Christmas Scenes from 2009

This is Piper's new favorite spot...the basket o' blankets. And she gives you the look of "Don't you DARE touch me" every single time you go near her.

Our mantle, complete with stockings for the dog and cat. 

 

These are animated figures from Rankin and Bass' "Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer". The penguin also sings, dances and hops around. All of them freak the dog and cat out. 

They have since been removed from this location and put up on a shelf. Everyone is much calmer that way. 

 Sprout's first ornament - cute and very appropriate for a little girl aptly nicknamed Sprout :) 

Ebony's new favorite snuggling spot - our bed and the body pillow. She loves it!

Christmas Thoughts

Well, it's here.

Christmas.

Actually, it's Christmas Eve. But still.

It's here and I'm so not in the mood for it.

Maybe it's the hormones, the stresses of being pregnant, not having everything ready and not being able to do much about it.

Maybe it's that I'm lazy and I just don't want to deal with it.

But it doesn't matter because it's here. And I'm trying to convince myself that I need to be in the holiday mood - for my husband, my family, my daughter, myself.

Having holiday sweets, especially the fudge and puppy chow, does seem to help some :)

Today was supposed to be a day for my husband and I just to relax. Together. He didn't have to work and we were going to watch Christmas movies, drink hot cocoa, make glass candy, make homemade spaghetti sauce together, and just be.

Instead, he and my lovely lovely lovely unforgiving, unselfish father-in-law are upstairs melting the varnish off of the nursery floor by hand with a heat gun (so graciously lent by my dad early this morning) and a paint scraper. We rented a sander yesterday to sand the varnish off but the sander just melted the varnish onto the sander pads and rendered them useless.  Poor Caleb was so incredibly frustrated last night and we were both near tears. It shouldn't be this difficult and it seems so silly to get mad about, but that's what was happening here. We thought this would be a semi-easy task. Instead it's been one flippin' headache after another. 
Currently, I'm downstairs praying that this will work (they're going to try to sand the area they've already un-varnished to see if it will work with this type of sander or if they need to get a different type) and just waiting to hear the results. Caleb and my father-in-law are going to return the sander today so that we don't have to pay for an extra day and re-rent it next week when we can work on it more efficiently.
While downstairs, I'm watching Star Wars: Empire Strikes Back (the newer ones, Episodes 1, 2 and 3 were on yesterday all day and the older ones are all on today), snuggling with the kitty and watching my belly move.  Everyone keeps telling me to cherish this time we have without Sprout because by next year, she'll be grooving and moving all over the place.  And we are - very much so. I just can't wait to meet her and to see what she looks like and just hoping that we'll get everything done in time before she arrives :)

With that being said, I'm going to back to snuggling on the couch and wait to see what happens upstairs. It sounds like I should start making dinner around 4 so we can eat - I think we'll try to get to church for the 9:30 service. It's not too far and hopefully the nasty weather will hold off until we get home. 

Okay...seriously

I think that our house has a mind of it's own and when we're down, finacially and emotionally, it breaks It does this quickly without the bat of an..windowshade and does it with a smirk, I'm sure.

Case in point: We finally got the two flat roofs fixed so that they are now pitched to match the rest of the house and are no longer leaking (Praise God!). However, in the process of this, there was door in our bedroom (that led out to the roof) that had to be removed. So the guys had to use the siding from the part of the house they were covering up with the newly-pitched roof....only, they ran out of siding. So new siding was ordered and will be in Friday...which my husband has to put up. 
When the door was removed, the guys took the outdoor screen door off and left the indoor door still hanging. I pitched a fit when I re-read our proposal and it stated that WE had the choice to have the door removed. So the guy took the door off. And put a piece of drywall up where the door was...only he left the door frame.  So now we have to tape and mud the drywall and take off the doorframe and fix that.
With all of this, the ceiling still has a large hole in it that needs fixing - we did recieve some back payment from the company but for reasons that need not be discussed, that money had to be used elsewhere.  So, we still need to go get drywall for that, plus mud, tape and paint.  We do have the insulation. And a 5 pound box of roofing nails (don't ask...you're just better off not knowing) that we'll never use.
So, the ceiling needs fixing still, the siding still needs to be picked up, cut and nailed up on the house, the door frame needs to be removed and filled in/insulated (whatever you do to a door frame that is removed)....

and then the door broke.  The piece we need may or may not be available to us.

On top of everything else, we still don't have some necessary items for the baby and I'm slightly worried that even with returning a few items, we may not have the money to get what we would like to get. We have one more shower tomorrow for Caleb's work, so we'll see. I need to just trust that we will get through this. It's just very hard and having all these hormones running through my body is NOT helping. at all.

And I feel big and pregnant. Literally, overnight - yesterday I felt HUGE and I think it was due to the fact that Sprout was just sitting front and center. I was able to breathe (she wasn't in my ribcage for once) but was SO uncomfortable most of the day. I felt like no matter how I sat/stood/laid down/moved, I couldn't get comfortable. Today, I don't feel like I look as big as yesterday and I don't FEEL as big as yesterday. She's taken back to the ribcage, which is fine with me.

Enough of my complaining - I'm going to go get a bucket ready for Caleb to wash out paint brushes (he's putting up the last coat of paint tonight on the nursery walls) and then tomorrow, we're taking up the carpet. Please, seriously, pray that we find hard wood under there (we're thinking we will) so all it will need is a little clean up. I don't know how we're going to afford to put different flooring down - laminate flooring maybe...

i feel super stressed.

Beware...

...of the hormones that come with pregnancy.

Holy cow...I was a mess yesterday and so far, today isn't any better.
It has a lot to do, at least yesterday, with my lack of sleep. The night before, a certain baby had decided that 2 am was THE perfect time to start her morning kalestenics. I couldn't get comfortable and was up for most of the rest of the early morning hours. I got up with Caleb at 7am yesterday and got some things done around the house. At lunch, while Caleb was trying to get lunch together before he had to return to work, I snapped at him, the dog, the cat and the dishes. When I started crying that I was a bad dog mom and am not doing enough for her, he ordered me back to bed for, at the very least, a nap. I did take a nap before running a few errands.  Add to that the fact that we were SUPPOSED to have 20-ish Amish men at our house today working on our roof and we won't, until at the earliest, next Monday... I was all around cranky. 
Today hasn't been much better - Caleb woke up late, I woke up very sore and cranky.  He has a consultation today for the local sleep clinic - we are pretty sure (the doctor and myself) that Caleb is having sleep apenic episodes throughout the night and from what I can tell, they're getting more intense (more gasping for breath) and more frequent. So, the doctor referred him to the sleep clinic to see what they can do to help - needless to say, we're both a bit nervous and I think that added to the tense feelings this morning. And I was going to go the consultation with him but decided that it would probably be best if I just stayed home. And the way my stomach currently feels (thank you baby, Braxton-Hicks and something that isn't agreeing with my stomach), I think I'm better off here.
Today, I also have the grand task of finding out what permits we need to acquire before the Amish come and fix our roofs. Looking at the city's building department and their website, it seems that we may have to apply for a couple of permits but I'm not sure - hence, why I'm going to call. The contractor is going to take the two flat roofs (who EVER thought those were a good idea had some issues), make them into pitched roofs to match the rest of the house. And because they're pitching the flat roof right under our bedroom, the infamous-random-door-that-leads-to-the-flat-roof has to be removed so that they can pitch the roof correctly.  And in addition to that, they will remove some siding from below to add/hide where the door was.
Ugh.
So I have to call and find out if we need a siding permit, a building permit, roof permit or a combination of the three. AND, the siding and roof permits each cost 100 dollars plus the after-inspection.

I'm going to cry.

And then throw up from the Lucky Charms that aren't sitting well.

Happy Tuesday

Update

Well, I at least changed the theme of our blog...

and finally took some pregnancy belly pictures.

Pregnant belly at 30 weeks in a very comfy (but increasingly tight) sweater:

sorry this is blurry - my camer and I don't always love each other

I'm 31 weeks pregnant and it still feels unreal.

Baby Sprout is definitely bigger and moving all over the place.

Moving so much so that you can literally see my stomach move.

And last night, she showed off to her daddy and used a pointy part of her body (elbow? knee?) and ran it across my belly. It totally freaked mommy out and just made daddy laugh. hard.

She has also taken a love for momma's ribcage. She likes to, as it feels, walk along my ribcage. I'm not sure that's what she's actually doing but it feels like she's walking along/running/drumming her fingers along my ribcage. It takes me by surprise when it happens and it tickles. A lot.

I look and feel pregnant but there are often times that I have to remind myself that this is real and still really happening to us.

I'm definitely more uncomfortable but I try not to complain because I feel guilty for doing so.

I love my pregnant belly but will be glad when I can bend over like a normal person again :)

Belly picture at 31 weeks:

Unkept promises

I know I said, nearly 3 weeks ago, that I would post soon.
But life got in the way. Life gets in the way a lot these days.
Tonight, after running a few errands, and going through yet four more boxes of paper work, I want to sit down and just let the words flow...

and change our theme to Christmas because I simply can't wait any longer :)

Pregnant and sick.

• I'm sick. 

• And pregnant. 

• And emotional. 

• And there's so much on my mind but my mind is so tired. And my body is starting to feel pregnant and a wee bit sore. 

I want to update and will hopefully do that tomorrow.

• That was my plan for today but my body had other ideas.  I slept a lot. Even through WALL-E. Three times. I woke up enough to start the movie over, hoping I would make it past the beginning 5 minutes. 

I never did.

I slept a lot today, coughed a lot, blew my nose a lot (thank goodness for Puffs with lotion!) and cried because I finally am starting to feel "sick".  No fever, body aches and minimal headache. It feels like a nasty nasty sinus infection. Praying that's all it is.

Tomorrow. I'll update. Promise :)