This weekend has been productive- we got several projects completed around the house. My biggest priority was making the Halloween decoration for the house (it totally rawks and I'm so proud of it! Pictures to come.), followed by putting the crib together, installing the infant car seat and preparing for a play date on Monday. Somewhere in there I also did some web design work and managed to clean downstairs twice. Rusty had a few projects of his own and a few shared with mine. The nursery is almost finished. So close! I need to assemble the infant swing, check that my breast pump is functional and make curtains. I'll probably start on curtains later this week.

Josh and I are done being sick. We both had a cold this week and have pulled through it coughing and blowing our noses. Well, I blow my nose, Josh either picks his or asks for the nose bulb. Unfortunately, it seems as though Rusty finally caught our germs. He's going to take it easy, maybe staying home from work tomorrow. At least he can take more drugs (unlike Josh & I) and may have help in getting rest this week.

My mom is scheduled to fly in Tuesday morning and will be with us until Thursday afternoon. She hasn't seen Josh in nearly a year! This will be Joshua's first trick-or-treating and my mom's first visit to our new home. Until today, I was OK with the idea of the baby being born around Halloween, but with Rusty sick I hope he doesn't come this week.

On that note, I decided that if this baby is more than 10 days late, I will probably ask my midwife to induce me. If I haven't started labor by Nov. 7th (the day after the official due date), I'll start with all the homeopathic stuff like eating certain foods, massage, meditation, using evening primrose, and so on. Until the... we wait.

A Day in the Life…

People have asked me “so what do you do in the day when Josh is in school?” No, I don’t watch TV all day. I decided to record my every movement yesterday. I caught a cold from Josh Tuesday and woke up Wednesday morning feeling like crap. While the day was a bit a-typical, it’s really not far off from a normal day. Remember, this is my normal life. Not exciting. At all. So here ya go…

  • 2:52am wake up w/ runny nose and full bladder
  • 2:55 cover up Josh then go downstairs for a drink and snack (applesauce), watch the ending of Garden State
  • 3:50 go back to sleep
  • 7:40 Josh wakes me up by whispering “Momma” at my bedside
  • 7:45 finally get up
  • 7:50 change Josh’s diaper & put new band-aids on his scratches, get him dressed
  • 8:10 get breakfast ready then take Josh downstairs to eat
  • 8:15 give him medicine while he’s eating then write a note to his teacher about his cold
  • 8:20 give him his inhaler treatment and put on his shoes
  • 8:25 say good-bye as Rusty loads Josh into car
  • 8:30 eat a bowl off cereal, watch CNN Headline News
  • 8:39 answered automated call from UPS wanting to pick up a package (that won’t be ready to send until Friday)
  • 8:40 call UPS to reschedule pick up
  • 8:48 lose patience w/ Indian customer service rep
  • 8:56 call Amazon.com customer service to talk to another Indian rep who speaks better English (who ultimately doesn’t solve my problem either)
  • 9:20 while on hold, I look for an image to create an Evite invitation
  • 9:28 call w/ Amazon.com ends, I resume creating my Evite
  • 9:55 talk to Rusty after finishing the invitation, check email
  • 10:10 go upstairs to nap
  • 11:45 wakeup
  • Noon check email while lunch cooks
  • 12:20 watch yesterday’s Oprah show while eating lunch (Asian chicken noodle soup, apple, slice of cake, OJ and iced-tea)
  • 1:10 text message w/ my mom while beginning to create an animated gif, and run dishwasher
  • 2:05 take short break to check email
  • 2:15 take a call from Fieldwork Dallas
  • 2:25 end call (I qualified to attend a research group for $65), continue working on animated gif
  • 2:55 give up trying to animate my gif, shut down computer
  • 3:00 go upstairs to get dressed, then leave to vote
  • 3:35 return home from voting, wait to leave with mother-in-law to pick up crib picking up around the house while I wait
  • 3:55 leave w/ mother-in-law
  • 5:25 get home minutes before Rusty & Josh (sans crib, SUV was too small), start prepping for dinner (Boboli pizza)
  • 5:55 prepare table for diner, serve Josh
  • 6:10 sit down to eat
  • 6:25 clean up dinner, take Josh upstairs for diaper change and shower
  • 6:30 Josh in shower, I get into pajamas
  • 6:37 Josh out of shower, Rusty gets him into diaper and pajamas while I continue to pick up downstairs
  • 6:40 sit w/ Josh who plays doctor w/ me and watches a little television, I give him his medicine and inhaler
  • 7:05 I lay down due to raging headache (sinus pressure?)
  • 8:15p wake up
  • 8:25 check email, begin work on animated gif again while Rusty sits outside Josh’s door
  • 8:30 catch Josh coming downstairs then sit by his door
  • 8:40 Rusty sits by Josh’s door while I return downstairs to work on gif
  • 9:36 finish working on animated gif (yay!!), brag to two friends online
  • 9:40 sign up for hosting play dates next spring, reply to a few emails
  • 10:10 watch more of 1408 w/ Rusty
  • 10:45 go upstairs for bed, read “In the Beginning Was the Command Line” for a few pages
  • 11:20 fall asleep
Follow up: I felt really bad this morning and slept in and did nothing all day long. Between headaches, sneezing, blowing my nose and taking two naps, my schedule was full.

Josh has a cold today so we're chillin' at home all day. He wants to go "ou'side" but it's raining and cold. And his voice is horse from coughing all night. At least he's in good spirits. He's dancing, ate breakfast and not cranky. Thank goodness!

We're spreading our memes through our son. He can now imitate dance music: oomp-cha-oomp-cha-oomp-cha... He can count to 20 (with help past 10) and knows his colors (mostly) and can identify all the basic animals and body parts- so an occasional useless skill, like imitating dance music, seems OK.

Today has been super productive for us. Josh spent the late morning and took his nap with the grandparents giving Rusty and I a few hours to get stuff done. We finished putting together the dresser in the nursery, prepped dinner, cleaned the house a bit and now are working on the Fox & Co website. Well, Rusty's fixing code while I take a moment to blog. He's grappling with making stuff work in both I.E. and Firefox.

Newby II is growing. People say I look bigger than the last time they saw me. When he's awake, I can count 10 movements in about 2-3 minutes. Joshua was almost always 10 movements within 2 minutes. This guy is between 2-5 minutes depending on how active he is. The weather is supposed to cool off tonight and tomorrow- W00T!! High of 66 sounds so nice right now. Josh will wear pants and a long sleeve when we go out tomorrow, I'll wear short sleeves and a skirt. I'm down to one skirt, one pair of shorts and two dresses. If these fail me, my last resort is a large mu-mu type dress from the first pregnancy.

Last update before I go back to web development mode: the hair is no longer blue streaked. Alas, it was changed to brown last week Wednesday. I'm getting used to my new, easier-to-style do. In a sense, I've lost an identity. But I'm still 5'10.5" tall, which really helps me stand out in a crowd and I'm the same quirky, goof ball I've always been. Just without blue hair.

Josh is tossing and turning right now. He's having trouble falling asleep tonight. We're reasonably sure he'll stay in bed and eventually fall asleep in the next few minutes. It's taken about 45 minutes to get to this point. :-(

However, overall, he's getting better. Especially in regards to sleeping through the night. I'm not sure exactly what it was, but the timing of his new blanket and 'big boy' pillow are uncanny. Prior to the new threads, he was waking up frequently at night for various reasons: lost his security item (Puppy), fell out of bed, had a vivid or bad dream, or some other unknown reason. After the switch, and getting over seasonal allergies with a moderate asthma flare-up, he's waking up maybe one time, if even! (Except last night during an intense thunder storm that even woke me up.) I want to say, "Aha!! It was the blanket and pillow that made all the difference!" But not so fast. The reasons for him waking up prior to the new bedding hasn't changed. He can still lose Puppy in his bed, still have lucid dreams, and still on occasion fall out of bed. So the mystery is unsolved. It's simply a fine example of how correlation is not causation.

Last week Newby II dropped a bit. This week, he's still low and a few people have noticed. My heartburn has eased up a bit, probably due to the extra gut space. I think my pelvic bone is a bit out of whack so I have plans to visit the chiropractor this or next week for a final adjustment. Rusty's been good to me by massaging my back, discouraging me from going up and downstairs, and he even clipped my toe nails this weekend. What a champ of a husband!

Josh and I spent the morning playing at Arbor Hills in Plano. We were invited to join a group of moms celebrate October birthdays. Although Josh is older and waaay more active than the group's kids, I decided getting out to a park near home in the morning might lead to a good long nap. So far so good! I almost didn't want to go though. The idea of chasing after Josh doesn't appeal to me these days. But I'm so glad I did go because I bumped into another moms group I know that was meeting at a pavilion outside of the playground area. It was like a blast from the past! I saw moms I knew from Josh was an infant, and now their kiddos are all as grown up as Josh, and a couple have new ones since then. I really wanted to stick around and chat, especially with a few I clicked with long ago and haven't seen in over a year. But Josh was running amok, as usual. :-(

I'm in so many moms groups these days it's getting hard to learn names. Here's my list of moms groups in order of longevity:

  1. Meetup.com Tots & Babes
  2. Monday Moms (aka Awesome Moms)
  3. Presbyterian Hospital Moms (I'm not really a member anymore, but I run into them)
  4. Carrollton Moms Group
  5. Meetup.com 2007 Babies
  6. Homestead First Friends (the neighborhood assoc. group)
I don't regret being so involved, but I do feel a bit pulled sometimes when something fun is going on at two places at the same time. My only regret is that I can't remember names or recognize familiar faces as quickly as I would like.

Josh is waking up. That's my cue to wrap things up. And scarf the remainder of my lunch!

I'm fairly convinced the baby has dropped a bit this week. There's more belly in the way when I sit down. Luckily, no one expects me to be lady-like when I sit. Today was my last day of prenatal yoga. I decided I was done for a couple reasons: one, the dropped belly is making it difficult to keep pace with the class and, two, my schedule. I'll continue to stretch and be active at home, I'll just not be making a 5 mile trek to be with others.

Besides, I'm eager to begin all the nesting things I want to do: make curtains for the nursery, finish wrapping holiday gifts, unpack stored baby stuff, assemble the crib & dresser when it arrives, stock up on baby essentials (i.e. nursing pads, pacifier, etc.), and most importantly make a duffel bag for the BIG day so we're not scrambling at the last minute. All these little things take time that I hope to have more of after next week as I wrap up two web design projects.

The midwife appointment on Tuesday went well. Blood pressure is very healthy (110/60), weight gain is good (I've gained 42.5 lbs. so far to be 164.5), the belly size is good (~33"), we have a birth plan and we have back up plans in case something (anything) doesn't go as planned. We're set! And now waiting.

I was so grumpy last night. We went to bed around 11pm. Thirty minutes later Josh wakes up for some reason and I attend to him. Coming back to bed, Rusty went from silent sleepr to heavy snorer. I grumbled about that saying something like "why is it that I get Josh and you get loud! Stop snoring." Then twenty minutes later Josh wakes up again because he lost his puppy. Then 15 minutes later he wails again because his nose is stuffy. Rusty gets up to help him with that. Ten minutes later for the same reason. Then 15 more minutes later for- I don't know why. I think he made some crying sound one last time in his sleep that I ignored.

Ironically I had just finished reading an article in Scientific American about how boys shorten their mother's lifespan by an average of 34 months and are rough on the life of siblings born after them. It's still speculation as to why this is so. If this evolutionary theory is true, I'll attest to it. I get crap for sleep on a regular basis, I run after him constantly, and he's just rough on me physically, such as wanting to be picked up all the time, bouncing on my lap and other toddler boy rough-housing.

<:-/

Feeling icky today. I've had an upset stomach and heartburn off and on since lunch. Plus, and I'm not 100% sure on this, but I think the baby is dropping just a bit. When I was pregnant with Josh, he descended weeks before he was born. It's now more uncomfortable to bend to the floor. My next midwife appointment is Tuesday and she may check me then. That' the appointment we also discuss our birth plans. Which Rusty & I need to review this weekend. We have just about 4 weeks left. Time's a tickin'!

We're monitoring Josh's breathing today too. He's been coughing all day and Rusty thinks he heard a little wheezing earlier. He spit up mucus and other food/milk stuff at dinner. But afterwards he felt better, the coughing reduced and his appetite came to full swing. He's had his rescue inhaler twice today with little improvement. Despite the news reports about cough medicines for young children, we gave him some cough suppressant before bedtime. So far he's sleeping and quiet.

I'm waiting a bit more impatiently for the weather to cool. It's the first week of October and we're still HOT! It should mid-80s by now. I remember it being chilly near Halloween both last year and the year before. Where is my cold front!?!?

It's Friday but Josh is in school because I have lots of work to get caught up on. I'm really striving to finish all these web projects before the end of the month. Having this extra day takes some pressure off of the deadlines. So far, I've gotten a lot done this morning and after this break will dive into my to do list again. Hopefully I'll be caught up enough that Josh won't have to be in school next week Friday too.

QOTD:

Here is a test to find whether your mission on earth is finished: if you're alive, it isn't.

Moms Night Out last night was great! We met at Obzeet's for dinner/dessert and socializing. I had already had dinner (grilled ocean perch on rice pilaf with mixed vegetables) so I had a huge slice of chocolate caramel Heath cake. YUM! Among the five of us, we spent about 80% of our conversation talking about our kids. Other topics ranged from house improvements to bills to crime in the news. It felt so good to get out for a bit and connect with my friends.

Work work work! I have so much work to get done, Josh will be in school again tomorrow to give me the extra time I need to get caught up. I wouldn't have to do so if Rusty wasn't working on Saturday. I suppose if Countrywide is busy with campaigns that means business is trying its hardest to turn upwards without more layoffs. Which is reassuring despite the few weekends Rusty has to work.

QOTD:

Have you ever noticed that the people who are always trying
to tell you `there's a time for work and a time for play'
never find the time for play?

Speaking of work, I've got three website projects on my plate- yay! Two should be done relatively quickly, the third can wait for months as there's no rush.

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