39 Week Update: May 14th

On May 14th I became 39 weeks and people at work started to get concerned that I might actually have the baby at work! I did not...Thor/Simon came two days early. I had gained a total of 31 pounds and was ready to go. 

Not much was different with week 39 then week 38 or even previous weeks. I do tend to get more and more crooked when I stand as I get more pregnant. I swear I am standing up straight or that it feels straight.

Updates to come

Thor has arrived! He is now known as Simon Alexander but feel free to call him Thor.  Everyone is healthy and happy.

On my to do list for blog:

9 month/39 week update

Post baby weight update

Pictures of Simon of course

Birth story

**not necessarily in that order**

House Updates

We have received the two items we bought from Costco and have set them up. We are currently shopping around for a roofer to help decide on the third item. Mom also came over a couple weekends ago and helped us put up pictures. Sounds easy but I have been trying to get some of them up since we moved in. More of Mom's visit will be in another post....

For this post I want to show you the pictures of what we got accomplished. While organizing the pictures I discovered that for some rooms I haven't shown the updates we have slowly been making so I will start taking pictures of the rooms as they are now to post later.

First up the garage. I don't really have any before pictures but I think you can imagine the before. We got the shelving unit from Costco and it is great! Fits perfectly, easy to assemble and plenty of room to store in. Everything that we have had to deal with on the floor, some stuff that we were storing in the laundry room were all able to be put on the shelving unit and there is plenty of room for more!

The wheelbarrow is my mom's and will be gone soon as we no longer need to borrow it so that will be more space for us as well. We have a few more projects for the garage but this shelving unit helps out A LOT! We want to put a storage unit over the garage door opener so we can lie the hurricane barriers up out of the way and other flat items and we want to put peg board on all/some of the walls so we can hang things like brooms, shovels etc. It is so much easier for me to pull in and out now and everything just looks so much neater!

The next thing we got from Costco was the bakers rack. It has worked just as well as we had hoped. I am just one more step closer to being able to use my Kitchen Aid mixer I got as a wedding gift!

One of the few true before pictures I have....

After :)

We were able to get so much stuff out of our pantry, off our counter tops and all those frying pans out of a cabinet. We have not reorganized everything yet because we just need the kit for the Kitchen Aid mixer and more time to figure out where the best spot for things is but we could not be happier with the bakers rack!

We hung a lot of pictures in the nursery. I would do a full nursery update but it is a mess! We had gotten so many diaper cakes that we had trouble storing them all and they all fell apart so we have diapers everywhere! When Mom comes up to help with Thor one of the things I hope to do is get the nursery picture worthy at least once :) But until then...here are the pictures we hung.

Before

After: Picture and the top of baby's first bookcase

Before

After: the shelf my Mom had when she was a little girl and Peter Rabbit and Howdy Doody collectibles

The above two photo's are probably my favorite part of the room. We did center them to the room not the crib because I do not plan on ever moving them where as the crib will leave the room at some point. The picture on the left (and the close up which is on the bottom) is of Benjamin giving Thor kisses while Thor is still "cooking". I was just trying to get photo's of Benjamin and my big belly. Benjamin is a cuddle bug so it wasn't hard to do. Benjamin must have felt Thor kick or something because he moved his head to look at Thor...I was lucky enough to catch it on camera. I was so pleased I got it! The plaque in the middle has a bible verse on it that we got from Ms. Micki and I thought it would be perfect to use as a separation of the two big photos. The second picture frame, which is empty right now, will have the picture of Thor lying on Benjamin when we go down to visit during maternity leave. We hung the frame now so we could ensure it was placed properly and so it would be easy for me to put up when we get the picture printed. I am so excited these pictures are working out as I hoped. And when "Thor" gets big enough and decides he wants other photo's in those frames we can just switch them out. I think the Hulk and Iron Man would look just as good in those frames :)

These two pictures are hung in the living room. These are two of my favorite pictures from the wedding. The left of us being our goofy selves and the right one being just a great formal, posed photo. We plan on putting the plate Caroline (Mom #2) painted as part of the Bridal Party gifts in the middle and then surrounding that area with photo's of the children as they come.

The above two photo's are of one of my favorite pictures from the engagement shoot. I did not use it as my "Save the Date" photo but it really shows our personalities. Brian is poking me as he always does and I am just smiling at him and trying to hide my laughter that he is still being his mischievous self while we are trying to get our photo's taken. I put this photo in the hallway heading into the Master Bedroom. If you were to look at the two photo's in the living room and look right you would be looking right smack at this photo.

The above photo is placed in the foyer. So if anyone walks in the front door this picture is one of the very first things to be seen. Excuse the boxes in the top photo, we haven't been able to get rid of all the trash from the baby shower/Costco purchases. It is one of the few good, rainy shots we have. It was torrential downpour when we got married and while our photographer was fantastic...we didn't listen to him as much as we should have and I miss not having more pictures of us out in the rain. I was too focused on making sure we got everything in and done to feel relaxed enough to add more out...but I am very glad we did get this shot.

This is one of Gamma Kay's prints. I love it and I put it in the hall way that takes you to the nursery (on the left) and the guest room (on the right). I think it ties the rooms and hall way together perfectly.

Before

After

This is one of Gamma Kay's paintings. It was originally in the kitchen where the baker's rack is but we moved it to the guest room. The bakers rack is just too high but that is okay because I think it looks great where it is :)

I am so glad we got the photo's up. The house is starting to feel more like a home and more like a family is actually living here. Before it looked like we had barely moved in and now, after over a year and a half, we have made it look like people do live here!

38 Weeks Update

Well I wasn't planning on doing another update until after Thor came but with everything that is going on...I want to make sure I keep up with the pictures and if I do that..I might as well document what is going on.

Thor has definitely started his journey home. I still don't think he will be here much before his due date and am still hoping for Memorial Day weekend but I don't want new mom naivety to ruin Thor's pregnancy photo book.

At 37 weeks I was 50% effaced. At my 38 week appointment which was actually on the 10th I was 70% effaced and 2 centimeters dilated. My 39th week appointment is on Wednesday the 15th so we shall see where I am there.

I knew on Friday (the 10th) that I had made some progress because I was having bad, constant cramps....similar to the menstrual cramps I used to have. These lasted 2 hours and were strong enough for me to think that maybe he was coming so I started to rush at work to finish or get as much of a project done as I could. I figured I would just go to the doctors appointment as usual and go from there. The doctors office is quite literally across the street from the hospital so I figured I was fine. By the time the doctors appointment had come the cramps had subsided. While I was being checked by the amazing midwife (love her...if Thor could come when she was on call....I will be SOOOOOO happy) I actually had a contraction so maybe the "cramps" I was feeling were actually contractions". I continued to "cramp" on and off the rest of the night. Based on the doctors appointment I finally got off my butt and packed the hospital bag. Brian just needs to put jeans and socks in and we are set! 

The midwife has said that I could come this weekend but she thinks it could possibly be by Wednesday (coincidentally my next doctors appointment). While I have made progress I know too many women, including my mother, who have made significant progress and the baby still didn't come for weeks so who really knows.

Because it could really be so close I made Brian take my photos. I apologize for not smiling much...I was still cramping at the time :)

Half way to an outie...

Yup....Brian is still Brian

No baby yet but we are getting there :) 9 days till due date!

Our Yard

Our yard remains an issue of frustration for me and Brian. The size of it is great. And our yard would be fine if we could get it under control..so really I guess the frustration truly boils down to our landscapers.

We did go ahead and get the sod done and re-did the irrigation system. We are still glad we did both things but right now the results are not what we were expecting.

We have had to get the irrigation people out twice already to fix issues which they did and those are fine but now I found another head that is permanently in the up position so we have to get them out to fix that and do a walk around and make sure all the other heads come up as they are supposed to and go back down as they are supposed to. They also had to create trenches to bury the wire/pipes/etc. It really feels that they did not even bother to fill in those trenches. I have been going out and filling them in but they never get full. At this point we are going to have to go to our landscapers and ask them to fill them for us as we cannot rake or get anymore dirt into them. Theoretically we could get soil and do it ourselves but with me being 9 months pregnant and soon with a newborn and Brian who hates the outside....it is not something we can do. We spent over an hour yesterday and barely made a dent with what we can do. You can see the lines from where they dug up everything and the landscaper says the grass will grow over that with time especially since they are fertilizing the lawn and that there might be some unlevel-ness which is fine but I am worried about trenches. As it is it's a liability. The trenches we have are 4 inches deep...an adult's foot could get stuck and cause injury...lets not think what would happen to Thor! Once the irrigation heads get fixed and the trenches get properly filled in I will be much happier with that aspect of the backyard.

An example of the 4 inch deep trench

I am not happy with our landscapers. Really not happy. We have tried to find others but they are all  A LOT more expensive and don't offer the same services. You get what you pay for but our current people have AWFUL communication. Last year our yard looked great. Our biggest issue is that the landscapers would not respond to us. I would have to email and send multiple notes with bills back to them letting them know that we want to change something and threaten not to pay them if they continue to do it. This year...I don't know what happened. The communication hasn't gotten better which I expected but I really feel our yard is going back to its natural state. The new sod is the worst. Either they didn't clear the easement like they were supposed to and just mowed it and placed the sod over it or they bought awful sod. Even the front and the side yards are falling apart and going back to how it was before we even built the house. The culprit? Weeds. Weeds are everywhere...and not weeds that I can pull out. A) it would take days and B) it would literally pull the sod up with it...even in the front/sides of the house where the sod has been there for a year and a half or so. The landscapers are supposed to take care of the weeds too and I just don't feel like they are. I refuse to let our yard go back to natural but I am concerned with what the landscapers are doing. We are still early in the process but I am really concerned about it. We did not spend all this money on the house and the new sod to have it ruined by weeds. We have thought about going out and getting our own weed killer and spray that around but we don't want to kill the grass and we don't want to put too much chemicals in the yard. Brian is going to call them and talk to them, they do not want to talk to me at this point, and hopefully we can get this under control. All I want to do is pay someone to come mow the lawn, throw pesticides down in the grass and make sure there are no weeds. Right now we have someone who cuts the grass really well, we haven't had any pest issues in the lawn so that's great but they are really falling short regarding the weeds. Ugh.

The one good news about the yard....the bunnies are back!

Easement

Easement

Easement

Front yard

The front yard is not as bad as the easement but it did not look like this last year. It is also harder to take pictures of. Hopefully this will be fixed soon