6 months

Time is moving quickly now!  The first 18 weeks of this pregnancy seemed to take longer than my entire pregnancy with Arlo but the last few weeks have really flown by.  Probably because for the most part I am feeling pretty good most of the time, and I have also been in serious nesting mode which has been keeping me rather busy.  I had an appointment last week with the midwives, I was 25 weeks the day of the appointment.  Belly is measuring on track now, 25 weeks, with a total weight gain of 13 lbs.  Which puts me at only 3 lbs less than I was when Arlo was born!  That being said, I was definitely not at a healthy weight at his birth due to being so sick in the weeks before he arrived (I lost 4 lbs instead of needing to gain that amount) so of course I have expected to gain a bit more this time.  I am eating good foods and exercising daily so I know my body will gain whatever it needs to for a healthy baby.  At the appointment, I mentioned to the midwife that there was a slightly sore spot on my belly, to the right of my umbilicus.  She said the baby was probably spending most of it's time in one position and that could be causing me to feel discomfort in the area that the baby is often pressing against.  When she felt the baby, she said that he/she was head down, and while it can still flip around at this point, it's likely that most of his/her time is spent in that position.  So, even though I know baby can move around still I was pretty happy to hear that he/she was already hanging out in the proper position!  And also wondering if we have another large-headed kid on the way, hmmmmm..... 

26+2

For comparison, here is 26 weeks with both kiddos, Arlo on the left, current belly on the right.  I thought I was growing so much faster this time around but I think the bumps look pretty similar here:

Symptom-wise I am feeling a TON of movement, especially at night.  This baby is a party animal!  Still having a fair amount of braxton hicks contractions but they seem to have calmed down a bit since I started taking Wild Yam Root, a supplement recommended by the midwife.  I think I am seeing the start of the linea nigra (dark line down the middle of my belly) but it is very, very faint still.  I don't remember when that first appeared with Arlo but it faded completely soon after his birth.  I have been fortunate to avoid any chloasma aka the "mask of pregnancy" on my face so far, with Arlo I definitely had it by this point in the pregnancy.  It wasn't super dark but I did notice it a bit on my forehead and cheeks.  I am going to be really diligent about sunblock as the weather gets warmer and we spend even more time outside as sun exposure definitely contributes to those pregnancy skin changes.  Another symptom that has popped up in recent weeks is actually something that I truly thought people made up (or decided they had after watching too many pharmaceutical commercials!)  I thought that restless leg syndrome was more of a side effect of too much caffeine or something.  However, I now know firsthand that it actually exists and is kind of annoying when I am trying to fall asleep!  So far it's pretty minor and some nights I just feel like I want to squirm around as I am trying to get to sleep, but that's the only time I notice it.  Hopefully it doesn't get worse, I guess it wakes up some women later in pregnancy.  And other than that, physically, I am feeling pretty normal!

Emotionally though, a few weeks ago some pregnancy anxiety started to set in.  And unfortunately, in a pretty big way.  I wrote about our post-partum experience last time around pretty truthfully here on the blog, but I never really let on to how bad things really got.  And really, no one probably wants to read all the details.  But, let's just say it wasn't good and it took me a really long time (seven months) before I admitted to myself how bad things had gotten and reached out for help.  I think a lot of the anxiety that popped up a few weeks back is related to the fear of the same thing happening again.  I have been telling myself that this time around I have no expectations for what happens post-partum, so I won't be disappointed or hard on myself if things don't go as planned.  Last time I went into the 4th trimester (as they call it) probably a bit overly confident.  I was going to breastfeed my baby until he was three!  And we would use nothing but cloth diapers until he was potty trained!  And Arlo would sleep peacefully in our homemade co-sleeper every night!  And I would babywear all the time which would allow me to be super mom and have a clean house and dinner on the table every night when Erik got home!  I wrote a post during that time that I went back and reread recently, called expectations vs reality.  I know that my mood/emotional issues were not caused by all those things not working out as I had planned but they sure didn't help make things any easier.  And this time around I know there will be additional challenges because not only will I have a newborn, but also a very energetic 2 1/2 year old to take care of.  I know I can do it, I am confidant in my abilities as a mom and very much look forward to having two kiddos.  And it's pretty easy to say "oh I will just roll with the punches this time" but I know firsthand that often that is easier said than done.  Despite all the expectations I had last time around I was also keeping in mind that we would be new parents and have to adjust accordingly to life with a newborn.  However, the struggles we had outside the realm of "normal" newborn challenges made things a lot harder than I could ever imagine.  So, we have made a plan to do things a little differently this time around. 

First, we have decided to hire a postpartum doula.  We don't have any family in the area (or the entire state for that matter) and while they do come to visit several times a year, it's proven to be more difficult than we ever anticipated it would to not have that support nearby during these early years of child rearing.  Erik will take off at least a full week when baby arrives, and probably go back to work half-days for a week or two after that.  I then plan on the grandparents coming to visit and help out for a bit, but then I will be on my own.  We have several friends who have offered to help, but most of them have families and little ones of their own and only one of them lives close by.  So, we are hiring some help!  A postpartum doula is trained in helping families adjust to a new baby, be it your first or your fifth.  They will help with the newborn, entertain Arlo while I spend time with the baby or take a much needed shower, or even do light housework.  They are trained in newborn care, breastfeeding, and the emotional needs of the mother in the post-partum period.  I am hoping that once I am officially "own my own" with the two littles that we can have someone come in twice a week even if just for a few hours to give me a hand while we continue to adjust.  I have a feeling that even that little bit of extra help and support will go a long way in the early weeks and months after this new babe arrives.

Secondly, even though I won't be working, we plan to continue to send Arlo to his babysitters house, for probably a half day once a week.  Not only would it give me a little break from the chaos of two, but also some time to bond one-on-one with the new baby (and perhaps even go grocery shopping or cook dinner?!)  Arlo absolutely loves going to her house and playing with his friends, and I love that he gets to socialize with the other little kiddos there and spend some time without Erik or I around.  She has a pretty structured schedule with the kids in terms of meals, nap time, activities and crafts, and reading time, and I am hoping that continuing to go there will make the transition to preschool easier when the time comes.  Cause lord only knows we don't follow a structured schedule at home, and even if we did it would be thrown out the window when #2 arrives, ha!

Thirdly, to help with the recent anxiety that has popped up, I have joined a Moms support group.  It's something I did after Arlo was born, but not until he was around seven months old.  I could have used the help and advice so much sooner!  It's a great group of moms who meet once a week and talk about anything from pregnancy and postpartum mood issues to playdate groups to feeding problems and more.  Periodically they have professional therapists who come in and offer advice, and so far it's been really great to attend.  In addition, I started taking Tumeric (which I recently learned has about 100 amazing uses!) and it's done wonders to improve my mood and emotional well-being.  I suppose it could be the placebo effect but I usually find that either a supplement works for me or doesn't, I don't often feel symptom relief just from taking something new.  Studies have shown Tumeric can help with pain, inflammation, and mood elevation - and for me it definitely has.  As a bonus, I strained my back pretty bad last weekend and a little extra Tumeric seemed to really help bring down the inflammation.  Move over ibuprofen, mama's got a brand new drug!

While I would love to do nothing but sit back and enjoy this pregnancy (and my last few months of Arlo as my only baby, cue the tears) from here on out things are going to be pretty busy.  We are mid-way through a total laundry room reno, still have several rooms of our house to paint, and still need to hopefully squeeze in two beach trips (one with Arlo and one just Erik and I) all before August arrives.  We also still need to find me a larger car, eek!  Erik is starting to try and convince me to look at other vehicles, or at least other colors of the vehicle we have in mind, but I am holding out for what I really want.  I still have a feeling we will find it before baby arrives, and if not we will stop on the way home from the birth and lease something big and safe.  Kidding, kind of.  While we don't yet have a car, I can tell you we have all the paper towels, toilet paper, toothpaste, dish soap, laundry detergent and tissues we will need for the rest of the year.  Part of my nesting urge (this happened with Arlo too) is to stock up on everything I possibly can so we won't run out after the baby arrives.  I don't know if I fear a nationwide toilet paper shortage in August or what, but I just feel like it makes me more prepared somehow!  We don't even use paper towels but something made me buy the jumbo pack last time I saw them on sale.  File that under weird pregnant lady behavior!! 

While I know Arlo isn't completely aware of how much our lives are about to change in a few months, he is so excited to be a big brother and is at the age where he can understand that there is a baby in my belly and it will be here soon.  He loves to hug, kiss, and talk to my belly.  When I ask him what he thinks will happen when the baby arrives he tells me he will share his toys and that the baby will drink milk, ha!  He has a little baby doll that he named Howie, which both laughs and cries depending on where you press it, and when Howie "cries" Arlo will instinctively hug him tightly, kiss his head, and rub his back.  And when this happens I melt into a tiny puddle and may or may not have to hold back tears, darn hormones.  While I do anticipate a lot of clinginess and some jealousy when the baby arrives (Arlo is a mamas boy through and through) I do know he will be an awesome big brother and really excited to help with the baby.   I try and not think about this too much because I get sad if I do, but as much as I am looking forward to meeting this new baby, I am sad that this is the end of my time as just Arlo's mama.  He has been my little buddy and sidekick for the last 2+ years, and thinking of not being able to give him all my attention and energy makes me feel like he will be missing out somehow.  But then I think "geez kid, you are the only one of our children who will ever have had any time as an only child with your parents, you have no idea how good you have had it!" and then I don't feel so bad!  I guess that just comes with the territory of being a second or third kid, and honestly they probably never know any difference.  

So, that's my update!  Life goals before my next pregnancy check-in: come up with a list of names (any names, we literally still have zero!), finish the laundry room or at least get the washer and dryer moved back in because holy smokes does laundry pile up fast around here, and come to the realization that we are fully stocked on cleaning products and I can stop my crazy-lady stockpiling action!

And lastly, a side by side of Erik and I.  Who do you think is further along?  ;D

kitchen reno, take three.

We are officially done working on our kitchen, and now I can finally share it with y'all!  I am really excited about how it turned out.  My last post was written about our first two kitchen renovation projects, you can read that here if you missed it: kitchen reno, take one and two.  This is the first time we have lived in a house while we did any major work on it, for the last two houses we always lived someplace else while the work was being done since they were both whole-house makeovers.  Being around for the renovation actually turned out to be way less of an issue than I originally thought it would be.  In some ways it was easier - we didn't have to leave to go work on another house and things had to stay pretty tidy for the most part since we couldn't really live and eat in a total construction zone for the six or so weeks it took to finish the project.  There were some days where I was cooking dinner in the "clean" half of the kitchen while Erik was putting up tile in another part!  While the last kitchen we did was pretty much my baby - I did all the cabinet refinishing, painting, electrical, and hardware installation myself, this time around Erik is responsible for almost all the hard work, and he did such a fantastic job.  I will take a little credit for some of the design and painting, but outside of that it was all him.  Here are some pictures, and more about how we did it (and in a really budget-friendly way!):

before:

after:

A little about how this project started...  When we first saw our current house, we immediately loved almost everything about it.  The layout is exactly what we wanted, the location is great, it has a nice fenced-in back yard for Lucy and the kids.  But I did have to look past a couple cosmetic things to get on board with buying it, knowing we would eventually change them out.  The thing I disliked most was the brown glass kitchen tile backsplash.  I don't know why I disliked it so much, I know some people really like that style, but I was just not a fan.  I contemplated trying to paint it as a temporary cover-up, but realized I would want to eventually replace it anyway so I held out until we were under contract on our old house and knew we would be able to comfortably afford starting on our planned house projects (as in, there was an end in sight to the double house payments we had been making for almost a year - blah!)  So this whole thing started out as simply replacing the backsplash, and totally snowballed into something much larger.  But, after six years of on and off house renovations, we should have known that was bound to happen!  That's just how we roll.  Anyhow, as the tile was being ripped out, we started talking about making a few other changes.  We have both always loved open shelving, and while it felt a bit scary to think about removing our existing cabinets (what if we actually hated having the exposed shelves?!) we decided to go for it and I am so happy we did.  Taking down one cabinet turned into taking out a total of four, and adding in floating wooden shelves in their place.  I love how much it opened up the kitchen and it is a much lighter and brighter space because of it.

We debated a bit about the tile, I have always wanted to do white subway but then worried it was getting too popular and that maybe I would get tired of it down the road.  But it's a pretty classic look and I have liked it for a long time so we went with it.  Initially we purchased all the tile and supplies from our local big box store but I then realized that I didn't like the boarder pieces you had to use with it, so we returned it and started looking for other options.  Since we were planning to tile up and around the window, I didn't want the distraction of a border all the way around that space, so we had to find tile available with finished edges so it could literally just "stop" where we wanted it to.  We ended up finding the prefect tile at a local tile shop.  The tile we went with not only had the edging options we were looking for, but was also a matte finish and a soft white color, as opposed to the glossy variety sold at the big box stores.  The downside was the cost, the stuff we went with was around three times as much as we originally planned on spending, but it was worth it to us knowing we would be looking at it for (hopefully) a lot of years to come. 

Did you notice anything missing in these pictures?  We got rid of our microwave!  Last September a coworker of mine and I got into a serious discussion about microwaves and it really got me thinking - why on earth am I comfortable with a machine in my house designed to radiate my food?!  We buy organic foods to avoid this very thing, and here I am radiating it after I bring it home.  Not that I microwaved everything, but I did use it often to quickly reheat leftovers.  So, that very day after talking to her, I came home and put a piece of tape over the door that said "no no no" to remind myself not to use it.  Ha!  It worked, we haven't used it since that day and quite honestly it has been incredibly easy to heat up our food in other ways.  Now I mostly use our toaster oven that I bought to replace the microwave, or the oven if it's a larger amount of stuff to reheat.  The space that used to hold the microwave is now open - we added in a light to keep that area bright and a shelf above for decorative items.  I am on the hunt for a large artificial plant to put up there but haven't found it yet.  If you know where to buy large, realistic-looking artificial plants please let me know!

Now let's talk about those glass doors.  That is another idea we came up with when we were talking about how to give the kitchen a brighter and more open feel.  We initially removed the doors with the intent to replace them with new ones.  Strangely enough, neither of our big box stores could specially order custom sized glass doors, so we turned to the internets.  Erik found a website that sold them for $150 a pop, which I thought was quite expensive, especially since we needed three doors.  When I realized they were that costly and didn't even come painted or with glass, I said no way Jose.  We started looking for other solutions, and Erik found what turned out to be the best solution possible.  We actually used the existing doors, cut a hole in the middle and (I almost don't want to tell you this part) added in plexiglass!  Erik found this tutorial and loosely followed it to make our doors.  A huge sheet of plexiglass was around $60 and he had to buy a routing tool to help cut the space for the glass to fit into, so the whole door project cost only around $100, maybe a bit more.  And Erik is happy because he got another tool out of the deal!  The tutorial promised that you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between real glass and plexiglass, and honestly, you can't!  The only way you can tell is by tapping on the glass, and really, how often do you do such a thing?  He added in some trim on the face of the door to hold the glass in place, filled in the seam, and put several coats of paint on top.  It was pretty easy and sooo much less expensive than buying new doors!!

We went back and forth on paint colors, it was probably the hardest decision of the whole project.  The kitchen opens up to the living room, which is painted a nice, neutral beige.  I tend to pick warmer colors but fell in love with the cooler grey/blues for the kitchen since they look so nice next to the white tile.  In the end, we picked a light grey with a hint of blue, but on the walls it definitely looks more blueish.  We love it though, and it looks fine next to the beige living room, which I was most concerned about. It is definitely a nice change from the formerly gold wall color!  The switch plates were something else that Erik and I went back and forth about, he wanted something decorative, I wanted something that would blend in with the tile.  As a compromise, I ordered white metal plates online.  When they arrived and I installed one, I noticed they were not the same color white as the tile so those were sent back.  The best solution ended up being the plain, inexpensive plastic plates.  They were just the right color white and blended in well with the tile.  We also replaced the switches and plugs - I tried to clean them but years of kitchen gunk had made them dingy, especially when next to the white tile.

In addition to new paint and a lighter colored backsplash, we also removed the gaudy 6" granite backsplash, added in some under-cabinet LED lights, and added a light above the stove, all which combined, made a drastic improvement in the brightness of the room.  We replaced the knobs with handles on the cabinet doors, and smaller profile knobs on the drawers.  We upgraded the light fixtures with the exception of the pot rack above the island which we both really like, and the light above the table which I am still shopping for, I am pretty sure we will replace it at some point.  And that is pretty much it!  I feel like we made a drastic change and this renovation cost far, far less than the last two kitchens.  I think because we didn't have to replace anything major - cabinets, counter top, or appliances.  The stuff we did buy was pretty inexpensive in terms of renovation materials.  I don't know the total cost of the project, but I can tell you it was surprisingly inexpensive.  And two of the cabinets we took out of the kitchen will soon be repurposed up in our laundry room, which will save us more on that project's costs.

The part of the kitchen pictured above is between the main part of the kitchen and living room.  We didn't do much here except remove the granite backsplash, paint, and change out the hardware, but we have tentative plans for a future phase two of this renovation.  Behind the wall on the other side of these cabinets, is the shower/tub of the full bathroom downstairs.  All of the bedrooms in our house are upstairs, and we don't ever see ourselves needing a shower or tub on the main level, so we are thinking of turning that full bath into a half bath, and using the shower space to put in a larger, walk-in pantry.  We do have a pantry, and I will not complain about it - it's the first pantry I have ever had and I love it!!  But we feel like we could add in some additional pantry space, plus a small bar/countertop/desk thingy and wine fridge inside it.  That's Erik's dream anyway!  This plan won't happen for a few years I'm sure, once baby #2 enters the picture all house projects will be put on hold for a while.

One other area that is kind of part of the kitchen, is an area we worked on last year shortly after we bought our house.  I found the idea on Pinterest, and we literally completed the whole thing in just one weekends time. There is a small entry space from the garage into the kitchen, where we took a blank wall and turned it into something of a permanent coat rack.  This was a quick and easy project that really made quite the difference in the small space, and also gave us a functional place to hang our coats and bags.  There is a large coat closet directly across from it, but we turned that into a "cat closet" for our spoiled kitty, with a cat door and ventilation fan for the litter box fumes.  I know, I know, he's a really lucky cat (you would think he would show more appreciation, but no.  None at all.)  Anyway, we have another coat closet by the front door for winter jackets and additional shoe storage, but our everyday things are kept by the garage for easy access.

And finally, a few random photos of the renovation as it was happening...

this evening started with "I wonder how hard it is for that tile to come out..." and ended with this!

close up of the brown glass tile, oversized granite backsplash, and gold walls.  hey, 1996 called and wants their kitchen back! 

who does this?!  fixing little things like this made a big difference.  we moved this outlet over a few inches while we had the drywall out, replaced the outlet itself, and freshened up the window trim and caulk.

in the main area of the kitchen it ended up being easier to just remove and replace the drywall, which wasn't our original plan but gave easy access to run the new electrical wires through the wall.

Arlo loved watching Erik work in the kitchen and learned all about different types of tools and materials!

first few rows of tile complete!

hanging the floating shelves was something we did a good bit of research on, and in the end decided to drill holes in the studs (actually having to add in a few extra studs where we wanted them), screw in these metal rods, and then slide on the shelves which also had holes drilled in them.  

unfinished shelves before they were stained and sealed

I mentioned in a previous post that we had plans to start working on our laundry room when my parents were here a few weekends ago, but we ended up using that entire weekend to work on the kitchen.  In the upcoming month we will (hopefully) start and finish the laundry room and I will share some pics of that when it's done.  Thanks for coming along on what turned out to be, a rather long tour of our updated kitchen!