Ahhhh,,,,

It is August and I spent today, the entire day, at home! For a SAHM that may not sound like a big accomplishment, but the last few weeks have been crazy busy and it was so wonderful to not leave the house. And it was a perfect day to have planned to be home, as it has been raining all day long and I've actually really enjoyed hearing the rain. However, by the end of the day I'm not sure Jonathan really wanted to be inside all day long, but it was the best for us for today, so I held strong and didn't leave!

Jeremy's Dad and niece were here last week visiting and it was really great to have them here! Jonathan of course loved all the extra attention and went into full entertainer mode! It was also great having them here because Jeremy got some things crossed off his "honey-do" list :). So, both bathrooms got painted and the back entry hallway. I love the color of the bathrooms, and how they turned out, maybe once I get them cleaned again I will take a picture ;). Just one more painting project, and that will be to paint the bedroom that Jonathan is to move into.

I am now 29 wks pregnant! And have decided to start the "before baby is born" checklist. I'm sure Jeremy is really excited about that one too :). When I was at my last OB appt and she handed me the pre-registration form for the hospital, it sort of started to hit that this baby is going to come! And with only around 11 weeks to go, I am close to starting the count down. So instead of counting up to how many weeks in row I've been sick in the morning, maybe I can start counting down to how few I have left! Yes, lovely thought, I know. We even decided it was time to start talking baby names! Whoa - now we're really getting going on this new baby thing. Before I was pregnant with #2 I always had hoped that I would treat the pregnancy with the same excitement and joy and anticipation as I had with the first, but reality is, that just hasn't quite happened. It's not that I'm not excited, but right now I feel like my life is much more occupied in the day to day and harder to daydream of the future and plan and such as before. The reality is that when there is already one child around, my focus isn't always on the baby growing inside. Maybe that's why I've been given the sickness every day, so that I can't forget that I'm pregnant, because there have been some days where I think I could have. Although at this point I'm getting into the uncomfortable stage, where there isn't a moment that passes that I can't forget. This little one has been quite active, much more so than I recall with Jonathan, this one has woken me up many a night with limbs kicking and punching all over the place!! And at my 28 wk appt I had finally put on some weight! At my 26 wk appt I was still below my original weight! This comes as somewhat a feeling of a small victory, since with Jonathan I ballooned and was huge and uncomfortable. So, hopefully there will be less to lose afterwards!!

All right, enough about my prego state .... I know I had some pics to post, can't remember what all they were, but enjoy!






We had a gorgeous blue sky day last Thursday, so I finally bought Jonathan a baby pool thinking he would love it, because he loves the water and to swim -- haha I was wrong! We even brought warm water from inside and the sun heated it up quite nicely, but he still wasn't too sure. Oh well, my mom and I enjoyed putting our feet in it while we sat in the sun and watched him play.









Somewhere in the above pictures is Jonathan finally getting to take a walk around the whole house with Grandma, of course he is naked :).

Also, he really wanted her mug of iced tea, so Jonathan traded his water bottle with Grandma! What a good sharer!

Pictures!!

This will mainly be pictures....Jonathan has discovered Daddy's hats, and loves to play with them and model them....also we went to the zoo yesterday with my mom, my brother and my cousin, Jonathan's favorite part was probably the petting zoo. It was really sweet, he actually was petting and hugging the goats, in the past he wouldn't get very close to them, so he's obviously getting more comfortable with them. He also tried pulling their ears and pulling up their legs!! Yikes! Thankfully the goats must be used to a fair amount of prodding. And I'm not really sure what I think of him hugging goats, but it made for cute pictures at least :) And sorry, they are going to be in random-ish order, I'm not spending the time right now to resort, but all are pretty self explanatory :)

July 4th camping, parade, Music in the Park in pictures

We tried our hand at camping with Jonathan last weekend, and while overall I can come home and say we had a fun time with our friends, I am not planning a camping trip with a 19 month old again. - Please remind me of this if I ever talk about going again. He was determined that sleeping in a tent was not for him, especially not in his pack n play, and would not go to sleep until after midnight. So, the adult thing sitting around the campfire, playing games, talking at night, not so much a part of my trip. Oh, and that I was pregnant didn't help, I was exhausted by the time we got up there and honestly didn't recover until after bring home for a couple of days. Oh well, we did it, we can say we did it, and did have a nice time with some very good friends that I am so grateful are in our lives.








We took Jonathan to his first parade on July 4th - now the Anchorage parade isn't exactly the greatest parade ever, but we still had a nice time and not surprisingly, he loved any group that had music, and there were a couple of drum playing groups, in which he would dance and clap to the beat. He also waved at the people going by and it was just fun to watch him experience something new.






We also went to Music in the Park on a beautiful finally sunny and warm day last week. It was great to sit and listen to some music, catch up with family and friends and enjoy our lunch outside. Oh, and Jonathan got to dance and play with his friend Kaleb. :)



And a few others...

New Sewing Home and Post #100

Wow, just saw that this will be post #100! That seems like a milestone of some sort! Hmmm...how to celebrate? Well, I will talk about my new sewing area :) - a post about me!!

You know when you have an idea and it actually comes together like you think it should? Well that's what happened this last week? I had this brilliant idea to move my sewing table into my living room - we spend all of our time upstairs, I hate having the machine on my kitchen table (I have these fantasies that we actually use it for eating occasionally - which we are getting better at), and I have never seemed to enjoy going and sitting downstairs to sew. And, I was ready to move my living room around - I sort of like moving around my furniture, but my mom LOVES to move furniture! BONUS for me! So I give her my idea, bring her over, make some iced tea and she is awesome at helping me make happen what I want to happen. On top of that I decided to move our armoir out of our bedroom and switch it with the bookcase that was previously living in the corner. Then I have somewhere to store my sewing stuff, not quite as accessible to little man and the bookcase is in our room, holding books and not quite as victim to his new found climbing antics.

We got this done on Friday and by Saturday I was getting to sit down and work on a quilt that has been in my WIP (work in progress) pile for awhile now. How exciting! SO, I have wanted to make a quilt from old jeans for a long time now and have been saving and collecting old pairs of jeans for a number of years. And then I recently decided I wanted a picnic/outside blanket for us to take to Music in the Park, baseball games, etc. and found some cute sports flannels at Jo-anns a few months back when they were on sale for about $2.50/yd! So, I put the two ideas together and got my jeans/outdoors quilt. It is a rag quilt, I still need to finish cutting the seems, and wash it so that it will fray and have that rag quilt look, but I am so thrilled that all the pieces are cut and sewn together.

Cutting the jeans was a lot of fun, it was fun going through them and remembering them and when I had worn them. I even had a skirt in there that I had worn in high school! And also some of my favorite jeans from college days, so it's fun that they are incorporated into this quilt now.

I'm excited about my new space and re purposed pieces of furniture. And looking forward to it being easier to pick up a sewing project - at least for the next few months before little one comes.

One of those days...

Learning to Drive - hanging out in Uncle Goo's (Danny's) Bronco

Lunch with friends - moms were planning camping trip, so kids got to all play together

Ready to play baseball - another current favorite, when we are at my parents house, he goes and finds a baseball bat and helmet and wears them around.

More driving experience

It's only ten am, and it's already "one of those days" - you know, the one where you wake up, great mood, going to get tons accomplished, life is looking good, etc. And then, little bit wakes up and is raring to go! I went to get him and he already had his pants and socks off, curtains in a tangle, kleenex box knocked off night table next to him, but I still was determined that it would be a good day. The sun is out, I quickly made plans to go to Music in the Park downtown, so at least we have an escape from here shortly. WE get upstairs and he immediately goes to an open cupboard with the cheetos and tries to convince me that would be a good breakfast. Nope, I win this one. Meanwhile, I get him breakfast going and he eats a good meal, so that's a plus but when he gets down from the highchair it is full steam ahead! The current source of contention is the dishwasher. He has learned how to open it and thinks that is great! And yes, I mistakenly was allowing him to at first, also thinking it was cute, however, cute quickly turns to a nuisance, turns to annoying, turns to frustrating!!! AGH! So I started yesterday with deciding it was no longer allowed. And when he went to open it, was spanking him for it, stern NO and moving him away from it. Well, we continued this for a long while, and another thing he has started doing is he pats/spanks his own leg after I do!!!! Seriously child?!?!? So, today when he went to the dishwasher I started with just a "no", he closed it, clapped his hands for himself, then spanked his own leg. This did continue for a few times until he moved away from it. Then while I ran out to the garage to look for my camera and came back in, he was standing on the dishwasher door and had spilled my coffee all over himself!! Thankfully I put enough creamer in it that it wasn't too hot, and I never get it drank very quickly, so it obviously didn't seem to bother him. However, I was still trying to get him to obey me over the dishwasher, so while I was cleaning up the coffee mess, I attempted a timeout on the rug in front of the fridge right near me, of course that was just an invitation to see how quickly he could get up and run across the living room and boy was it fun to see how quick mom in her pregnant state could get out of her crouched position and chase his across the room. AGH!!! This happened a good 10 times I would guess. He was racing over to the couch and literally started launching himself from about two feet away to jump on to the couch. Maybe he thought if he got on the couch it was a safe zone and I couldn't get him. He finally sat still in a timeout and I got the mess cleaned up - thankfully a majority of it did land in the dishwasher, and gave me good reason to clean the cupboards, since I was already down on my hands and knees. While I was finishing this, Jonathan did come over to me and gave me a big hug and kiss, his way of saying sorry. So, maybe I slightly got through to him.

We then headed downstairs to change his clothes, and my footstool was in front of his crib, so he used that and pulled himself up and climbed into his crib!! I stood and watched in shock, he can get those little legs moving so quick and so determined, it is quite impressive sometimes. I took this as a hint that he really wanted a morning naptime, but by the sounds from the monitor, doesn't sound like that is happening, but this momma needed a few minutes of rest.

Stories and mornings like this really do amuse me, and maybe that's the hardest thing, I'm trying so hard to work on discipline and obedience, yet at the same time some of the things he does cracks me up! Seriously, do you know how hard it is to spank your child especially when it obviously doesn't phase him, and he then does it himself?! So, I'm going to be having to figure out some new form of discipline.

So, here's to hoping the rest of the day goes a bit smoother and maybe he just needed to chill in his crib for a bit and have some time to himself.