Belly pictures

Things have been so busy around here that I never got around to getting any good belly pictures. I've always taken pictures of the belly at it's {Biggest} to frame and put up on the wall. I was worried since we are at the very end that I wasn't going to get a good one, so since my bestest buddy was over yesterday, and it actually stopped raining for a moment and the sun came out, I freshened up and we headed out doors. There wasn't really a great spot in my soggy yard for pictures so this was the best we could do, and working with the shadows and the evening sun was a bit frustrating but oh well. We had fun. In some of them I was just being silly. We did end up with some nice ones though. These are the originals, but after I cropped some of them and fiddled with them a little (Costco.com photo albums...love it!) I have some good ones to choose from. Just another thing to check off my list, almost baby time!

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It's a full moon on Sunday...Here's to hoping she is a full moon baby!

The days are all a blur...

I just noticed my counter says 17 days left to go and I got a little freaked out! That is according to my latest possible due date too, my other one is Oct. 1st, yikes!! I've already passed my earliest due date of Sept. 21st...and yes I ended up with three different due dates this time around. One from my midwife, one from my first ultrasound and another from my second ultrasound. My official one is Oct. 11th, the one that my midwife and I agreed on, so we will just have to wait and see! My husband and I have had a feeling since almost the beginning that our baby girl will be born around the 4th or 5th of October, but I will try not to get my hopes up because Spike was born a week after his due date! I seriously won't last that long. I am so sore this time around, everything is hurting and I am beyond exhausted all day long. Pushing myself to keep going and care about the day to day stuff when I really just want to sit around and think about baby. I feel like I've had barely a moment to enjoy this last pregnancy or connect with the baby girl inside me and it's hard not to get a bit sad about it. Although at this point I'd rather not be pregnant anymore, I want to see her so bad! I just want this part to be over, the stress, the worry, the unknown. I am trying my hardest to get myself in the right frame of mind, but I don't know how long I can last. Come On Baby, we are more then ready for you, I promise.

So Ready!

The count down, less then a month left...I am so ready!

There have been some major last minute changes in my birth plan, not ready to talk about it now but I have a feeling I will have LoTs to say about it later.

Never the less, although I could allow myself to stress out about it I am instead focusing on preparing myself mentally to welcome my baby girl into the world. Which means I can hardly think of any thing else, and probably won't be blogging much until she is here with us.

Keep us in your prayers! :)

Wild pregancy dreams...for my husband.

I was roused from a deep sleep the other night to the sound of my husbands "mean voice" belting out

"Who's talking to my wife!"

Now being that I was sleepy for a split second I thought, who is talking to me?...but then I realized...it was the middle of the night!

So with my heart beating a mile a minute I said "Oh my goodness, that scared me"(or something similar to that but I am trying to keep this blog PG) when I should have just punched him, to which he responded in a sleepy voice, "sorry...good thing I didn't yell that".

"Um yeah you did why do you think I'm awake." To which there was no answer because he was apparently already asleep again dreaming Lord knows what.

I on the other hand I was awake for hours, thanks hon.

This far surpasses the time he was talking about cookies in his sleep.

Pictures, pictures and more pictures, seriously way to many pictures...

Baby shower pictures! This is just the last half of the baby shower when someone else reminded me about my camera. Unfortunately my camera was on a horrible setting and seems to be failing also so most of the pictures that my friend took ended up being really blurry, oh well.

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What a wonderful day! I felt truly blessed to be surrounded by so many wonderful friends. There have been times in my life, when I was much younger, were I felt completely alone. There has never been another time in my life that I have felt such love from so many. My life is full right now, and I am surrounded by so many loving, generous, talented, funny, compassionate, supportive women. Having so many of my loved ones in the same place at the same time was over whelming...in a good way! It made me realize how truly lucky I am and how far my life has come from were it was. To me just having all my friends there to show me how special I am to them was what mattered the most. A couple of my friends drove over two hours to come to my baby shower, one of my friends came even though it was her birthday, some of my friends drove somewhere else to drop off older kids and then drove to my baby shower just to make sure we could have girl time. My husband took all three of the boys to the Children's Museum (alone!) so that I could have a moment kid free with my girlfriends. Friends brought delicious food, an overwhelming amount of gifts, kind words and love. Two of my friends stayed up until after midnight the night before to make me a beautiful cake and a super awesome diaper cake packed full baby clothes, cloth diaper and much, much more! I had told all the girls that gently loved clothes were perfectly fine with me, and lots of my friends have had baby girls recently, so I ended up with an enormous amount of adorable baby girl clothes, I am swimming in them right now! We had fun just chatting and loving up the three little baby girls that were there, playing a couple fun games, eating LoTs of good food and looking at all the cute girl stuff that everyone brought. The party lasted for Hours and I loved every minute of it...and now on to pictures. :)

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One adorable baby girl.

and another.

Oh and yet another adorable baby girl, my little niece. I have no idea what I am looking at.

Opening presents.

My "little" sister and my soon to be sister in law.

More presents.

Food! The little boy in the picture was the only boy there and he was so well behaved!

Oh My Goodness, more presents!!

...and more...

Fabric from my other sister in law, looks like I am going with the red themed fabric for my little strawberry's quilt.

A super funny book I got.

A Moby Wrap, super excited to use one of these this time instead of the sling I used with the boys. I ended up with two Moby Wraps in different colors, how cool is that.

Giddy over girly clothes.

Don't know what the serious face was about, someone brought me a different sort of cloth diaper then I am use to and I think they were explaining it to me. They seem pretty cool, the G diapers, less bulky then the ones I've used previously.

I used baby girl onsies hung up with clothes pins for decoration.

These cute litte baby girls stole the show, they were talking to each other, it was really adorable.

Eating... the girl sitting on the far left by the window has been my friend since 5th grade!

My mom and my little niece.

More baby girl pictures, aren't they just adorable.

This is the cake my friend stayed up all night making, wow huh! She is super talented.

An adorable outfit.

...and another...

...and another...

...and another...

I just love this one, my mom found it...I think it's perfect!

...and finally there is this one. My friend made it. She has a blog here, and a link to her Etsy shop on her blog, check it out she is seriously talented and I have never been disappointed by anything I have ever ordered from her. I luck out because she also just makes me awesome things for gifts, and I am always excited to see what she has come up with. This little gem is too cute for words. It's a little monkey print top with a diaper cover that has ruffles on the back and matching monkey slippers. I can not wait to put my little baby girl in this and take some super cute pictures!

Just look at those ruffles...oh so cute!

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So there you have it, if you made it all the way through this post then you're awesome too!

A whole new level.

I would get down to my kids level more often but...................it's really dirty down there! ;)

I have been cleaning like a maniac. Partially because I am at that stage in my pregnancy were I want everything perfectly organized and clean to sparkling at all times, and also because my baby shower is this Saturday and I am a freak about my house being put together before people come over. I cleaned all day again yesterday and the house was looking quite nice if I do say so myself, then I bent down to talk to Bubu and while I was listening to what he was saying I glanced over at the wall by the back door and noticed a whole new world of dirt! Months of sticky hands touching the walls down low. I guess since it was below my eye level and I'm not as flexible and bendable as I once was right now it had completely evaded me and my frantic cleaning. Once I saw that though, I noticed much, much more and once again I was thrown into a cleaning frenzy that left me breathless (not hard to do right now). My husband is not working today and I came up with millions of things I need him to do as I was wandering around the house cleaning and organizing yesterday, isn't he lucky?!! I already had him fixing the bathroom, painting a wall and steam cleaning my carpets this week, hey if he's going to be home I'm putting him to work no use having a strong capable man just sitting around (like he ever gets to do that). Now I must stop blogging because I am sure there is much more that I need to clean, plan and prep before tomorrow.

Melt down then get it together...

Last night I threw my hands up in the air, declared, "I'm taking a bath", went into the bathroom turned on the water and proceeded to bawl like a baby. Because I'm tired. Everything hurts. It's overwhelming. I can't even keep up with my own schedule at this point, and it's all down hill from her until well after the baby is born. I've been hitting a wall around 5 pm, I am on the go all day long, keeping up with what needs to be done for the most part, but by evening I am burnt out and sore and I just want to be done, but there is always so much more that is left undone no matter how I wore myself out during the day. My belly is huge, I can't get around like normal, my feet ache, my back aches, I can't sleep right, it goes on and on. So I cried. Because I needed a good cry, even if there wasn't a specific reason. Even if it was just a pregnant melt down. I'm perpetually exhausted right now, and I'm like a little child that way, when I'm too tired I just need a good long cry about nothing, or everything, which ever way you want to look at it. I finished up my short bath as my sobs melted away, got out and went straight back to doing what needed to be done. Because we all know that just because we don't want to do it doesn't mean it goes away, and I don't know about you but when I put things off they just pile up and it gets worse and worse, right?! A good hard cry is sometimes just what I need to keep going. Melt down in the shower (it was a bath last night because that's how tired I am I didn't even want to stand up) and then get it together and get back to work, that's my mode of operation. What do you do when things get too overwhelming?

My life in a nut shell

It was a long week.

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All the regular every day busyness of raising three boys three and under, and caring for three additional childcare kids for an average of 12 hours a day all together. On any given day I have 6 kids in my house under the age of 6, most of them boys! The cooking, the cleaning, the dishes that never stop, the (messy) projects, the story reading, playing with, refereeing, bum wiping, laundry, constant picking up after, and multi-tasking a million different mini-catastrophes in 24 hours is a repetitive never ending process. Add to that the scrap booking I have been trying to catch up on, and the HuGe batch of apple sauce I made this week, the apple crisp, more apple sauce, and the peaches I prepped for the freezer, and you have one over whelming week for a pregnant lady. Then like the cherry on top of this chaos pie add to that this end of the week experience.

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I had to do my grocery shopping last night as tired as I was. I have a busy weekend ahead and knew I would never be able to get it done before the weekend was over. So after I waited patiently (ha, ha) for my husband to get home and shower so that I could leave I hurried out the door. List in hand I crawled into the van, it was around 6 :30 and I hadn't eaten dinner first. Not a good idea. Got to the grocery store and moved robot style through the isle grabbing what I needed. Filled the cart to the max as usual and pushed it along on aching feet to the check out counter. Lady starts ringing up my groceries, small chat, lie and say I'm feeling great, how about her? Reach into my purse and at the same time get the sinking feeling that my wallet isn't in there. Yeah. A good portion of my groceries are rung up at this point. I blurt out that my wallet isn't in my purse while I am still frantically looking for a wallet that I know isn't in there, and that I need to check my van. This has never happened to me before. I was mortified, the lady was so sweet though and said she would just save them for me. I told her I might have to go all the way home (which I did!) and she was still sweet. So home I rushed at almost 8 pm to find my wallet, I might have started to hyperventilate and I was definitely sobbing when I flew into the house frantic for my wallet which I had left on the top of the computer desk after ordering a present for Bubu's up coming birthday. My husband offered to go back but I was so freaked out when I left the store that I couldn't remember what check stand I had been at and only remembered what the oh so kind lady looked like. So I had to walk back into the store, swollen eyes and all (at least I had been able to force myself to stop crying on the way back) and pay and wait for the groceries to be hauled back up front. So. Stinkin. Embarrassing. I know I looked like a crazy pregnant mess at that point, and I was starting to feel dizzy because I needed to eat and I was still choking back tears and trying to put a fake smile on my face. Horrid. Got home, helped put kids to bed because now it was past bedtime for them, before I finally got to eat at 9, what a night. Nothing ever seems to be simple in my life I swear.

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Next time someone asks me what I do for work I am going to tell them I am a multi-tasking, mini-catastrophe handling manager of a large Enterprise. I take no vacations, or sick days and I work 14-24 hours a day 365 days a year...no wonder I can't keep my head on straight! Ahhhhh...now I like that...that made me feel just a little bit better. If I had thought of that while I was standing in the grocery store last night I might not have felt so frustrated with myself.

:)

it's offical

So when your kids make up a game where they creep up to you until you give them the "look" because you are trying to clean the house and then they run away screaming..."monster, monster"....over and over again, that should tell you something right?

I think I have officially hit the grumpy pregnant mommy mark.

So many choices so little time...

So I asked you all a while back to tell me which quilt pattern you liked the best. I finally picked and it's....pattern C. Not the fabric, just the pattern. So now on to the fabric. There are so many different fabrics to choose from I can't make up my mind. I went to a fabric store (with my little monkeys, boy was that fun!) and took pictures of my favorites and now I want you all to help me choose which color/pattern combo to go with. I put together the pattern choices that are up for debate on separate sheets of paper and have been asking friends and even the hubby to vote on which one is their favorite. Now it's your turn. Ready, Set...Go!
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Number 1. Lady bugs and flowers , strawberries, and plain red fabric. Don't bother trying to read my chicken scratch on the sides, it's just noting which fabric will be used for the sashing, center squares, border and binding, and corner stones and corner squares.

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Number 2. Blue, green and pink print fabric, butterfly, dragonfly, and blue fabric. I know the blue fabric looks grey in this picture but it's actually a light blue. I could always switch the solid blue fabric for a pink...although I am not much for the color pink, it would make it look more girly.

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Number 3. multi color flower pattern with brown background, multi color strips, solid blue, and flower/vine print with ladybugs and butterflies. Again I could switch the blue to a pink.

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Number 4. Big flowers, small flowers, butterflies, and blue fabric. I could do a green solid fabric on this one. I know that is not very girly, but have you figured out that I'm not much of a girly girl yet?

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Number 5. Multi colored flowers with a white background, solid green, green vines with flowers and a brown background, matching multi colored/patterned strips. I'm not sure if I want to go with green solid fabric for this one or switch it to blue or pink.

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So there you go, five choices. Which one is your favorite? What would you change? Let me hear your ideas.

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One last thing I bought my first girly outfit last weekend...it's adorable, take a look. It's sized for next summer, since this is a fall baby. So I have to wait a while before I can put her fat little body into it and stare at some juicy rolls, and I can hardly stand it!

I absolutely love dresses with matching diaper covers or shorts underneath. Cuteness!

Eyelet trim, strawberries, ribbon flower, red checkers, can it get any better then this?!

Heat Wave

So you don't think I'm just being a whiney pregnant lady, check this out . It's hot. We are not use to this sort of thing in the Pacific North West. Not many of us have air conditioning over here in our homes. We don't even think about it. Because it's usually raining. My house yesterday...miserable. Even with every ceiling fan on and three other fans plugged in, they just blew the hot air around. Today, because my husband picked up a FREE (thanks to Craigslist and an awesome friend keeping an eye on things for me) old air conditioning unit last night, the kind that goes in the window, our playroom is a bit cooler. It doesn't reach far, but if you stand right in front of it... wonderful. So we are trying to huddle around that. The rest of my house is still too warm, but it's like ten degrees hotter outside today too so I am thankful for the cooler playroom (even though I am still sweating buckets). We can't even go outside this afternoon to play in the water because it's just plain WAY too hot out, the kids are watching a movie as I type, something we normally don't do at this time of day. My garden is pathetic, my yard scorced, my plants dying...so sad.

If I could pay my water and electric bills for this month with out looking I would. I want the rain back... ;)

One Hot Momma

...and not in the ooh-la-la way...more like the, if you look at me wrong I might punch you in the face way...well not if you're a kid, that would be just wrong, I was thinking more in terms of my husband. Help me I'm melting...and get that *bleeping* camera out of my face! I'm not kidding peoples it is stinkin' hot around here, me no likey any more...

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Signing off as one grumpy momma. If I am not a puddle by tomorrow I may live to blog again.

invites

So here they are, cards on a budget. I printed out strawberry and strawberry shortcake pictures from the Internet. Then we cut the green card stock the shape of a legal size envelope (because that's what I had on hand). We carefully planned to make sure we got the most out of each sheet of paper. Then I cut a double flap of the pink paper and glued it to the front. When you lift the flap there is a pink background and all the info is listed there on the inside. I glued red checkered ribbon that I had on hand to the front and then used my sewing machine to stitch a line down the middle of each ribbon to make sure it stayed on...and because it looked cute. I also stitched around the picture that I glued on the front. Then my dear friend who was helping me hand wrote "my little strawberry" on the front of all the cards (Because she has beautiful handwriting and mine is juvenile chicken scratch in comparison!) and ta-da, all done. The kids helped glue the extra pictures I had printed off onto the envelopes.
My friend paid for the card stock as a gift, we used a small amount and she took the rest home for other projects so I not sure how to figure out the cost on that, but for everything else we spent not a dime. Each individual card basically cost me the price of a stamp. Even that I skimped on because if the person lived close enough and was someone I see on a regular basis I just hand delivered theirs! So I say we are onto a good start for a budget friendly baby shower in these hard economic times. We will see how I fare with the remainder of the shower preparation. The food is always what gets me. Mostly because we try to eat an all natural organic diet as much as possible and that is just hard to do on a budget. I reminded people on the inside of the card that gently used baby girl clothing is A okay in my book and in fact all that this mommy of boys needs! I can't wait to get together with all my girlfriends and celebrate the life of this baby girl!!!
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My next dilemma is that I can't make up my mind on the fabric for Strawberry's quilt. So I am going to take my camera next time I go the the fabric store and take a bunch of pictures and then I am going to try and get you guys to help me pick. There are just so many cute patterns and colors to pick from I can't make up my mind! I decided on Quilt C, from the three quilts I showed you all before, so I only have to pick a few fabrics but still...

FYI

I just sneezed...and wet myself. As in I need a diaper. I love being pregnant.

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Oh, we're not that good of friends yet, too much information, yeah...

How do you spell me?

Repeat after me... B. I. G. What does that spell? ME! Does it get bigger? Yes, yes it does...three more months to grow.

My hubby's idea of a nice artistic shot, except you can't really tell I'm pregnant, just round.

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Oh and it was stinkin' hot out today, wow! Probably why I didn't much feel like smiling in the first picture. I melted and then melted again, I am a shell of my former self right now, and I can tell sleep will allude me, because I can't sleep when I am laying in a puddle of sweat. Yuck!

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You would think I would have learned the first time that being pregnant in the summer is no fun, but no, all three it's the same old story. Good grief.

Our little strawberry

My little strawberry

I can't wait to meet you!

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Starting to plan the celebration of new life, this babies shower.

Planning a get together on a budget is always a challenge but I also find it kind of fun. I guess I like a good challenge. Must be why after going so long with no kids, I now have so many so close in age and run a daycare to boot! Anyway I am doing a strawberry theme, red has been in my head for this baby, almost all the clothes I look at or purchase for this baby have some red... strawberries, cherries, ladybugs, red strips, red polk-a-dots, plain red...maybe a little pink or green, but mostly red. I didn't do this with my other two pregnancies. My friend, the one who is always helping me with everything, is coming over tomorrow and we are going to try and whip out some handmade invites. It's last minute and like I said on a budget so we'll just have to get super creative, which I hope I have in me at this point. I'm pretty tired, not sleeping well at night with the combination of Atty's non stop night waking, heartburn so bad it makes me cough, peeing every two hours all night long, being too hot, having a hard time even falling asleep in the first place, oh I could go on and on.

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So I am planning the food around strawberries, going to have red and pink decorations with a little green, the invites are going to have a picture of a strawberry on them, what else... anyone have any good ideas on other ways to incorporate strawberries into the party theme? I'm also encouraging guest to reuse, reduce, recycle by suggesting that any clothing or blankets (being as this is my third I really don't need anything else) they bring for the baby be gently loved (hand me downs, thrift, garage sale, etc...) as well as encouraging them to either not wrap the gift or reuse wrapping items. If they bring a gift at all which is not necessary, although I didn't suggest this like I usually do because I already know that all of my girlfriend are itching to get me something girly for this newest one. They all know I don't really like pink or purple (I'm not much of a girly girl) so that's probably all I will get. Ha ha! I am also going to wrap the game prizes in little brown paper bags that I already have, tie them with all natural garden twin add a little pink tag with a red strawberry or cherry on it and some sort of cute quote. The gift itself will be all natural in nature like soy candles or Burt's Bees products, maybe some nice natural handmade soaps, I have a few different ideas. I want to combine the strawberry theme with a "going green" baby shower. Want it to be girly as well as environmentally friendly. We try to live this way, so I wanted my baby shower to reflect that too.

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I'm a bit consumed by planning the baby shower, (yes I plan my own, I think by now you might be able to tell I am a bit of a control freak! Actually I just feel really uncomfortable having other people do my work for me, or something like that.) thinking about baby girl, planning for the home birth, getting the cloth diapers in order, finding a cheap dresser so I can start folding and putting away the clothes that are sitting in bags, decluttering, and on and on and on. Mostly I'm just thinking about it and writing lists because like I said, I'm awfully tired!

If you guys have any great (cheap, or should I say homemade with items likely to be found lying around the house...) shower ideas send them my way!

IT'S A GIRL!

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giggle, giggle....

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My little strawberry.

Tomorrow, tomorrow...

So tomorrow afternoon on the same day as Atty's adoption I also have an ultrasound appointment. I took the whole day off (which never happens when you run an in-home daycare) so I figured I better schedule both in for the same day. It's going to be a busy exciting day. The adoption is first thing in the morning and then we are headed to a park with my close friend and some family members to celebrate with food and lots of pictures of Atty's last two and a half years. I put these big posters together on cardboard using a million pictures (or close to it) and wrote down different little facts out of his journal I kept for him. They turned out pretty cute. It's so neat to see him grow from little peanut to the bigger boy he is now. So after some time at the park, and it's suppose to be a nice (hot) day, we will be rushing back towards home to drop off the boys with their Neenee (my mom) at the house and hubby and I will then head off to my ultrasound. Which I am super excited about because I should finally be able to tell for sure whether this little strawberry is a boy or a girl. We have been going with girl for the most part because in the early ultrasound the tech and I were sure it looked like girl bits and pieces, but I was only 14 weeks along which is borderline for being able to decipher the sex of the baby. If we can't tell the sex of the baby this time around, if he or she makes it difficult to tell I might go crazy! I am not one to wait to find out what we are having, I like to plan. This day is going to seem like it lasts forever I can tell because I want it to be tomorrow already. Can't wait to tell you all about it!

Is there anyone else out there that thinks that tomorrow looks like a really weird word? Or is it just me...

BiG

So now that I am almost 26 weeks I get to go back on a gestational diabetics diet, ya me! I don't have gestational diabetes, just super BiG babies. So in an attempt to keep them under 11 lbs, my midwife suggested the diet. I did the same diet with Spike and he was about 8 oz less then Bubu (but still over 10 lbs) so I guess that's progress. I am just not good with diets, as soon as I know there are things I am just not suppose to have...that's all I want. Horrible. Plus fruit is my vice when I am pregnant, I crave it, I need it, I must have it Right Now! I have to restrict that, sweeteners of any kind, sweets, and grains. When I do eat any kind of grain...noodles, rice, bread or whatever, it has to be a tiny serving paired with a protein. Ugggg. It goes on and on and the diet plan it self is way more in depth then I will actually get because I am just not a counter of calories and carbs, nor can I guarantee that I will eat at the same exact moment every day and space my meals out every few hours. That takes way to much effort, but I will try to watch what I eat. Because the idea of pushing out a baby much bigger then Spike was is quite frankly terrifying!

Oh and I'm huge...I should stop looking at the scale when I'm weighed, except that wouldn't work because at my midwifes clinic you have to weigh yourself and then relive the humiliation when they ask you how much the scale reflected this time. Not very kind if you ask me. Big, bIg, biG...that's me.

FOOD. GOOD.

This...well this was good. Black bean burger with buttered yams and celery sticks. Oh yeah!

But this...well this was better. I made chocolate covered strawberries. I had left over chocolate from a treat I made for the daycare moms for Mother's day, and what else was I suppose to do with it? I ate way too many!

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My pregnant self is a bit obsessed with food...ya think? I barely ate a thing when I was prego with Bubu and still gained 55 lbs and had an 11 lb baby. I went on a gestational diabetes diet with Spike, just to try and make him smaller and gain less, still gained 50 lbs and had a 10 lb baby. So this time...not going to do it. Don't care. Not going to try hard to fight the inevitable. What's the point. Just going to enjoy this pregnancy and a few more chocolate covered strawberries.

Oh and this, it doesn't taste good, but it sure is beautiful. I call this a unicorn sky. Even my husband calls them that now, so funny.