January | 2013 | Team Trader Mom

To quote an age old classic female rock group of the 80’s, “Time, time, time…see what’s become of me….”

Ah the classics…

Happy 26 weeks!

If you’re anything like me, you find the whole trimesters/months/weeks of pregnancy thing confusing. It doesn’t always add up correctly in my head. But I found this chart online that helps visually show how it all lines up.

(source)

So according to this, I’m nearing the end of the 2nd trimester!

This week, as part of the ongoing pregnancy fun, I got to do the Glucose test for gestational diabetes. That means I had to drink a bottle of this super sweet orange liquid (Glucola), within 5 minutes, and then wait an hour for them to draw my blood.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – I am not a fast drinker. So getting all the liquid down in 5 minutes was tough. At first it tastes like Orange Crush but after a while it turns nasty and by God I had to stop myself from gagging a couple different times. But I did it!

If I don’t hear anything then all is well. But if the doc calls that means my reading was too high and I’ll have to go in for a follow-up test. So far, no word so that’s a good sign!

Otherwise, all checked out well. Baby’s heartbeat was strong. My weight was fine (I’ve gained a total of 27 pounds so I’m still on track for averaging about 1lb a week). I noticed that I’ve gained more weight in this last 4 weeks than I had the previous 4, most likely due to the holidays and extra eating.

My belly is definitely expanding!

Let’s compare to the last picture I took, which was at 22 weeks –

Yep, definitely bigger (oh look, and I’m wearing the same shirt…how awkward…).

Now let’s compare it to how I looked at this stage in my first pregnancy:

This was taken at 28 weeks. The belly looks about the same but my face is definitely puffier which I think means I was gaining more weight all around and not just with the baby.

It’s harder for me to keep up with Isabella too. I hate that part. She is always on the go and play time with her tends to be like a Catholic church service – stand up, sit down, kneel, run around, sit, run some more, move to another room, and on and on. A lot of times I have to tell her “Sorry, Mommy can’t do this or that”, which I hate. I want to do everything she does but alas, I just can’t.

Isabella is not shy in pointing out how big I’m getting either. I only have a couple winter coats that still fit me and one of them is getting more and more snug. Every time I put it on, Munchkin says something like, “That baby sure is growing Mommy!”

In terms of unpleasant experiences, I got a Urinary Tract Infection this week. I have a history of getting those so I know the symptoms and can tell almost immediately when one is coming. This one showed up on New Year’s Day (happy new year to me!) so I phoned the on call doc and they wrote up an anti-biotic. Normally the docs would want me to wait until I can get in for a urine sample but since I’m pregnant, they didn’t mess around. Any untreated infection could move to the kidneys and that would be bad. So I’m glad we caught it early.

I’ve been having a lot of Braxton Hicks contractions too. That is when your uterus has sporadic contractions. They can start as early as 6 weeks and generally don’t hurt. Instead you feel a tightening or hardening of the uterus. They are nothing to worry about unless you get more than 4 in an hour or they start to hurt. I generally get them when I stand up after having been seated for a long time or after a lot of walking (like doing mega-shopping or something). I had CJ feel my ‘belly’ when I got one last night and he was like, “Whoa!” Your uterus really does feels hard as a rock and it’s kind of freaky the first few times. Isabella poked at it too and said, “Hard!”

We’ve also made a change in some decisions about the nursery. Instead of making it the room right next to Isabella (the famed “polka dotted room“) we’re going to change what is now the office into the nursery.

The office (the room straight ahead with the green sheets on the futon) is the closest room to the Master Bedroom (door on the left) so it would make nighttime feedings/changings easier.

Plus, being further away from Isabella would minimize opportunities of waking her up in the middle of the night to the baby crying (Isabella’s room is the door on the far right and the polka dotted room is the one right next to it). Eventually I’d like the 2 kids to have rooms next to each other as I think that would be fun when they’re older, but for now, we’re going this other route.

Aaaaaaand we probably need to get started…so, I stopped by Lowe’s on the way home and grabbed some paint swatches (for both the nursery and Isabella’s room)! Going to hang them up in the rooms tonight, live with them for a week or so and see what we like!

Yellow and green as possibilities for the nursery and the blues are for Isabella’s room.

Hopefully in the next update I can show some progress pictures of the nursery!

Track my progress!

7 Things… | Weeks 21 and 22 | 20 weeks | 19 weeks

Happy New Year! Here’s to lucky number 13!

We rang in the new year in a pretty low key manner. Just the 4 of us at home, playing games, eating and being silly.

We did our official toast to the new year at 9 pm so that Isabella could participate. We mixed orange juice and Squirt and drank out of wine glasses (champagne flutes are still in storage…) to make it fancy. Then we took some more silly pictures and called it a night!

Now, let’s talk resolutions…

I started out 2012 with a long list of resolutions (30 of them! Eek!). I acknowledged at the time that it was ambitious and tried to break it down in to manageable chunks. I actually stuck with it for a good 6 months too and can say I crossed off about 50% of the items (I say “about” because some of the goals were in multiple parts or I did a resolution for the first half of the year but not the last, etc.).

I could site many excuses for not doing more (laziness, being pregnant, changing priorities, etc.) but the fact of the matter is that I’m human and can only do so much. I’m not perfect (are you shocked?) and so I think getting through half of my list is pretty darn good.

That being said, this year I’m going to come at it a bit differently. I have 2 goals (you know, other than the Big One of having a baby) and they pretty much go hand in hand:

1. Get our finances in order and pay down our debts

2. Establish and maintain organization in the household

The first one is a carry over from last year. I learned a valuable lesson in the last couple of months – no matter how much money you make, it’s all about how you manage it. To that end, you have to have a budget and a plan, neither of which we really had. I really struggled in December with our money situation and how I let us get here (I’m the CFO of the house). But “shoulds” will not solve anything and all we can do is fix it going forward.

So I took some time over the last couple weeks to come up with a budget, formulate a plan for how we’ll pay down the debt and save money and put it in to action. It’s a work in progress and I’m sure we’ll have to adjust as we go but it feels good to at least do something. Admittedly, we are not nearly as bad off as many others in America and I am truly grateful for what we do have. But it could be better and I’m determined to make it so.

In my mind, #2 will help us with #1. The more organized we are around the house, the more money we’ll save. Case in point: the other week I bought new toothpaste for Isabella because she ran out, only to discover a couple days later when rifling through the closet that we already had some for her. Also, the more diligent we are about cleaning, maintenance and upkeep of the house, the fewer ’emergencies’ we’ll have down the line with things breaking or wearing out due to improper upkeep.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not like we’re slobs or don’t take care of things, it’s just that with the daily hustle and bustle, things tend to get dropped by the wayside, forgotten or overlooked and the next thing you know, you’re taking your car to the mechanic for a $200 job that could have been avoided had you remembered to change the oil 3 months ago (not that I’m speaking from personal experience or anything…).

So I’ve put together a Household Management Binder that will hopefully keep us on the straight and narrow. In it there are sheets for:

1. Weekly meal planning (this will save us money on groceries and help avoid eating out plus take away the daily stress of “what’s for dinner?”)

2. Weekly Cleaning Checklist – I’m using #2 (breaks up cleaning tasks out by day of the week so that we have a few small things to do each day rather than a huge list on the weekend)

3. Monthly Cleaning Zones (lists out items that need to be done on a monthly basis so they aren’t overlooked)

4. Budget (visible reminder of our budget that will help us see how we’re doing and stay on track)

5. 52 Weeks of Organization (a weekly guide to organizing so that by year end, the whole house will be organized and de-cluttered)

6. Play date Calendar (monthly look at all the play groups, story times and open gym times around town for CJ and Isabella to use)

7. Emergency Contact Information (list of emergency numbers for easy reference for us or baby-sitters)

8. Household projects (list of all the big projects / to do’s that need to be done around the house so that CJ and I can sync up and track them together)

We’ve been using it since Sunday and so far, so good. Crossing items off the weekly cleaning list feels good because it means we’ve accomplished something and that we’re doing good things for our house! And the meal planner has made the week so much easier when it comes to lunches and dinners.

We also got one item checked off the household projects list – putting the storage cabinet together and organizing it!

In our old house, we had this cabinet in Samson’s Room and used it for storing gift wrapping supplies, games, scrapbooking stuff, and miscellaneous small décor items (like candles). We had to take it apart when we moved and it never got reassembled – until this weekend!

The basement went from this:

To this!

Pretty awesome, huh? I was able to unpack and toss about 7 big boxes, freeing up so much more space.

Here’s what the inside looks like:

On the left is the gift wrapping station (ribbons and accessories on top, bags and tissue on the hangers, and wrapping paper and boxes on the bottom). On the right we have games, memory boxes, extra baskets/art supplies and candles (in the top drawer). Bottom drawer is empty which means there’s room for more!

Feels so good to have that done and I smile every time I go in the basement and see that area!

Cheers to a good year!