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Maternity & Parenting Center

Awww Moment

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So Elliot is leaving town tonight to go on a business trip, and I asked him to clean up his stuff in the bedroom before he left since the cleaning people are coming tomorrow. For the first time (perhaps EVER) he isn’t just hiding the mess and shoving everything into his drawers – he actually is sorting/organizing/putting things away! In doing all this, he stumbled across some notes I hid in his suitcases when he went down to Mississippi for a month to help post-Katrina. When I was little and went away to camp, my mom used to hide little notes in my suitcase/dresser drawers so that all summer long I’d find cute little notes that made me smile and remember someone cared about me. Elliot & I hadn’t been together all that long when he left, but I decided to do the same for him. Before I could second guess my decision or whether he would think it was stupid, I dashed off some notes (just little things like “hello” and “kisses from me & Nugget” and “we miss you” or “thinking of you”) and stuffed them in his folded clothes in his suitcase. Anyway, he saved a bunch of them, and he brought them down to show me today when he found them. I think it is so sweet that he saved all those notes. It kind of made me want to say “Awwww.”

On Monday night, we had our final birth class! Now we just have to keep practicing what we’ve learned and hope it helps on baby’s birth day. Yesterday was our midwife appointment – everything is progressing well (I measured 33 cms, so right on target) and the baby’s heartbeat was perfect. We asked a bunch of questions about labor and delivery stuff, and we are feeling good about everything. On Friday we go in for our ultrasound to see how things are looking. From this point on, we will be doing weekly appointments and ultrasounds.

We have couches!

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Well, we now have furniture and a tv in the living room! We still have to mount the tv on the wall, and we have to dump some of the boxes. On Tuesday, the final piece of furniture will arrive. I’m ready to clear out the boxes and start putting up artwork. It is really starting to feel like a house! The blinds come on Thursday, and hopefully the dining room table and couch for downstairs will arrive sometime next week. Elliot needs to get his bedroom clothing in order, and we have more things to buy to finish putting everything away, but I’m finally feeling like we’ve made significant progress.

We moved

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It’s official . . . we actually moved. There are a ton of issues with the house, the move was a mess, and I’m so completely exhausted I can barely see straight, and I can’t get Elliot to stop bringing crap in and mucking around with stuff. We have SOOO much unpacking to do, not to mention all the stuff we left behind at my place – I have no idea where all this stuff is going to fit! I can’t even think about all the crap still at my house . . . and in the storage unit. I wish we could just throw it all away and not miss any of it.

I’m exhausted and going to go to sleep.

Moving Hell

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It’s official – we are in the midst of moving hell. I’m so tired I can’t see straight, my feet hurt, I’m contracting like crazy, and I swear it feels like the baby is shoving a sharp pointy object into my cervix just for fun. I’ve spent most of the week trying to pack up – I took care of the linen closets, kitchen, pantry and vanities (thanks to help from my organizer, Leslie, and good old Mom & Dad)! We moved all that stuff over to the house today and unpacked it. Elliot moved the new rugs in, and we had a cleaning service come through today. There are still issues with the floors, and a missing vanity, and a hole in the shower wall, and a bunch of other things that are still unfinished, but for now, it is livable. We still have SOOOO much left to do before tomorrow morning – we are just trying to shovel out from so much crap it is unbelievable! We have to clear out all the garbage before we can even pack up, and I have no idea how the mover is even going to get to all of our stuff. Tomorrow is going to be a LONG day. After a long week of running around hunting for rugs and all kinds of other odds and ends that we needed. I’m so far behind on my work right now. Ugh! What a week!

Packing

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We have officially started packing. We are starting with a huge mess, so trying to pack up a disaster zone is . . . complicated. We have been working with an organizer, Leslie, over the past 2 years, first to help empty out Elliot’s house and combine our houses into my place, and now to pull all of our stuff together here and get it to the new house and put away. The biggest bone of contention in our marriage is cleanliness. Elliot is a collector of junk (although he gets upset when I call his “stuff” junk), and tends not to put things away. I, on the other hand, believe everything should have a place, and most things should be either completely put away every day or two, or at least never exceed a small neatly stacked pile in 1 location of the house. The problem is, since Elliot emptied his house and moved all his stuff into my place, things don’t have a place anymore. We never did manage to put everything away. So, it makes it difficult to ask him to clean up when there is nowhere for it to go. We also had to cancel our cleaning lady, because with stuff all over the place, it was not possible for her to come and clean. Back in May, I sort of gave up the fight – I figured we were moving in a month, so why bother any more, right? Well, 1 month has turned into 6+ months, and let’s just say that my house looks like a tornado swept through here.

Since I am really supposed to be taking it easy (and packing and heavy lifting are things I’m supposed to be avoiding), we enlisted Leslie’s help to get things packed and sorted. Last week, we packed up the linen closets, my knitting/crocheting, my baking stuff, and the bathroom vanities, and we moved all the boxes over to the house and stored them there. Today, we tackled the kitchen and now she is upstairs trying to pack up Elliot’s office.

So, assuming the contractor completes the work he is supposed to complete by Friday, we are all set to move in on Sunday. We have too much stuff (and I’m too afraid of creating another messy situation like we did when Elliot moved his stuff here) to move everything at once. Instead, we decided to move in shifts. We are only moving what is necessary for us to start living in the house. We are going to move our kitchen stuff, clothing, linen closets, and vanities. We will be taking the bedroom set and any other big furniture that we are certain will fit in the house. For now, we are leaving behind a few decorative tables (we aren’t sure where/if they will fit) and some file cabinets, and a tv armoire, and my office stuff. We are leaving all of the artwork/personal items behind for now, too. We will slowly move those over when we know where they are going. We also need to deal with our storage unit, but that is definitely a challenge for another day.

I can’t believe it looks like we are finally moving! I’m so ready to be moved into Elliot’s house already! I have an appointment with a place that does blinds tomorrow (hopefully we can have blinds put in soon) and we have a green cleaning service coming on Friday. Elliot is trying to arrange our phone/internet, and I guess we’ll figure out the rest as we go. We are definitely going to need to buy more furniture items, but I just am not sure exactly what yet. Our living room couch will arrive on Tuesday, and we are still waiting for the basement couch and the dining room table top, both of which should arrive by mid-November. We still need to buy some area rugs for the living room, dining room and master bedroom, but we think we might have found what we need. That puts us in great shape for the baby’s arrival!

Are we really moving?

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According to our contractor, our house will be finished this weekend. Now, we’ve been hearing this since . . . May. But for some reason, this time I think it really might be true! I would love to finally be able to move into our new house and settle in. We shall see if the contractor is telling the truth this time.

I’m feeling okay today. Frank seems to be sleeping right now (he was awake and contracting most of the night), so let’s hope he stays quiet. The nausea is what is making me feel the worst today. According to the scale, I’ve lost another 2 lbs . . . I cannot for the life of me figure out how that is possible. I swear, this baby must have Elliot’s metabolism (which is much better for him in the long run). I’m sure going to miss eating with impunity.

Dancing Baby

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Tonight I am sitting here and watching my belly . . . the baby is making my belly dance!! He seems to be kicking and punching, and my big ole’ belly is moving all over the place. I’m quite amused by this, and I can’t stop smiling. Now if we can just get him to play when my mom is in the room, he’d have a happy Grammy!

What else can I report? We are finally making progress with our house – for the first time, I have hope that it will be finished in the next few weeks. We have ordered the baby furniture, and we are actually planning to go and start registering for stuff this week.

Other than that, I’m feeling well, but still not over the morning sickness completely. Suddenly, this week the indigestion has kicked it back into high gear, and every time I eat anything, I’m feeling over-full, like there is just no room in my tummy anymore. I have my next appointment in two weeks, and I’ll be having the gestational diabetes test done. After that, I start going in for appointments every 2 weeks!

Whirlwind week

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The past week has been quite crazy. The baby is kicking and moving around, and my belly grows larger by the minute. I discovered this the hard way . . . apparently, it IS possible to catch your belly and bruise it when trying to stand after sitting at a dining room table. Who knew? I need to practice backing away from the table BEFORE standing now.

I’m officially 24 weeks pregnant today! I can’t believe how fast time is flying. We have an appointment on Wednesday to see the midwife again, and my gestational diabetes test is coming up soon. Elliot has been crazy all week responding to the hurricane and tropical storm Hanna, and we are still fighting with the contractors over getting the house finished. Once again, we have another leak in the house! I’m not convinced we’ll be able to move before this baby arrives, but supposedly, they will have everything but the vanities and tile backsplash done this week – I’ll believe it when I see it!

Elliot and I are actually making progress on getting things in order – I actually would not be humiliated today if someone came into my house, which may be true for the first time in quite a few months. We have appointments set up with our organizers for the next few weeks to help us with packing and moving . . . assuming we are ever able to move.

This weekend we celebrated my niece Paige’s 2nd birthday. Here is the Dora cake I made for her:


Elliot was a big help – he did the baking, and I did the decorating. We make quite a team!

Today, however, I am worried about my dog, Nugget. She is lethargic and not eating . . . and she ALWAYS eats. We’ll be heading to the vet this afternoon, but I hope she is okay.