Jack's Nursery...

Jack will be 11 months old this month and yet his nursery is yet to be fully decorated.  I know, I'm a horrible mother.  But to my credit...he doesn't sleep in there anyway.  Hmm...not sure if that is a good or bad thing, but maybe he's patiently waiting to move in when it is finished.

Although it isn't completed, it is partially decorated.  All that is missing are some pictures/art on the walls.  I just need to paint some frames white and finish a canvas (hopefully with a quote).  I have all the tools, just not the time.  Oh only two weeks until I'm done with school for the Summer, then three months of QT with Jack and some serious house projects.  Anywhoo...here are some pictures of his semi-finished nursery.

The bench my mom fixed up is so cute beside the tree.

You can totally see the palace guard in this picture.  My fav part of the tree is the floating leaves.

He loves it...

Gotta love the little heart detail Lindsay drew, it says "K + T = J."

I love the tree so much.  It totally makes the nursery.  We painted the room around the tree it is a soft sand color, and is super neutral.  I didn't want Jack's room to be overly boy.  I think it could work for a boy or a girl.  The room has come together.  I just kind of gathered accessories that I already had.  I happened to have a really cute lamp that has leaves on it and has a very organic feel to it.  We also found the bench in the attic (I talked about it in this First Nursery Post), my mom stained it and Jack loves it.  I also think it will make a great prop for pictures if I can ever remember to buy batteries for my camera.  That attic is seriously a treasure trove.  There is also a super cute kid-sized red rocking chair (which I may or may not re-paint) and a school desk waiting for Jack to grow into them.

Realistically the mural may be a pain in the butt later, depending on how long we take up residence on Smith St., to repaint (and very sad too).  Hopefully the whimsical tree can be worked into whatever other theme Jack decides, for at least a few years.  I was thinking some England-ish accessories to big-boy it up...I already have a double decker bus and a black cab little cars on display, a stuffed bear version of a Buckingham palace guard and an English tea tin with some flowers in it (from the his baby shower)...not to mention the other English/British stuff I have around from my study abroad adventure.  I'm glad I went with this "theme," it's totally workable.

And once again, THANKS Lindsay.  That tree is just amazing.

Good times ahead?

Me: Don't eat leaves.
Jack:  Eh, they might taste good, you don' t know.

I'm often reminded that I'm a control freak.  Kemper reminds me, in that wonderful way he does, by ignoring my exhausting list of reminders or tips about Jack and the house and whatever I'm fixated on at the moment.  When I got pregnant, I worried, a lot.  I worried about what I ate, how much I ate, the weight I gained and what environmental factors I could and could not control and what exactly they would do to the fetus (or Jack around month 5).

And now that I have a 10 and half month old, my urges definitely ebb and flow.  When Jack first came home I was frustrated.  I tracked every nurse session, poopy diaper, pee diaper, waking time and sleeping time.  Some of it was out of necessity (the nursing and diapers), but mostly it was for the control.  I was told Jack should eat every 2-3 hours.  Ha.  Jack screamed for the first three weeks of his life because of this.  He.did.not.like.imposed.schedules.  He wanted to eat every hour, which meant I started to feed him at 1pm, finished at 1:45, and began again at 2pm.  This lasted forever...or maybe not forever, but it certainly felt like it.  Once I started to feed him whenever he liked for a few weeks, he chilled, and moved on to the better things in life like learning to like belly time and standing while held.

Control issues, as I have learned in my psychopathology class, are mainly linked to fear and insecurity.  I think that's pretty accurate.  I'm really trying to let go because controlling a ten month old is a joke.  As I'm sure controlling a toddler, a kid, a preteen, or a teenager will be.  So Jack is teaching me a lesson.  This is a lesson that I began to learn during my nine month therapy stint.  Through the ultimate behavior modification, parenting, I'm learning to try to let go.  I'm gritting my teeth and bearing it.  It's not always fun, and it's mostly frustrating.  Though I had the ultimate power (with my DNA helper) in creating Jack, I have very limited power in shaping the kind of person he'll be.  Most of that stuff he ironically got from me.  So next up is Jack the control freak...

Where Jack's At...March edition

Four days short of ten months!  Wow his first birthday is almost two months away...I'll get working on his Amazon Wishlist...hehe..

Crawling and cruising (walking using furniture or whatever is around).

Playing patty cake.

Singing ba ba along with any song.

Saying da da again (his first words were ma ma, then ba ba, then da da, but lately it's been all ba ba all the time).

Walking with help, sometimes from me, sometimes from various articles of my clothing.

Torturing his fur bro, papi, and fur sis, shady.

Dancing...pretty much bouncing up and down to the beat.

Napping semi-alone sometimes, in the tempurpedic, of course.

Eating, lots and lots, of solid food.  His fav at the moment are quesadillas.

Loving all things electronic...remotes, keyboards, kemp's headphones, the xbox, smart phones.

He's still wearing 2T...and 18 mo. bottoms.  Still a big boy, but chilling a bit on the extreme growing.

Loving swinging/strolling at the park.

Being generally adorable...kid is seriously getting cuter everyday.

Jack walking at Nana's.

What?

I really suck at this.

And once again far too much time has gone by since I blogged last.  It's not exactly my first priority.  Blogging is somewhere between organizing my kitchen cabinets (I NEED to do this, I can't reach half of the things I use on a daily basis) and decorating Jack's room (Seriously, this may happen before he moves into his room...sometime before he's 10).  Yeah, so important, something I wish that I could do more often, and apparently not happening.  Ah loving the stay at home, full time school, holly housewife life...

Anyway I wanna try to do a bi-weekly post of Where Jack's At...you know what he's doing these days.  These will normally contain pictures.  I will do a picture only Where Jack's At sometime this weekend, but I hope they will normally include pics.

oh how i've missed you....

So I know it's been a long, long time since I posted.  I was right...all things neglected except one not so very small boy and grad school.  Trust me, literally everything else has been left as is, including unfortunately my house and my pseudo-"housewife" duties.  Ha to that anyway.  Per request...shout out to Meg...I'm gonna try to be better about updating and letting everyone know what's going on in babyland....  I will even go back in time a bit and try to do some posts that I should have completed about a year ago.  I know I'm late for everything, but I read enough blogs that I should be writing at least one.  So Jack and online lectures can take a back burner for a few minutes every couple of days while I update all my peeps that care on life as I know it.

Nursery in waiting

The nursery is definitely on it's way to being finished.  I've got the majority of necessary things for small people and by the way that is a lot of stuff for something that currently fits inside of me!  This is mostly thanks to Heather & Connor.  Kemp painted the room a few weeks ago...we ended up choosing something very neutral.  It's so neutral it was called "sand."  And my super awesome creative friend is going to come and paint an amazing tree on the wall when school is out.  I'm very excited about what she is going to do.  Here is the room so far....

Cute crib...lots of stuff in it.

Not so great picture of the car seat, stroller, swing and rocker (my mom has had it since I was a baby).  And the walls look nice (thanks to Kemp)!

Awesome bench!  I might try to use it for a bookshelf until Jack is big enough to actually sit in it.  It should go well under the tree.

My mom also helped organize the closet.  It is now baby closet/linen closet and one of the most organized things in my entire house.  I wanted to choose a really cool quote to go on the wall, but I think that I might just buy a canvas and paint one on that.  I recently discovered a good Dr. Seuss one:  "You have brains in your head.  You have feet in your shoes.  You can steer yourself any direction that you choose."  If anyone else has any suggestions I'm definitely open to them.

I only have six weeks and the nursery is still a work in progress, but hopefully I still have time!

Babymania

5.5 months pregnant. Jackson is kicking now...where other human beings beside me can acknowledge his existence. I'm also past the halfway mark, so my mind has been on the nursery, the registry, pediatricians, etc. Gotta get in gear. But I have been lusting over some pretty awesome stuff for the nursery....I found this adorable bedding set at www.target.com.

It works pretty awesomely with what I think will be the nursery's color scheme.  I think we are gonna go with a warm, neutral cream color for the walls.  If all goes well a friend of mine is going to paint a tree on the wall that will be chocolate.  And I want green and blue accents.  So this bedding set goes perfectly with that.  I love the animals and the trees on it!  Hopefully baby Jack will get smarter just by sleeping on ABC's and 123's.  And the best thing is it is super affordable.    It is by Circo and they have tons of mix and match little sets like this.  I love it.  So much better than other beddiing sets I have looked at which were between $150-200.  This one is about $50 for the quilt, sheets, and bumper.

I'm having some pretty big issues with picking out a crib though.  I hate making decisions involving furniture, especially super expensive $200 furniture.  The room the nursery is in is kinda small too so there will have to be some creative thought put into how we  are going to all of the baby's stuff in there.

I'm kinda focused on the tree in the room though.  I had a long conversation with a very creative friend of mine.  I picked out a ton of trees that I liked.  This is my favorite:

I showed her this one and some others.  She's such a great artist, I just told her to do whatever she thinks will look good.  She really did like this one though.  I'm really excited about the tree.  We are also going to put some birdies, an owl and maybe a bunny near the bottom.  Ya know...so Lola can watch over Jack.  I can't wait to see what she comes up with.

The nursery is slowly coming together.  I still have a super long list of things to do before I'm anywhere near ready for the baby to be out in the world.

I do wish that I could currently be a bit more fashionable in all my preggo-ness, but I'm taking what I can get now.  The addition of black and gray leggings is helping.  And my mom got me brown, black, and gray tights for Christmas.  Hopefully all these things will help expand my wardrobe, especially since I'm job hunting again!

so close I can't stand it...

So my first ultrasound is in less than four days. I'm sooo excited! I can't wait to start buying stuff for the baby. I was really worried about having a girl...because I want a boy so it would make perfect sense that I would have a girl, but I saw pictures of a friend's sister's one year-old little girl and she is absolutely adorable. I've decided I'll be very happy with either boy or girl.

I'm definately starting to show. Well at least I'm definately starting to look significantly fatter. Absolutely no flat belly for me at this point. I am fairly confident that I'll be able to get back to where I was pre-baby, but I'm hoping for a bit smaller than that. I'll have to make a plan.

On Saturday I'll officially be in the middle of my pregnancy, four and a half months or in baby speak 18 weeks. Hmm...I think my baby looks like this, but probably a little browner with more hair:

I think that I've finally gotten used to the fact that I am having a baby. I kind of, sort of, not really, it's complicated want to do my usual thing: planning. It's been a hard adjustment, but I really think this whole thing is an adventure. I'm hoping that kemp will catch on. But I've got lots of things to do in the next few weeks. I want to make a birth plan... There are lots of good examples online, like this site: http://www.childbirth.org/articles/birthplans.html or this one http://www.justmommies.com/quizzes/birthplan.php. I'm not really looking forward to doing this so much, but it's a very important part of the whole planning thing. Especially in the area where I live, I'm very opinionated and I want things done my way during the birth of my child, and here people just let the hospital and doctors do whatever because they don't research things. I also have to sign up for birthing classes and make a list of things I need for the baby and start to plan my baby shower and maybe plan a mini baby moon and decorate the nursery and the list goes on forever. I need to make a list that lists all the lists I need to make.

It all sounds like a lot, but I'm really excited that I'm starting to let myself be really happy about everything. It's been an interesting 3 and half months.

I just have to remember that just because I'm having a baby doesn't mean my life will be ordinary. I've been scared for a long time that my life was going to be ordinary. I think that is why I've been so scared of marriage and moving home and just all of that. My life isn't ordinary. Now I just have to work on kemp.

An ode to this beginning...

I never really thought this would happen to me. I wanted to have myself, my life and my relationship thoroughly figured out beforehand. I wanted everything to be perfect before bringing anyone into the world. Maybe I just wanted to stall until I was menopausal...I'm not sure, but this certainly did not fit into my plans.

And now despite all of my plans, there will be a kid in this world that is half kemper and half me, and I am miraculously unprepared. 24 and pregant. 25 and a mom. I'm sure I will relax. I'm sure this will get better and worse and better again.

For now, I am horribly sick, almost every minute of the day. Apparently the words "morning sickness" are an absolute lie. I think most bits of pregnancy "facts" are lies to convince us to reproduce. And all of these lies are facilitated by my mother and my sister....I swear I've never seen anyone more excited than these two...I mean I'm an unwed pregnant person for god's sake. According to my family you'd think I was pregnant with the messiah.

But overall I am excited. It's a crazy thing that I have no control of, but I do have the important things to raise a good person. I am madly in love with the father of this kid...I think that was my main concern always....especially considering my mother's history. I'm smart, I have a mad researcher of all things for a best friend, my family is obsessed with this kid (maybe good and bad), we do have a house, and I (after what feels like a billion years) have an actual plan for my life. So maybe I'm more prepared than I think.