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Week 16 Bump Update

January 20, 2015 By amusingmjblog 1 Comment

Week 16 Recap

Baby’s Size: an iPhone… (its fruit/veggie size is a turnip, but since I can’t remember ever eating/seeing a turnip in real life… my iPhone feels much more realistic to me. Again… thanks to pregnant chicken for that reference)

Baby’s Progress: Baby’s skeleton is changing from cartilage to bone and can move it’s joints… and is growing. Baby can hear now, and that has made me think about all of the funny sounds I hear all day long: I wonder if he/she enjoyed the Stars game we went to with a group of friends… because I am sure it was loud enough to hear. But on a sweeter note it has made Reese and I more intentional about playing piano and guitar for baby. (Reese plays, not me… I can only play Oh When the Saints Go Marching In and I’m sure the baby doesn’t want to hear that on repeat).

Weight Gain: I’m still at 0 lbs. gained, again the doctor isn’t worried since she can tell the uterus is growing. And I’m sure at the end of my pregnancy these days of 0 weight gain will feel like a far distant memory. And clearly something is happening… I have a full on bump now.

Sleep: Sleeping is getting a little rougher, every now and then I have trouble sleeping, usually around 5 or 6am, which feels like it is just training me to be an early riser again.

Milestones: We had another doctor’s appointment this week, where we got to hear the heartbeat, and the doctor is saying after every strange and totally indistinguishable noise, oh well that is when the baby is moving, or that’s your placenta rubbing together, that’s your heartbeat, that’s the baby’s, and I’m hearing a whole lot of fuzzy noises. But I could actually tell the baby’s heartbeat, so that is fun. And we set a date for our next sonogram and we will get to find out the sex at that appointment, so YAY! Oh and we bought a new piece of furniture for the nursery! I’ll post about that later this week.

Favorite clothing item of the week: a long sleeve gap maternity T-shirt: cute and comfy! I received a bunch of maternity clothes from my BFF that she no longer needs, and this was in that stash.

Symptoms: My biggest symptom is that I burp all. the. time. It’s oh so very attractive. That and things seem to fall asleep faster: like my arms, hands, feet etc. So I can’t sit in the same cross legged position that I used to sit in, and I wake up and have to shake out my hands. My doctor said that could be a precursor to getting carpel tunnel later in the pregnancy which happens for some people. But since the solution to that is sleeping in wrist braces, I’m feeling like it would have to be pretty bad for me to think that was more comfortable. So I’m crossing my fingers (but not too tightly so they don’t go to sleep) that doesn’t actually manifest.

Workout: I worked out a couple of times last week, and spent Sunday afternoon raking leaves, so I’m putting a mark in the win column for last week!

Filed Under: Uncategorized

New House Plans

January 12, 2015 By amusingmjblog 1 Comment

So we have officially been in the house for a month now, and I have a lot of feelings about it. One one hand, I LOVE this new house, its the best layout, a great location, it feels more usable for us and definitely gives me the space I need/want for the way I want our life to be. On the other hand, it doesn’t smell like us yet. Is that weird to say? I walk into rooms in our house and they don’t smell like us (I should also say that I have always been strongly affected by smells which this whole pregnancy thing is only making stronger, but I have always associated people with smells and their homes as an extension of that). This house doesn’t feel like its truly ours yet. I know that it will, and that as soon as we get all of our stuff unpacked, things painted, decorated etc it will feel more like us, but part of me misses our old house and how (most) everything in the house was a reflection of Reese and I. And while I am so excited about all the opportunities to put our own stamp on this house… I’m still being a little nostalgic about our old house!!

But before I go getting all too sentimental about our old house, this post is all about the new house! And new possibilities!! I think I finally have the beginnings of my to do list for this house and so I’m sharing it, along with some photos of how things look now. And let me assure you, like all of my to do lists, this one is a work in progress, in 5 years I’m sure there will still be things undone on this list, and some that I am sure I won’t want to do after living in it for a while, but here’s at least where I am starting.

Also, these photos are of my house in its cleanest state since we moved in, but seeing as that isn’t saying much, forgive the mess… these are before photos after all!

Living Room:

Hang photos
Do something decorative with the mantle
Paint
Hang Curtains
Wire up the house wide surround sound

Dining Room

New Rug
Hang Photos
Paint
Remove MASSIVE mirror
Replace the flooring (see below in Kitchen for details)

Kitchen (ignore the yellow lighting in the top picture… I was running out of daylight when I took that picture!)

Paint- its been an ongoing debate in our house about whether to leave the red of replace it, but I think we’ve settled on changing it out for something more neutral/soothing
Paint the island-the two tone thing isn’t really my style
Get barstools of some kind
Put in double ovens (forever on my to do list somehow never at the top of what to spend our money on…)
Replace the kitchen sink its very small and has chipped down to the metal, so eventually this will get swapped out for something more useful
Replace the light fixture over the table
Replace the wooden floors- still debating over going back with tile or wood– we budgeted in to get these replaced when we bought the house because they are in such rough shape, so this will likely be happening this spring

Backyard:

plant some flowers
New patio furniture (this was a gift from my parents for Christmas so when it gets warmer out I just have to go pick it out!)
Buy pool stuff- toys, towels, floats, etc.

Downstairs guest room-

Paint
Hang curtains that aren’t bizarrely short
Put in new shelving in the closet
Hang Photos
Swap out desks

Master Bedroom:

PAINT PAINT PAINT
Find matching nightstands
Hang pictures
Seating area in front of window?

Master Bathroom

Repair shower and bathtub faucet
Replace knobs
Paint trim white
Paint Cabinets
New Curtains
Organize Closets
Storage Cabinet over toilet

Nursery

Unpack the boxes
Baby Furniture
Paint
Decorate
Curtains

Office/Craft Room

Finish Unpacking
Build a craft desk
Paint?
Hang Pictures
Swap desk
Organize Desk

Upstairs Bath-

Paint
Figure out a plan for

Downstairs Bath

New Vanity
Strip Wallpaper
Paint
Shelving?

Misc

Turn coat closet into a ‘drop zone’
Unpack/organize garage
Power wash front driveway
Spruce up the front curb appeal

Filed Under: House Tour, Uncategorized

Christmas at the Casa

January 8, 2015 By amusingmjblog 1 Comment

Moving two weeks before Christmas is a little insane. No, not a little insane… A LOT insane. So our strategy was basically to just survive and to work on the areas we most needed: kitchen, living room, dining room, our bedroom and closet. But we left areas like our offices, crafts & fabrics, garage, etc all packed up and ready to deal with at a later date ( I originally said after the new year, but since we are after the new year and I don’t see me dealing with all that in the near future we are going to just say… in the future).

I did find a few Christmas boxes when we were unpacking and talked Reese into buying a last minute Christmas Tree from none other than my favorite Orange Big Box Store, Home Depot. We decided to go cheap and small and went with a 5 foot tree (which fits since both Reese and I top out just over 5′) and we ended up loving it so much I think we’ll stick with that size from now on!

That combined with my already red decor (and kitchen that is currently painted red) means that the house looked halfway Christmas-y. Which is good because that is where we ended up having my family’s Christmas. And it felt good spending the few days surrounding Christmas not worrying about unpacking or what updates we need to do when.

This next picture is the front living/dining room at the house, I actually hosted 10 people for dinner on Christmas Eve, so having the large room worked out pretty well! I should have taken a picture of it when it was all set with my china and a 12 days of Christmas tablecloth from Williams Sonoma, but alas, I was enjoying the time with my family and didn’t grab a photo.

We still don’t have any pictures actually hung up in the house, but the 6 poinsettias that the youth at our church sell as a fundraiser did a good job of brightening the room up.

For Christmas my mother-in-law and I schemed together to get the arcade machine that my husband had redone in college moved into our house, and so the majority of our Christmas holiday the boys spent doing this:

My dad loved playing Galaga like he had done as a kid, but my husband is still clearly the reigning champ… which my mother would say is a sign of a misspent youth.

Speaking of my mother, it was so fun to have them come and see the new house and spend Christmas down in Texas with my brother and I and our spouses. We did manage to snap a photo of them in front of our Christmas tree… how cute are they??