Can't Wait to Peek

(prego pic by my sister Madeline!)

The nest is feathered. Every teeny outfit is folded in the perfect set of IKEA drawers. The bed is made. The lamps are lit (okay not really. keeping her lights on until she's born isn't very green, but it sounded good).

So please join me on a little tour of Lil' Sis' nursery.

I have mentioned before that her "room" is a glorified closet. It's tiny and has no window, so the photos aren't great. Now that it's finished I kinda love how small it is. It's a quaint little nook just perfect for our little gal.


Due to the size, a real crib doesn't fit, so she's got a pack 'n' play. I know, most people would just use it as is, but now that we're having a girl, I'm not really feeling the neutral decor, so I spruced it up.

Before:(yawn)

After:

(yay!)

Rotate slightly left to the green IKEA dresser/cabinet which is (not surprisingly) the perfect fit. Totally worth the 38 week pregnant opening day visit, crazy though that was.

Note the lovely wall de vintage. The pinafores I made, but the others are sweet vintage frocks I found on etsy and luuuuuuuuv.

And another slight left will take you past the tree decals and fun flower lamp, also from IKEA. And out the door you go.

I'll admit. I squealed a bit.

And now, I'm kinda out of things to nest. The hospital bag is packed. The house is relatively clean. The boys' Big Brother shirts are made. I guess I'll spend the next two weeks twiddling the old thumbs.

OR - she could decide to come a bit early and save me some twiddling. Just a suggestion.

Peek of the Week - July 29, 2011

What's Peek of the Week, you ask? It's our Friday feature and it's all about you! I want to hear (and share with my readers) what wowed you this week. It could be a cool finished project, a work in progress, a personal accomplishment, a cute kid moment, or something that surprised you.

If we could peek into your week - what would you want to show us?

Each week I'll share my own Peek of the Week to get the ball rolling, and invite you to link to your blog post about your Peek of the Week. I know y'all are up to cool stuff - we wanna see it!

Mine is a two parter this week, so bear with:

Since the shuttle launch Eli has become fascinated with all this space and space travel. And, Eric's away at church camp this week with some youth, where on Thursday nights they launch bottle rockets. So, the boys and I decided to take a day trip down to visit Dad and be there for the blasting off. But that required some prep work:

Step one in the bottle rocket making process: Root Beer Floats. (Gotta empty your bottles somehow).

That was Amos' favorite step.
Although he did get into the second step: decorate your bottle.
So exciting.

It was a beautiful day for a camp visit. We went down in the morning and swam, ate all the dining hall and played all day. Then we got a good seat for the launch.


I love the boys in their official (if backwards) camp name tags.

The boys were so proud and super excited about their successful launches. It's always a favorite night at camp, and we were glad we didn't have to miss it!

Alrighty, your turn!
You could get peeking in three easy steps:
1. Blog about your Peek of the Week - whatever it is. Whatever happened that made you proud, laugh, smile, inspired, excited, or just plain happy - now that's worth sharing.
2. Include a link to this blog or put the Peek of the Week button (on the sidebar) in your post.
3. Link your blog post using the InLinkz button below.

If you don't get a chance to get here on Friday, feel free to link your post up later.
The InLinkz button will be active for 5 days.

Embrace the Swedish Sensibility

Well, I did it. It may have been ill-advised, but as no one officially advised me against it, I went directly from my 38 week appointment yesterday to the grand opening of IKEA.

My facebook status: Me, Myself, and IKEA. And 20,000 other people.

I had a very short but specific list of items I need to feather little sister's nest. Mainly she needed a dresser, but a very narrow tall one. And some other goodies that mysteriously jumped into my big yellow bag.

I narrowly avoided being on the news because my gas light came on just as I got into the parking line. I really didn't want to get out, but I really really didn't want to be that pregnant lady who kept thousands of people from getting to IKEA because she ran out of gas in the parking line, that dummy. Thankfully my gas held out until I got to the first lot that had an open spot (I didn't even try to get close, so I wasn't even in the garage - I was in a satellite lot).

Other than that one hiccup, it went remarkably well. I had friends inside who were giving me updates. They had gone early and had to wait in line 45 minutes at the door just to get it. By noon it was less crazy, and I just walked right in with no wait.

IKEA is a wonderfully international experience. I heard numerous customers speaking in lots of foreign languages. It was cool.

I spent all of two hours and came out with most of the things on my list and a few other goodies. I showed re.mark.able restraint. I even made it out without any cut-your-own fabrics. How strong am I?

The only dicey part (besides the gas) was getting my difficult-to-steer-and-very-heavily-piled pallet cart full of flat boxes of un-assembled furniture to my car. I wasn't about to do drive-up pick-up, lest I run out of gas. So I basically stole a cart briefly and took it to satellite parking.

I'm so happy I did it. Now I can nip the rest of my nesting urges in the bud and it was kinda cool to go to the grand opening.

No baby movement seems to have come of all that walking and standing, although someone told me that "Ikea is a sovereign Swedish territory, which makes all children that are born there Swedish citizens" - So maybe I'll go back and try again. It would be cool to have a Swede baby.

Linking up to Embrace the Camera today, just for fun.

Big Day

Today is big for a number of reasons:

1) It's my sweet niece's 13th birthday. She's the coolest. Happy birthday Fiffin Face!

2) It's the fella's and my 134th month-aversary. Happy day hubby!

3) It's my 38 week appointment! Down to the weekly check-ins. Can't be long, right?

4)

IKEA opens today. And I'ma goin'. I've arranged to have the whole day to attend to #s 3 and 4. Thanks Yaya.

Eric thinks I'm a fool. He's right for sure.

People have been camping out for two days. Highways are rerouted for the next 4 days. Thousands of people will be there.

But I've got my catalog, my list, and my day freed up...and I'm doin' it.

Wish me luck.

Amos' UnHappy Place

Amos is spiritually, if not yet chronologically, officially two.

This comes with some sweet benefits. Besides becoming somewhat reasonable, he has become an excellent conversationalist, an insatiable reader, and a snuggler like none other.

But he's also taken on a few of those qualities that make people call this age terrible (although I think that's a little strong for him). For example, some days everything is just devastating to him. Finding we're out of chocolate milk makes him splay himself prostrate on the floor, wailing and moaning. Tell him no and he crumples like a piece of paper.

He is also testing the boundaries of listening. So much so that the other morning he had his first time out.
It broke his little heart. And mine.

The crime: eating dirt by the handfuls as though his very survival depends upon his consumption of it. Now, hear me on this, I'm not adverse to a little dirt consumption. I think the old adage about it bolstering their immune systems is 100% true (if so, he should be as hearty as they come). But as much as he eats I worry he'll get the giardia or something. Plus it's rough on the old digestion - the proof is in the diapers.

So after many pleadings for him to stop, and fingersweeps of dirt from his gullet, I gave him a warning that if he ate dirt again he'd have to sit out.

And he did.
He did not like it. That one whole minute may have been the worst of his little life. It made me sad, but Eli and I shared a little chuckle over it too. Eli thinks it was long overdue.

Peek of the Week - July 22, 2011

What's Peek of the Week, you ask? It's our Friday feature and it's all about you! I want to hear (and share with my readers) what wowed you this week. It could be a cool finished project, a work in progress, a personal accomplishment, a cute kid moment, or something that surprised you.

If we could peek into your week - what would you want to show us?

Each week I'll share my own Peek of the Week to get the ball rolling, and invite you to link to your blog post about your Peek of the Week. I know y'all are up to cool stuff - we wanna see it!

Ok, me first - and you better get the salts, because this is a good one.

A few days ago I completed for my growing brood Little Sister/Big Brother T-Shirts:
Pretty sweet right? Rarely do my projects work out the way I'm envisioning in my head. But I started dreaming these up a few weeks back and they are perfection.

One for Lil' Sis (can't wait to see her in it! Mostly because if she's wearing this it means she's no longer inside my body).

One for Amos, the magical middle bro.

And one for Eli, big bro extraordinaire.

Now, this might get a bit tedious for anyone who did not birth these children, but here are some select shots from our little shirt photo shoot. They are a plenty.



And...Amos is over it.



But Eli was feelin' the photo shoot vibe.


Man, I must be hilarious.


Such. A. Stud.


Next time you see these little gems it will be on the bodies of ALL my children as the two big'uns are meeting the little'un. I'm super excited about that day.


Now it's time for a peek into YOUR week!
You could get peeking in three easy steps:
1. Blog about your Peek of the Week - whatever it is. Whatever happened that made you proud, laugh, smile, inspired, excited, or just plain happy - now that's worth sharing.
2. Include a link to this blog or put the Peek of the Week button (on the sidebar) in your post.
3. Link your blog post using the InLinkz button below.

If you don't get a chance to get here on Friday, feel free to link your post up later.
The InLinkz button will be active for 5 days.

Embracing Balance and Celebration

It's embrace the camera time, and apparently for the last and next few weeks, that means belly shots. This one came shortly after devouring some scrumptious fried home grown zucchini that Yaya and Dizzy grew. Now that's something to celebrate.

Something else to celebrate: 37 weeks. Maybe not the home stretch, but I'm at least breezing past the short stop right about now.

Even more celebratory: I FINALLY finished Amos' 1 year album (he's a month shy of his second birthday). I've been working on it for a year. You can see here its finished girth, which serves as a lovely geological survey of my zeal about the project:
The top layer where I had all the best intentions and did fancy page layouts on decorative paper with cute text and layering and embellishments like this:



The middle layer is when I still wished for the best but I was getting tired and the impending new addition was beginning to bear down on me. During this phase I barely got decorative paper laid down and a few photos slapped in place.

The final layer (a full half of the book) happened yesterday. That's when I bought 400 photos worth of photo sleeves at Michael's and got that sucker done.

Here's the adorable cover:
Photo courtesy of my very talented sister Madeline.

You see, as crafty as I am, I do not appreciate the paper crafts. I do not heart scrapbooking, nor am I very good at it.

Photo sleeves on the other hand. We're besties.

Know what else I'm besties with? Tomorrow's Peek of the Week. I've been itching all week to give you a teaser, but I've resisted and tomorrow all shall be revealed and you will squeal.

This post is going over to the Anderson Crew for their Embrace the Camera Thursday thang.

Lounging

Dizzy's got things figured out.

Does anyone else feel like July has come to an abrupt halt? It's hot. I'm uh...eager...to meet this little babe perched precariously on my bladder, and July has slowed to a crawl.

I've been looking ahead to July 27th for sometime now - it's my niece's birthday, my 38 week appointment, and the grand opening of our IKEA. A big day, you understand. And I feel like it should have come and gone already but no, it's still a full. week. away. And lil' sis' arrival is expected a full two weeks after that. Zoiks.

Most people would be glad to have a little more time to prepare for impending transitions, but I've nearly nested all there is to nest, and it's still not time yet.

I know...Hang in there. Power through. Keep on keeping on. I'm in the home stretch. Keep calm and carry on. Yada yada.
I know. I shall.

Speaking of some of that good old nesting - I finished a project last night that is so cute I might need the salts. I really want to give you a teaser, but I will wait until the peek of the week on Friday. I need to practice my patience. Do come back. You won't be disappointed!

The skinny.

Here's the scoop.

It's hot.
The only way to cope really is skinny dipping in the back yard pool and copious amounts of popsicles. Clearly.








I feel cooler already.

If you have any tips for coping with the heat, let's have 'em. Because we are melting.

My biggest tip: Don't be pregnant in the heat. Will I ever learn?