Too much of a good thing?

Can you have too many good things all happening at once? We are testing this idea. First, there’s the new baby, due any day. Then, there’s big doings at Casey’s work as they open a new campus. He’s been working 12 and 14 hour days for weeks now. Finally, there’s our new house. It’s almost finished! The construction company decided they want to offload it ASAP, apparently, because we have a tentaive closing date of Aug. 31, a week from Wednesday! (Yep, my due date is Aug. 30. I just knew everything would happen at once.) Here are some pictures of the house as of Saturday morning. We are scheduled for a walk-through of the completed home this Friday morning, so I guess they are planning to work fast! This is all pretty exciting, but I do sorta wish it wasn’t all happening the same week! Wish us luck.

Unexpectedly ended up with tile floor in downstairs bath…

View of kitchen from great room.

Some of the lighting is in!

Our free (accidental) trey ceiling, master bedroom:

View of the neighborhood from the future playroom:

What’s different this time?

I feel like my brain has gone on hiatus for the past few months (haven’t been working, haven’t been doing much other than being pregnant and entertaining a toddler, so you can see how the brain hiatus thing can happen…). Anyway, I haven’t been too good about blogging. Max has continued hitting lots of milestones, but they are less “marked” than the baby milestones that made interesting blog fodder last year at this time. Instead of documenting crawling and cruising, it’s little advances like using two and three-word sentences, helping put on his shoes, sitting on his “bobby” (potty), etc. He’s quite the chatterbox lately!

I will be 37 weeks pregnant on Tuesday, which is considered “full term,” which I guess means the baby could decide to make her appearance anytime. In the spirit of preparedness, I finally started throwing together a bag for the hospital last night. I had a HUGE list of stuff to pack when I was getting ready for Max’s arrival. It’s a shorter list this time, but I replaced some of the necessary “stuff” with other things that I didn’t know about the first time around.

What didn’t make the list this time:

Books and magazines – It was laughable to me that I packed reading material last time. Not only did I not have time to read anything but maybe Facebook statuses for about 6 months after Max’s arrival, but if I did actually have any free time, it was fully devoted to trying to catch up on sleep.

Camera – I’m pretty sure we’re just going to use our IPhones to take pics. Sad to say, the camera we used to document Max’s entry into the world went the way of most of the “nice things” we had Before Kids: A can of baby formula exploded all over it in our luggage last Thanksgiving, and it has taken pretty iffy photos since then.

Boppy/breastfeeding pillow – Um, any pillow will work for this. I have never found the Boppy magical or indispensible. I know many moms would disagree, but this is not on my “must haves for baby” list.

Underwear from home – This may be TMI, but let it be known: There is no WAY you will want to put on underwear from home postpartum, unless you plan to throw it out later. The hospital has these lovely mesh panties, which you WILL want to load up with a pad the size of a barge and a giant ice pack. This will continue for several days, after which you MIGHT be able to stop using the ice pack. Maybe.

What I Added:

Yoga ball and baby sling/wrap – I had heard about using yoga balls for labor, but that didn’t seem necessary to me when I had Max (I was already in too much agony to move by the time we went to the hospital!). This time, I’m bringing one, along with a wrap and baby sling, but not for the labor part. See, Max screamed his entire first night. The only thing that soothed him was MAJOR rocking and/or bouncing. If you read my note about underwear above, you’ll understand that sitting up in a hospital bed, bouncing and rocking like a crazy person, is not the comfiest position following delivery. I was desperate for a rocking chair. Failing that, I think being able to attach the baby to myself and bounce gently on a yoga ball would be a huge improvement. Now watch, this baby will be entirely different and the yoga ball will just take up space. Eh, well.

Now, will I need the hospital bag in the next three weeks? Or will we be waiting four or five? Any guesses? 🙂

Colors!

Max knows most of the colors in his crayon box! Whatta genius my kid is. 🙂 (Ignore the fact that the green crayon is gone because he ate it. I’m sure geniuses eat green crayons, right?) And he doesn’t know red. But the rest are pretty solid! Video here.

Counting fishies

Just thought I’d post this video of Max practicing his counting while I audition a wrap for the new baby (or for Max…he still likes being wrapped, too, as long as nothing too interesting is happening at ground level 🙂 ). I didn’t know Casey was filming us at the time, and neither did Max, so it’s one of our rare candid videos where neither of us is totally cheesing. Max starts out counting the fish that are “swimming” across the wrap as I’m wrapping, but it turns into random one-to-ten practice, LOL. Other than the counting, this video struck me as funny because I try on a new wrap in front of a mirror like most women try on a new dress. Makes me think I need to get out more, ha ha! *blush*

Sleep regression

Can there be a sleep regression when a child never really slept well to begin with?

Max answers that question with a resounding “yep!” (his second-favoriteword after “no” right now.) This has been going on for a few weeks off and on, but the last three nights have been especially horrendous. Last night and tonight, he took nearly two hours to fall asleep. We tried everything. In fact, I suppose we could be criticized for not being “consistent,” because we keep switching tactics. But we DID have a consistent bedtime routine that was working reasonably well for the past few months (well, Max was still not sleeping through the night, but he never really has…). Now, suddenly, he won’t go to sleep to begin with, and that was a bridge we thought we’d crossed ages ago. We’ve tried letting him cry (he ramps up instead of down, and can literally cry for hours). We tried cajoling him with bottles of water and books to read in bed (even though he is waaay too old to need a bottle at night). We sang songs and patted his back. We rocked and rocked and rocked on the glider (he dozes but wakes violently as soon as I get up to put him in bed). We’ve even tried just letting him get up and play again, but he really is TIRED and should/needs to sleep! The worst part is that hand-in-hand with the trouble falling asleep is trouble staying asleep. We go through all this at bedtime and still have the kid waking throughout the night and bouncing out of bed before the sun rises. It is really, really exhausting (especially when one parent is working full time and in grad school, and the other is nearly 8 months pregnant).

So that’s the sleep update. Well, on to something more fun. For me, anyway. Baby carrier nerdiness! (File this under “I hope the next one sleeps better!” because otherwise I will be too tired to have any need to wear the second baby. I will just lay on the floor of a childproofed room while the children run wild around me.) Anyway, I had slowly sold off almost all the wraps I had collected during Max’s first year. When I do wear Max, which is mostly out and about when he needs to be contained for safety and convenience, I was mainly using the DIY backpack-style carriers that I’d made recently. But those carriers aren’t appropriate for a newborn, and I really missed wrapping. There’s just something snuggly about it, and I love the versatility of have one pretty piece of cloth that can do it all. So I added up my PayPal money (collected from selling all the wraps from Max’s babyhood) and started shopping for wraps again. (Uh oh!)

So far, I have this ring sling. It is light and airy and best of all, girly!

And then just a FEW wraps…

A Didymos cotton indio called “ruby mandarin.” It is very thin and quite long (4.2m). Max has been a very patient tester for these new wraps. It’s more of a brick red than this orange-y picture shows.

Max tests our new-to-us Girasol Blue Lagoon (the thumb always ends up in the mouth when he is wrapped! So cozy!). A bit thicker and softer than the indio, and around the same length.

No “action shot,” but this is a very short wrap (2.5m) called a BBSlen in the color Passion Fruit, which is a nice neutral brown with orangey stripes. It is also on the thin side and short enough not to drag the ground when wrapping with it in a dirty parking lot.

Finally, we’re waiting on a medium-length (3.6m) Didymos natural linen indio wrap which was dyed green and yellow. It kinda looks tie-dyed :). These are supposed to be fairly thick and cushy for the wrapper and the baby. It looks like this:

 

So lots of fun colors and different lengths and thicknesses to try. Max is going to be used a guinea pig quite a bit, I fear. Well, I mean, if we’re all going to be up all night anyway…Sigh.