DIY Landscaping: Front Yard Redesign Begins

When we started our DIY landscaping project, top on the list of landscaping redesign is the two front, large gardens. Nasty Bermuda grass has been growing in one. Nothing A has tried got rid of it. Plus, we hate having to pull weeds all the time. That led us to the brilliant idea of rocking in both of the beds and it spawned the whole DIY landscaping redo. Once we had the rock idea, we scouted out different types together to decide which type. Neither of us are fans of the river rock and the small pebble styles wouldn't work out well. I love the look of marble rock in gardens, so that's what we settled on. We tackled one side at a time, cleaning out first then continuing on to plants. Black weed-preventing paper went down under the rocks to try to discourage the weeds.

Two big Alberta spruces, one on each side, got really brown last year. I decided to rip one out and leave the other since the brown on that one was more hidden and didn't look as bad. The bad one you could see brown on as soon as you looked out the door. A big, brown, dead-looking plant right in front of you blocking out the view. Not something I enjoyed looking at all the time! Another large, green plant that previous owners put in I love, so it gets to stay.

Before the landscaping started

Previous owners seem to have had a love affair with spirea -- that's all that is in the beds with the other three plants. Five big, overgrown, messy spirea. I'm not a fan of spirea. At all. It looks too wild, boring, weedy and dull. Once the flowers die off, it's even more blah to me. A got the honor of ripping those out. I did decide to leave two that are the rare type of spirea with multi-colored leaves, making for pretty foliage. That, and they're two big plants in the midst of the Bermuda grass. We aren't sure that planting something new would go to well, the grass may kill it off. Since A has trimmed them up nicely, they actually don't look bad at all.

Landscaping in progress

The edge of the beds on one side, by the walkway, have creeping phlox growing. Those get to stay, too. I even planted a few more to fill out one side and to have the other match. I'm a fan of phlox since the flowers in spring are so pretty then the rest of the year, until winter, there's a lush, textured green. I added a cute stone owl for interest by the phlox.

To replace the spirea that we tore out on the grass side, I'm going with a container garden. The pots add interest and look neat sitting on the rocks. Hostas and dianthus fill those pots. Right now, the dianthus looks like it may not make it. If it dies, I've got plans to put in some flowering evergreens instead.

While in the process of getting both beds cleaned up, the Alberta spruce I had wanted to keep died, becoming a big, tall mass of brown with a green bits mixed in. The day I realized it was a goner, I sent A a message letting him know he had a "fun" project awaiting him for the weekend. That side already has rocks and is almost done. I am not happy that there's more work to do there now.

On the upside, after A ripped out the huge bush, the porch is much more open, airy and light. I love it! So much in fact that I'm not going to put in another tall plant like I'd originally thought (and been scouting out plants for). Right now, a big hole is sitting there. Once I get new plants in there, we'll add more rocks and finish it all up.

The non-grass-filled side is all cleaned up and everything growing removed. The spirea on that side was plain ugly and had to go. I almost gave them a pass once A trimmed them and they started to blossom, but quickly came to my senses. I am always drawn to barberry when I'm at nurseries, especially the deep, red Japanese Concord variety, so I knew I wanted to incorporate those. I've wandered local nurseries a few times, along with big-box-store nurseries in search of plants that I love. I don't want to plant anything that I don't feel drawn to and really enjoy. Looking at everything growing brings me happiness and helps me deal with stress, so if it's not something I'm excited about, I don't want to add it into my plans. There are so many options for gardens. I can't tell you how many times I've changed my mind until I finally settled on the plants that felt "right" for the spaces.

Rainbow ascot

With the barberry selected, I had to find something that would be taller so it wouldn't get lost in the back of the garden, would add contrast and color, but not look bad along side the barberry and the big, traditional holly growing next to the bed that is staying (it's too large and too pretty to rip out). We'd had the tall Alberta spruce in the spot, along with an empty space that always annoyed me. I don't want another tall plant there, though, as it closes in the porch, makes it too dark and blocks the beautiful view of the garden from the porch.

False holly

A neat nursery down the road from us carries false holly. I have never seen it before. It is beautiful mix of green, yellow and orange, and works perfectly with the barberry. In it goes! At a gardening festival a few weeks back, I found two neat little evergreen plants that will grow into small shrubs over the years. Called rainbow ascot, these guys smell like English boxwood, have pretty foliage and nice-shaped leaves. Another tall, flowering evergreen plant is set to go in, along with a third false holly that I need to buy. Originally, I was going to only have two false holly and three barberry, but it didn't look right. Neither did only having two barberry, so the rainbow ascot got added. It had been intended for a back garden originally. Ditto the tall, flowering evergreen plant that I can't recall the name of right now. As soon as everything is purchased and planted, we'll be rocking in that bed and it'll finally be done.

More to come on this project as it continues! For regular updates (and plenty of pics), follow me over on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

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DIY Landscaping: Getting Started

If you follow me on any of my social media accounts, you've heard that we are redoing all the landscaping in our yard. It's a DIY project. A and I are doing it all ourselves, from cleaning out every bed, ripping down big trees and bushes, planning each garden, selecting plants, to buying plants, planting them in the beds and rocking in two big gardens. A veggie garden also got built and planted this year. Finally, after years of wanting one. In all, there are 16 gardens in our yard of various sizes. It's a complete yard overhaul.

It's all still a work in progress. Some won't even be finished until next spring since it's starting to get too hot to plant, plus we have a budget to stick with. We're about two months into working on this, with much more left to go. Having super rainy days when we can't get out to work, plus other life things to take care of, kids to spend time with and life in general makes this a longer process.

One of the big reasons we are doing the project ourselves is cost. When you hire someone, landscaping is so, so expensive. We are saving thousands of dollars doing it ourselves. Plus, it's great exercise, a learning experience, stress relief and something I am really enjoying. (I can't say that A is enjoying it as much, but he's working hard!)

I've taken the lead on clearing out, deciding what stays and what goes, planning the gardens and picking what goes in. A offers advice when asked and is the muscle for jobs I can't do or that would take me forever. He's not as much into gardening as I am, so it's more something I enjoy and spearhead.

The entire project includes three front gardens, a side garden, four trellis gardens, the veggie garden, two rock gardens, two trellis gardens, plus four back gardens. I've also got a container garden for herbs that I have put together on the deck. Some gardens I'm simply cleaning up, others everything is being ripped out to start from the ground up. (See what I did there?) You can see in the pictures in the post some of what we started out with. Mess, mess and weeds galore.

I've wanted to redo everything since we moved in a few years ago. Once we'd put in an offer on the house, the previous owner let everything go. By the time we moved in, it was a giant, overgrown, wild mess. Before now, there's never been the time to redo it all as other projects around the house were more important (and sucked up all the funds).

Gardening isn't something I've done much of previously because we never had much of a yard before and were renting. As I'm going along, I keep planning out ideas then changing them. I've lost track of how many versions each garden has gone through as it changes and evolves into the final product.

Colonial, Southern and English gardens have always interested me so I'm aiming for that type of look. Mainly, though, I want plants and flowers that I enjoy.  I start out with a rough idea of what I want in my mind, color and size-wise. Then, I use nurseries as my inspiration, wandering around to find what it is I like, taking pictures of plants I am drawn too, checking tags for info and looking up each plant online to see if it'll work where I want it.

My overall goal is to have a blend of plants blooming at different times, along with evergreens to keep interest all year long, that are easy to take care of without a ton of upkeep, look nice together and have a range of colors and textures. I've always wanted to have gardens that I love to look at and get me to want to be out in the yard as much as possible to enjoy them.

More to come on this project as it continues, starting with the second part. For regular updates (and plenty of pics), follow me over on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

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DIY Natural Mosquito-Repelling Planters

As the weather warms up, the biting, annoying mosquitoes start swarming around. Nipping any skin they find, flying in faces, being a general pain in the butt. I'm being proactive this year to keep the little buggers (no pun intended) from eating us all up alive. I put together natural mosquito-repelling planters. As a bonus, they repel other bugs as well. One for the deck, one for by our front door, another for the porch table and the last one for the deck table. Along with being extremely simple to make, they look nice and smell good. Decorating the porch and deck with these are part of our landscaping redesign project.

I've never realized, though I guess I should have, that the citronella in candles to keep mosquitoes away is actually also a plant. Citronella plants have rough, big leaves and -- you guessed it -- smell like citronella and keep mosquitoes away from their dinner. Actual citronella has a fresher, cleaner, more lemon-like, less chemical smell. Surprisingly, they're easy to find at the big-box home improvement stores. Cat mint, peppermint and lavender also discourage mosquitoes and other bugs from coming around, so I chose those to go in my planters. Lavender is one of my absolute favorite scents, plus I love the way it looks, so I liked having an excuse to get a couple. Any type of mint works for these, so if you're not a fan of cat mint or peppermint, there are many others to choose from.

We've had an old wash tub sitting on our porch, empty, for awhile now. I've never quite known what to do with it. It's too neat to throw out, yet nothing ever really worked to put in it. With a few holes drilled in the bottom for drainage, it became the perfect planter for one of the larger bug-repellent planters I put together. M2 picked the other large, purple planter. Two smalls ones I got matching, picking cream, floral patterned to give them a country look. Not all planters have drainage built in, which drives me nuts. The smaller planters I picked are ceramic, so I made sure they have drainage already. The plastic planter didn't, but plastic is easy to drill drainage holes into.


The lovely lavender, since it is my favorite and the prettiest of the bunch, I put in the two smaller planters. I got plants that come with biodegradable wrappers. That makes them super easy to plant -- rip off the bottoms, stick them into the pots, add a bit of potting soil to the bottom of each planter, stick in the plants in their containers, put more dirt around, water well, and then set them out on the tables. In all, I spent maybe 5 minutes each to put them together. The planters look pretty on the tables as decorations, plus the lavender smells so good every time I walk past. A failure moment did occur with this project when my first lavender plant died. I have no clue what happened to it. Two weeks after I got it,  a wilted, dead mess was greeting me. It'd been a more expensive one, too.

For the larger planters, I pair a citronella with cat mint for one and citronella and peppermint for the other. In each of the large planters, I figure out how much dirt is needed in the bottom for the plants to be at the right height, without the stalks being too far above or below the sides. It's not an exact science. Dirt is easily added or dumped out, though, so I adjust as needed, sticking the plants in now and then to check until the levels are right. I put the citronella in first, leaving plenty of room for the mint, get them secure in the dirt by packing it in around them, then add in the mint and fill in with the rest of the potting soil. The last step is to water them well. The washtub planter I have set out on our porch, since we can see it from the front door and I want something  that looks a bit nicer. The purple planter is out on the deck with a bunch of other matching planters of different sizes as part of my veggie and herb garden. A post about the veggies garden and those planters is in the works, keep an eye out.

I strategically put the planters by doors to (hopefully) prevent mosquitoes from getting into the house. Plus, that's where the seating it outside. Any time I go in or out, the lemony citronella smell is in the air. It's not that chemical smell from the candles, it's clean, fresh and actually nice. Any time it rains, I move the ones from the covered porch onto the steps to get them watered. There's only been a few days where I've had to remember to go out and water them when I do the house plants because it's been rainy here lately. Here's hoping the planters work well this summer, I plan to spend plenty of time outside with the kids so we'll be needing them!

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DIY Girl's Toddler Room

I showed you what we did in B's room last year. Why not show you M2's room as well? I absolutely LOVE her room.

Back when we first moved in (and in our old house), she had a nursery with an animal theme. She still LOVES animals so that stayed. The idea was to have a nursery that wasn't too babyish so it could become a toddler room easily. Like B's room, the key to keeping the cost down was reusing nursery items. We kept the cost of the nursery down by using furniture and decorations we'd had that were speical.

To go from a nursery to toddler room, we converted her crib to a toddler bed, put in a kid rocking chair vs. the big one we used to rock her, and replaced the changing table with cubby shelving for her toys. All the wall hangings, paint, rug, decorations, and curtains stayed. The initial letter I painted for her has a prominent spot in the room, just like B's in his room.

Many of the animal-theme items you find for kids are either frilly and pink or on the boyish side. We didn't want M2's room to drip with pink. As a result, everything we chose ended up leaning more toward the boy side. To balance it out, we put in dashes of pink and used a girlier paint -- iced mauve by Valspar, to be exact. It's a pink/purple, lighter shade to brighten up the room. The paint was a total accident. I'd asked for a sample of another color on the chip and was given this one instead. We tried it anyway and it was the best of the many, many colors we considered.

M2's reading nook. She has TONS of books. The little chair was mine growing up. The child-size afghan M2's grandmother made. The elephant KinderGlo nightlight on the bookcase is on my list of must-haves for baby and a toddler. M2 has the same AngelCare monitor. I explain more about them in B's nursery intro.

All her teddies on the cubby shelf have special meaning. The fabric cubes moved from the changing table to the cubby shelf. I love how cute they are and fit with the theme. The elephant and lion wall hangings her aunt and uncle gave her. They're fabric to add more texture to the room, while the monkeys are wood. The prints of the parent animal with his/her baby on either side of the bookcase are my favorite wall hangings in the room.

M2's bed is in a cozy corner of the room. She has a convertible Davinci Kalani crib, just like B. The crib is easily turned into the toddler bed. The part rail comes off once she doens't need it. The afghan one of her grandmother's made, the quilt was made by the other. I put in the rug to make the sleeping corner more cozy and to add some more color and interest to the room. The pictures above her bed are canvas and not very heavy, just in case they fall. I love the look of the canvas art. Yes, that is B photo bombing. Isn't he cute?

The chest belonged to my aunt, for whom M2 is named. The lamp is one made by family friends for me as a child. The shelf above the chest (you can't really see it) my dad made for me. Then hand mirror was my grandmother's--M2 was named for her as well. Eclipse thermal curtains look nice and work great to keep in heat in winter, cold in the summer.

How did you decorate your toddler's room? I'd love to hear what you did!



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Looking Ahead to 2015

A new year means new plans. New goals. New hopes. New dreams. So much new comes when the clock ticks over to midnight January 1. For me, I have a number of these for the blog, my family and myself this year.

M2 is finally old enough to start  doing more crafts. I've got a number of ideas in my head and on Pinterest I'm excited to do with her this year. Even before she was born, I was thinking of all the fun things I could do with her.

Usually, I do baking and cooking for the holidays. None of that happened last year with pregnancy and a new baby. I just wasn't up for it. My KitchenAid mixer and other fun baking gadgets, many that I've never gotten a chance to use, are torturing me with their presence, whispering, "use me! use me!" All the recipes I stock piled, from tried and true to new-and-nifty looking are on the roster for creation and sharing. Some of the baking I'll be having M2 help with. She's already showing an interest in baking.

A previous creation.

I had planned a veggie garden last spring then realized with morning sickness and pregnancy it wasn't the right time. Those plans are back. Having two kids, including a newborn, means the garden will be scaled down. Maintaining a huge one, without having experience, just doesn't seem wise. It'll go in this spring as my first attempt at putting in a garden and at growing veggies.

My budget is getting revamped after tax time to establish where we stand and figure in a fourth family member. Another year of tweaking the budget as we go is on the horizon since we've never had two kids before. Last year it changed over the first few months as we'd never had a house of our own before.

Having two kids is the biggest endeavour of the year. Learning how to raise a boy (I'm used to girls), keeping up with two kids, reaching the toddler stage, making new mom friends, finding friends for the kids, helping M2 with her speech and overall learning, keeping her active and busy, along with joining a local church to give us better roots and meet people are all current and upcoming challenges.

I'm not great at meeting new people as I'm quite shy at first and don't have the best confidence in doing it so joining a church, and joining a new mom-and-baby playgroup are more difficult for me than you'd expect. Even going to library time to meet other moms is hard--I'm not the type who can just walk up to someone and easily start a conversation. Though, oddly, in the professional world I have no problem with it. Go figure. These things are important for finding the kids friends and making my own though, so I'll be doing it.

Weight loss is a big focus of the year. I have 25 pounds of baby weight to lose (I lost about 45 so far). Before getting pregnant, I was working on losing a substational amount. Once the baby weight is off, I'm going to continue on that journey. I'm going to be looking at is as giving up extra weight as that sounds more positive and happy than having a loss.

Focusing on the positive and being more upbeat are both things on which I'm working. I'm a worrier so I tend to see all that can go wrong which can get in the way of things. So does being a perfectionist. I need to focus more on the good, rather than the things that aren't prefect. Because, let's face it, nothing in life is perfect.

The kids' clothes are organized already.

Organization is something I work on bit by bit each year. We've lived in this house for almost two years so it's overhaul time. In preparation for baby B, we cleaned out lots of stuff from the basement. Now, it needs to be organized. I've got a few organization projects on the horizon. The extra food storage already got a good clean out last week. Being able to know what we've got, what we need and that it's all easily at hand is nice. Side note: had I done it sooner, I would have known we had a solid shelf of just pasta. Should the zombie apocalypse come, we'll be eating pasta and canned veggies. Those two things alone will allow us to stay fed for quite some time.

Being a better mom is an important goal for me. I don't think I'm a bad mom, there are just things I'd like to do and be better at. For example, the finding the kids  more friends that I mentioned earlier. Family day trips are something we don't do often enough. I plan to change that. I'd also like to see the ones we do have more often. This is also part of improving myself as a person. Many little things make up these two goals.

A previous zoo trip.

Daily life is a bit rocky right now. Our schedules are still being fleshed out. I had the cooking, cleaning, child care, errands and playtime balanced pretty well previously. Getting back to that will help me be less stressed and be able to fit in some of the other plans I've mentioned. The daily activities are what we spend most of our time doing. It takes up most of our lives so I want it to be enjoyable, stress free and easy rather than hectic, disjointed and craycray. Well, at least as much as possible. As John Lennon said, "Life is what happens while we're busy making plans." I want to enjoy that life and those plans.

All of this will find its way onto the blog throughout the year. My goal here is to post more, bring in more traffic and grow as we get into our second year in a few months. The first year has gone great, better than expected in fact. It's important to me to keep that momentum going. You can expect more of the things we usually talk about with new topics thrown in to liven things up. K and I appreciate all our readers and are so happy you join us for our stay-at-home mommy adventures.

Welcome to Baby2's Finished Nursery

Baby2's nursery finally got finished last night. I wasn't sure we'd do it before he came, but we did! And it. looks. awesome. (If I do say so myself.) I adore how it all turned out. It took a week longer than expected as all our free time to work in here last week got taken up having to fight with Verizon to get me a new cell phone after mine died. That's a long story of a two-day ordeal for another time. 

Without further delay, welcome to Baby2's nursery! I'll take you around on a tour picture by picture. If there is an item I bought and can link to, it's linked for you. You can also click on any photo for a larger view.

Here is the view from the door. The 5' by 7' rug covered up all M2's bleach art. I worried how it would look. It really adds something to the room to bring it together. The walls are painted in Beach Blanket by Valspar, as mentioned in this post. We got the new, top-of-the-line paint that's not supposed to fade and should be easy to clean. 

                            

The panorama view gives you a better idea of the whole room. The blue spot is Baby2's special initial that I painted. It's blued out for now since we don't want to share his name (or clues!) until his arrival. There's a big empty spot between the bed and door where a toy box of some sort will end up.

The Davinci Kalani crib in cherry is awesome. M2 has the same one. Our niece has the Kalani in Espresso. It's a great bed that converts to a toddler bed then full-size head and foot boards. The mattress is the Davinci Emily that M2 and our niece have. M2 picked the sheet. It's Target Circo brand I found during a big sale and mentioned in another nursery post.

What you can't see is the American Baby organic cotton mattress cover underneath. That thing is awesome! It's so soft, fits well, is waterproof and has no icky vinyl making the added cost worth it. It should help keep baby warmer in the winter as well. We had another brand for M2 that didn't quite cut it. It was thin, had vinyl and didn't quite fit. After trying out one for Baby2, I ordered one as a back up and one for M2. I hung them all to dry in order to avoid any shrinkage. I want one for our bed!

The soother is a Fisher-Price rain forest one my mom found for Baby2. The pictures above the crib are from Amazon by BedTime Originals and fit the nautical theme perfectly. I may adjust how they're spaced out, I'm not sold on this arrangement yet.

The chest and changing table corner. I painted the anchor on the wall. It's made of heavy duty cardboard. All it took was buying the anchor at the craft store, getting some antiqued gold paint, a soft sponge brush and about an hour to put on three coats of paint. The frame next to it will showcase Baby2's hand and footprints. The frame on the dresser waits for the birth announcement. Info on the lamp is in a previous post.

The changing pad covers don't quite fit the theme. The animals are from M2's theme. Since they're really nice ones and are so soft, we're reusing them rather than buying new ones simply to fit the theme. I don't think you can even buy these anymore. When I looked for a link, nothing came up.

The changing table itself was M2's. I couldn't have lived without it, it's one of the "must have" items on my list for new parents. The fabric cubes are from Target and hold toys, wipes and diapers. I went through all M2's toys, pulling out the baby ones and putting them in these cubes so they're easy to get to. There's also a basket you can't quite see in this shot for all his blankets.

Above the changing table are cute canvas art I found on Amazon and nautical-related Bosson heads that belonged to A's mom. Notice the pirate on the top right giving the fisherman to his left the side eye.

Another view of the crib corner. The curtains are Eclipse blackout curtains for nap time and to keep the heat in during winter. We already had them in the room. Since they match, they stay. I couldn't find tiebacks I liked so went to Michael's. They had some nifty ribbon that matches the room and makes easy tiebacks.

Again, the blue cube is blocking out the painted initial. Above it is a plaque M2 picked that says, "Twinkle twinkle little star, do you know how loved you are?" During a family shopping trip at a local craft store for baby room items, I picked it up. As soon as M2 saw it, she grabbed and hugged it. A pretty clear sign she wanted it for her brother. She kept going in his room to look at it before it was put up.

The bookcase corner includes a shelf set that A's dad made. A had it in his room as a kid. Everything on it, including the bookcase itself, (minus the monitor and nightlight) is a special item that belonged to A, his mom, me or my aunt. My aunt made the ceramic piggy bank at the bottom for me when I was about 6 years old. The frame at the top is being saved for something special. The middle shelf and bottom will soon be stuffed with books. I just haven't put them there yet. To be honest, I totally forgot about the books until now.

                     

This little guy is the nightlight on the bookcase. I love it so had to give him some extra attention with his own picture! I almost got a moon until this KinderGlo portable dragon popped up as just being available. You can set it to change colors (you can see it glowing in the bookcase corner pic) or to stay on one color. He's rechargeable and comes off the base. M2 has an elephant she adores. It's come in handy at night when I check on her or have to change a diaper. Instead of turning on a bright light, I nudge her elephant. Enough light is provided without waking up a baby.

Next to Puff the Magic Dragon lives the Angel Care Deluxe Plus monitor. We use the same for M2 and love it. Video monitors don't really work for us since I'd constantly be looking at it to be sure the baby was ok. The Angel Care beeps if baby stops breathing for any period of time. It's not fool proof and the usual safety measures should be taken. I still slept better having it as a back up. With one in each nursery, we've gotten no weird feedback so far from either monitor.

One final panorama of the room looking toward the door. All we need now is the baby boy to put in the crib.




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Baby2 and M2 Update

Nursery!
Baby2's room completion is near! A and I cleaned out the closet and rearranged ours to fit some of the stuff in there this past weekend. I then got the nursery closest all organized with the swing, hamper, wipes, diapers, humidifier, etc., that we will be needing to have on hand. A put together M2's cubby storage shelving as well. It's still in the nursery until we swap it with the changing table soon. All the fabric cubes are ready to go on the changing table, I got them organized with wipes, diapers, toys, accouterments, blankets and more. Baby2's hospital bag is ready to go as well. Mine is just a list right now as I realized all the stuff I plan to pack I'm actually using. If I pack it, I wouldn't have what I need now! That'd be rather pointless.

All the extra furniture and lamps have been taken out of the nursery. Some books and random things remain but that'll be easy to clean up. I also painted the anchor wall hanging and Baby2's large initial wall hanging so those are ready to go up. The rest of the room decor arrives tomorrow. This weekend, all of that gets put up and I'll put the finishing touches on the room. That leaves yard work, car maintenance, present wrapping, Christmas decorating, house cleaning and some other random things on my to-do list for next week and the week after. There are only three weeks left. Knock on wood, I think everything might actually get done!

Presents!
M2's Christmas and birthday present situation is all sorted. The last of her gifts arrive tomorrow. I've made a list of what she is getting for each. She'll also be getting a small gift from Baby2 when he comes home from the hospital. It's an adorable Melissa and Doug Christmas tree puzzle I found at Kohl's. It's this one. It looks even nicer in person than on the page. M2 saw it when it first arrived. I had to wrestle it away from her as she wanted it right then. She got the Melissa and Doug advent tree decoration/toy, so that distracted her. That is also adorable! It's better than I expected and M2 is loving decorating and taking apart the tree. The ornaments are all so cute with beautiful designs. It's a good size, too. It should last us for years. It's sold out already. Reading the reviews, it's an item that goes fast each year. I can see why! You can still get it on Amazon for a bit more. Check it out here.

Speech!
The therapy for M2's speech delay was finalized last week. Now, we're just waiting to hear from the speech therapist on setting up her first appointment. She'll be doing twice a month to start. Her coordinator thinks she'll pick up on things and progress fast as she's developing fine everywhere else and shows the signs they look for to know the child will pick up the concepts. We're hoping with hard work from her, A and me that she'll be right on track within a year if not less.

Halloween!

She didn't want to wear her hood inside!

Ready to monkey around.

Halloween was lots of fun. We started out visiting my best friend since high school and his wife. M2 loved that we ordered pizza and she got to watch some cartoons Mama wouldn't usually allow. It was then off to see other good friends and celebrate. One went trick-or-treating with us. M2 got the hang of going door-to-door quickly. She loved knocking and waiting for the door to open. Her costume was a monkey and A was a giant banana. I didn't dress up (hardly any of my clothes fit anymore, let alone a costume!) I did manage to walk around to each house. I'd thought after a few I'd be ready to fall over in pain. Stopping at the end of the drives to take a break while M2 went to the door helped. She was so excited and adorable walking along with her glow sticks and kitty cat candy pail. Sadly, our friends are moving cross country next year so this was our last Halloween with them. It's been a tradition the past 6 years or so to spend it with them so it's like the end of an era. We'll have to find trick-or-treating closer to home instead.


Doctors!
Baby2 has had a few doctor appointments (ok, I had the appointments and he got checked out, with no choice but to come along). He's growing fast. I'm measuring about 3.5-4 weeks ahead, which means right now I feel like I'm at 40 weeks. Driving has gotten hard so A has become my driver. My thyroid is acting up so I saw a specialist for that. He doesn't think Baby2 is being affected and I'm handling the symptoms ok, so we're holding off on meds. I'll be doing blood work often and after Baby2 is born we'll be looking into other testing. It's pretty complicated with many ways it could go as my thyroid is all sorts of screwy. There's a small change it'll go back to normal after Baby2 is born. I'm really hoping it does! There are some other worrisome health issues going on. Those I'm not ready to share yet. I've got more testing for that next week, along with the final ultrasound before Baby2's arrival.

Suspense!
Next week, I'll post pictures of the finished nursery. I was tempted to this week then decided we're so close to it being done I'd rather do a big reveal. You'll have to deal with the suspense until then. I'll also show off the easy painted wall hanging I did and explain it--it's sooo easy! The initial one will have to wait until we reveal his name after birth. I will say I am LOVING how the room looks!

Baby2's Room: Bright and Beachy

A and I finally picked out a paint color and he painted Baby2's room this week as musical couches was completed with the donation pickup. We went with Valspar's beach blanket color to keep the room colorful, light and airy while being in line with the nautical/sea theme. It also goes with the rest of the colors in the house to keep the peaceful, relaxing vibe going. We splurged and got the new top-of-the-line paint with zero VOCs that's easily washable. It needs to hold up and last a long time so we thought it's worth the extra bucks. With the paint up, a trip to Walmart yielded a turquoise and white rug that will go down once we carpet clean the whole house.

Fresh beach blanket color paint. 

M2's contribution is a twinkle twinkle little star wall hanging. She grabbed it at the store and loved it so into Baby2's room it goes! What's a nautical theme without some stars to guide you, right? I also got an anchor decoration to paint and hang. One of our family traditions is my painting a big wooden letter of the new baby's first initial to put up on the wall. I haven't found one I like yet though I've got a few ideas on colors. M2's was pink and glittery. Her room didn't have much pink so it became a girly statement piece.

All the other wall decorations have been picked. I plan to buy them off Amazon this week, along with all Baby2's and M2's birthday and Christmas presents. I want everything done at least a week before Baby2 arrives so I don't have to deal with it! Gamma and Gampa will send the new crib and mattress soon as well. As deliveries come in, I'll be hanging and A will be building. M2's room is getting a slight re-do as well--the changing table it coming out of her room to go to the new baby and she's getting a set of cubbies for her toys and treasures instead.

Now, to get the closet cleaned out and reorganized so I can wash all the baby clothes, blankets, bibs, burp cloths, etc., and get them put away. Not to mention the big pile of stuff that needs to clean out of the room and all the books and knickknacks to take off the bookcase. The laundry hamper and diaper pail need to be selected. In other words, (as you can see from the picture) there is still a ton to do and not very much time to do it in since there is only about 5 weeks to go! Our next two weeks are packed with other appointments and activities (Halloween fun!) which eats up even more time. The to-do list of non-baby before-baby items is long as well. If you don't see many posts from me, that is why.

A Quick Update: M2's Speech and Baby2

This week has been busy with kid-related appointments and having my parents in town visiting. One of the big appointments was to get M2's speech intervention rolling.

M2's Speech Development
M2 isn't quite where she should be speech-wise. She understands everything, has ways to get her points across, she just won't use words most of the time. Except for a select few, the words she does know she refuses to use often. A and I have been working with her doing everything we can think of to no avail. The pediatrician said we could either start looking into therapy now, or wait until she turns 2. However, when she turns 2 is just after Baby2 is born. Taking that into account, we decided to start intervention now.

When asked what the next step is to get her help, the doctor very helpfully only said to "call the county." The county very helpfully only has info on getting assistance with speech for kids 3 and over. After some research and asking around at library time, I found a place not too far away that specializes in therapy for under age 3 only. The nice lady I spoke too arranged an appointment for initial intake at our house. She came over this week, met M2, asked a bunch of questions, and set us up for the next step of a complete evaluation. In a few weeks, M2's going to have "playtime" with a couple ladies who will do a full eval then give us the results. The woman today said she's obviously very intelligent, we just need to get her to start using more words. It's expected that she'll be on track with everything else.

After the evaluation, our intake coordinator sets M2 up with a therapy plan. The good thing about this organization is that they find it important that the child is in their own environment for therapy. The therapist comes out and word with her and show A and I things we can do with her the rest of the time.

The plan right now is to get all this set up and maybe even get a session or two in before Baby2 arrives. At the least, we'll be ready to go as soon as things settle down with him.

Baby2's Room
Last week, we finally narrowed down the choices of paint colors for Baby2's room to four. Once we get those up on the wall we'll (hopefully) be able to pick one. Right now, there's a futon in there so we can't paint the whole room. The futon needs to go in the family room, which has another couch in it. That one needs to go in the living room which--you guessed it-- also has a couch in it. The hospice we're donating one couch to comes next week, then we can play musical couches and start painting. You can read more about the plans for the nursery here.

At my weekly appointment the doctor said Baby2 is on track. The only downside is that he hasn't flipped yet--he's still breech. He's got a few weeks left to make the flip and I'm hoping he does as I don't want a C-section for a number of reasons (the big one being surgery and I don't mix, at all).

A and I checked out the other choice of hospital for labor and delivery finally. M2 got to spend time with Grandma and Grandpa going to the pumpkin patch, animal park and out to dinner while I was busy with the tour and doctor appointment. It's a good thing we did the tour since we've decided we like the hospital better than the one we were thinking of using. As long as Baby2 doesn't come earlier than 38 weeks, we plan to use the one we toured. The big selling point for me was all private rooms and wireless monitors so I won't have to be strapped down uncomfortably to a bed for hours. That part was NOT fun with M2 and I think labor would have gone faster than the 41.5 hours it took had I been able to move around. I also can't get comfortable in beds sitting up or lying on my back--which is the position I got stuck in so the doctors could have the monitors work.

With less than seven weeks to go, there is still plenty to do on our lists!