Friday, July 10, 2015

22 Weeks

Holy moly, we're just a month away from hitting the third trimester!


It's starting to get really real around here. In these last couple weeks, Baby T has really upped his squirming game. I can feel him most at night right when I lay down in bed. Nothing painful yet, just the weird feeling of a teeny baby doing somersaults underneath my skin.

Even more exciting, we just started seeing him move as well. When I was 16 weeks, I saw a Youtube video of another 16 week-er who had filmed her baby's movement. So for about a week I poked my stomach and watched intently right before bed, but nothing ever happened. I'd kind of given up looking. Then, while I was taking a bath the other day, I felt him start tumbling and happened to glance down and boom! There was that little kick pushing underneath the skin. And then another right after. I saw him move five times in total in about ten minutes. Makes me wonder how long I could've seen it had I been watching for it in the last few weeks.

Chris saw it happen, though faintly, later that night when we were shining a light on him trying to get him to move. Baby T does things on his own terms, though, and doesn't like to perform when asked. I did get lucky and caught the movement on video the next morning when I woke up to him doing laps.

In the meantime, we're getting lots of stuff done around the house this summer. It's so nice being off from work, and with Chris working at home we can schedule any projects or errands we need to pretty easily. Our goal has been to do a full house purge before officially starting the nursery. Months ago we made a list of furniture we needed to get rid of (bedroom chair, TV stand and old school TV that used to be in our room, bookcase in our office), things we needed to downsize (kitchen table and our giant office desk), and things we needed to do (move wifi from office/soon-to-be-nursery to living room, clean out attic and garage, set up Chris' new office in the dining room, and my new "office" in the bedroom). And crazily enough, we are almost at the end of our list. We cleaned out the attic last week, and filled about six boxes of stuff to get rid of; yesterday we did the garage and emptied out most of our cabinet drawers down there. Note to anyone needing to clean out their house of stuff they've been hanging on to "just in case": just wait till you're six months pregnant. It'll turn you ruthless with what really needs to stay and what can easily go. And it feels so good to get rid of unnecessary things.

I still need to go through some stuff in the office, and my goal is to use up a lot of my scrapbooking stuff so I have little to store. That's actually my plan for today, while Chris goes on a man date with Ryan. :)

Friday, July 3, 2015

Cloth Diapers

We've decided to go the cloth diaper route, for a couple of reasons.

1) They're way too cute.

2) Hello, money saver?

3) We're all about the good ol' environment.

When I started researching cloth diapers, I was a bit overwhelmed. I couldn't figure out how they worked. Then I realized there were different kinds with different functions: all-in-ones, pockets, fitteds, blah blah blah. So I read blogs, watched youtube videos, and read Amazon reviews, and I think I now, finally, have a handle on this whole thing.

One of the first things I learned was that most cloth diapers come in a "one size fits all," which is awesome for saving money in the long run. But apparently most of these diapers don't fit the newish newborns all that well, so it's very recommended to have specific newborn diapers on hand for the first couple months.

We're not really into the idea of buying a whole diaper system for just a two month stint, so we've chosen to mostly go the prefolds with covers route in the beginning (Thirsties Duo Wraps to be specific). Then I learned about fitteds that can be used inside the covers. And then I learned you could make fitteds out of adorable flannel.

DIY Do it Yourself Flannel Cloth Diapers

I'm a little addicted. But seriously, how cute is that flannel?!

Right before school ended, I scored with a huge fabric sale at Joanns. Flannel was 70% off, and I paid around $2.30 a yard for it. Best. Sale. Ever. I got 5 yards at that sale and I'm kicking myself for not getting more at the time. I've managed to get about three diapers per yard, plus a couple of liners just because there were leftovers.

The plan is to use these along with a stack of prefolds for the first couple of months while baby is still a teeny tiny little thing and not yet fitting in the regular diapers. Most of them have no attachments, since my plan was to just use Snappis to hold them in place, but I discovered some velcro in my stash so I did some experimenting with the last couple. Not sure if I love it or not, mostly because I can't test out if I'm placing the velcro right or not. For all I know I'll have to cinch the diaper much tighter than the velcro will allow to get a good fit. Guess we won't know until November!

DIY Do it Yourself Flannel Cloth Diapers


Wednesday, July 1, 2015

Around here

Eating Cookie Crisp cereal. Every single day. I have never been a huge cereal person, and now I am making trips to the store to load up on three boxes of Cookie Crisp each week.


Visiting the doctor! Everything's looking good so far!

Attending a Knot wedding function at a new venue in Liberty Station. 

His and her drinks at the Knot party. It was not the same without the vodka.

Rearranging the house to make room for baby. We're trying to get as much done as possible in the early weeks of summer so we can really settle it by the end of it when I go back to work. The biggest step is moving the office from its current room (which will be the nursery) to the dining room. Chris found a desk he loved and we set it up this weekend. Now we're ready to slowly migrate all the tech and supplies into the space.


Receiving the cutest gifts! This package of adorableness came from Chris' cousin Emily, and I can't wait to get everything out of the nursery closet so I can start hanging things up!

Cuddling the cats while working on the laptop. Jack desperately wants to sit on my stomach, but he weighs like 18 pounds, so no. He finally gave up that quest and just rested a paw on it.

Not pictured:
Sewing up a storm! Since Chris is taking over the dining room, we had to move the dining table into the middle of the living room until it gets sold. Enter my new sewing table! About a month ago I bought a ton of flannel at Joanns while it was on sale for $2.30 a yard (score!) and I've been busy perfecting my cloth diaper making skills. And by perfecting, I do mean that they will be perfect for our baby to pee on. ;)