these days...

i am sitting down with a mug of hot tea for the first time in days. iced tea has been my drink of choice for the past ten days or so as it has been hot, hot, hot! we've been having record breaking temperatures around here. spring suddenly appeared and this is the one year (probably ever) where i didn't feel like i was waiting and waiting for it to come. our winter was so mild and really hardly even felt like winter - what a treat. the trees are budding and the flowering trees are blooming, daffodils have popped up, and the birds are chirping. we've been really enjoying the weather, although when it was close to 90 degrees the other day, this pregnant woman was struggling a bit! i told jeremy that if this weather keeps up, we will have to install our window air conditioner in our bedroom! i hardly have any summer maternity clothes, so i've been washing and rotating my three short sleeved maternity shirts with the one pair of jeans that i can easily roll up. it might get to the point of having to invest in some capris and a couple more short sleeved shirts, though i would rather not invest in those things since it's for less than two more months anyway.

our girl enjoying the weather and trying out her bike!

our little one is upstairs "resting". it seems that she has decided to boycott naps, but rest time in her room is still good for her. she sings and talks to herself and occasionally eventually falls asleep, or i get her up after an hour or when she starts to cry. i haven't even seen jeremy yet today because he left early for a breakfast meeting. the days when he is already gone when i wake up just don't quite seem like they start out right. i miss him. we had good playtime with friends this morning, which helped break up the day. it feels like the afternoon is slowly crawling by, but i shouldn't complain about that because usually i feel like the days fly by too quickly.

yesterday the little one and i drove out to the farm to pick up our milk. we arrived about two minutes after a calf was born in the field. it was laying on the ground by it's proud mama who was licking it off. beautiful. i love that we get to see things like that when we get our milk, instead of just picking it off the shelves at the grocery store. and i love that our girl sees the cows who make the milk that she drinks. it just seems so right.

after seeing the newborn calf, i was driving down the road marveling at the beauty of new life. then a bird flew in front of the car and i hit and killed it. it kind of ruined the moment.

this girl makes me laugh.

two!

our girl turned two on saturday! we had a fun time celebrating as a family and with a small group of friends from church.

making the birthday cake with mommy...

special birthday pancakes! she requested a teddy bear pancake...

ready for a celebration!

rainbow cake!

our girl is such a gift to us and we are so thankful for her!

sinus infections and potty training

i haven't been spending very much time here lately. i was sick for close to two weeks with a cold turned sinus infection. i have had one sinus infection before (when i was in college), but i forgot how bad they are! i was miserable. a trip to the doctor and some antibiotics later and i finally started to feel better. i'm someone who likes to trust the body to heal itself of such minor infections and therefore am resistant to taking antibiotics, but this is one time when i am very thankful that i was able to get my hands on some. i knew it was that bad when i spent an evening sitting on our couch just pressing on my face because that helped to take away some of the pain. thank goodness that's over.

our big news around here is that our girl is potty trained! it took very little effort on our part and she has been doing SO well with it. she is so proud of herself and we are so proud of her too! it's very exciting. and we are very excited to have this skill learned before another little one joins our family - how wonderful to have a bit of a break from using and washing cloth diapers before our little man arrives! of course, she still wears diapers when she sleeps, but a few weeks ago we switched to disposables for night time because the cloth diapers were leaking (they were getting to be too small), so a break from cloth diapers it is!

we also have a big birthday coming up at our house - our girl will be two on saturday! it's hard to believe it was already two years ago that i was very pregnant and so ready to meet her. we have plans for a family day with the three of us as well as a little celebration with a few of her favorite people from our church. it's going to be a great day.

today was a big day with a morning meeting, groceries, and then this afternoon the little one and i made granola, and brownies (a recipe from Feeding the Whole Family - a great cookbook with a lot of healthy recipes that i highly recommend!). i also have a loaf of bread baking in the bread maker. yum. i am finding it so much fun to cook with my little helper by my side. of course, it makes everything take longer and it makes a bigger mess, but she is such a little delight that i don't care. she loves to dump things in the bowl and mix them up. i love seeing her have fun in the kitchen and watching her learn. it certainly helps that jeremy has been doing most of the dishes lately - especially today. he spoils me.

no hole-y socks for us

yesterday we had banana berry baked oatmeal for breakfast. it was hard to wait the forty minutes until it was done, but it was worth the wait. i got all the ingredients ready the night before so i could just mix them up in the morning and pop it in the oven. i made it with frozen blueberries and simply served it with milk drizzled over it. we found it plenty sweet without anything added.

our book study met at our house last night and someone mentioned that they had holes in the socks they were wearing. someone else said, "that's okay - everyone has pairs of socks that have holes in them!" i was able to say that i know for a fact that i don't have any socks with holes in them, and neither does anyone in this house, because in my crazy nesting i have even gone through all of our socks and gotten rid of all the pairs that are worn out. that launched a conversation about my crazy nesting habits and even included jeremy giving several people a tour of our recently organized kitchen cabinets. when they asked if i got out the ruler to measure a perfect distance between each jar in the cupboard, the conversation quickly turned to teasing, which i didn't mind. hey - at least we are the ones who don't have any holes in our socks!

i am pretty much finished sorting every nook and cranny of our house (and i mean every drawer, cupboard, closet, and corner!), except for the basement which jeremy and i will go through together next week during a couple of nap times. the basement isn't too much of a mess, so it shouldn't be too big of a project. i think that after the basement is done, i will move on to deep cleaning every room and touching up the paint. this nesting...it's just crazy.

as of just this last week, i am starting to feel quite eager (even impatient at times!) to meet this little one who is growing inside of me. of course, i want to wait until he is ready to come out, but i am so excited to see his little face and be able to hold him.

our little one has had a cold for a few days now. i have been feeling under the weather today as well, so we laid low today. except for driving out to the farm to get our milk, we stayed home. we read books, built with her train tracks, she took a good nap, i rested, and then we made pancakes for dinner. she does a great job dumping ingredients into the bowl and loves to mix them up. i made her a special teddy bear pancake with a chocolate chip mouth and eyes. when i put it in front of her, she got a big smile on her face and said, "thank you mama!" it makes me so happy to do little things for her that bring simple joy.

daddy is currently giving her a bubble bath and she will soon be headed to bed. we are (supposedly) due for a big snow tonight, so after the little one is in bed, i think we will hunker down and watch some netflix while we wait for the snow to appear.

some thoughts on toy storage and other things...

i stepped in vomit shortly after getting up this morning...our daughter's, not mine. except for that little incident this morning, she seems fine.

i made buckwheat pancakes and blueberry syrup for breakfast. i really didn't like the syrup, but the rest of my family did! (i have been forever spoiled by the yummy foods my mom makes, including delicious fruit syrups. mine was no where near as good as hers - i will have to ask her for her recipe).

we have a new toy storage solution at our house that i've been meaning to write about for a while...

shortly before christmas, i became quite aware of the fact that there always seemed to be toys spread all over our main floor. i was constantly stepping over or on toys, pushing them out of the way with my feet, or tripping over them. we have been intentional about our daughter's toys and i think the amount of toys we have is on the small side compared to the average family with one child...but still...there seemed to be too many! christmas was coming and i knew that more toys would be added to the collection (including all of the little cooking utensils and pieces of food we were going to be giving her!), so something had to be done.

our play area is in part of our living room and it looks like this:

the red shelf is from a thrift store (i bought it when i was just out of college and living in my first apartment). we get lots of comments on it because it is so unique. i love that it's perfect as a toy/book shelf! the little table and chairs are from ikea, and the letter cards (i love them!) were in a box of kid's stuff given to us by some friends (thanks guys!). her toys used to be in all the baskets on the red shelf - some of the baskets were overflowing, and it was hard to find specific toys in the midst of all of them.

my solution was nothing amazing or clever...i just got some bins on sale, sorted out her toys (got rid of some of them), and put them in bins, grouping like toys together. i have plans to sew some drawstring bags to further organize her toys in the bins, but i don't know when that will actually happen. my first plan was to keep the bins in the basement and bring up a new one every so often, but i knew that i wouldn't really enjoy lugging toy bins up and down the stairs, especially as i become more pregnant. so...i found a spot for three of the bins in the corner of our dining room, and the other three fit perfectly in our main floor bathroom. i purposely chose bins that are clear so that we can see what toys are in each one.

this solution is working so well. we take one or two bins out at a time to play with, and i like that the toys are on the main floor and that our daughter can see in the bins to choose a specific bin to play with. when she is done playing with a toy bin, we put everything back in and she can choose another one. i have noticed that she is much more engaged with her toys and she doesn't seem overwhelmed with knowing what to play with like she sometimes did when she had access to all her toys. i love that there aren't so many toys strewn all over the house. her red shelf still has a few toys on it...her colorful scarves are in one basket, some of her kitchen toys are in one, and her tea set is in another...but i really think that we could put all of her toys in the bins and she would be fine with it.

anyway...it might just be all the nesting and de-cluttering i continue to do, but i am so excited to have found a system that works so well for us!

how do you deal with toy clutter?

this pregnancy

this pregnancy has been so different than my last, it was no surprise to me that it was a boy. i had a brief moment of panic after the words, "it's a boy" set in. this could be largely due to the fact that i have four sisters and no brothers. i wondered what we are going to do with a boy...and i couldn't help but fast forward to the teenage years - yikes! i took some deep breaths, reminded myself that thankfully boys come as little newborns, just like girls, and thought of all the little boys i know who love their mamas. that last part really got me. our girl is a bit of a daddy's girl, so the thought of having a little boy who thinks his mama is extra special makes my heart melt a little bit.

this has been a pregnancy of fruit. there was a brief phase near the end of the first trimester where it was all about cereal, but it didn't take long before i moved onto fruits. first it was grapes. i think that was around week twelve. all i could think of was grapes - green ones, not red. i went to the store three times that week to buy more organic green grapes. i just couldn't get enough of them. next it was clementines. then grapefruit. oh grapefruit - i would eat one every morning with breakfast and then sometimes even snack on one later in the day. last week it was strawberries. this week it's oranges. i don't mind all of this fruit eating - better than some things i could be wanting to eat. there is a pineapple ripening on the counter and i have a feeling that might just be the next target of my fruit obsession! i have a feeling this baby might just be a fan of fruit when he hits the solid food stage.

last night i finished up our daughter's baby book - something that was on my list to do before this baby arrives. i know that usually all of the kids after the first one get less photos and memorabilia to look back on when they are older. i am determined to give this baby a baby book. it might not be as detailed or as beautiful as his older sister's, but it will be a baby book nonetheless.

that's another funny part of this pregnancy...i have been in nesting mode since before i even knew i was pregnant. once i got that positive pregnancy test, i thought, "OH, this is why i've been sorting and cleaning every cupboard in our kitchen". this is great news for our house. i've been decluttering and reorganizing like crazy. it's not great news for my husband who has to put up with my impulsive ideas about what furniture must be rearranged "right at this very minute because i can't stop thinking about it and it's driving me crazy". thankfully, he is very patient and helps me out as he is able.

while i was finishing the baby book last night, i was looking at photos of my first pregnancy. i thought that i was carrying this baby about the same way that i carried our daughter, but i realized that is just not true. i definitely show a lot more with this baby and he also seems to be higher. by the end of my first pregnancy, i still thought i looked pretty good. i have a feeling i won't feel the same way about this one.

also, i've had an extra sensitive nose this time around. the other day when we were driving home from our travels, i suddenly smelled flavored coffee. it was such a strong smell, but jeremy was sitting right next to me and said he didn't smell anything. finally, a little while later he said that he did smell something that kind of smelled like flavored coffee.

speaking of my extra sensitive nose, as i was sitting here i started smelling something that smelled like it was burning. turns out, it was our computer charger. it recently started fraying and we taped it with electrical tape, but i have been worried about the fire hazard ever since. i looked down and the part with the electrical tape looks like it's splitting and i smelled it and that is definitely what i was smelling. don't worry, i unplugged it. i guess we'll be getting a new charger.

catching up.

i haven't been blogging much lately...life has been busy and full. but, i have missed blogging and hope to start spending more time in this space again.

we got home last night after over two weeks away. we were in wisconsin for a few days visiting my family and then we left our little one with my mom and headed out for a three night getaway with just the two of us. it was wonderful. we stayed at a bed and breakfast located just outside of a small town about an hour away from where my mom lives. we had quite picky standards when i was looking for a place for us to stay - we wanted a place that didn't allow kids, where we wouldn't have to eat breakfast with a bunch of people we didn't know, and that had a fireplace and jacuzzi in the room. the place where we ended up going had all of those things as well as comfy bathrobes for us to wear, a very comfortable bed that had silky sheets, and our own cabin where a hot, gourmet breakfast was delivered in a picnic basket to our porch each morning. we enjoyed our time together, had intentional and uninterrupted conversations, slept in, played yahtzee, read books, went out for dinners, and even went bowling together for the first time! we returned refreshed and very ready to be reunited with our little one, who did really well while we were gone.

our cabin

breakfast: day 3 (they were all this amazing)

 bowling!

the next day, we left for california for a visit with family. it was a fun, loud, crazy memory-maker of a trip. our girl had a great time seeing her papa and playing with her cousins, and we enjoyed family game time, warm weather, laughs, and being together with all of jeremy's siblings and his dad.

our girl and her papa.

 

and her daddy. such a daddy's girl.

 

love this little face.

this morning we woke up to a snowstorm! we had already planned to stay home from church because our girl is quite under the weather with a cold ("vewy sick" as she would say), but we did have to go out to get groceries as our fridge was literally stocked with wheat germ, a few eggs, a sweet potato, an old garlic clove, and maple syrup. we did the water float test with the eggs to make sure they were still okay, and they were, so we had those for breakfast with some bread that was in the freezer. we waited out the snow and then stocked up on groceries. we had delicious roasted vegetables with roasted garlic-yogurt sauce and a simple salad for supper. yum.

a few other recent photos...

baking with grandma. a favorite event.

sledding with daddy.

and our little kicker keeps growing. 

oh yeah...and we found out that is it a BOY!

we have heard from several people that now we are going to have the "perfect family". we think that our family would have been just as perfect with another little girl, but we are excited to add a boy to the mix. i'm 25 weeks along and am starting to finally feel pregnant. i can tell that the third trimester is right around the corner! i am again delighting in the kicks of a little baby growing inside of me - i love that part of this experience. he is very respectful with his kicks - so far he kicks a lot when i lay down to go to sleep, but settles right in and falls asleep when i do. let's hope that pattern continues outside of the womb. our daughter frequently talks about her "baby bwodder" and today she was finally patient enough to wait with her hand on my belly - and she felt him kick - that resulted in big smiles!

tomorrow morning jeremy begins his final semester of seminary. eek! i'm trying not to be anxious about what the future holds for our little family.