Living in Harmony » declutter

Hi baby

AttachedMama — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 19:45:31 +0000

Meredith and I were lying in bed together this morning and the baby was rolling and kicking quite vigorously. I asked Meredith if she wants to feel the baby and she nodded so I put her hand on my belly. It took a couple of tries, but eventually the baby did kick right where her hand was. She sort of gasped and pulled her hand off a bit, and I told her it was the baby kicking and saying hi. She smiled and waved at my belly and said “hi baby!”. I wonder how much she really understands. She knows what babies are; in fact she adores babies. She’s always pointing out babies everywhere we go, and she loves to touch my friend’s baby. She calls her doll her baby and will tuck her in and take her pee and nurse her. But I don’t think she gets that there is a real baby inside of me (I barely get that, and I’ve done it once before haha), and that in a few months it will be here to stay. But she does talk about (and to) the baby in Mama’s tummy (we try to tell her it’s in my uterus, but she’s decided on her own it’s actually in my tummy), and she loves to come and kiss and pet my belly. Today was the first time she actually talked to the baby though.

Things are still moving right along. I occasionally get mild heart burn, but other than that this has still been an extremely uneventful pregnancy. I’m not complaining at all lol. A few more weeks to the third trimester. We’ve pretty much decided on two girl’s names, though we won’t decide which one for sure until the baby’s born probably. Funnily, neither of them were on our list before I got pregnant this time. Boy’s names are once again harder. We have about ten on the “short” list still. That’s better than with Meredith’s pregnancy though, where we could barely get a short list at all that we were both happy with.

I guess I’m nesting. I’m still doing some major decluttering and reorganizing, especially upstairs though over the weekend we reorganized our living room too. It feels much more spacious the way we have it and Meredith’s toys don’t feel so cramped. Her room is starting to actually look fairly empty. I have the change table set up so I can start putting some baby stuff away on it. I need to sand and paint her bed and finish getting rid of the stuff that’s left, but compared to how it looked when I started it’s looking great. I’m not going to post any pictures until it’s done though, the before pictures will be too embarrassing without seeing that I really did get it done. I’m excited about it. We plan to use it as a space where Meredith can keep things she doesn’t want the baby to get into. She can nap/sleep there if she wants but I don’t plan to push her into that at all, I just want her to have the option because she’s such a light sleeper and I’ve read some kids actually prefer their own room with a cosleeping new baby. I may set our crib up there too and if this baby will actually sleep out of arms I have a feeling he/she may end up being put down more often for naps, so that I can spend some one-on-one time with Meredith and won’t have to be constantly asking her to keep her voice down. I haven’t decided about that though, as it would mean when the baby is sleeping she wouldn’t be able to go up there, and I also really loved having Meredith nap in the mei tei on us and didn’t find it too disruptive. But I didn’t have a two year old at the time either. I’m not really a fan of cribs though (we only have it because my mom bought it for us after I told her we didn’t want one), so more likely if baby goes down for naps it will be in our bed like Meredith does now.

I’ll end with a picture from Halloween. My talented friend Kyre made the shirt and it turned out perfectly. (Check out her site to see the gorgeous cake she recently made for a birthday party.) I got a lot of comments on it when we were trick-or-treating and I’m sad I only get to wear it once. Meredith was Nemo, which was perfect for her as she loves the colour orange and she adores fish (it’s her favorite part of the zoo when we go). She loved Halloween and still talks about the candy and balloon she got that day, even though she really doesn’t eat much candy besides Smarties. Kris and I ended up eating most of hers while she chose to eat healthy things like eggs, bananas, and avocadoes, even though we left the candy bucket out. She would open a bag, sometimes have one or two, and then give the rest of it to one of us. I think just the excitement of everything was really neat to her though.

21 weeks and trucking along

AttachedMama — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 17:07:20 +0000

Pregnancy-wise things are still pretty uneventful. Kris felt the baby for the first time last Wednesday. He/she moves around pretty much every evening for a while now. I feel him intermittently throughout the day too, but it’s most reliable in the evenings right now. We haven’t scheduled an ultrasound and didn’t plan to, though I’m having second thoughts about that some days. Not because I want measurements or anything taken, but because I want to know the gender. Strange for me, as I didn’t want to know at all last time and loved not knowing. I think partly this time, with this being our second and last child, if it’s a boy I’d like to get some boy clothes ahead of time (a lot of stores have huge sales in January). Also, since I feel so much better I’m actually doing some sewing for the baby, but all gender neutral does get a bit tiresome sometimes. I don’t worry one ultrasound would hurt the baby, especially just a quick gender check. Dopplers put out more ultrasound waves than an ultrasound does; it’s just dopplers tend to be a lot quicker. So I’m undecided. Today, I like the idea of a surprise. Tomorrow may be different lol.

I did a bunch of organizing, decluttering, and moving of stuff last week and felt fine afterwards. Then suddenly the next afternoon my back started hurting, and it still hasn’t gotten any better. I’m not sure what I would have done, as I was careful about what I moved and how I picked things up and have never had problems with my back like this before. I don’t think it’s pregnancy-related at all yet, but being pregnant probably doesn’t help. I have a chiro appointment set for tomorrow and I can’t wait. I’ve been trying to take it really easy but if anything my back is worse today than it was yesterday. Maybe because yesterday it was feeling a lot better so I probably didn’t take it as easy as I had been. I’m really hoping the chiro helps. It usually does. I can barely walk today without pain, whereas up until now it’s mostly been just bending over and getting up from a sit or from lying down that’s been painful.

The worst part is, because I had started the decluttering, the rooms I was working in had boxes and stuff pulled out. But I haven’t had a chance to go back and finish, so some of them look worse than before. Oh well, hopefully the chiro will help and I’ll be able to finish up sooner rather than later, though I’ll take it even easier just in case. My dishes have been piling up too, even though I’m trying to get at least a load a day done. Anyone want to come do my dishes?

Here are some belly shots from last night. Excuse the funny cropping on some of them, Meredith wasn’t wearing pants as usual and I don’t want to post nude shots on the internet or on Facebook.

Notice my belly button sticking out already? lol It didn’t do that until much closer to the end last time.

Starting to feel productive again

AttachedMama — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 20:51:11 +0000

I never really got “nesty” with my last pregnancy. I wanted to nest, but between the constant nausea in the first and second trimester, and the horrible heart burn (I feel so sorry for anyone who gets heart burn regularly, I sometimes think that was worse than the puking) and achiness in the third trimester, it never happened. We ended up moving a few days before I gave birth, and in the last month before that we did get a lot done as far as cleaning out and packing up and organizing, but then I was put on bed rest for high blood pressure and couldn’t even get that done. Then I had a baby and a friend came to help us move and unpacked my kitchen and my mom came afterwards and unpacked most of the rest, and I didn’t even really get to set up my new place the way I wanted. Of course, it’s been two years since then and a lot has been changed to be more how we want, but there’s still a lot I’d like to do.

This time, I’m already feeling nesty. Last week, I finally put up a clothesline I’ve been talking about for, well, two years. My yard isn’t the greatest spot for a clothesline since we have a forest directly south of us, but it gets enough sun that it’s good enough. I had ordered a bunch of used prefold diapers for the new baby, and they came more stained than I had expected. But they were super cheap, so I can’t complain too much. I had put them aside in a “to do closer to baby” pile, when it occurred to me that if I want to sun them before baby comes it will have to be now. So those are all hung up in the sun sunning out.

There are about 20 preemie prefolds and 20 infant prefolds, a mix of natural and “bleached” (though they’re actually whitened without bleach). I plan to embellish the infant ones. I may dye them as well, I haven’t decided yet. I’ll probably do some of the preemie ones too, simply because I don’t care as much about those ones if I mess up so they’d be good testers. The preemie ones will be great for the meconium poops and for avoiding the umbilical cord before it falls off, but I’m sure baby will grow out of them pretty quickly and then they’ll be used for spills and as burp cloths or inserts. I have some old clothes of Meredith’s that are too stained or torn for donations even, so will use those, and probably see if I can find some cute new fabric ends or something too. It means a lot of them will be girly, but that’s okay, even if baby ends up being a boy. Real men can wear pink, right? I also want to buy some plain white t-shirts (or kimono shirts, haven’t decided which would work better yet), and make some that match the diapers. Meredith spent the first 6 weeks of life pretty much naked and skin to skin with me, and I assume it will be similar for this baby. My mom complained that I rarely got dressed the whole time she was out here, ha. He/she may even spend more time naked, since he/she will be born at the beginning of spring instead of near the end of summer. So I figure some diapers and t-shirts and we’ll be set.

I also have spent some time cleaning and tidying, and even got around to vacuuming our sofa that we’ve been talking about selling pretty much since we moved here. We ended up selling it and replacing it with a love seat that fits much better in that spot (though is ugly, I need to invest in a slip cover for it!). I’m going to finally clean out our spare room upstairs and turn it into a space for Meredith, if she ever wants it.

I have a few other projects in mind too, like reorganizing our kitchen, cleaning out the pantry, painting at least the bedrooms, gutting our study, going through our big boxes of books and figuring out a better way to store them for now… I’m not going to count on getting it all done before baby, but hopefully can get a good chunk figured out.

Sickies

AttachedMama — Sat, 06 Dec 2008 17:03:49 +0000

We’ve had colds here. Meredith didn’t get it too badly thankfully, Kris got it the worst. I’ve been napping with her during the days though and that’s normally when I would post. Or at night, but she’s started going to sleep later in the evenings too so I’ve been tending to go to bed with her.

I have a couple of meme’s I’ve been tagged for that I would like to do at some point, and a few ideas for other posts. Otherwise, we’re doing well. Getting ready for Christmas, sort of… We haven’t actually really started gifts, and considering we want to handmake them all that’s not a good sign! I think I might make bathrobes for our nieces and nephew our of towels, and embroider their names on them. I’d really like to make one for Meredith too and they don’t look too hard. We’ll see though. I need more ideas for younger kids though. We have baskets planned out for most of the adults that should be good I think. I love everything about Christmas except the consumerism, so we started handmaking gifts last year and I think they ended up going over well with most people.

We are discussing selling our car. We bought it brand new 2 1/2 years ago and it has been great, especially when we lived in Sidney, but now that we’re in town we walk almost everywhere. It seems silly to be paying the payments on a car we use a couple of times a week. If it sells, we might buy an older American car (because they depreciate so fast, it’d be cheap), and just plan to rent a car for trips to Calgary. It would still be far cheaper than the payments on our current car. I put the car up yesterday just to see if there was any interest and already have someone coming to look at it today. If he decides to buy it I’m not sure what we’ll do, we can’t afford to buy another car until January when Kris gets his bonus. (We’ll just barely break even with what we have left owing on the car if it sells.) We’ll make do though, I’m sure. Maybe we’ll find we don’t really need a car that much anyway. In our ongoing efforts to declutter, I’ve also put a bunch of other things up for sale and had some interest in those too.

Meredith is really starting to become quite vocal. She still doesn’t have many “real” words but she makes a lot of new sounds and has started to string sounds together a lot too. She loves to say “uh oh”. She’s also making up new signs too. She will use the signs we use a few times, and then make up her own and stop using the one we’ve tried to teach. I’m not sure why but it’s pretty cute. I have a cousin who is deaf and was hoping Meredith would learn ASL, but even if not, at least it’s a way we can communicate with her.

Her favorite activity lately is to look through books, or have us read to her. She has one book in particular she loves. Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do you see? was cute the first time, and the second, and maybe even the third. But Kris and I both have it memorized now we’ve read it so much. She also seems to be teething again and has been less willing to play independently so I can clean up a bit or do dishes. I hate how messy that means the house gets, and would like to raise Meredith to appreciate a clean house (something I feel I didn’t get from my parents forcing us to clean our rooms once a week and otherwise our house was often messy), but really, I know that this is another phase and a messy house for a few weeks won’t hurt anyone. Sometimes if she gets really clingy or I’m tired of Brown Bear, Brown Bear yet again, I’ll take her outside and we’ll walk and explore. If it’s near nap time I’ll put her in the mei tei and walk until she falls asleep. A good friend just moved into our complex and she has a two year old son, so she will often come with us on the walks and the kids will play. It’s wonderful having someone so close by with similar parenting values.

Clutter and Stuff

AttachedMama — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 21:59:35 +0000

Kris and I have spent the past few days decluttering and moving rooms around. It’s a great feeling to watch our boxes and piles of stuff slowly diminish. I have a whole pile of stuff to post on FreeCycle or Craig’s List, and a huge bag of clothes to consign or donate. It feels good mentally too, like the less stuff we have lying around with no real place to go, the less burdened I feel. We’re discussing getting rid of some of our books (we have 100′s of books, maybe 1000′s), as well as some of our DVD’s (we have 100′s of those too). What point in keeping them if we’ve only read/watched it once and likely won’t again?

There is still a lot more to go through and organize, but most of it is in boxes now, so should be easy to bring down when I have a spare moment (ha!) and go through them one at a time. I’d like to tackle the kitchen too. I’ve started it a little bit. I bought some cool spice jars from the dollar store and have been playing around with different ways to organize our spices. But we have lots of kitchen utensils and such that never get used and I’d like to slowly start weeding those out too. There are also clothes that were packed away while I was pregnant and never got unpacked when we moved, meaning I haven’t worn some of them in over a year. I’d like to go through those boxes and only keep the clothes I really miss, and sell or give away the rest.

I’m hoping to raise Meredith to not value stuff as much as most people these days do. I would love it if Meredith looked forward to birthdays and Christmas because of the celebrations and traditions surrounding them, rather than the mountain of presents she might get. I think that cosleeping and not letting her cry it out (and therefore potentially turn to toys and blankies for comfort instead) is a good step in that direction, but I feel that not being surrounded by all sorts of stuff we barely use or don’t look at is important too.