Happy Due Date to me

Well today is my due date, and this baby is not here yet. Josh was born before his due date, so I was sure this one would be too. I guess everyone is right, no two babies are the same. At my checkup yesterday the midwife was telling me what they do in the next two weeks if there is no baby. I looked at her in horror as she told me that they would let me go to 41 weeks and 5-6 days, but then they would want to induce. Man I can't even imagine another 2 weeks of being pregnant, lets hope I don't have to.

In the mean time, I have had lots of time to finish nesting! The nursery is ready, except for one piece of art for the wall that has not arrived yet. It finally shipped, so maybe that is why this baby is waiting to arrive :)

I like to call the nursery woodland meets safari :-)  We needed to get some new stuff because Josh is not done with everything, and he is keeping all his toys/animals/blankets. So we decided to go with a woodland theme, because it is still cute animals and similar colors. So this baby has some new woodland stuff and some other cute safari animal stuff--some new and some hand-me down.

Here are some pictures:

Quilt I made and some new animals

I'm waiting for Josh to steal them...

No nursery is complete without a giant giraffe

New safari animal quilt, with MY animals :-)

New art

Closeup of the quilt I made for baby

Closeup of the quilt made by a friend for baby :-)

Big boy room

We put the finishing touches on Josh's big boy room last week. I bought a miror for above his dresser which still needs to go up, and sent his quilt to be finished. But I wanted to share some pictures of his room.

We didn't want to repaint our guest room in part because I painted it when we moved in and it seemed like a waste to repaint it so soon. We know that Josh is soon entering a "color on the wall" phase, so it seemed even more stupid to repaint before that. We also hope that eventually both boys will share the room upstairs, so we don't know how long this will even be Josh's room. 

But that left us with a lavender room for a toddler boy. The internet did not provide any suggestions or ideas for turning a purple room into a room for a boy, so I had to get creative. I decided that lime green, grey and white would go well with the wall color and "boy" it up a bit.

We got lucky and got a good deal on a white dresser and it really brightens up the small room. We got the rest of the furniture from Ikea in white and light wood color. Ikea happens to use lime green as an accent color in many it's, so it was easy to stick with the theme. We got a darker grey carpet cut to fit for his room that will hopefully cover any stains. I also decided on a few craft projects to tie the room all together. I made Josh a poster with his name, and used an Internet hack of painting IKEA spice racks to use as little bookshelves with the same color paint. The biggest project I took on was making a quilt for the room. 

Making a twin size quilt was a much bigger task than I realize. It took me over a month to find and pick out fabric that I wanted, and then another few weeks to put the quilt together. I couldn't find much fabric that I liked in stores, so I ended up ordering it online. I wanted to bring together the purple, green, grey and white in the quilt with some patterns and fun prints of animals and things Josh likes. I ended up adding lots of other bold colors (blue, teal, orange and red) in the prints. I was worried about this not matching well, but I love how it came out.  I made the top of the quilt, the bottom of the quilt and prepared the binding for the outside. I just sent it off to have it machine quilted, because I don't have the time, skill or proper sewing machine to do it myself. I can't wait to see how it turns out :-)

We needed a lot of help from family and friends to convert this room from a guest room to Josh's room and really appreciate everyone who helped out. From moving furniture out, to putting up shelves and lighting we couldn't have done it without everyone. I also really appreciate all the crafting and sewing advice from near and far. 

A friend recommended getting Josh excited about his new room by picking things out for it and that was great advice. We couldn't always take him shopping with us, but we showed him each item as we got it and let him "help" get the room together. He LOVES his new room and loves talking about the things he did to get it ready :)

Here are some pictures of the room. I'm really happy with how it all turned out. Take that Pinterest and the Internet, you can make a purple room for a toddler boy!

Big boy bed!

Posters, toy storage and little table

New dresser and shelves

Reading area :-)

Unfinished quilt, just to see what it looked like. And a view of the new ceiling fan.

Better view of the corner of the quilt

Helping Daddy!

39 weeks!

Belly pictures for those who have been requesting them :-). I'm in the home stretch!

Feeling big!

Hugging baby brother :)

Eastover

I heard someone call the combination holiday of Easter and Passover, Eastover and I like it. Certainly very fitting for us this year. We decided to host a little egg hunt and passover Seder this year with some friends and family to make sure that Josh got to celebrate both. Josh learned at daycare that you "hide the eggs and then find them!" and that the eggs have candy in them. So easter was not a hard sell :-P Fortunately he is a big fan of Matzah and gefilta fish, so he enjoyed both parts of the holiday. This year I also took over the tradition of hiding Easter baskets in diabolical locations for my cousin, sister and our spouses to find. 3/4 were very hard to find. Fortunately I have a whole year to come up with a good location for Julian's next year ::muh ha haaaa::

I hid some eggs in the yard for Josh and our next door neighbor to find, and they had a great time. We then had a passover style meal with very abbreviated Seder (4 questions and explanation of the seder plate). I made Matzah ball soup for the first time, brisket, and flour-less chocolate cake. Which all came out very well. I also tried to make nut free charoset, but really should have added more wine :-)  The gefilta fish was really not popular among our guests, so their loss.

I would say the biggest holiday fail was a book I bought for Josh on Big Bird and Grover's search for the Matzah. If you are looking for a book about passover for a child, I would certainly skip that one! The book doesn't even tell of the story or discuss any passover traditions.

Easter reminds me of both of my Grandmothers who I miss dearly. It was fun this year that Josh was really learning about both holidays and getting to experience them. It was nice to get to start passing on some of the traditions I grew up with.

Eating his findings

Soup success!

Mmmm Brisket

Basket hunt :-)

Mark didn't think I was spry enough to hide a basket in the ceiling :-) 

Finding his basket :-)

I told Josh he couldn't have his chocolate bunny until after breakfast and put it on the counter. He promptly got his stool and got it anyway. I awarded his cleverness with chocolate bunny.

Change is Difficult

Our family is going to change dramatically in the next few weeks and to get ready for that we have been making lots of changes at home.  Transitioning Josh downstairs and into his new room has been a big change but we expected it to be hard on Josh.  It turns out it has been harder for us.  Josh has been sleeping in his new room since Saturday and overall it has gone very well.  The first night he slept through the night without any trouble.  Last night was a bit rougher, he woke up several times but he just needed to be shown where his pillow was. Overall he loves his new room, and when we ask if he wants to sleep there he always says "Yes!"

Margaret and I on the other hand find it very strange for him to be downstairs from us.  I keep seeing his old room without him in it and it feels very strange.  I have to remind myself he is downstairs and everything is fine.

We are almost done getting his room ready. We have moved most of his things downstairs. We just have a few more things to put on the wall, and Margaret has a never ending hunt for the perfect hamper for his room. In a week or two we'll start shifting his old room to be ready for the new baby, we'll see how he handles that.  I'm not sure it really will make sense to him until he see's his little brother in his old room.

A friend gave us some very good advice to get him excited about picking out things for his new room, and to let him help with it to get more excited. This has really helped! We have shown him each new item in his room as we buy or make it, and he gets very excited. He watched Daddy and cousin James put in his ceiling fan and loves to talk about it.

We also changed the child proofing downstairs so that he will always have access to his room. He loves being able to run to the living room and then back to his room. We put a gate in front of our basement steps, and locks on our office and hall closet to keep him safe.

Once the art is on the walls in his room we will take some pictures to share here :-)  But for now some cute ones of Josh enjoying his new room.

Happy in his new chair

Sleeping soundly - yes we are stalkers...

"I'm a goof and a cutie pie"

I called Josh a cutie pie once, and he really latched onto the term. Clearly I think he is a cutie pie, so I love that he repeats that :-)  When he is being silly Julian or I will call him a goof. At first he would say, "No, I cutie pie" but now he says, "I'm a goof and a cutie pie". If you call him silly he will say, "I'm a silly goose". I know he doesn't really know what these mean, but it is so cute to see him learning phrases like this and using them appropriately :-)  Anyway, Josh has been in full blown toddler mode lately and liked to do things HIS way. This makes for some fun pictures which we will share with you.

This is how Josh rolls when we shop these days...

He also likes sunglasses while he eats

Testing out the washers at Home Depot

Nap time, big boy style

The rug arrived for Josh's room on Friday and I made a big trip to ikea to get a few more things for his room. There is still some work to do in his room, but we decided to let him nap in there this weekend.

The nap went about as we expected. Josh has been a little difficult at nap and bedtime lately, demanding extra songs and pats on the back. Getting to sleep in his new bed was very exciting for him, but he requested a bunch of animals and toys in the bed. We made the mistake of giving him his talking Elmo doll, which he proceeded to play with. He got out of his bed and tried to get out of the room once, but we were able to get him back in bed. By that point he was a bit overtired and cranky, but once he calmed down he went right to sleep. 

It look about an hour to get him to sleep, but then he napped for 2 hours...so we decided that it was a win! He did not fall out of his big boy bed, so double win :-)

We still have a bit of work to do in his room, so this week he will be sleeping in his crib at night. Hopefully by next weekend we will at least do naps in his new room, and maybe try for an overnight! Our goal was to have him in the new room by April, so we are right on track. So far he has been excited about his new room and new bed, but we think once he realizes he doesn't get to have 2 rooms he might be upset. 

Getting comfortable :-)

hummm....

Not looking promising...

That is not sleeping.

Victory!