Waiting…

I am sitting here waiting for the delivery of our new dishwasher. (The old one finally died.)

I can’t remember the last time I had the time to just…. sit. It feels weird.

On the family front — we’ve endured this year’s flu thing for three weeks before everyone was well again. I’m still lingering.  Paul’s been really busy with his music. I’ve been really busy with fundraising. My committee life is rearranging too — I’m fading out as secretary on two committees and coming in as co-chair on another.  Julia turned four and is really busy with her friends, her playing, her artwork, and we’ve been shopping preschools for fall. She liked them both so much she wanted to stay right there and then.  I have to make arrangements for her shots and so on.

On the health and fitness front,  I have not been taking my Glucophage full strength and I’m feeling better. I was getting wiggy. I don’t know if maybe I’ve improved to where I don’t need it so strong? But I don’t have an actually appointment til April… so a drag to wait. Call it an unofficial adjustment of my meds then.

I’m down a few pounds though I’ve had to miss gym some while getting through the sick wave in my house. I plan to go tonight alone since I’m missing this morning to let the dishwasher in.

I’m wrapping up a nutrition study class that has been interesting but I’m not sure that I’d take again in this format.

On the growing front… I took a spring garden class as a refresher, I’m reading an organic lawn care book, and the tiny church garden I planted with the kids is sprouting:

The house garden has to get another bed planted over the weekend if I can get Paul to give me a hand. I gaev away a bunch of seedlings because I had too many and I still have a lot so I need that bed to put them in. Julia and I planted tomato, onion, sugar snaps peas, and eggplant already.   I want to get the rest out.

The strawberries started giving us fruit and she’s having a good time finding them. Here was the first of the season:

pictures and lists

I added a post on my family site with a new belly photo.

<><>I made a list today of things I need to get done before the baby arrives.  These are specifically baby related things and not the (more stressful) work things that need to happen before the I leave for maternity leave.

Stuff that needs to be done before the baby arrives:

1) Clean the baby carseat, install the car seat bases in the CRV and my mom’s car.  (The car seat is all sticky for some reason.)

2) Clean the stroller and put the stroller in our car and the small stroller in mom’s car.

3) Buy an outfit to bring her home from the hospital.  (the girl needs at least one new thing)

4) Pack a bag for me and the baby.

5) Put some groovin music on my mp3 player to listen to in the hospital.  Buy some new books for the hospital stay.

6) Set up the pack and play in our bedroom, clean it and find the sheets.

7) Buy a few essentials we don’t have, like butt paste, baby lotion, and a sleep positioner.

Buy a new diaper bag.  I want a sleeker one than we had from last time.

9) Buy a gift for the baby to bring home to Iz (something our neighbor told us about.)

10) DECIDE ON A NAME! (Maybe that should be #1!)

Stuff that can wait till after the baby comes, but who wants to put stuff off?

1) Clean the baby toys that we got from Iz’s toy box and put in a basket in the baby’s room (I want Iz to start thinking of them as the baby’s toys, not her toys.)

2) Figure out if we want a swing and find the one we want.  There is a big baby consignment store thing in March and I was hoping to find a swing then.

3) Buy some collage picture frames and make one for the baby’s room and for Iz’s room of family members and baby pictures.

4) Make some art for the baby’s room, the walls are looking really bare now.
Woo, I am tired already.  I think I will go out tonight and get the basket and supplies and look for a new diaper bag.  Shopping is always the first thing to tackle on a list, right?

trying to Re-Lax

Oh my, what a couple of weeks.

When I last updated, I talked about finding radon in the basement and the contractor never showed.  Well, he did show up the following morning and after installing a new fan that we hope will solve the radon problem, he did an “energy audit”.  He went around taking measurements and finding areas that were leaking air.  He was in the basement for quite a while and I was getting ready to walk out the door to work when he came back in and said that we had a “major problem”, never a good thing to hear when getting ready to leave town for the week.  Using his infrared camera, he found a water leak behind one of our walls.  It was a fairly serious leak and had apparently been going on for a few days and was just getting ready to seep into the carpet where we would have noticed it if we had been here.  I made an emergency call to the plumber and waited for him to arrive which made me late for a meeting at work.  I skipped the meeting (I got to work about 15 minutes before it was done) and got in trouble for that.  Oh well.  Hopefully we got the radon fixed and the water line fixed in the same day.

Mike and I headed out for a weekend in Gatlinburg to celebrate our 12th anniversary (since our first date).  We had a great time.  The cabin we rented was amazing and had a media room with a 72 inch screen and theater chairs.  It  was by far the nicest cabin we had ever stayed in.  I was feeling a little sick when we left, but otherwise the weekend was perfect.

We left the cabin on Monday and drove back home for a couple of hours before I had to fly to San Diego for a week of work.  The flight out was beyond awful, I arrived very late, then had problems operating the rental car requiring me to call roadside assistance around midnight and sitting outside for 20 minutes while someone talked me through it.  Work was very productive and i was happy to be there, but my sugars ran high the whole week (I think because I was eating a few hours later than my normal times).  I flew back home on Saturday, happy to be here for the duration of the pregnancy.

On Sunday I just laid around and felt like crap.

Today was my doctor’s appt.  The one where I was going to confront her with the VBAC vs C-section discussion.  Here is the problem: I have talked to all my girlfriends including a nurse that works at the hospital in labor and delivery and tried to get a recommendation for a new doctor.  The nurse was the most helpful, she said I should try to a stand alone older male doc (she gave me a couple of names) for 2 reasons.  1) A doctor in a big practice would be hesitant to take me away from my doctor and 2) no local doctor was going to be pro-vbac, the best I could hope for was a person who was practicing in the late 90s when vbacs were more common and not too scared to give it a try.  So having this depressing  information under my belt. I didn’t want to be too aggressive with my doc because I really don’t want to change to a stand alone doc.  I went into the doctors office prepared for a nice calm discussion and everything went wrong.

As it turns out I am severely anemic and getting worse.  I mentioned that I was really tired and they tested for anemia and it had dropped several points since my last test even though I have been religious about taking the iron supplements.  She also felt my sugars were too high last week and I should go on insulin.  I asked her to one more week and she said I had to fax my numbers into them on Friday and if they were ok, we would put the insulin off.  If not, they would start it next week.

Ugh.  So no big c-section talk today.  I am just feeling very defeated by this pregnancy.  The good news is that I have only gained 20 lbs (compared to ~45 at this stage with Iz) and I am measuring right on target for the date (33 weeks).

When I got back to work, I got in trouble for missing the meeting 2 weeks ago and then had a confrontation about some stuff in a committee I am on.  I so can not deal with this right now.  I just need to bow out of the committee and reduce my stress levels.  I keep thinking Re-Lax, Re-Lax.  Any good tips on avoiding stress that involve no exercise or sugar would be most welcome.

And that has been my week.  How was yours?

radon and nesting

ARGH!  When we bought our house 2 years ago, we knew there had been a radon problem and there was a radon mitigation system in place.  The system consists of two pvc pipes that go into/under the foundation and pump the radon gas into the attic/out of the house.  We have this gauge thing in our garage that looks like a thermometer and from what I can see, it reads “0″ so I assumed all was well in the radon world.   However, Mike has been wanting to test the basement for some time and finally got around to it.  We got the results yesterday and came back with radon levels of 11 (the maximum allowed number is 4) and we both summarily freaked out.  I started calling radon mitigation services that morning and all the numbers seemed to go to someone’s house (never a good feeling).  I finally got someone on the phone and his first question was “do you hear the fan running?”  Umm, there is a fan?  No, we don’t hear a fan running.  Well, he says, fan has probably gone out.  I will come by in the morning and take a look.  I will call before I come.

So this morning found me anxiously waiting the radon guy.  8:00 came and went, then 8:30.  I called around 8:45 and got his voice mail to ask if he had a time in mind that he would arrive.  He called back at 9:30 saying he couldn’t come out today, how about Friday.  Since we are all going out of town and want to get this fixed asap, Friday doesn’t work for us.  he said he had another job tomorrow that he could push to Friday and would come by tomorrow at 9.

<>I hate dealing with contractors.  If your radon  person cancels on you tomorrow, I apologize.

<>Since it was already 9:30 and I was meeting Mike for lunch at 11, I decided to clean the house (lets just call it nesting) instead of go to work before lunch.  I cleaned our kitchen bar area which always gets junked up with everything imaginable and takes forever to sort and put things away.  Then I cleaned our bedroom which was where all the excess stuff from the former storage room – now nursery was “temporarily” placed (3 months ago).  The bedroom looks loads better.  I guess we will set up the pack and play in there for the first couple of months of baby life.

The nursery is really coming together too, I need to take some pictures.  I bought a white bookcase yesteday to put by the rocking chair and hold books, little toys, and my iced tea while I nurse.  We still need to get some baskets or bins for additional storage on the closet shelves and bookcase and some artwork supplies (we are making our own artwork for the baby’s room!).

<>Speaking of the nursery, I went with a barnyard theme (you know, horses, cows, sheep, ducks) because it was nice colors and gender neutral and I thought it would be easy to find barnyard stuff anywhere.  (I hate being held hostage by the big baby store.)  WRONG.  Everywhere I look there are all zoo animals and bugs and butterflies, but no barnyard which is why we are making our own artwork.

<>I am off on Friday for a romantic weekend (!!!) and then off to CA for a week of work.  Will try to check in sometime.

Updates…

Julia turned four this week and we celebrated with friends and family yesterday with a backyard party. It went well — we did about the same as last year with food, activities, guest list, etc.

My abs are sore from Friday’s workout — it was really good abs/shoulders day. Small problem with a hip flexor acting up. Julia has a cough this morning so I may end up having to go to gym on my own at an ungodly early hour so she and Paul can just carry on sleeping. (Sick kids aren’t allowed in gym daycare.)

Today I want to do some work on my garden… we plant soon.

10 weeks to go

Are you feeling better Cat?

We spent our weekend setting up the nursery!  It was great fun.  We painted the walls yellow 2 weekends ago and got the carpets cleaned last week.  This weekend we moved the furniture in, set up the crib, and unpacked and washed all the clothes from my 0-3 month bin.  We have ALOT of little clothes, about 25 onesies (some plain, some highly decorated).  Some of them to tiny and small it is impossible to believe that Iz ever wore them or that this baby will ever wear them.

Even with our overabundance of clothes and all things baby, I can’t stop looking at the baby section of whatever store we walk into.  I want to buy the baby at least one outfit that will be just for her.  It is hard to know what the temperature will be like, though, when the baby comes since she is due at the cusp of spring.  I will try to wait till slightly closer to the due date.

The gestational diabetes diet continues.  I am getting the hang of it and even though I HATE it, esp. breakfast, I am managing and my blood sugar seems to be ok.  I thought I would test it a little since I still don’t really believe I havee it and ate a little worse yesterday (we went out to lunch with friends), but sure enough, my blood sugar was high after lunch.  I guess I do have it. I can’t tell you how much I miss my cereal and juice for breakfast.  I have been having toast with cheese or eggs instead with a big cup of ice cold water.  Sounds like a prison breakfast, no?

Otherwise, everything is groovy.  I hope these next 10 weeks pass quickly, I can’t wait to hold a little baby in my arms again.

Updates

Some updates from my corner of the world?

1) We had friends over tonight to celebrate Paul’s bday in a low-key way. Pizza for dinner, sundaes, and the kids fooling around while we chatted. I really enjoyed it. I think Paul did too. I’m trying to include more friends on our holiday season to help bring more balance into it.

2) I’m -1 lb. And that’s after Thanksgiving, people. I’m rockin’ this holiday season! (I usually aim to maintain and end up adding 10 lbs with the holiday hoo has. To actually be maintaining is exciting!) Though I keep forgetting things. Water, iPod sleeve, heart rate monitor… every day at gym I find I left something at home. But I’m going. Typically gym visits fly out the window during holiday because things get wacky.

3) I put the raised beds in… mostly. I have to do some work levelling and getting in the last one before I go back to digging paths. I also found my friend Carla can donate cinderblocks, so we can put a new one in at church for the kiddies. So… pix of that one to come later.

4) Holidays.

Usually the not knowing drives me up the wall. I want to know what the game plan is as early as possible because there are other things I want to do too. Because I want to know, I end up being the organizer a lot of the time and the stress is sometimes like trying to herd cats.

Paul and I would argue about this. He thinks I do too much and take on extra stress. I ask him when he’s going to take some on to alleviate the stress then? Because til this year I had 3 people on my side. Now with Karen getting married, I’ve bumped up to 4. It is him with the other 33 people on his side! And it’s been me organizing the holiday calendar, the shopping, the mailing, the cooking, the cleaning, etc. for 10 years at least.

Since Julia was born he tries to take on more. It’s a big help.

This year I’ve been actively trying to get more sunlight, not miss workouts, and be more go with the flow. I don’t organize anyone but me. He’s been trying to get firm answers about gatherings from his family and as he endures the waffling back and forth he understands more of why I get grumpy.

Thanksgiving for us has evolved into my bringing my parents to my MILs and having a group thing. Except for last year. My mother reserved Thanksgiving in APRIL because my sister was announcing her enagement and bringing boyfriend to meet the family.

Christmas has been an ongoing problem since the baby was born. (It wasn’t great as an adult couple either with the lack of organization, but we sucked it up, figuring as an adult couple, we were able to take more travel foo foo than the ones with kids could so we’d work around the ones with kids and their needs.)

Now we have a sidekick too.

I happen to think kids shouldn’t be dragged all over, and I think that she’s best off at home. I spent all my childhood Christmases going to midnight mass and then opening presents at home and then lazing around Christmas day. We went around delivering presents before hand, and then the big family hoo ha was for my Uncle’s birthday because it fell on New Year’s Eve. The adults chipped in for food and had it semi-catered, stayed up playing mah-jong all night, and the kids played with their presents from Christmas that they would bring to show the other cousins. Then we’d have firecrackers in the street and go home.

Paul spent all his childhood ones at home also. So you’d think he’d be fine spending them at home now so Julia can have her childhood holidays at home. esp. since Christams is bookended by Thanksgiving and her birthday so it isn’t like we aren’t getting together in groups as it is.
He wants to be home, but he isn’t ready to act on it to make it happen.

I told him I was tired of arguing and I was going to start alternating. We had agreed to alternate when she was born, and last year was her 3rd Christmas already! So I told the grandparents and mine said they’d come see us then and my MIL started the phone campaign to get us to come. I politely but firmly declined any time she got me.

Paul got guilted in with the phone campaign and took the baby down and back in the same night. He dealt with the drive there, the time there, the drive back, and all the rest while I stayed home and had a quiet day to myself.

This year I travel. So I’ve already made sure that we are expected over there on the 24th. My side the 25th.

2 more weeks till relative freedom

Our thanksgiving was fabulous and drama free for the most part.  A perfect holiday.

Holiday planning stresses me out.  We have a small family which should theoretically make things easier, but it doesn’t.  In fact, I think it makes it all worse because we don’t have a set time and place for our family gatherings (xmas eve at Aunt Mary’s, xmas day at grandmas).  We all live far apart and plans change every year.

Of course, my first priority each holiday is just deciding what locations we will be at and the time of the visits.  Obviously, we want to spend as much time with possible with all our family, but I also want to spend xmas day at home.  I know this is selfish of me, but we now have a kid and I don’t want to have to lug all of Iz’s presents to a relatives that is either a long drive or plane ride away, only to have to lug them back again, probably missing the small pieces she couldn’t wait to tear into.  The alternative of having 2 xmas’s is equally unappealing, though we have tried it before.  Because we live far away from all our family, we start the negotiations early, like mid-October, and we have a general plan together by the beginning of November.

Mike’s family can’t travel so we always have to plan a trip to FL some time during the holidays.  We have gone for xmas day a couple of times, but most of the time we go well after xmas (like the second week of January).  While this is the most economical route, it means we miss most of the other family also visiting during the holidays.  This year, we opted to go down the day after xmas to make sure we see Mike’s sis who we haven’t seen in a year.   We had to buy all three tickets (no skymiles seats available) and the trip is setting us back $1300!  Merry xmas!

This year with my family, we decided to do t-day at  my mom’s house and xmas day at my house.  My sis and bro were going to come to t-day and brother was bringing his family.  It would be the first time we were all together since the birth of my nephew and we were all excited.  But things went badly and the nephew was sick so the brother and his family couldn’t come.  Now there is some discussion of changing xmas plans and going to brother’s house for xmas since we didn’t get to see brother at t-day and he can’t come for xmas for other reasons.

The long and short of it is, I am not changing my xmas plans.  I am being selfish and spending xmas day at home with my family and hope my sis and mom will do the same as originally planned.  I may try to visit my brother before xmas, but that would be a long, unplanned trip for a just couple of days and will depend on the weather and how I am feeling.  I feel bad that they couldn’t come for t-day, but I am also annoyed that negotiations have started again when I thought my holiday plans were squared away.

The whole discussion (mainly done over email) is really upseting me and I have come really close to stomping my feet like a child and telling someone off.  I wish we all lived closer together so we could easily go to each others houses over the holidays.   It would solve these problems.  But next year, brother is moving to New England making every visit a plane ride, not just a long car ride.  It is going to get even more complicated.

How do you make your holiday plans Cat?  Is it the same thing every year or does it change?  How much are you involved in the family decision making?

Tired

Congrats Amy, on the baby GIRL!

Things over here are up and down as we navigate the holiday season.

We saw my MIL for her birthday yesterday.  That was fine, though I def. feel it these days when we do day trips out that way. It’s just a 90 min drive, but it increasingly wears me out. I try to convince Paul to go down Friday and come back Sat or go down Sat and come back Sunday but he isn’t keen on overnights because he wants one day home. I can understand that, but I’m def. feeling like I’m not as young as I used to be. Cramming so much in one day isn’t something I can pull off easily any more.

Church was fine. Sunday school, service, then a meeting afterwards. Came home and dug a little bit more in the garden and then watched a movie with Julia while Paul took a snooze. Then he took her out while I took a snooze.

Not really sure what’s going for Thanksgiving with the families. This year everyone is sort of blah about putting a plan together.  That sort of bugs me because I like to know what’s happening in advance. I don’t like last minute things.

Fall Cleaning

The church auction was Saturday night. It grossed over 9K, so not bad! Yay!

Slept late Sunday and missed class, but made it to service. Slept late today, and then I was bang at it again.

All these workers finally leaving and my church projects in a comfortable temporarily lull meant I could fling myself into fall cleaning and restore order around here. You know? Time spent on myself and my family? Before I get caught up in the next fundraising thing and church quilt and Christmas pageant?

Started with the kitchen. It’s going to be a two day job to deep clean it how I want.

Today:

• Put dishes away, loaded up dirties to wash.
• Cleaned up counters and stove top.
• Towels in to wash.
• Dink around the garden with child for an hour or two weeding and laying out edging.
• Scrub Floors
• Wash kitchen textiles
• Wash window and window screen
• Break window blinds while trying to clean them, email spouse to get another one
• Starbucks and groceries (Daddy napping after work, took child out for a treat and to get food for house)
• Clean upper cabinets and mint tea bag them*
• Towels in dryer, sheets in to wash
• Used butcher block oil to finish a wooden utensil organizer thing DH built me but never finished.
• Clean drawers, mint tea bag them*
• Trash out

Tomorrow:

• Clean oven
• Clean under sink, throw out old cleaners
• Clean lower cabinets
• Clean on top of cabinets (may have DH to this one)
• Clean fridge
• Clean behind fridge
• Furniture polish cabinets, furniture
• Wash baseboards
• Sort out excess kitchenware to donate
• Help child make leaf decorations for patio doors.

(* If you open mint tea bags like you were going to make tea but instead throw the pouches in the cabinets, the mint repels bugs for a month or two. And it smells nice.)

In the yard, I’m trying to come to grips with the fact that might not get done in time for spring planting in ALL beds.  Half beds would be ok. Even though I REALLY want to plant in ALL beds. But that desire is not realistic, given that it will also be holiday time and our weekends won’t all be free for gardening. And if Paul is to help, it has to be weekends.
I have define the edges with buried wood, tiller out about 2-3 inches and grade it so it ultimately will slope away from the house, move the extra dirt to the other side of the yard, maybe even put in a french drain if the ground is still puddling up into the garage, fill garden area back up with wood chips for the paths, redo the gutter by the garage to help with the puddling problem, get a rain barrel, get a composter, decide if I want drip lines and install if I do, get the beds set up, fill them with soil mix, build a low fence to keep the possums and other critters out of that corner… THEN I can plant seeds and transplants.

So…yeah. I’m working on just accepting that it isn’t going to happen in 12-16 weeks!

Here is the goal:

 

Here is where it is after child and I cleared out the fenceline and started defining edges with wood and raised bed plots with spray paint this afternoon:

Got a long way to go yet! And I may need to get the tree trimmed a bit further so this corner gets more sun. Argh.