra bedroom so Liam would be able to get some sleep Nate suggested that maybe we should stop giving Jonas a nap during the day anymore. No more naps!? How could I even consider something like that. I am exhausted enough as it is with my 1-2 hour break during the day!

Saturday and Sunday we tried it out. I am so glad I had a little backup those first couple days. Monday was a little harder. Our days are a lot more boring on weekdays. At least on Saturday they went outside to play with their friends across the street for a few hours. But yesterday and today have been more of a challenge. I like to have a little midday rest myself and by 2 pm I needed to lay down. So Jonas and I snuggled up in my bed before we had to go pick Liam up from school. We were watching a cooking show, not planning on actually falling asleep. I guess Jonas had other plans because within a few minutes he was almost asleep. So, for the next 15 minutes I tried to keep him awake. I can't believe I am saying that - I was trying to keep him awake! After that we had to go pick up Liam so Jonas was happily awake for the rest of the evening because he has someone else to entertain him.

Today (Tuesday) was similar. I had a lot to do today around the house - dishes, laundry and some transcribing for Nate of interviews he did in the Philippines. While I washed dishes (there were a lot of them!) I let Jonas watch some Gummi Bears episodes. When I was finished it was time for lunch. After that is usually when he takes a nap. I knew I needed to have some sort of activity for him to do to keep him busy. We took a little walk up and down the street collecting autumn leaves and then came back to play around with them. Here are our creations:

Jonas'

Mine

A portrait of Jonas using the leaves we collected.

All of that only took 20 minutes!

I really had to work on the transcribing. I tried to talk him into playing with Lego or his toys or coloring but all he wanted to do was hang on me, begging to do something else fun. So I turned on a movie for him. The next thing I knew he was dozing off while watching his movie and once again I was trying to keep him awake.

The only good thing that has come from these last few days is that at bedtime they go to sleep! We haven't had to go in and warn them once. Now I just need to find some activities he can do on his own that will keep him happy and awake so I can get some things done during the day. Wish me luck...

School Holidays - Primary Activity

On April 20th we had a ward primary activity. We used an Easter theme and decorated eggs, made nests out of chocolate covered fried chow mein noodles, had an egg hunt and finished by watching a cartoon about Christ while eating hot cross buns.

Another part of the activity was to plant flower seeds for the kids to give their mums for Mother's Day. We figured something would start to happen in the 3 weeks between our activity and then. I was super excited about it. I have been wanting to grow some sort of plant with Liam and Jonas for a while now so they could see the process from planting, watering, giving sunlight, to growing and hopefully flowering. Plus, I am excited to have plants around the house.

We were pretty surprised when after only 3 days the plants started sprouting!


The smaller plants are a little flower called Pink Paper Daisies (I think) and the larger ones are two different kids of sunflowers. After just 11 days the sunflowers were so tall they couldn't stand up on their own anymore and their roots had started coming out of the bottom of the pots.


We decided it was a good idea to replant them. Here they are today. The sunflowers are even starting to grow their second set of leaves. I think we'll need bigger supports for them soon!


I think I might be the most excited about watching them grow. I can't wait to see if we are able to get them to bloom!