t-minus 2 months

Well, time is flying.  Like whoa.  And I keep trying to come write a post on this ol' blog, but I get maybe a sentence written before I am distracted, off to do something else, or just plain too tired to go on.

Month seven of pregnancy is wearing on me.  I am uncomfortable.  Baby girl is up in my ribs, like all. the. time.  And the two of them move around like aliens inside me, constantly pushing and shoving on my insides.  Sometimes this is really cool and amazing.  Other times I am so over it and just want to lay down without the internal drumming beginning.  My feet are starting to swell up, and some days it is so bad that I feel like Shrek with my ogre feet.  Other days it's just my toes that get swollen, which isn't too bad but still feels very weird!  I am still plagued by heartburn.  It is mostly manageable but some nights I can hardly sleep without sitting straight up (which is, you know, impossible).  And my never-ending cough is pushing the two month mark now.  That's two months of coughing.  Oy.  Plus, due to baby girl or the constant coughing or who knows what, I have a constant pain in my right ribs/side, which is especially painful when I lay down.  So again, sleeping is tough.  I borrowed a Snoogle pillow from a friend.  Despite being a little ridiculous and large, it does help with actually getting comfortable at night.  We took a quick, 24-hour trip to Oklahoma City this weekend to see my family, and you better believe the Snoogle came along!

It's not all bad news over there, though.  We've been seriously talking baby names and we are officially decided on Baby Girl's name, and down to a handful of options for Baby Boy.  So that is fun.  We aren't keeping the names a secret, but we are holding out until we are set on both names.  Hopefully in the next week or so we can share those with friends and family.  And our nursery is coming along too, thanks to Mark's hard work and my delegating of ideas :)

I've got bedding to wash and walls to decorate, but the big items are assembled and in place.  Not pictured from this angle: a dresser and a chest of drawers.  It's crammed tight in the room, but babies don't need that much extra space, right??  Let's hope not.

It's hard to believe our littles will be here in less than two months!  I saw my doctor on Thursday and she told me to expect to see "exponential growth" over the coming weeks.  Which kind of freaks me out.  I am already growing out of most of my pregnancy clothes, so what will I do after exponential more growth!  Eek.  But the good news is that everything is still going great with the pregnancy.  Besides some really minor aches and pains, I am doing well and lucky to not have anything worse than some discomfort and ill-fitting shoes and clothing. It could be so much worse.  I feel like we still have SO MUCH to do to get ready, but at the same time, I'm ready to just dive in and figure out this crazy Parenthood thing when they get here!

Stay away, August!

I am in some serious denial that August is two days away.  WHAT?!  No, August.  Stay away. We are so not ready for you.

In just 3-ish weeks, I go back to work.  Oy.  I am not ready for that, mainly because I had big dreams of getting all this stuff ready for the babies "over the summer" so that when I went back to work, we would just be relaxing and waiting for them to make their appearance.  Well that has SO NOT HAPPENED YET.  I know I will be kicking myself when school starts back up and then I am trying to scramble and get things put together after work every day.  I will say, "Self, why did you not do this when you had those THREE MONTHS OF NO WORK??"

Well, in my defense, we didn't really want to do anything until we knew if we were having boys, girls or a combo deal.  Now that we know it is a boy and a girl, we can really hit the ground running.  Sort of.  Turns out, finding any kid of nursery bedding and decor that tastefully blends boy and girl is...... pretty much impossible.  After weeks of looking, my options were basically as follows:

- Beach theme with plaid in pink for her, blue for him (Eh. I don't want a "theme-y" room that has surfboards and palm trees and ocean waves.  Too much.  Stay away from themes.)

- Solid white bedding with subtle hints of blue for him, pink for her (Eh. I don't even want to mess with solid white crib bedding and blankets.  I spill enough as it is, without adding two babies into the mix, also making their share of messes.)

Annnnnd that was pretty much it.  My Plan B option was to just pick a boy bedding set and mix it with a girl set.  But here's what I'm finding - boy things come in two categories: animals and sports.  With the occasional "western" theme sprinkled in.  So I could do monkeys, giraffes, elephants, birds, fish, zoo animals, circus animals, moose, etc.  Or I could do football, baseball, soccer, basketball....  Again with the themes.  Not working for me.

So Plan C is the always-trendy "gender neutral" nursery, which means tan, gray and/or yellow.  Or even all white (No. See above)  Ducks.  Bees.  Birds.  Things like that. But I knew I wanted more color and something fun.  So after being throughly overwhelmed by all the lackluster options I was finding, I decided I would just have to put together my own design, picking and choosing from all over.  And as I have started to make decisions and even purchase things, I am really getting worried that this room is just going to be an explosion of patterns and colors.  But hey.  These kiddos won't complain, right?

Here's where my basic vision is going, with an update of where we are on the whole Let's-get-the-entire-nursey-set-up-this-summer plan:

- All white furniture.  We have this all picked out, but have only purchased one crib so far (side note: please send any and all Bed, Bath and Beyond/Buy Buy Baby coupons your have our way)

- Mint green/pale aqua walls, with one or two walls accented with white stripes.  This is halfway done. The mint color is on the walls, stripes coming... soonish.

- Navy blue (for him) and coral (for her) throughout.  This was tougher than I thought it would be, and my mom and I ended up buying some cute fabric to make our own crib bedding (which means my mom and mother-in-law will be sewing this... not me!)  Here's what we got:

- I am also wanting to get some of those very Anthropologie-ish ruffled curtains for the window.  So we're talking stripes on the walls, ruffles on the curtains, patterns on the bedding, and then, you know, throw a rug and some art work in there somewhere too.  Oh and we ordered a chair with a geometric print on it.  Uhh.. too much?  Only time will tell.

I'll wrap this up because I know it's more than you probably ever wanted to know about my unborn children's bedroom, but before I do, here are some quick "before" shots of the room that is going to be the nursery:

Cleaning out this room was actually a big part of our June and July.  I lost count of Goodwill trips after our fourth one.  We had to do some serious purging and organizing, so that whatever was going to stay would have a new place in the house.  Like that dresser has moved to the guest room, where it looks so much better than, you know, right in the doorway of the room when you walk in!

This room has always been the place we stashed the things we just didn't know what to do with, or even never really unpacked when we moved almost a year and a half ago.  Some things have found new homes, thanks to our friend Craig ('s List).

This closet was my "dress closet," housing all my dresses.  I am proud to say the closet is now EMPTY for our two little foxes to fill, but that meant giving away a lot of clothes on my part, and then squeezing the remaining stuff into my actual closet (well, the Bridesmaid Dress Hall of Fame was relocated to a guest room...)

That little TV there, I bought with a year's worth of babysitting money when I was in the fourth grade.  I paid for it, in cash, at Best Buy years ago, and even remember handing over baggies of coins to the cashier.  I've never wanted to give it away, but it did finally make it's way to Goodwill.  Not before I gave it a hug though.

And now (finally!), here's where the room is now:

Empty (other than a kitty who still thinks it's his room) and in it's current, mid-paint stage.

Whew!  If you made it this long, congratulations.  I'll save the rest of my rambling for another day.

What's up, weekend?

Hello Saturday.

I am currently taking a break from:

* laundry {does anyone else feel like they are ALWAYS doing laundry?!}
* dusting
* clearing out one of our random junk-filled bedrooms (and by clearing out, I mean moving everything out of this room and across the hall into our other random junk-filled bedroom)

Wanna see?  This is the before-but-not-all-the-way-before shot because, well, I forgot to take a picture when it was totally filled with junk.  So picture like, way more junk in this room and way less carpet visible.

This room could loosely be referred to as our Office.  And I saw loosely because neither the Hubs nor I ever does any kind of officing at home, ever.  So this room is really a glorified place to print out things.  Because the computer in here is only ever turned on when one of us wants to print something off and we didn't think ahead enough to actually print it off at work. (shh, don't tell).  We are making a little trip up to see my parents tomorrow because they are giving us some bedroom furniture they don't want anymore, so this room will soon go from a waste-of-space "office" to a full blown Guest Room # 2.  Which means we can have more than one person/couple stay with us and not have to get out the ol' air mattress.  Woo!  And this also means we will soon have only one room left in this house that has no purpose other than holding all the stuff we don't know what to do with.  We are six days away from being in our home for one year, so I don't know if that achievement is really sad or really impressive?

Anyways, I am looking forward to decorating this new space.  I really want to paint the walls but I don't have even an inkling of what color I want them to be.  Gray?  Coral?  Pale blue?  Soft yellow?  What will my potential guests want to see when they come stay in Guest Room #2?  I've looked at Pinterest a little, but that really only makes me more confused, not less.  And I know there is quite possibly nothing more boring than talking about paint colors, so I will move on.

I wish I had something more exciting to write about right now, but all I can really report is that Mark is waxing the cars today, I am transferring junk from one bedroom to another, and I really need to do a little bit of homework today so that I don't end up way behind later this week.  Not too exciting.  Does anyone else feel like every time they talk to someone and they ask "So what's new with you guys?" or "What have you been up to lately?" you have NOTHING to say other than... well, the usual?  It sounds so lame.  Umm.. we get up and go to our jobs every day, and then hang out in the evenings and on weekends, perhaps enjoying a little time with friends and family.  Rather, rinse, repeat.  I don't know what news exactly I wish I had to report, but the lack of anything is making me feel like I missing something.  Does everyone else have big and exciting things happening around them?  Happening to them?  Maybe we need to go on a vacation?  Or quit our jobs?  Or buy new cars?  (Spoiler alert: We are not doing any of those anytime soon.)