29 weeks!

Noah's room is officially painted! I need to take some good pictures with my actual camera (which also reminds me that we NEED to buy a new one soon that doesn't kill any battery in 5 minutes). My cell phone can only do so much. And...I also want to clean the few large spots of paint off the carpet before taking pictures (oops...). It will for sure be done by Sunday since I need to move all the stuff back into the room from our living room before we have people over for the Super Bowl on Sunday.

I also have officially moved all my craft/sewing/scrap booking supplies into the office and just have a few things on my shopping list to get before I can put it all away. Those things being 2 new bookcases as well as a few storage jars/boxes from Ikea. Hopefully I'll get to that next week.

Today I actually caught up on the dishes (seriously, the last time there were NO dirty dishes around the house/in my sink/on my counter was probably 2-3 months ago). Now hopefully my goal of one load of dishes per day will keep it relatively under control. The plan/dream is to get a dishwasher before/soon after the baby but it will require some cabinet demo-ing so we'll see if we get there. I also randomly started cleaning out some cabinets in the kitchen yesterday...freed up a few cabinets which will hopefully make losing a few if/when we get the dishwasher not so much of a bummer, plus I have kept some open for when we need to add baby/toddler dishes.

I think I'm in full nesting mode...and it feels so good to be crossing projects OFF my list and seeing my house get so organized rather than adding to the list and constantly being frustrated when I see a messy cabinet or drawer. Now the question is if I can finish organizing before this little guy arrives or if I'll end up with a bunch of half-finished organizations projects!

28 weeks

I guess I'm officially in my 3rd trimester now! I have to say the past 3-4 weeks have been pretty pleasant with the exception of one 3-day span when I'm pretty sure I passed a kidney stone or two (the drs. said all the tests came back clear but if I had already passed it, it wouldn't have shown up in tests). I'm curious to see how much weight I gain in these next 12ish weeks since this is when you're supposed to gain the most. So far I've only gained 8lbs. and still have pretty much all my mobility (I even shaved my legs and painted my toe nails yesterday!). I wonder how much has to do with just genetics/being my first/etc. and how much has to do with working out with my personal trainer twice a week.

We're almost half-way done with our Bradley class now. I'm really enjoying the wealth of information we get (even if we're being selective in what we really set our hearts on as far as our birth plan) and I think it's going to be really helpful for Matt to feel like he knows what's going on and what he can actively do for me during labor. I'm sure he would be MORE than willing to help regardless but without this class might feel like he doesn't know what the heck he's doing. I really appreciate him giving up a whole evening every week to attend this class...12 3 hour classes is a big commitment and not every husband would be willing to participate or think it's even necessary.

And last but not least in the update, we finally started painting Noah's room! On Saturday my family came over and my dad and Caleb helped Matt tape and paint the majority of the room while my mom and Rachel helped me go through all my craft/sewing/scrapbook supplies and reorganize them in the office. I threw away multiple boxes full of "memories" and photos...and I think I need to admit I am a bit of a hoarder. But it was a blast to remember a lot of things because of those ticket stubs and receipts and photos that I probably wouldn't have if I didn't have them. After about 4-5 hours of cleaning/organizing, my house looked like multiple rooms had exploded...yet somehow this meant that I had LESS stuff and was more organized than before. But now that I know what I am keeping and where it's final destination will be I can find boxes and containers to put them in and put them all away.

Pictures will be coming soon of the finished paint job. I'm working on touch-ups this week so it will hopefully be done by Friday.

2012 Goals (NOT resolutions!)

I was paranoid about forgetting what I wanted to blog about again since I had all these thoughts running through my brain as I was trying to fall asleep for two hours last night. I even tried to jot down some notes on my phone at 1am but my phone has been acting up and kept freezing every few words. Luckily I think all my worrying cemented it in my brain :)

I'm not one for resolutions per say...when I was younger I would always write your typical stuff down in my diary at the end of the year and then forget about them within a few days. A few that I actually did accomplish was reading through the Bible in a year, and for the past two years I've resolved to not drink soda which usually only lasted a few months HOWEVER I feel the real goal was reached in that I did reduce my soda consumption greatly and was more aware of my choices when I did choose to drink soda vs. water or even lemonade. This year with a baby on the way and anticipating the chaos that will probably ensue around my home I have some goals that I'd like to reach...mostly in forming good "wifely" habits and routines. I would say these aren't necessarily pass/fail goals as I know life happens and also what I'm actually capable of doing vs. what I wish I was capable of doing might different greatly, especially with the unknown of a new baby in 3 short months (WOW!). So without further ado, here are my 2012 goals:

30 min./day of gardening/working in the yard - we have so many plants/bushes we need to rip out! Two huge hedges of juniper in the front yard, some birds of paradise that are growing back in the back yard, random weeds and bulbs that keep popping up in the planters despite being covered with bark, getting rid of all the rocks in the back raised planter, not to mention just general maintenance (fixing the front fence and lamp post, finally putting our address back on our mail box, sweeping patios). This may not happen every day but the goal is there to remind me to get out when I can, and I feel like 30 min. is enough to get a section of something done but little enough time that I can almost always find it in my day, even with a baby (during nap time when he's younger, with him in a sling or backpack or pack'n'play when he's older).

Make my own natural cleaning products - I don't know why I haven't done this already...it's better for people/animals, better on our budget, and, even though I don't REALLY care all too much, better for the overall environment. The goal is to decide what cleaning products I actually use/need, find natural recipes for those, gather all the ingredients and then spend a day mixing up the concoctions so my arsenal is ready to go whenever I need it (rather than making each thing as I find the need for it).

Laundry/Dishes - I actually did this pretty consistently for 2 weeks a while back before I got really sick for another 2 weeks. They say it takes 21 days to form a habit so I wanna give it another go and see if I can just make this part of my daily routine. The goal is to do one COMPLETE (wash, dry, fold, iron, put away) load of laundry a day (as needed, at this point I only do 3-4 loads a week) and at least one COMPLETE (wash, let dry, put away) load of dishes a day. Without a dishwasher I'm not sure this will even keep up with the dishes (especially in light of my next goal) but we'll see. I may need to up this goal to one load in the morning and one load at night...or maybe we'll finally get around to getting a dishwasher!!

Make a complete dinner at least 3x/week - I know it sounds like an easy goal, but somehow I find I don't do this! I've said it since I got married, I don't know how we eat dinner every night because we rarely get food out or order in during the week yet I feel like I never make dinner! I think if I can make 3 times a habit (learning to plan & shop is the big thing) then I can start increasing my goal. I really want to be in the habit of having a dinner planned every day of the week by the time Noah's old enough to really appreciate family meal time. And I'm hoping to start going through my stacks of saved recipes and weed out the ones that are hits and the ones that are misses. I think having a good selection of easy, tried-and-true recipes will help with this as I can have ingredients for a variety of meals always on hand rather than having to go to the store for specific ingredients every time I do want to cook.

Now for the fun stuff...

Photo-a-day - this one's a little hard to start as the only camera I have right now is my camera phone AND my days right now aren't exactly photo worthy but both of those will be changing soon. Some days are - my growing belly, special events, etc. but in general I stay home, watch TV/rest/read, do housework, occasionally run errands...not exactly stuff you need to see in pictures. But I think trying to take a photo a day would help me get in the habit of pulling out my camera and actually using it. A habit I really want to have by the time Noah's here, because with Noah I know I'll be bummed to even miss the everyday stuff, not just the big milestones or events that I now even only sometimes remember to take pictures of.

Daily calendar - I saw this idea on Pinterest and I really like it. Basically it's an index card file with an index card for every day of the year. The cards are labeled with the month & date, but not the year. Each day you write a short summary of what happened that day with the year it happened. The idea is to do this for multiple years in a row, using the same index card for each day of the year so you can look back and see what happened "this day in ____". I thought it sounded like a simple enough thing to do and could be really fun now that we will have a baby. So much happens and changes year to year with kids, it will be fun to be able to look back and remember specific days of the year. I've seen lots of cute ways to organize this on Pinterest but so far I'm just writing it down in a word document until I decide on what kind of container & dividers I want to use and to get all the cards labeled.

So those are my goals - I elaborated more for my sake than for yours...it helps me to have a plan of action (no, really?) in mind when I decide to do something and it also helps solidify my determination to do these to really sit down and think about the reasons for these goals. I'd love to have the perfect little organized home/yards/life and there are so many ways to go about that, so this helped me decide what's really important to me and the quality of life I want to have vs. having goals that I won't succeed in because while they look good in other people's lives or even just to society, they really don't matter that much to me and my family personally.