Nesting projects.

There are tons of projects I would love to do in our home. When I was 5-6 months pregnant with Abigail, I wanted to redo our living room. That is the room where I spend the majority of my time in so I wanted a change before A was born. So we ripped up the old carpet, put down new laminate flooring and painted. Keegan was away at sea that week so my sister came to stay with me for the month and she helped me renovate the room. She learnt how to operate the electric saw since I wasn't going anywhere near the dust. The room is great now with new floors that are way easier to clean!

Now that the midway point of this pregnancy is quickly approaching, I feel the need to take on another huge home project. There is painting to be done throughout the house, flooring to be replaced throughout the house and a garden expansion to get ready for the spring. Here's the list!

• Replace basement flooring
• Replace upstairs flooring
• Expand garden boxes
• Set up spare bedroom downstairs
• Get pictures up along stairs and throughout house
• New mancave furniture
• New flooring laundry room
• Paint Abigail's new room
• Replace ceiling fixtures throughout home
• Re carpet all sets of stairs

Keegan will only be home from sailing for a couple weeks this fall so we will have to choose which projects to complete carefully. I think we start with the basement. Get some nice "warm under you feet" cork flooring to replace the old forest green carpet and rearrange the spare bedroom to actually have some usable space. We can have a futon there for guests and maybe even set up a craft area (I'd love to learn how to sew!)

The only projects I don't see us completing before baby#2 arrives is redoing the stairs and upstairs flooring. What do you think?

20 chore Tuesday!

I figure I'm going to give this a try. I first saw this over at http://www.joyfulabode.com/ I have lots I want to do today so hopefully this will encourage me to do most of them.

- Finish meal list
- Plan August meals
- August grocery lists
- Put away my clothes
- Put away A's clothes
- Call gym about swim membership
- Inquire about evening babysitting
- Dig out bathing suits
- Throw out dead plants
- Water those that are still alive
- Fold laundry downstairs
- Diaper laundry
- Post highchair for sale
- Empty dishwasher
- Cut and freeze watermelon
- Store away some toys
- Empty dehumidifier
- Clear stuff from A's big girl room
- Clean toilets
- Vacuum main floor

Wish me luck!!!

Official end of the first trimester.

First trimester is officially done and oh my, was it full of drama!

Weight gain : Still a bit under but at least I haven't lost more over the last couple weeks.

How clothes is fitting - While I am still on vacation, I will continue to wear my tank tops since they are long and stretchy. My belly had suddenly popped so I do need to put away some of my shorter shirts. I purged the majority of my maternity clothes since I am much smaller than I was the last time I was pregnant. I still have all my cute tops though so I will be wearing those once school starts up again in a couple weeks.

Telling friends - We have officially made it public on Facebook. At 12w+1, we had our dr appt. We wanted to record the heartbeat. It took a good 5 minutes for the dr just to find it! Those were a horrible 5 minutes. Thankfully, we found it and were able to get it on video. So we posted it :) And then today, at 14w, I posted baby bump pictures. With pictures up, more and more people will be finding out.

Pregnancy project - My baby blanket has been started. Since we won't be finding out the baby's sex, I decided on 3 colours that will look great regardless of whether it's a boy or a girl. Green, yellow and purple. It is still in the early stages but it looks great already!

Road to vbac - Having a vbac (vaginal birth after cesarean) is very important to me. There are lots of obstacles that I will have to surmount. Having a healthy baby is important but so is me being healthy. And if I dont have to have major surgery, I would rather not. My dr is NOT totally on board with a natural intervention free birth so I am searching for one that is. I am still on a waiting list for a midwife. Fingers crossed!

My 816 days of breastfeeding.

So my first week not breastfeeding A since she weaned herself  just happens to fall on World Breastfeeding Week. 816 days, 116 weeks, 26 months. However you want to count it, it has been an awesome ride.

We had a bumpy start. She was extremely sleepy during her first 36 hours and only fed a handful of times. The night nurse said that she had to feed and since she kept falling asleep at the breast, she brought in a bottle of formula. I didn't want to use it so I didn't. It just sat there and they took it away the following day. She then spent the day under the uv lights and came out a whole new little ravenous girl.

6 months turned into 1 year and then just kept going  When my maternity leave was approaching its end, I realized  it didn't have to be "all or nothing" for my breastfeeding relationship with A. When she was 14 months old, we slowly weaned from 6-8 feedings a day to just 2 (bedtime and when she woke up during the night).

Then I became pregnant. My breast became so tender and sensitive that I wanted to wean her myself so bad. Luckily, the pain was short lived. She then decided to wean herself from her nighttime feeding. Occasionally, she slept through the night and when she came crawling into our bed, she just wanted to cuddle. 2 weeks ago she just wanted to hold my hand while she fell asleep at bedtime. Then she surprised me a couple days later, when i was 12 weeks pregnant, and actually wanted to nurse. Little did I know that that would be our last breastfeeding session together.

I'm happy I allowed A to decide for herself when she wanted to be done breastfeeding. Fortunately, I never got many of those unnecessary "Are you still breastfeeding?!?" comments. I'm sad that she is done. But I am totally excited for roughly 26 weeks from now for my next breastfeeding relationship to start!