Useless miscellany...

I have now been 27 years old for 50 hours and 32 minutes. Strangely enough, I do not feel any older.

As of today I am 30 weeks pregnant. I feel about 3 years pregnant. I've also hit that point (some call it nesting, I call it ARRRRRGHHHHHHHH!!!!) where I am panicking about all the things left to do before the baby comes.

I spent Sunday (my birthday, no less) making my husband help me empty our stuffed bedroom closet of all the clothes that we do not wear. A large box and two lawn and leaf size bags later, we have an empty closet. Why? Because I had the brilliant idea that our closet is the perfect place for the new baby.

Before you start calling CPS on me, let me explain our closet situation. Our closet is about 6 feet wide. It used to have these horrible floor-to-ceiling bi-fold METAL doors on it. When we moved in with a curious 3 year old, those fab things were quickly removed. Actually, all the closet doors in our house were removed. Cuts down on pinched fingers as well as hiding monsters. SO, now we have a 6ft space in the wall with a bar for hanging clothes on with a shelf above. This space is across from a 3 ft wide vanity counter with a mirror (anyone who knows me knows how much time I don't spend in front of a mirror). There is also a door next to the closet that accesses our upstairs bathroom.

If we (WE being my husband of course), block off that door it makes a space approx. 6'x6' with the 3'x2' vanity as a "changing area." That's what, 42 square feet of space? I think that is more than enough room for a baby and all her stuff.

What about mine and the husband's clothes you ask? What is left after the purge fits in a small 3 drawer cart and the closet on the other side of our bedroom that is a third of the size of the "baby" closet. It's amazing what you can get rid of when you try. I am down to 6 pairs of shoes. That's right, 6. Some of you may remember a time when I had nearly 60+ pairs. Gone are those days... sigh.

Going hand in hand with my "oh holy crap, we have so much to get ready!" panic are also my "we only have 10 weeks to go and we have nothing for this baby yet!" panic, and my "this baby is yet another opportunity to make my mother in law hate me" panic. If you aren't familiar with these, I'll explain.

1. "Oh holy crap, we have so much to get ready!" This covers the above mentioned need for space for the baby and her stuff. Also, the need to have things cleaned up and organized so when people drop in to see her I'm not running around saying things like "don't mind the underwear on the floor" and "pay no attention to the dirty dishes shoved under the couch." Also in this category is my need to have MY stuff ready for the hospital, labor and delivery. My labor was induced with Munchkin- so I knew I was going to be having the baby when I went- yet I took NOTHING with me. My mother spent hours running around finding clothes for me and Munchkin, the various feminine supplies I needed post-delivery, and the little things like his carseat that I left at home. Also I need to make a list of things that I expect to happen (or not happen) at the hospital. That way there will be no arguments with pushy nurses about how I want things to be. I got in a very heated disagreement with at least one nurse during my last delivery.
2. "We only have 10 weeks to go and we have nothing for this baby yet!" Seriously, not a thing other than a few outfits I bought with a giftcard I got at Christmas time. No bed, no carseat, no diapers, no blankets... See why I'm panicked?
3. "This baby is yet another opportunity to make my mother-in-law hate me." This is not so much a panic as it is a given fact. The woman hates me. Before you start thinking she's some horrible evil woman, let me assure you she isn't. She's very a very quiet, polite, nice woman. However, she greatly dislikes me and thinks I am mean to her son. He will deny that she dislikes me, but he's already told her to keep any negative opinion she might have of me to herself. So how likely is it that she'd make it apparent to him that she doesn't like me? Exactly. Besides the "mean to her son" bit, I have also declared my forthcoming daughter's world to be a "pink-free" zone. Thus angering the extremely girly mother-in-law even more. "You can't have a girl without having pink" was met with an emphatic "Oh yes, I most certainly can and will."
   

Panics aside, I am putting the finishing touches on the spreadsheet (yes, I can be a hyper-organized geek when I want) I created to keep track of TR's work expenses from last year. We're waiting on one paper to come so that we can file our taxes. Woohoo! Yea refund!!!

Okay, enough rambling for now. My brain is tired and my socks are wet from making the fatal mistake of walking through the bathroom after Munchkin's afternoon bath adventure. Puddles... blah.

Snow day!

No school for Munchkin today. He wasn't thrilled because he wouldn't "learn anything" today, but I was okay with going back to bed and sleeping in a little. He was happy to go out and play in the snow though, so I guess it wasn't a completely "wasted" day.

Today...

would have been my mom's 47th birthday. If you knew her, you know she'd have been less than thrilled about being that close to 50. I just wish she was here so I could pick on her for being so "old."

If she touched your life in any way, spend a moment today and think of a happy memory of her.

Catching up after the break... part 2

So the week after the "Week of doctors" was Munchkin's last week of school before Christmas break. I had a "slight" disagreement with his teacher over the way to handle a discipline issue. Seriously, every time I have to deal with the school I renew my interest in homeschooling.

All ended up okay and we finished the week with a class party. Nothing like 25 5-6 year olds hopped up on sugar and running around with glitter glue to brighten your holiday season. Ugh.

Munchkin made gifts for everyone this year. My carpet has yet to recover from the glitter.

TR and I completed all of our shopping in just one weekend! And it was still two weeks before Christmas. With a combined total of 9 siblings and both of us with step-families, holiday shopping is the biggest PITA you can imagine.

Our house got cleaned from top to... well, almost bottom. The basement is still a mess, but we'll get there eventually. With not feeling good (being pregnant will do that to you) and having a sick little guy, our house hadn't been cleaned in months. Yes, the dishes got done and the occasional necessary load of laundry, but actual cleaning? No. My dust bunnies had multiplied like... well, bunnies. Everything is clean and pretty again. Hopefully we can maintain that until we move. Move? Yeah, this summer. More about that another time.

Our tree (last year for a live one- no one needs a baby eating pine needles) was huge and decorated in its usual theme of blue, white, silver, and cartoon characters. Okay, so it's not your traditional tree, but we like it.

Christmas was okay. If I ever take them off my camera, I'll post some pictures. We all got things that we wanted (and will use), so that was good.

Munchkin spent New Year's weekend with his Nana (Glenda- my soon to be ex-stepmother, but that is an entirely different story) and TR and I stayed home and did nothing. It was relaxing. We watched the ball drop on tv and went to bed at 12:15. Maybe that makes us old, but it was nice not to have to do anything but relax after the hectic month we had.

So that brings us to the present. Hopefully I can keep up with things around here.

A less than brief hiatus...

There were so many things I meant to blog about but life sorta got in the way. It's been a whole month...

I'm not going to catch up in one post. I don't have the patience for that- or the dedication. I will start out my return by wishing everyone a Happy New Year and I hope you all had a good holiday season!

I'm also gonna share the reason that started my little mini-break:

My Munchkin got very sick back in December. It started out with a trip to Urgent Care on a Sunday and quickly worsened into an overnight hospital stay by Tuesday. We went home Wednesday evening only to be back in the emergency room Thursday morning.


The Reader's Digest version is that he caught a virus (they thought at first it was pneumonia) that aggravated his asthma horribly. The asthma set off a coughing fit that lasted 16+ hours and had him unable to talk and gasping for air. After being on oxygen all night, 25+ breathing treatments, and two rounds of steroids he was feeling much better by the following Sunday. He missed an entire week of school.

Needless to say, I got very little sleep and was not home much that week. Obviously blogging was not on mind. By the time we got that cleared up, it was onto other things that took up all my time and energy.


This photo still breaks my heart, even though I know things are much better now.