Wednesday, February 24, 2010

More Crafts!

What happens when you don't feel good and you can't sleep and you need something to take you mind off of things? A baby project of course! 

So here's the latest and greatest! 
(like my chubby doll model?)
 
 
I've been looking everywhere for cute hats at a decent price but today I realized that I had some extra yarn and so I decided to try and make one. After looking around for patterns forever I finally found one that looked like it might turn out with the yarn that I had on hand. You can't really see the pattern very well but it's still cute. I think it might even be small enough. I was worried because I took an adult size pattern and revised it.

Put a pretty flower on it and Voila! I'm pretty happy about it. And the fact that it took only about an hour from start to finish. I love it when things turn out!

Week 29

It was fun to go see Julie this past week. I'm excited that we're both having girls! And despite the fact that we've both been sick I think this has been a much easier pregnancy emotionally for both of us! We're 11 days apart on our due dates! Hopefully our girls will have fun playing with each other!

Sunday, February 21, 2010

Day 4

So it's been 4 whole days and Craig has had total success with his potty training. He's been totally dry for three days and two nights. (last night his pull up was wet when he woke up. But I suspected it would be that way because he drank an entire glass full of juice before going to bed. But I figure that being dry at night is something that will take a while to be consistent with.)

But his success is amazing to me considering the long trip to provo that we had on friday night the whole day in the car and shopping on saturday and then the long trip home. I never thought potty training could be so fun. But it sure has worked out good. I'm now a total believer in waiting until they are ready because it sure is nice to be the supporter of his idea instead of trying to force him to do it.

This has been such an unexpected wonderful blessing. I LOVE IT.

Friday, February 19, 2010

Little things that I love

I love Craigs imagination. This was a few days ago. (way back when he wore diapers :) He came and laid down on the floor with his truck and announced that they were both stinky and needed a diaper change!

I love his twinkly smile!
 

I love how he carries Lightning around with him. It makes me smile.
 

I just love spending time with my little man. He's so much fun and so smart!
 

And I love that he just decided to be potty trained. Like just now, I asked him if his pants were dry. He said they were and then he trotted into the bathroom and I could here little noises but I wasn't sure what he was actually working on. Then a few minutes later I heard the toilet flush... Hmm So I went to investigate.

There he was sticking the potty tray back in the potty. He'd gone in, removed his pants, sat on the potty, peed, pulled the tray out emptied it in the big toilet, flushed the big potty and returned the tray to the chair ALL BY HIMSELF! (without making a mess!)

What could be better than that?! I'm so proud of him! I love that boy. And he's growing up on me. I hope that we are always as close as we are now.

Thursday, February 18, 2010

I'm just too big for diapers mom.

The adventure begins (and I might warn you it's a long post) Last night Craig came into the bathroom and started pulling his diaper off. When I asked him what he was up to he announced that he just needed to pee.

Oh! That's fabulous, surprising but fabulous. So I pulled out his little potty and let him sit on it. Sure enough he peed and pooped! Then when I was trying to decide whether to put a diaper back on him or if I should even try to attempt the whole potty training thing again I asked him what he would like. Again he surprised me.

"Mom, I'm just too big for diapers now. I need some big boy pants!"

I admit that not having two kids in diapers sounded mighty tempting but it was also in the evening and I wasn't exactly ready or full of energy and I didn't have a plan at all because I hadn't even been thinking about it. To me it seems like potty training at least needs a plan of action so in the case of an accident you know what to do instead of just trying different things and confusing the poor kid.

But he was insistent so I got him a pull up and we decided to see if he was serious or just a passing interest. I even told him that he was able to keep his pants dry like a big boy we could go to the store and get him something fun.

(he decided that this meant a Dinoco Blue Chick Hicks and kept talking about being dry so he could get him.)

I must admit he did not make it through the night dry (but honestly I didn't expect him to. That's a pretty tall order for a little guy that just started even thinking about the potty.) But when he came running into our bedroom this morning the first words out of his mouth were "Oh no! I'm just poopy! Oh no what about the Dinoco Blue Chick Hicks?"

I was impressed that he remembered and that he was still interested seemingly in the effort. We got him cleaned up and he proudly picked a pair of underwear with Lightning McQueen on them. (of course).

I was still willing to let him try it and I wanted it to be a good experience for him but today was a super busy super hectic day and I just didn't see potty training turning out very good with everything else. Not to mention the fact that we have a trip to Provo tomorrow and that seems like a hard one to tackle so early in the learning of this new skill too. But I also didn't want to crush his enthusiasm so we went for it.

So here's what happened today.

-We got up got ready (had several potty breaks very successfully)
-Got in the car with his underwear on. (must admit this was scary for me! What would I do with an accident in the car?)
-Drove across town to the midwife for my hour long prenatal appointment. (I love my prenatals by the way! SO much better than a cookie cutter Dr. office! Absolutely love it.)
-Stopped to get some food (that included a drink for Craig that also made me nervous)
-Went to the grocery store
-Back in the car to come home.

We made it home clean and dry and as soon as we got here he ran in and sat on his potty. Can I just say that I was totally shocked and very impressed with him at this point. I have no idea what spurred this but I keep expecting it to be over and of no interest any second but he just keeps going!

Then we had nap time (with a pull up on). He was barely damp when he woke up and I thought this was the breaking point because he looked so sad and said "I just need a diaper." But when I showed him the options for underwear and the possibility of a treat he immediately chose the "big boy pants"

-Then we had a hectic afternoon preparing for the pinewood derby tonight,
-Car ride to the church at 5:30 to start setting up.
-Lots of distractions and people and CARS to keep him interested. (I was worried he'd get too engrossed and not care about his pants being dry anymore.)
-Another car ride to several locations picking up last minute supplies time in the car totaling about 40 min.
-Quick stop at home and then as we were pulling out of the driveway he said very urgently "I need to potty!" so we quickly pulled him from his seat and made it the potty safe and dry.
-Then two and a half hours of pinewood derby where daddy was running the show and trying to control the chaos, I was supposed to be taking pictures and helping with awards and refreshments and crowd control (all the while the noise level was giving me a headache and I felt very faint. I just about took the keys from K.C. and left like 5 times.) and there were so many kids running around and going wild and Craig was worried about "loosing mommy and daddy" and sad that he couldn't have the cars to play with and K.C. and I were both being pulled from this to that by everyone needing something just thing after thing after thing I felt so bad for Craig. I didn't want his only accident to be because I was too busy or distracted to help him. It was a very hard night for me but he did so good he even came up during the award ceremony (where I was taking pictures of each boy and their car as they received their awards) and started tugging on me saying "mommy I need to pee!" So I handed the camera off and ran out of the room with him. (Great timing Craig! But at the same time way to get my attention and not just hide in a corner somewhere because there was so much going on! I was proud of him again.)

-One more car ride home, some dinner, one last time on the potty and he's in bed.

I can't believe that he stayed clean and dry ALL DAY! Even with pooping he always told me and made it to the toilet. I'm so proud of my little guy. With everything going on he had a very successful day. And because he did so good he did get the car he wanted. call me a softy but I didn't want his heart to get broke right from the get go. I hope we have as good success tomorrow especially with our long trip. But so far so good.

I'm exhausted from having to be so enthusiastic about every potty trip and trying to stay very aware and available to help him amidst everything else and trying to get everything done but still be patient and encouraging when he wanted to sit on the toilet for what seemed to be hours, but we did it. One day down, many to go.

If you have any good tips for traveling please do let me know!

For my own record keeping craig is 29 months old (2yrs 5mo.)

The Work Bench

We decided to do something that we've been meaning to do since we moved in. Pain the garage. I wish I would have taken a picture before we got it all emptied out but since I didn't here's a picture of what it looked like before we started working on it but after we got our stuff out. you can't really see how dirty and gross the walls are or all of the holes. Trust me it didn't look this good in real life.

We had grand and glorious plans of organizing everything and putting in shelving and all sorts of wonderful things. But reality set it when we started looking at the actual numbers so we settled for painting it and putting in a little bench for tools.
K.C. has some tools and has never had a good place to put them or way to deal with them so that was our focus, a work bench.
So it went from this:


To this:

To this:
(doesn't it look so much better with those hidious shelves gone and nice white walls? Not to mention a pretty darn cool work bench!)

Then the fun part came:

Voila! Our one corner of organization and happiness!

Just don't turn around because here's the rest of the stuff we have to figure out what to do with!
(sigh)
But we do have nice white walls and one really nice corner AND we hung our bikes. Small victories. Small victories!

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Baby Hair Bow Frame


Here's my latest invention. I found some scraps of material and ribbon and decided to make a hair bow frame! I love it. Of course I had to make a few bows to go on it too! I can't wait till my little girl gets here so I can use them!

Now I need a cute idea for a head band organizer or a beanie hat organizer... Hmm, if any of you have any ideas please send them my way!

Monday, February 15, 2010

Week 28

 

  

Craig loves his baby sister. This is one of his famous hugs!
He will often give her a hug like this and say "I just love you so much!"

At night he'll show her how to fold her arms and he'll usually sing her a song too. Like Twinkle twinkle little star, or the ABC's. It's pretty cute. I can't wait till he can meet her and hold her and sing to her for reals!


Stats

Cough: increased in intesity the last week or 2 but I'm taking some stuff that I hope is helping it to break up and get kicked out for good. So I'm hoping the temporary 'bad time' means it's about to get better and be totally gone! I sure hope that's what it means.

Sciatic: Not quite as bad as it was. Unless I do a lot of bending over in a day it is OK. But if I over do it then I can hardly walk. Maybe I'm just more used to it now but it doesn't seem to be as bad as it once was. It's mostly settled into my left side at this point and mostly when I'm trying to sit or go to sleep.

Stuffy nose: one step down from that terrible sinus pressure that it once was it's now just bad enough that when I lay down I am completely stuffed. NO breathing except through the mouth. But last night it seemed to get a little better so I'm hopeful that will improve too. But it's been actually running and requiring me to carry tissues with me everywhere for about 2 weeks. And it's caused a terrible red sore under my nose. The kind where it starts out as about 15 little tiny blisters and then just gets worse and worse till it scabs and then starts to slowly heal. People look at me really funny so I hope it hurries up and gets better quick!

Swelling: Not noticing that much. Maybe I'm swelling and I just don't know it but so far so good. I hope I can keep it that way.

Contractions: I seem to be having contractions off and on. My stomach will get tight for a bout 10-15 seconds and while it's tight I get all light headed. Really weird. Maybe they're not contractions but it's the only thing I can think of. It's really annoying to feel like I'm gonna pass out though.

Light headed: I get light headed a lot lately. But it goes away pretty quickly if I just hold still. I'm not sure why that's been happening.

All in all. I'm surviving and things are better than they have been at times in the past. I hope this current dip into feeling worse is the beginning of the end of this ridiculous sickness. If I was just pregnant I think I would feel great, it's all these cold symptoms that are killing me the worst.

I'm so stir crazy! I feel like I've got cabin fever big time because I cough I've been avoiding people so that I don't get anyone else feeling sick (but how contageous can a 5 month long cough be?) I don't know but I not knowing I'm trying to keep my distance. That long of trying to keep to yourself is way too long to be fun anymore. I just want to DO something with someone! But then there's all those stupid cold sympoms making me think I should wait, so I continue to be a hermit.

We have a prenatal this Thursday. I hope that everything goes well and we find that everything is as it should be.

Happy Valentines Day!

There have been many funny memorable things happen today, most of which weren't exactly what I had planned:

 
K.C. gave me these beautiful roses! It never fails to make me happy!

I was going to get up and make breakfast in bed for K.C....Well because of the fact that we painted our garage yesterday and finished around midnight and then had to move all our stuff back INTO the garage so it wasn't out on the driveway, we didn't get to bed till late and true to form I didn't fall asleep till after 4am. At around 4:15 Craig came and crawled into bed with us and basically kept me awake the rest of the night. K.C. is super fast at turning off the alarm before it has a chance to disturb us (haha!) so we ended up waking up at 8:30 and church started at 9. We were out of the door all dressed and ready by 9:02. So we were a little late, very tired but happy to be feeling good enough to be at church. And that's how breakfast ended up being reduced to toast and peaches.

Yesterday while we were working on the garage every time K.C. would run to Home Depot for something I'd run inside and work on the little surprises that I had planned for him. I was planning on having an amazing Chocolate Raspberry Truffle Pie to surprise him with after church but it needed to 'set up' for several hours so I decided to do it last night. Brilliant.

I was successfully able to get the pie made and into a safe hiding spot in the fridge last night. It was going to be perfect.

We got home from church, had lunch:
 

I gave him some "love pills" (Reeses M&M) in a home made pill bottle.
  
And then after That I pulled out the pie!
 
Not the prettiest thing you've ever seen, but I couldn't wait to taste it!

He grabbed a kitchen knife and started to cut it, and cut it some more and saw on it a little and finally he got up and got a serrated steak knife!

What kind of a pie requires a steak knife to cut?!?!

After much effort we finally got it broke apart. I guess the chocolate layer in the bottom turned into a candy bar type chocolate and after being refrigerated for many hours was quite solid!


It's so rich (and hard to break pieces off of :) that you can only handle a little of it at a time. But it sure is yummy! And it makes me smile every time I think about it... A steak knife?

We had a delightful 3 hour nap! Then we went out to mom and dads and had a grand time laughing and talking about lots of things. It was a very good, Valentines Day even if nothing went as planned.

Thursday, February 11, 2010

I love making things!

Over the last month I have been a busy bee. I haven't felt very good so I've tried to come up with things to keep my self busy and keep my mind off of things. Here's what I've done:

I crocheted this baby blanket:

 
  
I tried this new edge that I really like. I had to make up how to go around the corners, but I think it turned out pretty good.

Booties
When I was in AZ they had a craft / project day and everyone had something to work on but me. So we found some yarn and I crocheted these without a pattern....
(Not perfect I know but for making them up and never having done anything like it before, or even seen it done, I like them.) I think I'm still going to add a strap though... we'll see.
 

I didn't make this next one but it's part of my "organizational spurt"

Bobby Pin Tin
I have bobby pins in my hair all the time, and I usually forget to take them out till I'm already in bed. So the natural solution is to take them out and drop them on the floor to be picked up 'later.' (right). But even if I were to pick them up I have no good place to put them so they end up in random piles around the bathroom or just lost.

Problem solved with the Bobby Pin Tin!

I have one by my bed, and one in the bathroom. AND if I'm running late and need to do some getting ready in the car, they are ultra transportable and have LIDS so they won't spill in the car! Love it. It makes me happy every time I take out a bobby pin now.

We even hung the picture that we got back in May when we were on our cruise!
I love K.C. so much. It's fun to have little reminders around to see every day.

  

Hair Bow Organization! 
I was tired of these bows laying around and getting lost or crumpled... But I didn't have a lot of time or money to come up with a really creative solution so I hung some ribbon on the wall. I have plans for improvements, but for now, SO much better! Now I just need to add more bows...
  

I finally got planner refills. I feel like I can have order in my life now. I didn't realize how much I write things down, until I had nowhere to write them.
  

Art
I'm finally drawing Craig! I always forget how much I love drawing till I start doing it again. I've never done one for my self though so I hope that I'm not too critical of it and that it turns out.
  

Baby Quilt
And last (for this post :) a baby quilt. I was able to get the material with some birthday money that I had and so I once again made up what to do. I ended up borrowing a sewing machine (thanks shannon) because my is a suffering from being dropped. and quilted it on a machine. Very beginner work here but all I have to do is finish the hem and it's done!
 

I'm not sure why but I've had the funnest time lately FINISHING projects and getting organized. Not just getting organized but staying organized. I love the fresh clean, free feeling of looking around my clean house and being free to think of something fun to do or make rather than be depressed with all of the little house keeping things that I'm NOT doing.

I think that having parts of the house so clean is what is motivating me to scheme and dream up organizational things for the rest of the house. So every chance I get to do or make something that will simplify a mess... I love it.

Like I said I don't know how long it will last but I've been trying so hard and not letting things stay messy and picking things up right away... I hope it lasts, but I'm not going to get stressed out about it, I'm just going to have fun with it (I'm even enjoying the cleaning because everything has, or is beginging to get, a place!)

Well I have another project that I started today. I need to find some ribbon and then I'll finish it and post pictures. I have a whole list (in my nifty planner :) of ideas and projects to work on so I'm sure there will be more to come.

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Clean

We cleaned our house quite thouroughly before leaving to go up north last weekend for a cub event. It was amazing, all the dishes were not only done but OUT of the dishwasher! All the floors were vacuumed, the bathrooms done, the mirrors cleaned, the laundry done, no clutter in any of the main rooms (o.k. so the office is a hard one :) we rearranged Craig's room and found spots for all of his toys that HE can clean up now, and much more... any of these things would have been kind of a major accomplishment with how I've been feeling lately but to have then ALL done was amazing! and all at the same time!

(We even took the Christmas tree down :)

It was so fun to come home Saturday night to such order! And I am so happy to report that it has been 3 whole days and it is STILL CLEAN! This is rare and wonderful, and I'm enjoying every second of it! I couldn't do it without K.C. he's been wonderful and it's been fun to see how much fun Craig has putting everything in his room away in the RIGHT spot (and he'll definitely let you know if you've put it somewhere it doesn't belong.)

I hope I can keep this up but for now, I'm just really enjoying it!

Thursday, February 4, 2010

What to do...

I was thinking about our stroller and car seat and thinking it really would be fun to have one that was more cute and girly but that there's no reason we need NEW ones when ours is in great shape and practically new. So I started investigating options and I found that you can order replacement covers for your car seat and stroller!

Brilliant I say. Don't have one more big thing taking up space but get a fresh new look.


Problem: The replacements only cost about 50.00 less then a brand spanking new travel system. So who ever the brilliant person was who decided to make them available didn't really go to any great lengths to make them affordable.

Dilema: No we don't need 2 strollers but with our current vehicle situation and the necessity of me getting rides all the time from different people having 2 car seats is a HUGE life saver! because then I'm not always stuck at home because I FORGOT to take it out of the car before K.C. left. and the 50.00 dollars we would be saving by ordering just the pads wouldn't be enough to get us a nice rear facing car seat so if we ended up buying one of those too we wouldn't have saved a thing!

I don't really know what I'm worried about though just because I found the option doesn't necessarily mean that we would be able to do something like that right now. So mostly I'm just bummed out about it because it's not the steal of a deal I was hoping for. It could have been amazing though.

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

What an imagination

I love the things Craig comes up with. Today he went and got one of his felt dinosaurs and carefully laid it on the floor in front of him, then he got a butter knife from the kitchen and crouched in front of the dinosaur.

"This is a fish, and I am Uncle Nate. I'm just cutting this fish." A pause and then "Come here Kale I'll show you how to cut a fish because I am Uncle Nate!"

Love it!

Monday, February 1, 2010

Art Display

 

I got to go to the mall on Saturday and display some of my art. It was fun because I got to work on the portrait of Craig that I'm doing. And I had some great entertainment because there were 2 freeze models that were pretending to be manikins. They were hilarious and so many people had great reactions as they tried to discretely (or not so discretely) find out if they were real or not. I spent most of the afternoon laughing.

Thank you to everyone who took the time to come and say hi to me. It's not like it was a big event or anything but it made me feel so good that people I knew would take the effort to stop and see me anyways. So thank you.


week 25


 
  

So in all honesty this is like 25 1/2 weeks and tomorrow I'll be 26 weeks so I'm pretty sure there's not going to be a lot of difference between these and the next. But I guess you never know.