Halloween

Halloween was a lot of fun this year. Joshua really got into it. We watched Charlie Brown and the Great Pumpkin early in the month and he was ready to go trick or treating right then and there. He picked out his own costume this year and gleefully ran from house to house. He even said Trick or Treat and thank you. Last year he would stand frozen on the doorstep until they took pity on him and gave him a piece of candy. He would then flee into our arms and want to be carried to the next house. Not this year. My feet wore out before his did! We went over to Eric's sister's house so he could trick or treat with his cousins. We live in a very small gated neighborhood and the neighbors keep very much to themselves. There aren't many kids around here either. We left a bowl of candy on the doorstep with a sign to please take one and we had candy left when we got home...maybe I didn't get the good candy!

Joshua chose to be Buzz Lightyear this year. Apparently a very popular costume with the re-release of the Toy Story movies in 3-D. He got to dress up on Friday for preschool and trick or treat with his class and there were 4 Buzz's running around...two of them girls! I think the preschool ended up with 6 Buzz Lightyears all in all. We have taken him to see the movies and he loves to run around saying...to infinity and beyond! He'll crouch down while saying the phrase and then jump into the air at the end. It's super cute but I can't get him to do it for the video camera!



With as much fun as he had with Halloween, I am really looking forward to Christmas this year. He's at just the right age for the magic and wonder of the season. Speaking of holidays, I am busily working through my to do list. I have 1 month before Lily's arrival and I have accomplished so much! I have everything ready for her arrival with the exception of actually putting the infant seat bases in the cars and setting up the bassinet. I have all the linens washed for it, just not set out. I've washed all the outfits, blankets, bedding, and toys that I've gotten and have her room fully set up and ready. I have everything for my hospital bag, I just need to pack it. I have had the carpet cleaned, done most of my Christmas shopping and wrapping, and even done some baking ahead of time. This weekend I have made and frozen a batch of Christmas cookies and toffee. I've got one more batch of cookies and probably another round of toffee to make plus our seasonal beef stick. I am waiting on a few items that I have ordered for presents to arrive and I have a couple people left on my list. I may actually get it all done before she gets here!

Nesting Insanity

These past two weekends have been madness. I am usually a neat and organized person. I like everything to have it's own place and be put away most of the time. I have turned into a cleaning, organizing, obsessive machine over the past few weeks! I guess I am nesting and I certainly don't remember it being this bad when I was pregnant with Joshua. Although, it may have been masked in the process of moving into and repainting a whole house instead of just concentrated on two rooms. Poor Eric has taken it all in good stride...I guess he has to since his is currently living with an insane person. I cannot believe how consumed I became with the prospect of finishing Joshua and Lily's rooms. I started the weekend after Joshua's birthday on Lily's room. We moved out all the furniture and donated it to a good cause. I had the room taped, painted and mostly wall papered by Sunday night....we started Saturday afternoon! The only reason it wasn't completely finished was that I ran out of the wall paper border and had to order some more. It didn't come in until the middle of the next week and I was gone the following weekend for a conference. The weekend after that Eric was out of town on a hunting trip, so I finished the wall paper and cleaned everything up to get ready for Joshua's room.

Eric got back from hunting Sunday evening and I had him and his parents moving furniture that night! I got everything taped, drop cloths down, and the jungle animal border that was part of the nursery painted over before I managed to get to bed that night. Work was very slow the next week, so I used long lunches to paint the bottom part of the wall, put up an airplane sticker border and airplane decals...I was done by Thursday and Joshua slept on his new mattress in the floor of his room that night. To be fair he didn't like the pink of Lily's room so sleeping on the mattress on the floor was his idea not mine! We were supposed to get Joshua's furniture that Friday or Saturday but it was delayed for a number of reasons. I spent the weekend changing out closets between the nursery and Joshua's room and all the stuff that used to be in his dresser wound up in laundry baskets on the floor of the closet until we could get his new stuff. I spent the weekend washing some of the baby stuff that people had given me and loading up the dresser for Lily.

My madness continued as we got Joshua's furniture Tuesday of last week. I had all of his clothes in drawers and everything organized by the end of the week. It was like I couldn't sleep until it was all done. To make matters worse I made Eric haul everything out of the attic that we had saved from Joshua's infancy so I could sort and organize. As of last night I have sorted, tossed, donated, and washed what I decided to keep out of Joshua's stuff. PLUS I have washed and put away everything that I got at my baby shower on Saturday!

The only things I have left to get down are the big things...high chair, infant seat, swing, etc... There are a few things I will need to purchase to be ready but at the rate I'm going I'm sure I will get that done this weekend. I have never felt so possessed by a desire to get it all done NOW! It's like I can't sleep because I'm thinking about all the stuff I need to do. Maybe I'm preparing this early because I know just how tired and worn out we will be after Lily gets here...who knows at this point! I guess my next adventure will be to get my Christmas shopping done....

Renovation Completion!

Yeah!!! The nursery and Joshua's room are finally done!! I've had the painting and everything completed in Joshua's room for about two weeks but his furniture was delayed so it took a little longer than I planned to get everything back where it's supposed to be and get it presentable for pictures! Joshua loves his new room. He has tried several times to take the airplanes off the wall around his bed and he had tried jumping off his bed to reach the airplane pull on his fan...both activities have been strongly discouraged!!!! I guess it's universal for little kids to try jumping on their first big bed. It's certainly nothing that we've ever taught him but he seems to know the song about monkeys jumping on the bed all the same. I guess preschool has covered the gambit on bed jumping!













Lily's room has also turned out very cute and very girly. Eric keeps looking around it and commenting on the pinkness of it all. Well it is a room for a little girl! Since she's the first girl in the family, I think we have all gone a little overboard ( just a tad) but it's been a lot of fun. Even Eric is guilty of coming home from the store with cute little girl outfits...matching jeans and all. I just have to giggle to myself when I see even Mr. Reserved lose control just a little. He was just as bad with Joshua, but with him it was all footballs, Cowboys jersey's and baseballs. The kid literally had three baseballs before he was ever born! Thanks to some of my sweet friends and in-laws who threw me a girl shower, Lily has a pretty complete wardrobe already!! I certainly have plenty of cute little sleepers and outfits for the early days. I may not even need to sort through all the stuff I saved from Joshua to pull out the gender neutral items. I am truly touched and overwhelmed by the great influx of pink and cuteness that has surrounded us these past several weeks. I can't wait for her to get here! Joshua seems very excited at the prospect of a little sister. I know that will change the minute we walk through the door with her and he figures out that she's here to stay. For now he has taken to asking once or twice a week "Where is baby sister?" I explain that she's still in my tummy and she has to grow some more before she can be born. The then sighs, looks at me and says "She's sure taking a long time!" You're telling me!

Busy-ness

It seems like September has gone flying by. We have accomplished quite a bit but I feel like I have very little to show for it. I cannot believe we are into October next week. I looked at the calendar this week and I have less than 10 weeks to get everything accomplished before Lily's arrival....YIKES!!!! Granted we have really only had one weekend to work on the rooms. The first weekend was Joshua's birthday and we had family in our guest room. The next weekend we accomplished a ton! I got all of our furniture out, painted and got most of the wall paper border up. The wall paper border was a point of frustration here and there. The bedding I really liked for Lily's room is supposed to be available at Babies R Us and Lonestar Baby (another local store). This is according to the manufacturer's website. None of the local Babies R Us stores stock it and neither does Lonestar Baby! I could order it from Lonestar or I could order it from Amazon. Since Lonestar was about $45 more, I went with Amazon. They don't have all the accessories but I really didn't want all of them anyway. One thing I did order was the matching wall paper border. Nowhere on the website or the packaging did it say how much was on the roll. Not even when I had the roll in my hand!!!! It came out to about 10 yards but wasn't enough to do the whole room. I had to get on and order another roll and wait for it to come in. Of course it didn't show up until right before I left for a conference, so I didn't finish the room until this week. I have never wall papered before and it was a learning experience. I'm glad I started with just a border....I'm not a big fan of wall paper but the border was too cute to pass up. I seriously doubt I will do any bigger wall paper projects. I can't imagine all the tedium that goes into hanging full size pieces to cover a whole wall! Not my cup of tea!!

Now I just need to work on getting the nursery furniture out of Joshua's room so I can tape and repaint for him. He is very excited about his airplane room and can't wait for us to get started. Eric is out of town hunting this weekend so I guess the furniture moving will have to wait until he returns. I think Joshua will just have to sleep in a pink room for a little bit so we can get his room painted and wait for his new furniture to get here. In my mind, his room will look really cute when it's all finished. I just hope the actual product matches what I am visualizing.

Joshua seems to be blossoming in preschool. Every day he comes up with some new fact or figure that his little brain has absorbed. We were driving around town running errands the other day and we happened to pass by a flag pole with the flag up. All of a sudden from the back seat he declares "That's a flag Mommy. It stands for America and it's red, white and blue." Having never discussed the American flag with him, I was impressed. It is truly amazing how much they learn and retain at this age.

I'll hopefully have some more room pictures to post in a couple of weeks as we finish the kid's rooms. I meant to get a before pic of Lily's room but it didn't happen. Here's the paint and border I have so far. I have some super cute butterfly decals to put up but need to get the furniture in place before I can configure the arrangement.

Joshua's 3rd Birthday

I can't believe my baby boy is 3 years old! It seems like he was a tiny little thing just yesterday and now he's a little boy! He has grown and changed in so many ways this year. I love to see this transformation but I also want to cling to all the sweet moments of his babyhood. We started out on Friday with his first true big boy haircut. He's gotten haircuts since he was 14 months old but they have always been scissor cuts to mainly trim around the edges. His hair is pretty thick now and grows at a rapid pace. His last scissor cut was only 4 weeks ago and he was looking pretty shaggy. Mom bit the bullet so to speak and had them cut with clippers on the sides and shape up the top with scissors. It's amazing how much older that one little thing made him look. He's so tall that people already assume he's much older but now he really looks the part too!

Saturday we had his main party at Pump It Up. I must say I was impressed with this place! I had decided that I was too pregnant and tired to do a party at home this year and wanted someone else to clean up the mess. Joshua had so much fun with the bounce house we rented last year that I figured Pump It Up was a perfect fit...I was right! They take care of everything. You bring the cake, candles, lighter and balloons...they do the rest! There are two huge bounce rooms and the kids get 40 minutes in each and then a party room for cake, presents, etc... The kids had an absolute blast....some of the adults did too! I'm kinda bummed that I didn't get to jump but that is off my list since I had the placenta problems earlier in my pregnancy. It was fun to watch the kid's antics though and I got some great pictures of everyone.

Joshua's birthday fell on Labor Day this year so it was nice that the whole family got to spend the day together. For several months now, Joshua has been begging Eric to take him to a football game. Try explaining football season to a two year old...he couldn't figure out why didn't take him now! We got the perfect opportunity when we found out that there were several high school games being played on Labor Day at the new Cowboys Stadium. With the exorbitant prices for Cowboys tickets we figured this would be our only way to see the new stadium this season. The stadium is pretty neat but they have a lot of bugs to work out when it comes to traffic flow and moving people in and out. Joshua had a great time and that's all that matters.

My independent little man also started all out preschool this week. He's always gone to a daycare/preschool but since he's potty trained he was able to move up to the official preschool class at school. They have school supplies and everything. He loves it and I can already tell he's learning a ton. He is quite the little sponge!

This weekend will start the change over of rooms. We are getting rid of all our guest room furniture on Saturday and will start the painting process for Lily's room. Once it's painted we will temporarily move Joshua in there with the toddler bed so we can paint and redo his room. I'm hoping to get his room painted before his new furniture gets here but we'll see! Once we get his new stuff we'll move him back and return the toddler bed to crib form to complete the set up for Lily. Then starts the great clothes sorting. I have all of Joshua's stuff up in the attic in boxes by size. Now I get to sort through and find all the gender neutral stuff and figure out what to do with the boy stuff. I have a feeling Goodwill and the Battered Women's shelter will be getting several donations in the near future! So far Joshua has accepted all this change with ease...I only hope that trend continues as we get closer to December 2nd!

Baby update

I had my 20 week sonogram last week with a perinatologist. Since I had the placenta previa and some bleeding in my second trimester, my regular ob/gyn wanted me to see a specialist for this sonogram so we could have a high def look at everything. I had to see one with Joshua as well, but for blood pressure reasons. This was a different doctor and the office was quite impressive. Eric went with me so he could get another peek at Lily and we got to watch the scan on a 55" flat screen plasma tv. It was pretty amazing. We could see all 4 chambers of the heart and looked at all her major organs. She was positioned perfectly to confirm that we are definitely expecting a little girl. Even Eric could see all the parts on that shot! We are very happy to report that everything looks great! My placenta is firmly reattached and Lily is growing at a normal rate. I will have another high def scan in 4 weeks to make sure all development is on track.

In other news, it looks like Joshua is finally on the road to potty training success. We are still battling going number 2 on the potty but he hasn't had a wet accident for almost 3 weeks! YEAH!!! He has done the number 2 deed at school a few times but never at home. I have taken to putting together a list of bribes if he will go on the potty for us. The list is currently at a balloon from the grocery store, Handy Manny underwear and M&Ms. I have a feeling when the event finally occurs all promises will immediately be called in. Here's hoping the list doesn't get much longer!!

We are all headed off for a week of vacation next Wednesday and are looking forward to it. Joshua loves to fly! I'll post details later but have to keep locations on the down low for now.

Longer Football Clip

I've been playing more and more with the iMovie stuff on our new computer. I had to give up and buy a more detailed explanation book to find some of this stuff! Here is a longer clip of the football videos we shot last weekend. It took me most of the week to find where the computer put the longer of the two, but I finally succeeded! I'm sure this will be an ever expanding clip as the summer progresses. The first thing Joshua wanted to do this morning after realizing it wasn't a school day was ask to play football with Daddy. I think we have a sports fanatic on our hands!