New House, New Baby, Pinterest

Guess what the fiance and I are doing? Buying a house! Pretty awesome, isn't it? We will be first-time homeowners, so it is a big deal for us. It is quite the fixer-upper, but we are getting it for a great price, so I'm sure I will actually have some interesting things to post pretty soon. The fiance is quite the handyman, so I'm sure we'll be fixing all kinds of stuff. Or...desperately trying. We're also having another baby. Hopefully, it will be as cute as the first two. If not, we may put it back. Either way, here is what it looks like now:

On another note, I have become addicted to Pinterest. However, I am coming to find out that some of this stuff is crap. Am I the ONLY person on this site that actually follows the link through before pinning? I can only imagine my poor friends seeing one of my pins and thinking, "OMG! That recipe looks AMAZING! Pinning!" only to find a week later, when they actually try to access the link associated to the pin, they are taken to one of those "Click here to win!" dancing pop-ups. Those really irritate me.

Do you know what else irritates me? Just pictures. Listen, lady, I know you want to try and keep that wedding dress that you love a secret so that NO ONE else will wear it. However, you grabbed it from the World Wide Web, which means that you are definitely not the original owner of the photo. So please, don't take that pic, put it on your blog without linking to the source, or upload it to your personal photo gallery and then pin it. No one likes that.

My dogs ate my cross stitch, so I am trying to venture my way into some other form of craftiness. I am now going to try to crochet something. I figure I should try and knit some booties or a blanket for the baby, since it's the womanly thing to do. This can go one of two ways. I will either A) successfully crochet a little blankie with strange stitches and that is lopsided, but I will force my child to use it anyway, or B) end up failing miserably and buy a little crocheted blanket and call it my own. Either way will work for me. I will keep you (my one reader HAHA) updated.

Finally

I'm back. Okay, yes, I suck at blogging. When I'm not working, all of my free time is spent mothering (whatever that means), trying to take up a new hobby, and then reading the Game of Thrones books when I fail. I never post anything of any substance (but that is 99% of the internet), and I don't ever post consistently, but let's get caught up: I had the baby, the first three months were horribly rough, but we have been blessed and she started sleeping for 5-6 hours at night probably around 3 weeks of age, she's adorable, and another love of my life. There, everyone is caught up. Currently, she is 8 months old and all over the place. Her older sister is awesome, and a great help with her little sister. So far, there are not really any jealousy issues, although I don't get to spend as much time with her older sister as I would like. Here is a picture of my wiggly little one.

On top of that, we have a surprise...we're pregnant again! How wonderful, right? We're going to name it "Oops". I scheduled an appointment to get back on regular birth control (I was on a weaker version since I was breastfeeding) and was feeling quite nauseous. I figured I would take a pregnancy test just in case and found out about my surprise. We were planning on having another, anyway, but were going to wait until our little one was at least 2 years old. We're happy about it, regardless. Anyway, updates to come, I am trying to take up something new, so here is a cross-stitch that I started recently. I'll probably throw it on the floor pretty soon and be back to reading my GoT (Game of Thrones, to those of you who are not fans) books in about 10 minutes. Here is where I'm at. I bought this awesome pattern from this awesome seller and thought I would give it a shot.

Getting closer....

The baby shower date is getting closer, and I'm starting to get pretty nervous about flying while 29-30 weeks pregnant. I'm sure I'll be fine, I have a doctor's note, so that makes everything okay, doesn't it? I mean, worst case scenario, I go into labor on the plane and have to give birth naturally. Call me prepared (my fiance likes to use the word "crazy") but I've also watched a couple of videos on giving birth in an emergency situation, so I'm practically an expert. Anyway, here's a video of my baby moving. It's right around 20 seconds if you get bored.

Kindergarten Graduation

In the midst of all of this baby preparation, my awesome six-year-old graduated from kindergarten!



Of course, it's called a "promotion" now, as opposed to a graduation, after I'm sure some politically correct parents or over-zealous educators got involved.

On another note, I'm not trying to brag, but my kid is pretty smart. Now, I believe that most children have the ability to be super-smart, it just depends on how much their parents work with them before they get into kindergarten or preschool. Once that happens, the kids mostly catch up to one another. However, my Angelina has been to kindergarten already, because she was too "bored" in the 4-year-old room in preschool. After starting elementary school, she passed the kindergarten competency test, which is supposed to provide their educators with a baseline indicating where they stand and where they need to be, with flying colors at the beginning of the year. She got the highest marks possible in all areas and achieved "mastery" in every subject (on another note, I didn't know they had subjects in kindergarten). I don't think she's any kind of genius, I just think she's very intuitive. Enough bragging, now to my point. Some of the kids were given awards for outstanding academic achievement. Yes, this is me being a little sore, but what the heck do you have to do for one of those? (She asked.) Did you finger-paint Picasso? Maybe the kids were able to read War and Peace? Oh well, maybe next year. In the meantime, congrats to my little angel!

Baby Loot

I'm already 28 weeks (or 30, depending on which of my doctors you ask, which is a little scary) but I don't have that much baby loot. My significant other made me promise "not to buy too much" until after the baby shower, which isn't until July. Way to be responsible, Tommy. Of course, we've made a couple of big/essential purchases, like the travel system, and I've already prepped a diaper bag with some diapers, wipes, butt paste, etc.

We went with a Chicco stroller/car seat combo after hours of intensive research and consumer reports (Google). Here's Tommy putting together the travel system. Always the professional, of course.



To be completely honest, I feel absolutely overwhelmed when it comes to choosing baby products; the last time I've shopped for them before now was 6 or 7 years ago, and a LOT of things have changed since then. Do you know there are sleep sacks with velcro on the back to keep your baby from rolling over? Weird. Another thing that's changed are the prices. I could be wrong, but I remember Avent bottles being cheaper. They worked 6 years ago, so I figure they should work now, too, so I went to pick some up the other day. Being that I was a single parent, I don't see any way that I spent $17 on a three-pack of bottles, but whatever. Good thing I'm breastfeeding and I hopefully won't need too many. I really couldn't resist when I found these:



PINK BOTTLES?! Don't mind if I do. I will mention that I did have a coupon.

But yesterday, I made the most expensive purchase to date...my breast pump. I was very lucky with my first and was given a Medela breast pump free of charge. After doing some research, apparently Medela is still a front-runner when it comes to milking boobs, so I went with the Medela Pump in Style Advanced.



I have to say, I feel a little prissy spending that much on a breast pump, but I had all of this money put into my flex spending account this year in the hopes of finally getting Lasik, but the pregnancy put a dent in that plan. This means that a lot of the money in that account would have been lost at the end of the year, and then I found out that "breast pumps and lactation assistance supplies" are covered. Do you care? Maybe not, but I was freakin' ecstatic!

I can't wait until after my baby shower so I can do some more shopping. :)

Baby Shower Prep

My baby shower is next month, which will be in my hometown. I am super excited and can't wait! I get to see a lot of good friends an family that I haven't seen in a long time. My first daughter would never provide a clear view during ultrasounds, so everything at the first shower was pretty neutral...decorations this time will definitely include a lot of pink!

These are the invites I chose from Shutterfly...they turned out awesome!



I really liked the chocolate and pink, so I decided to stick with that when ordering decorations, too. I found this picture and used it as inspiration:



It looks nice, but doesn't look too expensive. :) I also love these Martha Stewart Pom decorations...she has a complete "how-to" on her site, but I went ahead and bought the kits instead.



Not the best picture ever, but you get the idea. Now I just need to work on favors and the game prizes, and I'll be finished!

I'm expecting!

For my first blog post, I would like to let everyone know that I am currently expecting a little girl named Scarlett. Below is a picture of my little mystery person:



I didn't opt for one of those fancy 4d ultrasounds, because frankly, they weird me out. She's healthy and that's good enough for me. Angelina, her older sister, is ecstatic. I am 27-28 weeks (it's debatable between two doctors in different practices, apparently) and can't wait to buy lots of pink and purple. I never knew the definite sex of my first, so I'm going to have a lot of fun with this! :)