Happy Easter!

      We spent the long weekend laying low and mostly just tried to use our extra spare time to get things done from our To Do List before baby comes.

      Friday we did some yardwork that involved moving our vegetable garden. Our yard is pretty small and we need that space for a seating area. We also want to get Laura a swing set for the back yard this summer so I can sit out there and watch her play while being able to tend to the baby. So, yeah, lots of moving dirt (Josh did most of it, but Laura helped with her little garden trowel. <3) Everyone went to be pretty early in hopes of catching up on much needed sleep.

     Saturday we got groceries as early as possible since it is always a mad house at Easter when the stores are only open one day of the whole weekend. We had a pair of somewhat shady men come to our house to clean our furnace ducts in the afternoon, and were supposed to have someone else out to measure our windows that we are replacing, but they never showed. Afterwards we went out and bought some edging stones for the shade garden and finished filling it up with top soil. It looks great now - I can't wait for the plants to start sprouting in there! :) I did some more crocheting, and cleaned the house a little. Clearly we need to clean the floor behind the toilet more often than we do. Yuck.
Not an overly interesting day.

     Sunday, Laura woke up early (even though she didn't go to bed until like 9pm) and so we did her Easter basket and egg hunt all before 8am, which she was really into this year - very cute.

(Note work on garden) :)

Then we hung out around the house for awhile before we headed to the family cottage for Easter dinner. My mom was determined she was doing an egg hunt for us (since she apparently can't let go of the fact that her children are not of Easter-egg-hunting-age anymore) but, as I told her would be the case, none of us were really that into it since it involved running around outside in the cold wind and rain finding clues as to where the next egg was hidden. However, once my cousins showed up with their kids, they were happy to finish it up, despite the weather. We had a lovely dinner, and probably the highlight of my day was watching Laura getting to play with her older (second) cousins. They are 11, 9, 8, and 7 (I think), so I wasn't sure they would be too into playing with a 2-year-old, but after dinner they were all having fun running around and letting Laura chase them - her favourite!

Camoflaging as trees (apparently)

Then they played "horsey" after that, all taking turns giving her rides around the room on their backs, which she also loved. It was very cute. <3 Unfortunately the night ended on a kinda crappy note for various reasons including, but not limited to, coming home to a lovely mess from Chester, who was apparently feeling sick, and Laura not falling asleep in the car on the way home even though it was past her bedtime, and thus becoming overtired and unable to stay asleep all night.

     Overall a pretty nice weekend!

Crocheting Machine

Or, as Josh calls it, "crack-cheting".

     I am in full nesting mode now, and so this week I taught myself how to crochet. Or, more correctly, some lady on youtube did. The baby needs clothes, right?! And newborn stuff is relatively difficult to come by... so I googled free crochet patterns, and...
So far I have made 6 baby booties (it took me about four attempts to get two that looked similar enough to call a pair from the first ball of yarn,

then I got cocky and decided to make a bigger pair for Laura),

and a hat for a special little someone who is turning two very soon (which I actually had to take apart about five times because it didn't seem to be the right size!)

(not completely done yet, I think I need to get more yarn to finish up the brim)

I also made another hat - one for the baby to match the booties, although it came out a little more boyish than I had hoped... maybe I'll make a flower to add to it if it's a girl ;)

So much fun! (But I think I'll take a break now, for Josh's sake. I'm apparently driving him nuts with my obsessive need to finish all of these projects).

Pregasaurus Rex

Ten weeks to go and I am rapidly becoming the Crabby Pregnant Lady. While I am eternally grateful that I have the priviledge of carrying my own children, and we don't have any fertility/ maintaining pregnancy issues, etc, it does not negate the fact that the third trimester is a fairly uncomfortable time. I don't remember being this uncomfortable during my pregnancy with Laura, especially not this early, so I thought I should document it this time to make sure I remember. ;)
This time I have already grown tired of:

• insomnia for the entirity of this pregnancy. And having to wake up to pee.
• almost constantly being overtired/ grumpy/ having very little patience for Laura 
• having only two options for sleeping positions: left side or right side
• the recent development of heartburn being caused by chocolate. Just in time for Easter.
• feeling 'full' of baby and consequently not having enough room in my body to eat enough.
• normally I don't mind being touched, but since I am pretty much constantly being 'touched' from the inside, Laura climbing on me is not going over so well these days.
• requiring Josh to massage my aching back every. single. day. 
• no energy
• sugar crashes 

So, if you see a Pregasaurus Rex running around on the loose, it's probably just me.

Looking forward to this baby's debut!

Since It's Summer....

     How fabulous has this weather been lately? So crazy for March!

     Since today is the first day of summer spring, and it has been so amazingly nice out this week, we spent the day yesterday playing outside. A lot.
     I wanted to try this sidewalk-paint-water-balloon activity I saw with Laura. As it turns out, this is an activity to be prepped before the toddler gets involved, as it was a fairly frustrating process trying to fill the balloons, and Laura lost interest rather quickly due to her not really being able to help... As mentioned in the link, the result was not very "painty", but more of a watered down, faint final product. I only made eight balloons to begin with because it was too hard to try and make them while Laura was impatiently waiting. There ended up being a lot of food colouring splatter around my kitchen, and the eight balloons went pretty quickly.

 

     She immediately demanded more, so we went inside to make more. I was pretty sure she just liked splatting them on the pavement, so I didn't bother trying to put colour/ corn starch in the second batch. Much less frustrating for me, and I'm sure equally fun for her. Win.

      Again, this batch didn't last too long, but she had fun...

     We tried the sidewalk paint in another form, one in which I could control the consistency/ colour more easily:

     And Laura had fun just using it with a paintbrush and/or dumping it on the pavement.

     It looked pretty when it dried...

So there you have it: our fun, outdoor activities to try. Happy First Day of Spring!

(there is a robin in our tree) :)

Third Trimester. What?!

     So today I am 27 weeks pregnant. That's 6 months. Three months until I'm due. Whoa. Where did the second trimester even go?! I am starting to feel the pressure now, and we have started taking steps to get ourselves prepared to soon be adding another member to our family.
     Among the things we are doing, I have taken out several books from the library on birthing techniques, because I am highly motivated to have a VBAC (Vaginal Birth After Caesarean). I want to be as prepared as I possibly can be, both physically and mentally, for a natural birth this time; I really feel like I was robbed of this experience the first time around. We have also started the interviewing process for a doula to accompany us in the labour room, which I am also hoping will help facilitate a successful VBAC.
     I have gained back about 6 of the 10-11 pounds I lost in the first trimester, and my belly is starting to poke out the bottom of many of my shirts now. I currently suspect this baby might be transverse, because mostly all of the movement I feel is at either of my sides, especially when I am trying to lie down/ go to sleep (whereas earlier in the pregnancy I felt it in more of an up and down direction). Of course, this may mean nothing - what do I know? As long as baby doesn't end up breech at full term, I don't really care!

    In these last few months, we still want/ need to do/ get:

• newborn cloth diapers (have been ordered already)
• a double stroller (we're thinking a Sit 'n Stand)
• new waterproof mattress cover for our bed
• finish decorating the nursery
• get Laura out of the crib (yes, she is back in the "baby bed")
• get Laura out of our diapers
• go through and wash all of the baby items we have
• maternity photoshoot and belly cast
• and probably some more stuff I am forgetting right now due to preggo brain/ lack of sleep :)

Potty Training Take #1

   I had heard about a 3-day Potty Training Method I was interested in trying since I have grown lazy and tired of changing diapers (especially since in a few short months I will be starting all over again with 10+ diaper changes a day.) I wasn't sure that Laura was mentally ready yet, but I was pretty sure she could do it physically. Josh said, "We'll never know if she's ready or not if we dont try." So, I decided we would do the three day trial. It's three days, it can't be that bad, right? If she isn't into it, we could always try again later.
    The method suggests putting them in underwear and pants, and learning their cues as to when they need to go. By putting them in underwear, they too can learn immediately when they are wet, and it is only supposed to take up to three days for them to associate it with the feeling of "having to go". We had sticker rewards for just sitting on the toilet, and marshmallow rewards for when she actually succeeded. Fool proof! ... as long as she actually wanted to do it.

Day 1:
Several peed in pairs of underwear/ pants, pretty much par for the course on Day 1.

Day 2:
I woke up feeling sick, which is always a drag when pregnant since you can't take any medication. By noon I was losing what little patience I had and getting frustrated by Laura's resistance to trying to go on the potty. I knew she had to poop, and she did give a few pushes while on the toilet, which were rewarded with marshmallows, but no success. Later, however, I caught her lining up for a squat and swooped her up to the toilet and we had success! I clapped and danced and gave her a whole handful of "marshos".
She didn't pee for the whole rest of the afternoon, which was bothersome to me because I felt terrible and just wanted to relax a little after knowing she had just peed and wouldn't need to go again for a while. But no such luck. I finally resorted to taking off her pants and undies so I would be able to tell immediately when she started to pee, which didn't end up being until around 5pm. I again swooped her up to the toilet so she could finish there and have a "success". She was again rewarded with marshos. After Josh got home I really needed to lie down and rest for a bit, and he started making dinner (aka not paying 100% attention to Laura), which you would think would not be such a big deal since she already had a #2 and just peed before he got home. But, no, when I came down she had a poo squished up in her underwear and a pee leak all down her leg. Ugggghhhh. Should have just put a diaper on her, I guess, if no one could watch her.

Day 3
     Laura is starting to show signs of resistance to sitting on the potty. I'm pretty sure she can tell at least some of the times when she has to pee, because she has resorted to hiding. Not a good sign. And today when she started peeing on the floor and I quickly brought her up to the toilet she started crying. So... I guess she isn't into it. And we can't push it. It has to be something that she wants to do. So, she is back in diapers and everyone is happy again. Except our washer, who thought it might be getting a break from washing diapers. I guess we will try again in a little while, maybe with a little potty next time so she can "do it herself". I was really hoping I could get away without using one of those.

Coloured Rice!

      I've been getting pretty bored with being cooped up inside the house all winter long (we can only go outside for short periods of time since someone won't leave her mittens on), especially now that Laura is feeling better and actually has enough energy to get off the couch and do things other than watch movies over and over.

     So, yesterday we made "insh rice". For those of you who don't speak Toddlerese, this translates to "Orange rice". Laura's seemingly favourite colour right now is orange (or maybe it's just the colour she can consistently get correct - it's a fine line), and the other day we attempted to make some orange Flubber (that failed). She had been asking for "insh" every time we go into the kitchen since then, so yesterday I suggested we could make some orange rice. When we were getting set up, she also proclaimed that she wanted "geen rice", too. I made the executive decision that we should have three different colours, and going with the 'secondary colours' theme, I picked purple.

      I loosely followed the directions from here, but basically I just put 1/3 cup of white rice in a baggie with a splash of vinegar and a few drops of the food colouring of choice. It's definitely not an exact science. Laura was excited to help shake up the bag/ smoosh the rice around, and she did a really good job, too! (The last few days have been exciting for me because Laura has actually showed interest in fun activities like this, unlike before when all she wanted to do was play with reusable ice cubes). After we were satisfied with the colours, we spread the rice on an old pan and put it in the oven @ 170 for 10 minutes. When it was done, we mixed it all up and it looked like Mardi Gras! :)
    





     Today we went out and got a bigger bin to keep it in so we could make the rest of the colours. Laura actually did a good job of trying to keep it contained while stirring it with her wand, and scooping it back and forth between buckets. Luckily, it is much easier to clean up than sand, and as an added bonus, not so toxic if she happens to decide to try and eat it!

She even wanted to help clean up! :)

I feel so gloriously guilt-free to surf Pinterest for a little while now!