I have been reading this all day and laughing…
http://stfuparents.tumblr.com
Just because you have a baby it is not appropriate to talk about poop on facebook! Is nothing sacred? If you really want to drive me crazy then go ahead and make sonogram pics your profile picture. I know you are proud but it’s weird and icky for the rest of us, I PROMISE. Especially if you are sending a friend request and you changed your last name since high school.
“Hmm, I don’t know a Jessica Hughes that looks like an UNBORN FETUS. Should I accept anyway?”
June 29th, 2009
I’ve been watching a fair amount of daytime tv, which is really not that much for someone that is home all the time but considering that for the past 2 years I worked at home, it feels like alot. When I work at home I never, ever turn on the TV. I hate distracting noises while working which includes not only TV but any kind of music, talk radio, co-worker chatter, birds chirping, wind blowing through trees, etc so its been really nice to control my environment. Once I stopped working I started watching a bit more TV during the day but it was mostly movies, or things I tivod. Since the dreaded summer TV season started I have become desperate. I’ve watched about 147 episodes of A Baby Story and everything and anything on TLC. This has led to an issue I am having. A goal really.
I really want to be on What Not To Wear.
So in my oodles and oodles of spare time I’ve been thinking of Ways To Achieve My Goal. I don’t think I’m that bad of a dresser in my normal life. Boring, sure but nowhere close to needing the help that the people on the show seem to need. Lately my constant rotation of 4 tshirts, 1 pair of yoga pants with paint on them (I had 2 but had to pack one into my hospital bag) and 1 pair of jeans has made me feel so sloppy all the time. The fact that every one of my tshirts are stained does not help.
Idea #1 - keep on wearing my limited wardrobe of maternity clothes even when they become too big
Idea #2 - start wearing my pre-baby clothes asap even though they are definitely too small
Idea #3 - wear matthews clothes
Idea #4 - stop wearing makeup or doing my hair (um, check)
Idea #5 - ALL OF THE ABOVE
I think I’ll have to play it by ear. If you think I am being too presentable at any point please let me know. I don’t want to hurt my chances of spending a week with Clinton and Stacy
I’m hoping that I am so tired/lazy/busy/out of my mind once I have the baby that one of you kind people will nominate me and I can get a whole new wardrobe.
A gal can dream.
June 26th, 2009
I thought I’d post a belly pic since it’s been a while and know I just took some pix a few days ago. Then I downloaded them from the camera and the date said June 4th. Hmm. That was 3 weeks ago. Time sure does fly when all you do is unpack, run errands and pee.
Well in any case, here I am! (at 35 weeks)
June 25th, 2009
I really, really, really, really, really, really, really want this headboard
and there are DIY instructions here.
{via d*s}
June 24th, 2009
Over the course of my pregnancy I’ve had a few different cravings, although nothing you would think to call weird or bizarre. Yes there’s that whole thing about me eating hamburgers (ok that’s weird and bizarre) but for the most part its nothing special. I just have this thing where someone will say something and it will send me into a little frenzy of want for that particular item until I get it. Nothing is worse than fried chicken. If someone says something that even sounds remotely like fried chicken I want it and (luckily) there really isn’t anywhere close to pick it up. THANK. GOD.
I should probably stop but I read alot of food blogs. They do not help. If you’d like to come over and make me all or just one of these things I will consider naming the baby after you. If not we might have to call him Cupcake Fried-Chicken Piercy. It has a ring, no?
Bacon, Lettuce, (Fried Green) Tomato sandwich via Last Night’s Dinner
Sweet and Sour Chicken via The Amateur Gourmet
Grilled Pizza via The Kitchn
Soy Glazed Flank Steak via The Bitten Word via Martha Stewart Living
Ice Cream Sandwiches via the Kitchn
The worst offender of the most crave-worthy post ever via The Pioneer Woman
The truth is the only thing that I constantly crave on a daily basis is a bagel with lox. Lox is on the no-no list and its blatantly paraded in front of me all the damn time. I cannot believe that some random (non-jew!) in the boonies rubbed her love of lox in my face months before I could have it. There is a Murray’s Bagels across the street from the hospital. If Matthew hands me a bagel, I will hand him the baby. I think that’s a fair deal.
June 24th, 2009
So yeah. I’m due 2 weeks from today. Wow. That’s like…done. Now people are starting to try and guess when the baby is coming. Your guess is as good as mine. I’m hoping at least another full week. More would be fine. I got lots of plans for the next week. Like Star Trek, and Up. And maybe Transformers. And a mani pedi. Not to mention finishing up the last o the boxes. No rush here, no sir!
Last week we finally met with a pediatrician even though the midwife has been asking us for weeks if we’ve decided on one. Oops. I’m sure all you mom people already know the deal but I was kind of surprised that you are expected to interview pediatricians before choosing one. I have never interviewed a doctor before and I’ve been to a lot of doctors! Imagine if you called and tried to get an interview with the podiatrist. Hilarious.
Anyway we got 3 recs. One wasn’t taking patients, one got mixed reviews on the neighborhood parents board because she was too straightforward (ha) and the other was not in walking distance but highly recommended all around. So there you go. Doc #3 it is. They kindly offered us a meeting for 6 weeks down the road. I guess we should have called earlier. I just told Matthew to sign up with them, I mean what’s the big deal, but we went to check it out cause why not. As usual we are late to the party where the baby is concerned. I swear next time around…
We go in for the informal group meet and greet (MOUTHBARF) and there are 6 or so other couples already there. Ugh. They are all like super prepared and I don’t know, just a different type of parents than we are. We definitely felt like the youngest people in the room. Evident by our jeans and flip flops and coffee dribbled shirt (me) when all others were in suits with lists and shit. Anyway one of the crazy high maintenance 40+ mamas asked the nice, chubby, earth mother pediatrician “There are quite a few of us here, how many will be accepted” as if its an F’N RITZY PRESCHOOL. Holy hell, its a doctors office. Competitive much? These people are insane. Why would they meet/greet us if they didn’t have availability. The Dr. was like “We don’t turn people away, just call when you have the baby.” For the love, lady! Not 1 but 2 couples were having twins. Out of 6. Matthew was like wow, what a coincidence. I said what? That they both had IVF??? That’s no coincidence.
It was an experience to say the least. Long story short we loved her, she was right on target with all the stuff that’s important to us, been at this practice for 15 years and just seemed really, really nice. The practice as a whole seems great. They have office hours on Saturdays and one of the 3 docs are always on call 24hrs a day so you don’t deal with a service during off hours, just the doctors. Which was one of the top 3 things I wanted. So YAY! Procrastination comes through again. Too bad the parking sucks.
June 24th, 2009
American Idol
Baseball
Hamburgers
Concerts
Wine
Lost
{idea via Rothman}
June 17th, 2009
#1-Boxes are free
Start searching craigslist a month before for free boxes and you won’t have to pay for any. People are very generous.
Don’t write on the boxes so when you pass them on they are clean and pretty. Use different color paper to make notes on what is in the box, to help with actual move day by tell the movers what goes where. Also helps with unpacking. Then make sure you have enough of each color.
Me ”Blue is the small bedroom, purple is our room, green is the living room and yellow is the kitchen”
Mover: “Ok I have a white label where does it go”
Me: “uh…that is Living room too”
Did I bother counting the sheets I had before assigning the largest room? No. But you should!
#2-Moving while 8 mos pregnant sucks.
It is not easy for many reasons. When you cant lift or bend packing is hard, and unpacking is harder. On top of that Matthew does not remember anything he packed.
Location: Our new Living Room
Time: Mid-Afternoon, day after we moved in
Scene: MP: “Have you seen where the black power strip from our room went”
Me: The one you packed 3 days ago? no.”
#3 -Moving is the perfect time to declutter.
We seriously downsized for this move. We turned our office/catch all into a room for the baby so we needed to get rid of a ton of stuff to make it all fit.
While packing, always have a box open to collect things to get rid of. We still have ours going so as things get unpacked if we don’t love it, it goes to good will. We’ve dropped off about 5 bags of clothes/sheets/towels and 20 boxes over the past few months. Just this weekend we donated 3 more boxes and now the one we have going is almost full, I’m sure by the weekend we’ll have 2 more. Its amazing how much you don’t need when you are trying to maximize your space. We slowly went from 4 full size billy bookcases 3 years ago to 3 halfsize ones today. When all our books didn’t fit in the new allocated space we ditched enough to make it work. I only kept ones I loved or haven’t read before because thankfully I finally realized that I don’t care if people walk in and say “wow, you have alot of books” It makes me feel so much better to say “I go to the library” Same with DVDs. We stopped buying them for the most part years ago, I think we probably only accumulated 2-3 a year the past 5 years but we still had about 150-200. We have netflix, and cable, and plenty of places to rent them if I’m having a psychotic DVD viewing related emergency. If it wasn’t a kids movie and I didn’t watch it in the past year I donated it. I would have liked to sell them but in the end the time just wasn’t worth the $50-$100 I would have made.
This week I have been dealing with the miscellaneous boxes of random stuff. Office supplies, crafts, old photos, mementos, stationary…probably the hardest ones yet.
#4 - If you have large junk people will buy it.
Even though its a huge pain in the behind, take the time to sell anything on craigslist before you move so you don’t have to deal with it later.
Now this may seem like a no-brainer and really we tried to get it together but ended up with 4 things at the new apartment we needed to get rid of. Matthew goes to the school of just putting everything out on the street but I can’t help it - if I can make $25 thats better than nothing.
It was a bit of a hassle to sell all those things at once while unpacking but I brought in a total of $230. Which was more than enough to cover the baby’s new dresser/changing table!
#5 - Things take way longer than you estimate.
Do not offer to paint. If your landlord asks what you want to do just say no even thought you don’t want a crap job done by crap workers with crap paint that you will want to touch up for 2 years. Tell them to just do it all white even if you want Natural Wicker.
Especially if you end up painting your humungous LR/DR area Cotton Ball. AHEM.
(We are doing the pipes and around the windows this week. Again, HOW DID THESE PEOPLE LIVE HERE??)
Tags: lessons
June 15th, 2009
Grrrr can’t decide on a baby bathtub. Isn’t that pathetic???
I think the problem I run into with these small things is that I didn’t have a baby shower so I have waaaaay too much time to hem and haw about what to buy. Its a little insane when you are talking about a $25 item. Like who cares already! Buy 2 and shut up. (I imagine that is Matthew’s inner dialogue as he is too nice to tell his pregnant wife to hurry up regarding a decision that is so completely life changing, obviously)
We walked into the scary baby superstore a few weeks ago and walked out with this:
That place is so overwhelming and I needed alot so I didn’t want to linger on something so boring. Seemed to make sense - its smooshy and it folds up. Yay.
Then I read some reviews on amazon.WHY? WHYWHYWHYWHY? and someone said you have to let out a bit of air to fold it which sounded a little too high maintenance for me. Plus there is zero support for the baby and I can see this situation leading to 2 parent baths which is a hell no. Honestly. So I started looking around and now I think I want this:
I like that there is some support for them to lay down as newborns and you can put it in the bathtub or on the counter, then when they get bigger they can sit up for a while without worrying about toys and stuff getting all over the bathtub. Its nice that its just all contained in the little tub. Right? RIGHT?? I mean we are talking about THIRTY-TWO DOLLARS. I obviously have to research the shit out of this investment.
Since almost every mom I know reads my blog I thought I’d ask around via a post. So lemme know. Is this bathtub stupid? What do you have? Do you love it/hate it/think baby tubs are stupid in general? I think I’ll just store it upside down in our tub, Is that what people do? It seems the easiest and most out of the way place.
Tags: baby gak
June 14th, 2009
I’m so excited because we are redoing the bathroom this weekend. The walls in there are a mixture of brick and wood paneling, kind of a scarier version of this:
We got permission to repaint and basically do whatever we wanted. Matthew primed the walls last night and he’s finishing up in there this morning before we head to ikea for some cute shelves and a new mirror. I think it’s going to be an amazing transformation for under $100. We shall see!
June 14th, 2009
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