Adventures with our Elf on a Shelf

Meet Albus, our Elf on a Shelf. (I swear I did not prompt Kayla in any way to choose a Harry Potter related name, but admittedly did give her a huge hug when she came up with that all on her own.)

Today was our first day meeting him. This morning when Kayla woke up she was excited to start looking for him. She bounded down the stairs quickly, turned the corner, and since I had placed the elf conspicuously on the DVD shelf close to the stairs she saw it right away. I figured that for the first day it would be best to just ease her into it and let her get used to seeing him.

Well, upon seeing him she froze in her tracks and started yelling for me to help her. She was pretty terrified. I picked her up and we waited a few seconds, and I let her hold the elf (which you're technically not supposed to do, according to the story). But it helped her and she quickly smiled and liked him. I put him back on the shelf where she couldn't reach him and told her it was time to choose his name. Albus. Can you believe it? She's so awesome. In hindsight, I actually wonder if she was trying to say "Elvis", which would have been a lot less exciting for the Harry Potter nerd in me, but I'd be equally impressed with her wit (Elvis the Elf is, after all, still pretty funny) and wonder where she heard the name. Either way, when I asked her again, she confirmed it was ALBUS, so we went with that.

I'm very excited to have some fun with this little dude. I can't wait to see what he gets into this month.

In Progress: Cloth Diaper storage and Upcycled bookshelf

So here's the progress on my cloth diaper storage unit. I got the idea from pinterest, so I can't claim originality.

Here's my inspiration:
http://wallfry.blogspot.com/2011/06/upholstered-drawers.html

Here's the result:





The original tutorial mentioned that you needed to use dressers that don't have handles, but I still was able to do this without a problem. I just unscrewed the knobs, and then used an exacto to cut a very small hole through the fabric and batting. The knobs screwed on perfectly and it looks nice.
Ever since I redid the kitchen chair fabric, I'm finding a new love for upholstering. I wonder what else I can add some fabric and batting to around here?

Now if we could just get the crib put together, a mattress, and an actual dresser for in the room and maybe the nursery will start to actually come together. Brian thinks I'm rushing things, but I'm almost 27 weeks pregnant now, and even if I didn't have the bleeding problems early on, Kayla was almost 2 weeks early. I can safely assume that this baby will also be that early since subsequent pregnancies tend to have earlier labors than previous ones. So that means we're down to 13 weeks for a 40 week, full term pregnancy, 11 weeks for a probable 38 week pregnancy, and less if my bleeding complications and friable cervix lead to any other issues later. It is NOT that far away.
Holy crap, it's really not that far away.

Nursery Stuff

So somehow, despite getting only 3 hours of sleep a night for the past month and a half, and after chasing around a crazy 3 year old all day, I've still managed to find a little energy left to do some crafty things for the third bedroom. Not too much so far, but still think it's looking pretty cute.

Stuffed owls for a mobile:


Of course I still have the monumental task of assembling the mobile, itself, but so far I am happy with the owls!

Painting:


Those are actually the only two I have pictures of so far. Ha! It feels like I have so much to do left, but really it's only a matter of organizing a few things and making some final touches. I'm having a lot of fun with this decorating thing!

Nursery Tree with Hanging Name

Woohoo! Behold! My latest creation.



It's not entirely done in that picture, but I couldn't wait any longer before I shared it. I'm just so damn proud of myself. So just imagine the leaves a little fuller around the edges, and a couple of bird houses in the tree.

Since we can't paint- or, more accurately, we COULD technically paint, but don't feel like making the effort to repaint later when we need to move- I have been looking for non-paint ways to spruce up the owl nursery. I wanted to do a tree with some owls in it, and more specifically wanted that long branch over the crib to hang her name from.

My original plan was going to be to use cardstock pieces for the whole thing, including the trunk. But I was worried how terrible it would look having tiny pieces of brown for the tree trunk. You'd definitely see the lines and everything. So I got an idea from another mommy-to-be on Babycenter.com to use foam board covered with cloth. Perfect!

I got 4 large pieces of foam board from A.C.Moore for less than 2 bucks each. Then swung by Joanne's and found the brown fabric that actually looks sort of like tree bark (that wasn't a must, just a lucky bonus, and I would have just used any slightly patterned brown fabric) and got 3 yards of it. It was way more than I actually needed but since I wanted the entire center of the trunk to be one pieces of fabric, I needed it to be longer. I could have also just gotten less fabric and cut it in pieces like I did with the branches, I guess, but I wanted it to look uniform. I got a can of spray glue, too.

At home we already had a box cutter (although we desperately need a new one and I wish I knew that before trying to use the one we have!), cardstock for the leaves and owls, and duck tape.

I just cut the shape of the trunk out first by lining up the foam board pieces, sketching it out, and cutting away with the box cutter. I also cut out the shapes of the branches to make sure they lined up with the trunk. I taped the pieces of the trunk together, and then used the spray glue to put the fabric over it on the front. Once the whole front was glued I turned it over and secured it and pulled it tight on the back with duck tape. Then I did the same for the branches. After the trunk was covered, I did the same for the branches. For the hole in the trunk, I taped a pieces of darker brown cardstock behind the foam. All of that was hung up on the wall with small nails.

Then I started cutting out the leaves. I just picked some of the paper and cardstock that I liked for the colors and patterns, planted myself down in front of the TV for a little while and cut until I had a massive pile of leaves.

I have a lot of leftover foam board. For the trunk and branches I actually only used two full pieces of it. Instead of just hanging the leaves on the wall, I decided to glue them onto large pieces of foam board and hang the board on the wall. I used the other two left to cut them into half-oval and oval shapes. I knew that the two half-oval shapes would go against the ceiling (why they had to be flat) and the two ovals would be hung below the others. I covered each board with the leaves, layering them from the bottom up.

At some point, I ran out of spray glue. I just substituted with some Matte Modge Podge that I had anyway and it worked just as well. *LOVE Modge Podge!*

When all those pieces were covered with leaves I used small nails again, first hung the half-ovals with their flat edges along the ceiling, and then layered the oval pieces over the other pieces. I decided after that point that I wanted some more leaves, so I made a few extra foam board-covered leave chunks and added them here and there where I wanted. I will probably fill in a few more leaves by just using glue dots to hang individual leaves on the actual wall itself. I'm sure with better planning this would all be unnecessary, but I like to fly by the seat of my pants with projects like this so I wind up adding and adjusting small things all the way until it's done.

Then I made those cute little owls out of cardstock, gave them a home up on the branches along with a few more leaves. Like I mentioned, I'm not done with details like that. I have a couple of small wooden birdhouses that are painted and ready to be hung but I just haven't gotten around to it yet.

As for the name- first I printed out letters from the computer in the size and font I wanted. I cut them out to make a pattern for the letters. Then I traced the pattern onto the cardstock and scrapbook papers of my choice and used matte Modge Podge (Squeeee love Modge Podge!!) to attach the letters to their pages. After that, it was a quick trip to the Dollar Tree for 5 one dollar 8x10 picture frames, hot gluing some pink ribbon to the back of them, and putting my letter pictures into them and I was done! Easy peasy.

See what happens when the 3 year old spends a week with Mimi?

At least I think it's productive!

Cloth diapers!!

Ok, so my newest baby-obsession is revolving around diapers. I never would have guessed I'd fall into this particular hobby (as I'm already beginning to see this as), but here I am. I know I'm prone to becoming a little... hmm... what's a good word here? Intense?... when it comes to various baby products.

When Kayla was little, I obsessed over bottles. Don't ask me why. I just loved trying different bottles and had a massive spending problem. I should take a picture of the two totes worth of bottles we have in the basement sometime just to verify this. And now with this second baby on the way I am already starting to feel the pull of bottle-buying again, even though we hardly need them. I did get replacement nipples for a couple bottles and caved to buy a two pack of Avent, but that's only because I want to try nursing again, and we don't have many wide-neck bottles that would be good for going from breast to bottle. Our Avent bottles were the older ones that had BPA in them, but I remember Kayla liking them. So yes, I already did buy another pack.

This also applied to sippy cups. We have another entire tote of sippies.

As she got older, it became bows and tutus.

Somewhere in the countless files of pictures on this computer, there exists one of her full collection. That's most, but not all of them.

I tried to calm it down a little. I really did. And I think I was successful. My spending habits were under control up until about two weeks ago, when I made my first cloth diaper related purchase for baby Paige. And now I'm once again proving that I can't be trusted with a debit card or Paypal account.

I decided that I wanted to use cloth this time, mostly knowing how much money you can save. I read on some site that the average person spends about 2000-2500 on disposable diapers for two years, assuming you don't buy Pampers and Huggies all the time. Well, we sometimes bought the big names, and Kayla didn't even begin to potty train until almost 3. We are still buying Pull-Ups for sleeping and long trips. I shiver to think what our number would be.

I also realized that we have a washer and dryer now, and I'm a SAHM. Um, no excuse this time, really. I was confused at first- and I can see why people try to read about it and give up. It's ridiculously confusing when trying to figure it out on your own. It took me about 2 or 3 weeks of reading the same material online over and over again before I could wrap my head about the concept of most of this cloth diapering stuff. And with all the options for types of diapers, nevermind the literally COUNTLESS brands and designs- your head could spin right off your shoulders if you don't keep an eye on it.

But I started to get it. After a lot of reading, I decided that I would ultimately like to try and wind up with a stash of mostly one-sized pocket diapers, possibly some AIO diapers, too. They're slightly more expensive than some of the other choices, but I like that they seem to be easy to use. I did, however, decide that we should start with diaper covers and prefolds, because most people agree that newborns don't really fit in most of the one-sized diapers until they're at least few weeks old. Even working out the math as far as money is concerned, investing in NB sized prefolds and covers still works out to be cheaper than buying NB disposables- or at least close to the same amount.

So I searched for some covers and prefolds that seemed good. I decided to just pick a handful of the more popular brands that I've seen online- Thirsties and Bummis. I got 5 NB and Small covers, and need to order the prefolds and snappis still. (Snappis are the modern-day answer to saftey pins). I'll go with the NB-sized prefolds from Green Mountain Diapers when I do order them, but in the process of ordering THOSE, I got distracted by Sunbaby diapers.

Sunbaby is a brand that one of my cloth diapering friends suggested I look into. After lots of reading online, most people who use these diapers seem to just love them. And for about 5 bucks per diaper, they're an amazing price. So I went ahead and caved, and did something that I told myself I wouldn't do. I ordered a 12 pack of these diapers a few days ago. I couldn't resist! I went on the site and started looking through the patterns they are offering now, and I almost literally had no choice. I mean, come on!! Look at some of these!!











!!!!

See? Practically no choice in the matter, really.

And they're exactly the type of diaper I was hoping to really fill my eventual stash with- one sized pockets. So I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that they fit my baby as well as most others seem to claim.

Of course, that doesn't mean I'll stick with Sunbaby. Of course not. Knowing my obsession with bottles and bows, I can't stick with one brand of anything. Not when there are so many options out there, I want to try them all!

Tonight I ordered a large sized Fuzzibunz diaper for Kayla. I'm sick of buying pull ups for her to sleep in, so after debating for a few months, I decided to finally just go ahead and give the cloth diapering a try for when she's sleeping. It'll also give me some practice for when Paige gets here. If the Fuzzibunz Large size fits her and it works, I'll order a few more and stop having to buy pull-ups. Plus, I'll be able to reuse them when Paige gets bigger.

Fuzzibunz also makes a one-sized diaper that I'd be more likely to buy for the rest of the stash. They're also pocket diapers.

I just read a little more about Bumgenius's Freetime all--in-one diapers and I'm now obsessed with the idea of those. While some people favor pocket diapers because you can change what you stuff them with and they dry faster than AIOs, I can't help but be drawn to the idea of a cloth diaper that is as easy as one piece that you pop on a little bum and go. I might find I don't like them as much as the other types, but it's so worth a try to me!

There are several other brand names that I'm interested in, either because of a recommendation from a more experienced cloth-diaperer, or because I'm just in love with the way they look and good reviews. Kawaii Diapers, Blueberry Diapers, smartipants, to name a few.

Well, that's about it for now. Here's some links to some of the stuff I mentioned.

http://www.greenmoutaindiapers.com

http://www.cottonbabies.com/

Cottonbabies offers free shipping all the time! This is where I ordered my diaper covers from. They also sell several different brand names and all different cloth diapering accessories.

http://www.bumgenius.com/freetime.php

http://sunbabydiapers.com/

https://www.smartipants.com/

http://www.blueberrydiapers.com/

http://www.sweetbottomsbaby.com/Kawaii-Green-Baby-One-Size-Bamboo-Pocket--Blue-Label_p_42.html

http://www.blueberrydiapers.com/

Ok, I gotta run. There's obviously a mountain of details I'm skipping out on for now. Maybe another post for another day. I'm also lacking one very important detail to all of this- firsthand experience. I'll probably write about what it's like actually dealing with cloth after Paige gets here, but for now I just had to share my excitement with discovering this entire world that I really didn't even know existed. It's like a subculture all it's own. So fun!!!

Back to Preschooling

I wish I remembered to update this blog more often. Blogger, for some reason, doesn't let you change your log in email address. I'm stuck using an old gmail address and I hate having to deal with remembering the extra information.

Anyway, I'm happy to say that I'm getting back into the swing of doing preschool with Kayla. We were going to start Five in a Row last month, and I was super excited. In fact, I'm still excited to start, but I realize now that it's just not the right time for that for her. My friend, Jen, sent us the curriculum and we started buying some of the books to go along with it. It's really geared towards kids who are slightly older (around 4) or maybe kids who are her age but not so crazy. I struggle as it is to get her to listen to stories- even shorter ones. These books are a little longer and require some actual concentration. She's too hyper to get anywhere at this point. My plan is to try to read them in parts to her from now until we try again, and also keep them for bedtime. She likes stories at bed time best and I think enjoys longer ones so she can stay up a little later. I think it'll be the best way to introduce them to her, so when we start again she'll be really ready.

For now I'm back to using the next step in the Letter Of The Week program I was using before. We just finished the first week and I think it's going well once again. For now, she learns best when we can involve a lot of play, music, and art. Plus, this curriculum allows for a lot of flexibility and I can be a little more creative. Instead of focusing on one story, I can basically do anything I want as long as it focuses on a certain letter.

The site is letteroftheweek.com and I recommend it. Kayla learned a ton with the preparatory curriculum and she's showing a lot of promise with the preschool curriculum, too. I like that each day only calls for an hour worth of 'school' stuff, but Kayla tends to do things spread out over the whole day that add up to much more than that. We do a ton of art and coloring things because she's very interested in that stuff. I know that I'll have to start working on a more structured day for her, especially once we get closer to Kindergarten, but it's so far away that I don't want to even worry about it right now. She's thriving this way and learning a lot so I don't want to risk it.

This week is B week. I'm looking forward to finding a bakery and taking her there!! I wanted to go Apple Picking for A week but came down with a massive cold/cough thing and haven't been really up to getting out and about so that had to be skipped for now. I'll still probably take her anyway but it won't be so relevant. Oh well, still fun.


*****Off topic----- In unrelated news, baby is doing well so far. I'm 21 weeks and 1 or 2 days, and we found out last week it's a second girl. I'm happy, and Kayla wanted a little sister so I'm even more excited she gets what she wanted. Brian was disappointed because he wanted a son, and we know after this baby we are D-O-N-E, done! M-O-O-N, that spells DONE! (The Stand, anyone?). Anywho, I'm still very glad. Aside from the fact that we get to reuse most of Kayla's stuff, I feel comfortable with girls already. A boy would have been sort of scary. Like I'd have to relearn everything over again for some reason. So I feel more prepared and ready to go. The nursery is coming along. I'll make another post soon once the room looks less disastrous and more nursery-like. I made the curtains and they turned out pretty spiffy, if I do say so myself! Not PERFECT, of course, but for my first time I was very content. I have a lot of plans for DIY things in there, if only I could get Brian to get HIS mountains of stuff out so we can get baby's stuff in! GAHHH!!
Baby is still nameless, btw.


That's all for now! I just came online to print up some letter B things and decided to drop in. I'll really try to update more.

I'm 15 weeks Pregnant

Well, depending on whether you ask my doctor or my online ticker, I'm either 15 weeks or 15 weeks and 1 day pregnant. The doctor insisted my due date was February 12th, but the also told me I was one day ahead where the online calculators and other Feb. 12th mommies say I am. I'm not complaining, but it's a little confusing.

The baby is doing well. We had an NT scan and the results were all normal- not that the doctor even bothered to contact me about them. I just read the paper before I handed it back over to the tech, and the result was written on there. I googled it later, and the number was very within normal range.

I have to admit that I'm not thrilled with my doctor, but sadly I'm just too lazy to find another at this point. She's never had good bedside manner, and I also don't feel like she's very thorough about anything. I guess the coming weeks will confirm that for me. My only 'normal' appointment with her was at almost 10 weeks, and it was the fastest sort of check up you could imagine. Other than that, my experience with her has been her disinterested comments about my 'almost certain' miscarriage. She has actually delivered news of that nature with a smile, and then a quick, "I'm sorry, I know it's not what you want to hear."

As far as how I've been feeling- meh. The nausea has been better, especially when I take the Zofran. That stuff is just a miracle drug. The only problem with the medicine was actually when the doctor prescribed Phenergan for the days after I ran out of Zofran. Insurance would only cover 12 pills every 30 days, and wouldn't budge when they asked for more. So she gave me the phenergan, and I had a terrible, terrible reaction to it, so bad that I wound up in the ER. I honestly thought I was dying, or having a stroke, or something. I took it at 4 PM, and by 5 I was so tired that I could barely lift my head. When Brian got home, I said nothing and walked upstairs and just collapsed in bed. I couldn't move,and every limb felt like it weighed 100 pounds. I could barely speak because I couldn't move my mouth. I was nearly catatonic. Brian called me down for dinner, and I managed to get downstairs after about 15 minutes of willing each part of me to move, and then I couldn't even hold my arms up to the table or hold the silverware. When I went back upstairs I was completely passed out until the morning. I was nearly immobile for almost 17 hours.

When I got up I could move again, so I thought that was good. I got Kayla up, dressed and downstairs. I gave her some breakfast, and sat down at the table intending to read the medicine's pamphlet to see if my reaction was normal. As I started to read it, I realized that I couldn't see the words. I got insanely hot, my breathing got shallow, and I felt my heart starting to race. My vision started to tunnel to black but with a bunch of light starbusts, and I ran to the bottom of the stairs to call Brian. He didn't hear me, so I started to climb, still feeling everything closing in and, calling him again and again. By the time I got to the stairs, I let out one good scream and collapsed on the floor. I couldn't see anything. I know I told Brian something was wrong, I couldn't see. He got me into bed at some point, and after a few minutes my vision was ok again and I started feeling normal. But I called the doctor and she said it sounded like blood pressure and since I took the meds last night it probably wasn't related. She sent me to the ER just to get checked.

The doctor at the ER barely looked at me, but seemed confident that it was a reaction from the medicine. She called it a dystonic reaction. She was even able to get the insurance company to allow 30 pills a month since I definitely couldn't take any other medicine. All they did was give me benadryl and told me not to take the medicine again- duh. Well, other than that, things have been pretty normal.

I'm showing more this time. I already look 5 months pregnant. oooof.

Still no kicking or anything. I sometimes think I feel things, but I'm not entirely sure.

I'm always, always tired, but I also blame Kayla for that one.

Kayla is her normal, crazy self. She knows of the baby, but I'm sure she really grasps the idea yet. She will tell you that she wants a sister (sometimes a brother, but mostly a sister now). She's so good with babies so I'm sure she will be ok once this one arrives.

Now that I don't have Kylie any more I am trying to force myself to cook more. It's not easy because Brian is so unbelievably difficult, but I'm still trying. Even just crock pot meals- I already have two for the week. I've been horrendously slacking on the preschool curriculum with Kayla, and I just got everything out to get organized again. I want to start the Five in a Row this fall, so I have to finish up the letteroftheweek.com curriculum. I am also going to enroll her in a tumbling class very soon!



I'll post some pregnancy pictures soon. Gotta run for now- naptime!


Edit:
13 weeks, 6 days



The Belly at 15 weeks