amusingmjblog

Bump Update Week 28

April 14, 2015 By amusingmjblog 1 Comment

I have now completed week 28 of pregnancy, which means I officially have 11 more weeks to go. I’m firmly in the 3rd trimester, and getting bigger by the minute. Things are getting increasingly hard to do (like bending over, putting jeans on, lifting anything), but there are moments when I feel just like pre-pregnancy me and I am continually surprised to look down or pass a mirror and see just how large this ‘bump’ has gotten. Pregnancy is a crazy experience.

Anyway, on with the update:

week28

Baby’s Size: Baby girl is butternut squash sized and anywhere from 2.5-3 lbs.

Baby’s Progress: She is pretty much at her birth length, so will just spend the next 11 weeks getting fatter and adding muscle. She is moving around a TON in there because she has room to do so, but will quickly be running out of that room, so pretty soon her rolling around will just be elbows and jabs.

Weight Gain: I gained about half a pound last week, so I’m at around 10.5 lbs up

Sleep: Ahhh sleep, some nights its great, some nights… not so much. Regardless of the night I usually have to get up at least once to go to the bathroom, and a couple of nights my sore back has woken me up and kept me from getting good sleep, so we will hope that goes away soon.

Milestones: The great news is that I passed my second glucose test! If you fail the one hour test, you have to go back to the clinic to drink their super sugary drink, and then sit for 3 hours getting a vial of your blood taken every hour on the hour. So I look a little like a bad heroin addict with bruised needle marks in my arms after getting stuck twice in each arm, but the test is over and I don’t have gestational diabetes, so I’ll take it. There was a moment about 45 minutes into the test that I didn’t think I was going to make it. They have you fast for at least 8 hours before the test (only sips of water) and about 45 minutes into the test I started to feel pretty miserable, but the great ladies at the clinic let me lay down and I didn’t pass out or throw up (which would have meant doing this all over again), so I’ll call that a win. My results were all way under their threshold, but interestingly enough, my levels went up between hour one and two when all of the online info indicates that it will spike and then gradually decrease, so that’ll be a question for my doctor this week.

Favorite clothing item of the week: Old navy Maxi Skirt. I went with my BFF to do a little comfy 3rd trimester shopping at Old Navy, and found a skirt for about 12 dollars with coupons, and paired with a jean jacket and cute necklace it is the perfect comfy summer outfit

Symptoms: This week the big symptom has been incredible lower back pain. I’ve had some lower back pain in the past, so I kind of figured I wouldn’t escape this one during the last trimester. Its hard to tell whether the pain is just from normal pregnancy stuff or because I worked too hard planting flowers on Saturday. But I’m taking it easy for the next few days to see if I can get it to subside a bit.

Workout: that didn’t really happen this week… although like last week, I was pretty active during the week doing my normal daily life, so its not like i’m sitting on the couch eating candy. Or at least not all the time!

PS. If you missed any of the updates, you can check them all out here.

Filed Under: Pregnancy

Living with a DIY-er

April 13, 2015 By amusingmjblog 1 Comment

I’m one of those people (and according to the blog-o-sphere, I’m not the only one…) that always has a project going… or two or ten. I’m sure it drives my husband CRAZY, since that is not his normal M.O. But one of the most rewarding things for me is to get to the end of a weekend and have accomplished a TON of projects. This was one of those weekends!! (And major shoutout to my husband for helping me ALL WEEKEND LONG). I’ll be sharing a lot of those projects over the next week, but I just couldn’t resist giving you a glimpse inside my brain with this project.

My husband is a youth pastor and since they have a Sunday night youth program, he is usually gone for 3 or 4 hours on a Sunday night. So this weekend, after working on projects all weekend the logical thing to do would have been to sit on the couch, rest my incredibly sore back and fold laundry. But that doesn’t sound like me.

Instead the dresser I bought for Baby Girl’s Nursery was taunting me from her room. You see one of our projects this weekend was to assemble the bookshelf/changing table I bought off of Amazon. Another was to install the light fixture (also Amazon… I might have an addiction). And the last major project we did this weekend was that the husband spray painted the crib. Which means that the bulk of the pieces for baby girl’s nursery were falling into place.

When I bought this dresser I knew I wanted to go with a white and gray theme for the nursery and this dresser was definitely a distressed off-white. But I loved the shape of the dresser and thought… I’ll just make it work. So we bought paint for the crib that sort of coordinated with it, but (long story for another day) that didn’t really work out, so we settled on just white spray paint. After all, everything else in the nursery is white white. But painting this guy seemed like a lot of work, so I convinced myself to live with it.

But like I said… the taunting. And here I was at home by myself, about to relax and be productive when I gave in to the taunting. After all… I had ALL of the supplies without leaving the house. and maybe I could get it done before the husband got home, so it wouldn’t even bother him that I had added ANOTHER project to our list.

So I did. I laid down paper, because no way my preggo self was moving this beast anywhere. Grabbed my paint brush, a roller, Floetrol, and the leftover paint from the kitchen island (Behr’s Marquee in Quiet on the Set), opened the window and got to work.

Here she is in all her off-white distressed glory. (don’t get me wrong, I loved the distressed look, it just wasn’t what I wanted for this room)

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And after a quick coat of paint: (and you get to see the light fixture we bought, this guy)

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This really was a quick project. It took me about an hour and a half to paint all the visible parts (yes if I ever move it I may have to paint the back or something, but for the next few years, she is staying RIGHT HERE). I put the top drawers back in and then gave them a quick coat of paint as well, but I’m going to hold off showing you the finished product until I can get the handles back on… but I promise more juicy nursery updates in the next few days!

nurserydresser3

The big pieces in the nursery are SO CLOSE to being completed, now we just have to fill it up with all the fun things she needs!!

And the good news is, this project went so smoothly I had time to finish it, clean up, AND make zucchini bread so the husband would forget I just keep adding projects 🙂

Filed Under: Keepin It Real, Nursery

A Little Outdoor Sprucing

April 10, 2015 By amusingmjblog 1 Comment

We have started to have a few days of nicer weather here in Texas and judging by my allergies… SPRING has sprung. And since it was so beautiful out last Saturday I jumped on the chance to do some spring flower planting. Our new house has two stone planters around the base of our trees out front, and they were just begging for some spring color! The trees are really starting to green up and I wanted some color on the ground to balance it out!

frontofhouse

It is amazing to me what a few small flowers can do for a yard! Under the trees they get quite a bit of shade, so I planted 2 different varieties of impatiens. I’ve had good luck with those in the Texas heat as long as they don’t get too much sun!

flowers

In our last house we had a great patio which we saw each morning out our kitchen sliding glass door, so I regularly planted pots and pots of flowers to add some color to the side patio (some that survived and some that didn’t, and even gave my metal flower towers a coat of happy teal paint. We have good landscaping around the pool in our backyard, so a ton of pots weren’t strictly necessary, but I just love how cheerful they make things, so I planted a few. The two top baskets are dianthus, one I just planted with new flowers, but the other one survived from last summer (even through the move) so I’ve just watered and fertilized it and it is starting to bloom again.

flowers2

On the second shelf from left to right are Kalanchoe, Petunias, Petunias, and a Rieger Begonia. I know the petunias will thrive in pots in the Texas heat, and I had moderately good luck with the Kalanchoe the last time I grew one… it is a desert flower, so hopefully it will survive. The rieger begonia I just couldn’t resist, but after getting home and doing some research it looks like maybe it won’t survive in its flowering state for very long, so that may have been a waste, but they were SO PRETTY!! The bottom shelves have two more rieger begonias and another pot of white pansies.

Then the big pot on the left has hibiscus, the pot in the center has Salvia and some other green ivy that has survived the last year in that pot, and the sad plant on the far right I got after my grandfather’s funeral almost 5 years ago. Between my dog deciding to eat its soil a few times, me forgetting to water it when it lived indoors for a while, it is on its last limb. But I can’t bring myself to throw it out until it is REALLY dead.

The other outdoor sprucing I did was to purchase a power washer. (I bought this guy from Amazon because it got good reviews) Our patio looks a lot worse for the wear after the winter and all the dead patio things we had laying out after our move but before we have cleaned up. For a couple of years I have been borrowing a friends pressure washer, but decided after about 10 times of borrowing one, it was time to buy my own. Especially since this house has some places that could really use it!

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Here’s the worst area: I’m not quite sure what the big black and green stain in the center is from, but the line down the middle and the round circle at the bottom are where a piece of our hammock and umbrella stand sat all winter. Needless to say this area tracked a LOT of dirt into our house, and looked a little too redneck for my tastes.

patiobefore

But after about 45 minutes of pressure washing?

pressurewasher

That is much better!!! Pressure washing is one of the most rewarding cleaning projects because you get to shoot a water gun and can literally watch the dirt disappear! See where I’ve pressure washed and where I haven’t??

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