Catching Up- Rambles

If you actually care and read my thoughts here, you know I’ve been slacking this last week or two on posting. So what I’ve been doing rather than blogging:

I haven’t made any baby purchasing progress. I’m okay with that. I haven’t even purchased fabrics because my current fun money budget has been on E. I hope it gets to F soon. First I’ll have to get past back to school shopping for Gums- her new name since she’s lost 3 teeth in two weeks. No big deal. It’s been hot, and it doesn’t help me to feel motivated to craft. It seems like such a fall/ winter thing to sit at the sewing table for hours on end.

I have been reading “What to Expect Before Your Expecting”. It’s not as fun as a great novel, but I’m learning a lot, and I hope to make this a very positive experience through education and research to be VERY prepared.

We’ve been pretty busy around our house. This past weekend me and my best friend Adrienne threw a surprise birthday party for two of our friends… and we plotted and planned that, shopped and cooked. I would say that our fondue fun was a total success. They were both surprised. We all had a great time. I really do have wonderful friends! Blessed.

Most evenings of last week I focused on cooking at home rather than eating out all the time, and getting some exercise by walking with Adrienne. Her husband was out of town, so we hung out pretty much every night. We make great food when we get together! Oh yeah!

In the baby making front I’ve been trying to take better care of myself physically. I am modifying my eating habits to incorporate more balanced and healthy meals. I’m not doing too shabby. I am NOT on a diet. I refuse to diet. I am simply trying to make healthier choices, choose foods that I know are providing me with the nutrients that will help me grow a healthy offspring. If I get in the habit now, I won’t feel deprived or in shock later when I need to eat healthy. Don’t get me wrong, I allow myself the occasional burger or shake, just not more than once a week.

I’ve begun taking those disgusting vitamins, and I’ve not missed a day yet…yeah for me. I find that they make me have terrible indigestion with a nasty egg flavor if I don’t eat a ton of food before I take them. Yuck!

Sadly this week I have been so busy and worn out from my day at the office, and I’ve been getting home later and later each day…I haven’t made much progress in the walking business. I will be struggling when I get a chance to do it again. Frankly the 103* temps make you never want to step foot outside, and if it’s not that hot it’s storming, leading to mosquitos. I was up to two miles.

Saturday I got to go visit with a friend that had her baby girl on Friday, oh melt my heart…she was so sweet and just slept so sweetly in my arms. It made me wish we weren’t waiting the whole year to prepare for a baby. But I know in the end I’ll be glad we did when we’re relaxed and enjoying the moment rather than being panicked because we can’t afford everything, or because we weren’t ready. It doesn’t help that at the party Sunday every one of our friends are actively trying to conceive, just had a baby, or are pregnant (except Adrienne).

No further progress on the crocheting of the blanket has been made, but on a productive note, I have however created an account at every baby site, product site etc. to get free crap, coupons and samples. Poor made up due date for made up baby I hope it gets me lots of great crap to start my soon to be real baby stash. I’m excited to see what I manage to come up with. I wish I could be and extreme coupon person…and I may start using some coupons in my shopping to see if I can save a few extra for bottles.

This coming up weekend we are visiting our family, and I hope to get into the storage building that is housing what we kept of Neely’s baby items to access our inventory and find out if our crib can be modified to no long be a drop side crib. If it can we’ll repurpose it rather than buying new. It’ll also give me a little boost to start creating bedding and such if I have the first item in place to inspire me. So I’m looking forward to it! I also will get to see my cousin’s cuties…and I hope their cute faces help my husband get excited about another little one. He. He.

Austin Weekend Getaway Day Dos

Went to Bookpeople at 10:30 PM. Yep great parents take their kids shopping in the middle of the night and then return to the hotel to watch Married with Children. Apparently she watches it every night on Nick at Night along with That 70's Show. Nice.
Drunks in room next ours kept us up most the night.
4:30 AM we call front desk on them.
Sleep late...obviously.
Go for breakfast at Threadgills for the brunch buffet. I love those sweet potato pancakes and garlic cheese grits.
Force feed Corndog like a baby syrup covered goodness. Who has to force their kid to eat sugar for breakfast? Gaw!
Go back to room so Corndog can swim.
Take Corndog to kid's museum while husband goes to random selection of bike shops.
I think the museum is lame, and a waste of money. She participates in a study for some UT kids.
Pay a million dollars to park and enter the city wide garage sale.
Only score was a $6.00 chenille bedspead in soft baby yellow with cute little ball trim.
Eyed a Kate Spade diaper bag. It was a steal at $75, it was emerald green. I prefer to keep with the blacks in my Kate bag collection, so I practiced will power and left it there. I WILL find one in black. I have two years practically right?!
Already planning how this lovely blanket will be cut to shreds and re purposed.
Hit up an amazing donut food truck on S. Lamar. I got the Funky Monkey. Fried bananas, cream cheese frosting. To die for.
Hit the road East.
Back in the big hot city, bags unpacked, and ready to relax.
Pox update, appears no other bumps have made their way to the surface, no fever, and no complaining of itching. I will say it's not the pox for now.

Austin weekend getaway

Day one:
wake kid up at 6:30, she's not happy.
Get dressed and packed in under an hour.
Get in car drive 30 minutes stop for breakfast, kid is sleepy and not hungry anymore.
Get back on the road, drive kid sleeps off and on and asks when are we going to be there during the off times.
Get to Austin, she's not amused.
Wait in line for kyacks, she informs us she is not excited, rather freaked out.
Complains about how she's freaked out, tired, and can we turn around 10 minutes into it.
We go to pool, water is 68 degrees, she's thrilled, not one complaint.
This momma can't take the cold water, so I get sun burned on the sidelines.
Hit up soco for food trucks.
Corndogs corndog is too hot takes forever for her to eat.
I sucker her into eating fried goodness by telling her I'll buy her all the candy she wants at big top and an overpriced cupcake at hey cupcake. Yep she has to pee, no restroom in site.
Get to our hotel, discover red dots on her chest and torso... Jury is still out if it's pox.
Lounge around in room watching tv.
Wait for bats.
Husband comes back from his bike ride and tells us let's go out and watch from the deck below.
In transition to outside we miss the bats.
It is currently 9:30 and have not fed my now reluctant to dress and go out kid anything for dinner.
We have yet to determine what we plan to eat, how we will schedule time for the bookstore too...and corn dog wants to watch that 70's show.
Great parents let their kids watch shows with teens making out and getting high.
Day one of weekend away is a success.
Right?

IV

I should start making up titles for my posts. It'd be classier.

This is my main inspiration:

It's from the Lily and Will II collection by Moda fabrics. I have found it to be a total challenge to locate in the Houston area. Imagine that. Yes I can order it online...and I will, sometime. It's very pricy for my budget, and I'd like to see it in person before I totally commit to it. I'd hate to plunk down dough on something and decide it's not really what I love. I'm pretty sure I'll love it though, it's way too cute not to love.

Part Three

I don’t plan on finding out the sex of offspring #2. Perhaps we’ll do a gay as shit gender reveal party later in the process. Honestly it’ll depend on how much pressure I feel from others on the issue. To me it doesn’t matter. I have my names picked, and they are both equally as wonderful to me. I have no true wish for one sex over the other…although I won’t lie that the mother/ son relationship does sound so wonderful. I never had a closer relationship with Neely. I believe that I suffered post pardon; I was very immature when she was born, she was not a planned pregnancy, and it wasn’t a very “blissful” time in our relationship. I defiantly want the relationship with this next child to be different. Don’t get me wrong, I adore and love the mess out of Neely. We get along great now, and I was never a bad mother to her, I just never felt that “bond” that people talk about. It was never a Johnson and Johnson commercial moment of wonderful. Looking back I wish I’d taken the time to sit and enjoy her, to cherish the little moments with her more…but I was facing and dealing with my own young people struggles. Clearly a total disadvantage for her. She’s well adjusted; thank the man in the sky.


Gender neutral nursery color: Browns, creams, and light yellows.

Part Two:

I have chosen names...I know that’s a bit much with no real guarantee in site, but I have. I have not shared this with Husband, I assume he’ll find out via way of blog, or he’ll find out later. Selfishly I don’t care if he likes my name choices or not. I don’t plan on taking away the fact that he’ll be the father of this baby, but I want it, he’s just appeasing me, and therefore I feel that it’s my baby my choice. I’m sure that’s a very wrong way of thinking about it. He’s a great father to our daughter…and I would imagine he would be to any future child. He did not like or agree to my choice of Neely’s name, I always figured he could name the next, but now the fact of the matter is that I no longer feel that way.


I have learned to crochet. I plan on making a baby blanket as soon as I finish the lime green scarf for Neely. Knitting is not for me. I wish it was because there are soo many cute baby hats, and stuffed animal toy patterns for knitters. I can deal with it I suppose. Perhaps I’ll learn. I mean I have forever and a day before I’ll actually have the baby.


Boy: Cillian Drake
Girl: Darby Camille

Part One

How can I have this baby on the cheap?

I gave away pretty much every baby item we had from Neely. At the time we were real sure we didn’t want to experience that hell ever again. Also at the time we had several friends going through first time babies, and a tight budget as well, so we shared the items with them. I don’t regret sharing, and frankly by the time this next kid comes it’ll be 8 years difference. How old would that stuff be?! Ewww! Don’t get me wrong I’m 100% for good used stuff, and I plan on going that rout as much as possible for this go around.

I do have a crib that was outlawed last week. Seriously! It’s a drop side, it’s beautiful, we bought it used, and paid way too much for it. No doubt it’s been in storage in Handsome Husbands great grandma’s barn for 3 plus years now…probably rotted, would need a new mattress either way. I have a feeling this will be an added expense. I will need to purchase new EVERYTHING for this time.

Other ideas:

Breastfeed. As long as I can. I did not boob feed Neely, I wasn’t mature, ready, willing, or educated enough at the time to do it. Three weeks of trying, she was starving, I was crying. I gave up. I plan on being as educated and prepared as possible for this round. I will give it all the effort I can to make it work. At $22 a can of formula, I will have to. Besides, faster weight loss, I’ll take that!

Cloth diapers. Safer, healthier, overall cost is cheaper, I can make them myself from recycled fabric, and it’ll probably be an expense Handsome says we can spend in order to have disposables once he has to do the wash once. We’ll see. I am willing to give it a try.


Make shit myself. Blankets, bedding, décor, clothing. It’ll mean more to me if it’s my creation, my choice of fabrics, and it’ll be way better than some ugly crap with turtles or rocket ships on it. Gawd I hate the Babies R Us selections.

Buy at resale, or discount. Furniture, clothes kids outgrow fast, all of it that I can get cheap and use or repurpose I plan on doing. My budget is small. Like as in I have $40 every two weeks to sock into this project.

Midwife and home birth. Neely was 17 hours, no pain meds, I think I can do this. I would be okay with an at home birth with a midwife. Hubby thinks I’m crazy. Frankly I have a bathtub people pay large amounts of dough to rent in birthing centers. Perhaps I’ll go tree hugger on this round, and water birth it. Frankly the hospital nurses were very rude last time during my recovery, and I can do without that by being home. Ha ha.

I hopefully will pull it together on the smallest possible budget.

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Well....

It's not something set in stone or anything, as much as I'd like for it to be but…. we're planning on adding a wee one to our family. In fact planning on trying for one next spring. The idea of waiting that long bums me out terribly. It's something I've been wanting for a good long while, and I have no patience for things like that.


The main reason we are putting it off for so much longer is my way of compromising. Let’s face it, we're just like most Americans, up to our eyeballs in debt, we live a very free lifestyle and we're not 100% willing to give up on some of the things we like to have or do to have another offspring. It's the responsible, adult thing to do, wait, pay down some bills, and be one-

Hundred percent sure we can deal with the whole thing.

I am driving my husband crazy by bringing it up daily, several times a day. We stand on very different ends of the spectrum. I'm sure he's not happy I'm going to be "painting him in a bad light." I mean it’s good he's being "responsible”, I suppose someone has to keep us grounded, and make sure we're okay. Blahh!

So long story short, in order to prepare for offspring Number Two, I plan on obtaining everything we need for a little person before we even get to the breeding part. My plan in to do this to alleviate the extreme financial burden having a tot is. I plan to record and document my journey in obtaining and creating the items for baby, nursery, maternity wardrobe, and so on. Not only that I will more than likely be sharing my emotional journey as well. I don’t expect anyone to read this.