The nursery beginnings

This weekend my brother Luke came home and together we plunged into the world of nursery crafting.


I had decided on a yellow and white scheme quite some time ago, which resulted in hours of scouring Etsy for the prettiest fabrics I could find. In the end I chose 4- 1 for curtains, 2 for bedding and pillows and 1 for further pillows and accessories. They all arrived in record time and I've been sitting admiring them for some time. Admiring is way easier than pulling the sewing machine out and actually getting to work.


Next came the lighting decision. With a very basic white and yellow palette I knew I wanted a statement piece. At first we considered making a string lantern. Then I came across this blog complete with the most amazing paper lantern makeover EVER and knew we had to try it! 


Armed with a paper lantern, a lot of hot glue and 600 coffee filters we set to work. And we glued. And glued....

And stopped to eat copious amounts of tacos...

And glued. And glued...
And bought 100 more coffee filters...

And had delirious fits of laughter... (don't believe Luke's expression. He was having a BLAST.) 

And glued some more...

Until at last it was complete!

Don't be alarmed. It is not a giant lampshade. It will be suspended from the ceiling :)

It's gigantic and gorgeous. Sort of like a ginormous, glowing, white peony. What could be better?

Since we finished the light Saturday night, which had only served to get our crafting juices pumping, we decided to tackle a painting for over the crib on Sunday afternoon.

Our inspiration for this piece came from here. We started out looking close to the original...and then my mom dug up some old nail polish and things got drippy and Pollock-esque quickly. 

I'm in love with the finished product... 

The painting with one of the artists!

With the nursery fabrics!

And now I must sew, sew, sew!!

So excited to see it all come together.

Thanks crafting buddies Luke and Mom.

Where the Wild Things Are

5 Months!

Yesterday was officially the 20 week mark in this pregnancy which means....drumroll please... we're already halfway done!

Now for those of you who do math like me, 

4 weeks = 1 month

therefore 

20 weeks = 5 months.

And if 5 months = halfway, then pregnancy is definitely 10 months long.

Don't listen to anyone who tells you otherwise...and never mind all those silly 30 and 31 day calendar months. 

9 months? Ha! 9 month pregnancies are for sissies... like cows...

Where are we now?


Things that are still kind of crummy: 

Not much at all! This is definitely the sweet spot of the pregnancy.

If I had to complain, I'd say...

Feeling tired again- baby is stealing my energy so she can grow, grow, grow (please keep your head tiny baby).

I have the odd braxton hicks contraction. They aren't too intense yet, but they are uncomfortable. 

Things that are awesome:

The kicking! She is one heck of a kicker! 

We have been able to see her kicks from the outside - no touching required-  for about 3 weeks already. My stomach looks like it has some sort of nervous tick. This means Luke gets his fill of feeling baby, particularly late at night when she goes crazy... I hope her schedule changes before January.... Judah, my mom and my sister Jessie have also gotten in on the kick show :)

The fact that we know she's a she! I'm sooo happy we found out her sex. Just knowing makes everything so much more real. Everything being more real makes me eat fewer popsicles and more fruit...well, a little fewer.

Our midwifery appointments continue to be a highlight. We love both our midwives! 

Planning the nursery! I have one project underway and a bunch of others planned. A progress post will follow soon :)

Cravings?


Ice cream.

Chocolate.

Cheese.

Starches, like rice, quinoa, couscous, mashed potatoes.

Anything that isn't meat.

Apparently she's not a trucker from the midwest, she's a heartbroken teenage girl....

Judah's thoughts on baby now?

He now knows that only I am having the baby. He likes to point to his stomach and say "Baby? Noooooo!"

When we found out the sex, he was at my mom's. She called me so I could tell him about it. This is how the conversation went down.

Judah: "News?"

Me: "You're having a baby sister!"

Judah: "No, newwwwws?"

Me: "Were you hoping for some other kind of news?"

Judah: "I eat egg."

That pretty much sums up how much the baby is impacting Judah's day to day so far. The arrival of baby sister may come as a bit of a shocker...

Summer wind-down

It's already August 21st! In the words of Buster Bluth, "When did that happen!?" 


Luke will be back in school September 8th, which means in 2.5 short weeks I'll be an engineering widow again, Judah will be back at my mom's four days a week, and I'll be headfirst into a crazy three and a half months of work before my maternity leave starts. I fully expect this fall to be a complete blur. 


And so, we are making a concerted effort to squeeze the final drops of carefree togetherness  from the next few weeks. My idea to do this was to rip out all the flooring on our main floor and lay new hardwood. Luke's idea was to book a second camping trip. Judah seemed much more keen on sleeping in a tent again as opposed to being cordoned off to the upstairs of the house for 4 days. Luke's idea won... for now.


Now we have 2 weeks to anticipate our camping trip, not to mention a trip to Stratford to see Jesus Christ Superstar, the return of our sister Elle from almost a year away, visits with my bestie's new baby girl, and lots of nursery crafting to keep us busy in between. 


I've been pretty negligent at dumping the contents of our camera of late, so I thought I'd take the opportunity to offer a recap of Judah's summer so far. 


Here it is, in his own words... 

My grandparents came home from Africa. I liked visiting them in Africa, but even better is this park near their new place that - get this, is just for dogs!

I taught my dad how to grow tomatoes. 

And how to throw your ball into tomatoes.

And how to walk on tomatoes.
And how to ride your bike on tomatoes.  

We went to the zoo. My favourite part was the fat, flightless, swimming birds. 

The water chickens as I named them. 

We went to the International Food Festival. My favourite cuisines were mini-golf... 

And ice cream!

We visited Centreville and my Oma and Pake took me on the train.
The moving scenery gave me a bad case of the slow blinks. 

My favourite part of the summer was camping. A. because I got to suck on all sorts of salty rocks...

And B. because I turned two, and suddenly everyone started giving me sweet presents! 

Sadly, the present stream dried up the next day. 

My Morai and Grandad took me to St. Thomas to meet Thomas the Train.
Sadly, a bunch of other kids wanted to meet him too. 

Next year I'm hoping for a private audience. 

Then we went to Quebec for Vandenfest.
It was fun, except for the part where every guy looked like my dad and I kept grabbing the wrong legs...

This is some of my family. Not a bad gene pool eh?

With a social calendar like that, is it any wonder I need regular naps!?

We have news!

The ultrasound

Monday was the big day!


After much discussion and debate over the weekend I decided that I HAD to know the baby's sex. And Luke decided that he couldn't not know if I knew- it would be too weird. So there it was - we were finding out... 


Ha! Not so much.


Turns out the odd little ultrasound clinic we visited is a bit gun-shy on sharing the big news. In fact they have a sign on the wall saying "umm..no." Needless to say, I was pretty bummed. All was not lost however, our tech said she would include the big reveal in her full report to be sent to the midwife and our midwife could then tell us the big news. How is this different? I'm not really sure, but I'm guessing there was probably something to do with pink paint bought, a boy born and a lawsuit...


So we wait... up to 4 business days...if we're lucky. In the meantime, we can ooh and aaah at the cuteness that is baby twosie. From what we saw in the ultrasound- a lot of swallowing and baby forking amniotic fluid into its mouth with its fist- it looks and acts a lot like its big brother. We can't wait!


Without further adieu - baby number two...

The Sex Debate

Today is August 7th. Which means I have exactly 8 days to make a fairly major life decision. Do I want to know the sex of this baby now, or do I want to wait until mid-January when it lands in my arms... from the stork... I've decided that's the easier way of giving birth.


When we were expecting Judah, Luke was super adamant that he didn't want to know the sex. I, experiencing pregnancy and everything else for the first time, thought "What the heck. Let's make it a surprise." I had a pretty strong inkling Judah would be Judah, as did everyone I met while pregnant....


Pizza Hut man: Would you like a drink with that?
Me: Yes please. I'll have a...
Pizza Hut man: So you're having a boy eh?
Me: umm...we actually don't know.
Pizza Hut man: It's a boy.




This time feels sort of different. Luke is still adamant he does not want to know. So, if I do find out, I can tell no one! Well, at least not anyone who ever sees or talks to Luke- that wouldn't be fair. Can I keep such a HUGE secret for 5.5 months? I like to think I can... I also like to think I could train our cat to use the toilet... so maybe I'm overestimating my abilities. Nonetheless, I really want to know. The difficulty comes in deciphering my motivation for wanting to know. I've come up with a few possible motivating forces:


1. I have absolutely no patience and I like instant gratification. This is a terrible reason, but it's kind of true. If this is my primary motivator, I feel like I should just use this as a character building exercise- not find out and gain some self-control.


2. I've done it one way (waiting) now I'd like to try it the other way (knowing) and this way if and when we do this a third time, I'll know which method I preferred. You know, like trying different wine pairings with lamb...they will all be good, but will one be better?


3. (Luke's theory) I want to know so I can decorate the nursery. This theory is incorrect (sorry darling) as I've already purchased all the fabric for the nursery textiles (post to follow!) and the colour scheme - yellow and white, is cemented. I'm not a fan of pink for girls or blue for boys anyway. So that motivation can be scratched :)


4. I need to mentally prepare. I know I can handle a baby boy. I can picture myself as a mother of a son. Somehow, however, having a girl seems like a bit of a mental leap. This makes me feel really shallow for the most part. I don't want to gender my child from birth. I don't want to presume heterosexuality on them and I will do my utmost to treat them the same. That being said, the thought of having a girl (as much as I'd love one) somewhat terrifies me. To be a young girl in this day and age means being inundated with the idea that you need to look and act like a princess, images of sexualized children's clothing, and a perception that her worth is only as good as her looks and her ability to attract boys. What I'm saying is, I'd like to know if I'm having a girl so I can build a tall tower in the woods somewhere...without wireless internet signals...to lock her until she is 25. Practical no?


And still, a small nagging voice says, "just wait". Knowing the baby's sex will mean nothing about knowing my baby. Their sex is only a tiny part of the amazing, complex, little personality that we will meet on that wintry day. And so I continue the mental debate. I honestly don't know what I will do next week - I'm open for advice. Maybe baby will make things easy and will cover its incriminating parts with the knitting I'm sure it's busy doing...those are definitely needles I'm feeling in the side of my bladder.


Happy Sunday world!