Waiting...

I wanted Garrett to come early because he was my first and I was excited.

I wanted Addie to come on 11/11/11 because, it's cool. And it's Paul's birthday. 

Neither happened. Both late. 

I've thought this one would come early because she's so low, and so, low. At 35 weeks I couldn't image going till 40 weeks. But here I am, 2 days from her ETA, and no signs pointing to an early baby. And I'm just fine with that. Actually I'm even ok with her being a couple of days late. Mostly because everyday, my rib feels a little better and I want to give that as much time as possible. And also, because Paul has family in town from Colorado for Poppy's birthday. There will be at least 8 visitors here on my due date for a party. And people coming and going for a couple of days after. I know they'd all love to be here when the baby's born, but it all sounds chaotic to me. I'd rather have a slow and easy going time getting the kids ready for grandparent sleepovers, etc. 

But, like most women who stay pregnant for 40+ weeks, that week leading up to the due date goes by sooo slooow. Paul's had a crazy busy week and everyday he has some commitment that makes him say, "please don't go into labor tomorrow." So far so good. I haven't made any plans or commitments this week, just in case. So that also means I've been really bored. My rib caused me to take it easy for long enough that I started feeling really lazy. So this week I've been busy. My rib hurts the most if I'm laying down, so I've spent a lot of time sitting at my sewing machine and standing in my kitchen. In the past four days I've made three dresses, six baby hair bows and headbands, three headbands for myself, and two receiving blankets. I've also made 22 freezer meals, with a couple more planned after I finish this post, and two batches of cake pops. 

I also spent a lot of time today thinking about how all of my boy newborn clothes are in Utah, and what if I need my parents to bring them out, just in case… A coworker of Paul's got a new nephew yesterday and they were told throughout the pregnancy that it was a girl. His coworker knows how shocked I was to find out it was a girl so he wanted to make sure that Paul shared that with me yesterday just to stress me out again. It really doesn't stress me out much, the thought of it being a boy. But once you have the idea in your head of what it is it still would be really weird if it ended up being a boy. Anyway, that's all, just waiting, rambling, passing time...

Oh and the kids and I killed some time at Target and at Wendy's this week on a lunch date. I love these two.  Addie chases Garrett around all the time trying to massage his shoulders.  She chants in a high voice, "massage, massage, massage!" And they both laugh.  She told me he needed a chicken nugget massage.

Making room for one more. (And toddler sleep patterns.)

We almost gave up our guest room. We almost put the baby in Addie's room (and kicked Addie out) which is essentially a walk in-closet in our room. But since I wake up at the sound of kids breathing, and I haven't slept well (in our room) since Addie was born, and was finding myself sleeping in the guest room too often. We still kicked Addie out, but made her room a little office for Paul. No pictures of that, but just imagine a little brown and tan office, full of computer stuff and files, a buffalo leg lamp, and a deer head mounted on the one and only wall that you can see from our room, (that's location I did not approve of), and that's Paul's office. 

We moved our craft/storage room to an old file room that we acquired from the business. We added a new wall and door to close off the old craft room and made that a shared room for the older two. We made Garrett's old room the new nursery. And the guest room stayed the same. 

It was a lot of work, but went a lot faster than I expected it would. Thankfully the in-laws did the building part, my mom did most of the painting, and Paul and my mom did most of the room moving. So I supervised and worked on the details. (Perks of pregnancy.) 

Here is the finished nursery. The walls used to be light blue. We painted them gray with a yellow and gray stripe. All I did was the stripes. 

 There's only one of our 5 rooms that have a closet so we get creative. 

I love decorating and redecorating rooms. I can't imagine what I'd do if we had big rooms for the kids, so for now it's probably good that they're really small. I pointed out this time around that in three years I did Garrett's room twice, Addie's room twice, the new nursery, and the toddlers' room both complete. As well as changing our second living room into a playroom, and I've changed the guest room twice. And I've never actually completed the master bedroom. I don't know why. But maybe that'll be my project after the baby is born and I have all the time in the world. 

Anyway, here is the toddlers woodlands themed room. My inspiration for this room was Garrett's bed that frustrated me for 5 months. We bought a nicer mattress than the standard IKEA ones, and when we got the bed fully put together and put the mattress on, it was too thick for him to be able to lay on top safely. We almost bought an IKEA one, but then I realized 4 or 5 inches of wood above the mattress was not enough to keep the kids safe who would inevitably climb on the bed and push each other off. So I went to Pinterest for Plan B. And found so many cute treehouse themed beds made using this bed that we got at IKEA. Paul made it all come together and I couldn't be happier with it. The treehouse façade is in two pieces and they lift off of the frame. Not easy enough that the kids can lift them off, but easy enough for us to remove to change sheets or grab Garrett in an emergency. And Garrett loves it! 

Here's the before:

And the afters:

The wall colors in this room are a little crazy. We didn't want to buy any paint so we went with what we had. Just enough green for the two big walls, and barely enough light blue for the wall behind the treehouse. I was going to do the other wall tan, but Garrett had insisted for weeks before we even started construction that he wanted a red wall. Lucky for him, we had red paint so I just went with it. And I actually think it looks really cute.

I love this room. And the kids have so much fun in here. If they wake up too early I tell them to get some books and climb under the bed and read, and they do it! And I often find them playing in there when I think they're in the playroom. Fortunately, all the fun stuff hasn't become a sleep distraction. Since these pictures were taken, we have now converted Addie's bed to a toddler bed. Because after the first couple of weeks of sharing a room and talking each other to sleep, Addie was getting a little restless. Garrett would fall asleep, or want to fall asleep, and Addie was keeping him awake. We'd hear him telling her to be quiet. Then she would get frustrated and cry. It went on and on and eventually Addie was in tears every night and Garrett was exhausted and mad. Sometimes for up to two hours we would listen to this. For some reason I thought it would be worth a try to switch her to her toddler bed. Maybe to make her feel like she had the same freedoms that Garrett had even though I hoped she wouldn't abuse them. Well, the falling asleep part has been amazing. She hasn't gotten out of her bed once. And we switched her about a week ago. They chit chat a little and both drift off to sleep. But just about every other night now, Addie has woken up between 3 and 4 AM calling out for a drink. Even then, she doesn't get out of her bed, she just calls for us to bring her something. It's frustrating, but we can quiet her down and she falls right back to sleep. Garrett always sleeps through her early morning requests. And he still almost always falls asleep first, and sleeps in longer. If only every child slept as well as he always has... 

Anyway, I guess we're pretty much ready. 

Impromptu Mimi Time

So my injured rib went from bad, to a tiny little bit better, to worse. I was having a hard time breathing and could hardly stand up. I think I went 5 full days feeling desperate to yawn, but wasn't able too. I called my mom on the worst day, mostly to tell her we bought a new computer so she has something fast and reliable now to work on when she's here and working remotely. But I never made it to that part before bursting into tears about the pain I was in. And wow, it hurt so bad to cry. A couple hours later she'd booked a flight and was here the next afternoon. I don't know what I would have done without her help. She did so much! Meal prep, cleaning, laundry, freezer meal making, helped get the house picked up for carpet cleaners, playing with the kids, let me sleep in... I could go on and on. 

She was here for six days and I was feeling so much better by the time she had to go. Still not 100% and still taking it really easy. No lifting, light on the house work, really short walks. My doc says it'll be painful until after the baby's born so I've accepted that. And now I just wait. 

We decided to take the toddler bed plunge while my mom was here, in hopes that Addie would fall asleep when we put her to bed instead of complaining for two hours. So far so (kind of) good. More on that later. 

The carpet cleaners were at our house for about 5 hours on St. Patrick's day so we tried to stay out as long as possible. 

I had a doctor appointment that afternoon and my mom prepped our festive meal. 

The kids sure love her and are already courting down to the next visit. They practice their "baby is here" phone call to her, and Garrett asks several times a day, "now is the baby getting born??" 

Thanks Mom! We love you. 

The car accident.

A fender bender really. Maybe a little harder impact and slightly more damage (mostly to the other driver's Mercedes SUV who was at fault) than a small stop-and-go fender bender, but not bad.

The good news is (well aside from the fact that it was just annoying when it happened) everything about it is good news. We were in my FIL's SUV. And his two dogs had recently used the corners of his bumper as a giant chew toy. It looked awful. He'd had a couple quotes already but just hadn't gotten around to actually replacing it, so someone else damaging it more, and even better, someone else paying for the new one was great news to him. 

No one was seriously injured. I had a sore neck and Addie had a couple rough nights of sleep and said her back hurt, so she and I went to the chiropractor and she's been fine since. (Me, not so much, but it's not because of the accident.) 

I spent a few hours in labor and delivery because I have B- blood type, and if my blood were to mix with the baby's blood and she doesn't have the same type as me then my body would treat the baby as a virus. I called my doctor right after the accident and she advised me to go to labor and delivery for blood work and heart monitoring just to be safe. Everything turned out fine. I forgot to mention that there were seven of us in the car, our friends from Chicago and their two-year-old were with us. So they watched our kids while we were at the hospital. And even the hospital ended up being a good experience because I had recently learned that the head of labor and delivery who I fell in love with when I was delivering Addie, has been promoted to a different job. I was so sad when I learned this, because I know I got good treatment because of her, because she and Paul and my father-in-law had connected a few months before and become good friends. Anyway, on this visit, through conversation with the nurse who was taking care of me, I learned that she is the sister of the former head of the department. And she called her sister while I was there and her sister told her great things about the White family. So again, I got great treatment and I'm really not nervous about delivery now because I met several nurses through her and I'm feeling comfortable again. 

Other good things: My FIL got a rental car at no cost while his is being fixed and he's getting a free bumper so he's glad he procrastinated. 

The insurance informed us that we need to replace all three car seats that were in the car. I feel kind of funny about this because it didn't seem like there could've been any damage done to the car seats, and I really don't understand that rule. When he told us that, I remembered hearing that before but I would've never thought of it. There's no price restriction. They just trust that we'll replace them at close to what we paid for them (and we did) and we send in the receipts for full reimbursement. 

I had a medical adjuster from the company come get a statement from me about my hospital visit and both mine and Addie's chiropractic care, which honestly, I wasn't too concerned about needing to pay all or at least part of. But, not only are they paying back 100% of our already paid for chiropractor visits, but they are paying 100% of my hospital visit AND if Addie and I go again (I told her maybe one or two more times), I fax the receipt to her and she'll send me a check. AND, both Addie and I got 'pain and suffering' settlement checks. I couldn't believe this part. I kept asking, "do I save this money to go toward something that is over the amount of something you don't pay?" Or "is this money I pay to the hospital?" I probably sounded so dumb. She finally said, "in California if you're in an accident that requires any medical care you are entitled to money for your pain and suffering." I was still so surprised, so I said, "Both Addison and I??" I went onto say, "I just feel like this is very generous for such a minor accident. We're really fine." But she didn't miss a beat, and continued to write two checks. After she left, I called Paul to share the great and surprising news, and he said, "Insurance companies are just happy when people are willing to settle and don't fight for more. That money is nothing to them." Maybe nothing to them, but to me it's a new pack n play, a video monitor, and the laptop that Santa forgot to bring me. Plus a bit more in savings. I still feel weird about it, and I've never been in an accident to know if this is normal, but I'm thankful for how kind and helpful the insurance company has been. I'm not wishing for more accidents, but this has been a really good experience overall with very little inconvenience and very little 'pain and suffering'.

Ok, that last part isn't true, about the pain and suffering. I've been in pain since my visit to the chiropractor following the accident, but it's not accident related. My chiropractor accidentally dislocated one of my ribs. 38 weeks pregnant with a dislocated rib.  It's worse than contractions and its gotten worse over the last couple days. I went back to him yesterday, nearly in tears and it was out again. He popped it back in but still no relief. I'm going back to him Friday and maybe to my regular doctor for any help on pregnancy safe pain killers. I'm feeling pretty overwhelmed.

Just the four of us.

The very end of our massive pre-baby to-do list says: plan a vacation. I think we had high hopes in January, but by the middle of February we had pretty much forgotten about it. But my, oh-my-gosh-Garrett-and-Addie-will-never-have-fun-in-their-lives-again-once-this-baby-is-here-because-I'll-be-tired-and-overwhelmed guilt set in shortly after our Chicago friends left. And while I know lots of kids become big brothers and big sisters without eternally hating their parents for it, it's just how my brain works and I'm scared. I'm really scared about having this third child. On more levels than just fearing my two and three year old will disown me, but that's one of the many. So sometime last week I told Paul, we have to do something, just the four of us. Even if its just a hotel for one night by Knott's and then a day at Knott's. Something intentional and quality with just the two kids. 

We decided to check pretty last minute with his second cousin who has a vacation home in Palm Desert to see if it happened to be avalaible on very short notice, and it was! We took the kids the night before to buy new swim suits and told them we were going on a vacation. They were super excited. 

I packed up Friday afternoon and we left as soon as Paul got home from work. Both kids have stayed at this house before but it was almost exactly two years ago so Garrett was a year and a half and Addie was less than 5 months old. So it was much different this time.

We got there just before bedtime Friday night but still watched a movie and had popcorn. 

The kids slept great. Paul and I each took a kid the first night and the second night I slept alone and the three of them shared the master bedroom. No complaints from me! 

We had breakfast by the pool and played in the water for a while. 

We spent a couple of hours at children's museum and it was really fun. I never have high expectations of places like this, but it was really clean, inexpensive and lots of fun things to do.

We had lunch and more pool time when we got back, followed by long naps for all of us. Trying to teach the kids the art of vacation napping. It went pretty well. 

We had dinner at Souplantation. I'd never been there and it was so good. Maybe it was because I hadn't been super healthy leading up to dinner, and I mostly filled up on salad, but I'd for sure go back. 

We found another giant size piece puzzle at the museum gift store so we had to do that a couple times before our bedtime movie. 

Somehow movie time turned into tablet time. 

We had breakfast at the old town farmers market. More like brunch because of daylight savings. 

And we stopped to play at a park because we didn't want to pack up and head home. 

Good memory making.