30 Weeks! Eek! Things are Moving Right Along...

Today I am officially 30 Weeks!!!! Only 10 more weeks to go! 3/4 of the way there! Holy Crap!

I am definitely starting to feel very very pregnant. The pelvic pain I had when pregnant with the munchkin is back in full force. I think the official name for it is SPD (symphysis pubis dysfuntion), or as I like to call it, lots of pain in my effing crotch area! Here are the symptoms listed on Baby Center:

• Back pain, pelvic girdle pain or hip pain.
• A grinding or clicking sensation in your pubic area.
• Pain down the inside of your thighs or between your legs. It can be made worse by parting your legs, walking, going up or down stairs or moving around in bed.
• Worse pain at night. It can stop you sleeping well and getting up to go to the toilet in the middle of the night can be especially painful.

Yep I can pretty much check all of those off. It sucks big time. It went away before, pretty much right after the munchkin was born, so hopefully the same will happen this time around. I notice that it feels better after doing a lot of walking so I am trying to get in as much as I can of that. There are special therapists you can see to help with the discomfort as well, but that just isn't in the cards with my schedule.

I have pretty much stopped booking photo shoots. It was a hard decision and I originally planned on continuing closer to my due date, but physically it's just gotten to be too much for me and I didn't want it to start to show in my work. I didn't think it would really be a big deal, but I just didn't realize how much I move around, jumping up and down, laying on the ground and all the crazy angles I sometimes get into to get the shot I want. And as I got further along and my belly grew bigger and bigger, I could definitely tell it was affecting me during a photo shoot. I still have several sessions booked in the coming weeks to complete and I will probably do a few more here and there under certain circumstances, but for the most part, I am going to slow things down until probably the fall.

I sold off the last stuff this morning from all the cloth diapering items I had bought when preggo with the munchkin. I just can't believe the resale value on cloth diapers! It's crazy. I am going with completely different diapers for my new little peanut and we just got our first two in the mail a couple of days ago. My grandma bought us these:

How cute is that? She got us a black one and a light blue one. Getting them in the mail and seeing them in person and imagining them on my little girl's bottom got me so excited!  After checking them out and seeing how they were going to work, Joe even seemed to be getting excited about them. I showed him how they were really going to work just like disposable diapers (for the most part, but with some extra laundry). He said they seemed like they were going to be really easy to use, especially compared to the ones we had bought for the munchkin, which he thought were way too complicated. He was also really excited about all of the money we were going to save. That is one of my favorite parts too! We still plan on using disposables for the first month or so.

I found this cute little owl set online....

I had to have them for the nursery. BUT they were way too expensive for something that was just going to sit on a shelf and collect dust.  The cheapest I could find them was about $45 with the shipping costs.  No one would even notice them or love them as much as me, I'm sure, so I gave up on them.  BUT then my dear, sweet friend Brooke, called me one evening and told me she had found them at a local trading co. store for super cheap (I had shown her a pic when chatting on IM one day). They didn't have one there they could sell (they just had a display left), but I tracked one down at another location and went out and picked them up the next evening! They are now perched up on the shelf in the nursery looking so stinking adorable, and I didn't have to pay a ridiculous price for them. It's funny how the littlest things can be so much fun sometimes. Thank you Brooke!!

I have a few more things I need to get still for the nursery, like a crib skirt, curtains and this huge wall applique I want to go above her crib, but then I should be about done with the decorating. I am pretty proud of myself for getting things done on such a tight budget. With some creativity and bit of shopping around, I think I did a pretty good job. Now I just need to go through all of the munchkins clothes and get them ready to wear again!

The munchkin seems like such a big girl lately. She is so funny and cracks me up every day. I have so much fun with her and am trying really hard to savor as much of it as I can before the new baby arrives and everything is disrupted for a while. She has become quite the helpful assistant in the kitchen and loves to cook and bake with me. She loves to dump each ingredient into the bowl after I measure stuff out for her and of course she feels very important when she gets to stir everything together. I think being a part of the preparation and talking about food with her has really made eating dinner more fun for her too.

I can't help but worry about how the arrival of the new baby is going to effect her. It really could go either way. She is such a sensitive and sweet little girl and I am just not sure how she is going to react. I know it will probably be difficult for her at first, especially not getting as much one-on-one time with me, but hopefully things will come around and we will all adjust well. I know this is a common concern with families with a second child on the way, and things always work themselves out eventually, but I still can't help worrying about it probably more then I should. She is my first born and will always hold that special place in my heart. I almost feel guilty, but I know that is silly.

Tonight I am going to take a pic of my 30 week belly. I seriously intend to anyway... so we will see how that goes.  Hopefully I will post that pic tomorrow! I am getting large fo sho!

The Beginnings of a Nursery and a Little Update

Nesting mode has started full force. I have been going through all of the munchkin's baby clothes and items to move to the little peanut's room. It has still been so white and stark in the nursery. I have been having such a hard time finding stuff I wanted to use to decorate with.  I knew I wanted to do a vintage floral type theme, and kinda had an idea in my head, but I wasn't finding anything online that I wanted and knew I just needed to get out to some stores and start poking around. So last night, Joe was at a work dinner thingy and I decided to pack up the munchkin and start our treasure hunt. I was so happy with what I found!

First of all I found the perfect rug. It was exactly the style I had been looking for and had so many wonderful colors in it. It's kinda hard to tell from my cell phone pic how great these colors are, but the rug had the main colors I was hoping to find... green, mustard yellow, light blue and burnt orange. I couldn't believe how perfect it was. Starting with the rug and all it's colors, I could now build the rest of the room around it. Yay!!

Then I came across this great lamp. The orange matched some of the colors in the rug and it lets off a soft warm glow when lit that is perfect for cuddling up and nursing or reading a book.

I found these two round wooden pieces of art with vintage flower patterns on it.  They are about a foot wide. These babies are going up on the back wall on either side of the inset where the window is.

I just love the next piece. It looks like it was painted on an old piece of wood and framed with darker wood. It picks up more of the colors from the rug and I just love the little blue butterfly. The frame is deep and it sits far out from the wall. Love it!

Some random picture frames I grabbed....

Here's a pic of the rug in the room. I am also on the hunt for new curtains, so the ones you see here will not be sticking around.

I will take some better pics later with my camera. The cell phone pics are crappy, but you get the idea...

It's so great to finally get some color in here and to see where things are going. Now that I have some of the big ticket items down, I can focus on some of the little accents and the bedding. Learning my lesson from the first go around, I have no intention of purchasing a bedding set. I just felt like it was such a waste of money last time. We spent alot on it considering all we really used was the sheet (in rotation with other ones I had bought) and the crib skirt. The quilt and bumper pads that came with it were never even touched and the valance was just kinda cheesy so I never really used that either. I did use the diaper stacker but having it so matchy matchy with everything else wasn't really necessary. I am just going to try to find a simple sheet and skirt that matches the rest of the theme and leave it at that. I will use the mesh breathable bumper (brown) that I still have from the munchkin's baby room.

I am started to get crazy excited. And restless. And nervous. And bigger. Much bigger. Today is my 29 week appt. Eek! Only about 11 more weeks to go! This baby is constantly moving around in my belly. Sometimes she will kick my so hard, I almost double over. She really starts moving alot when I turn on some music. Her biggest active times are in the morning on my way to work, in the car leaving work heading out to pick up the munchkin and when I am laying in bed at the end of the night and reading a book or watching tv.

The munchkin felt her moving for the first time. She was especially active one evening last week when we were sitting in the living room. I took the munchkin's hand and put it on my belly. The little peanut moved so hard that you could see a rise in my belly and it moved all the way across it right under the munchkin's little hand. Her eyes grew so wide and she looked up at my in amazement and said, "The baby is moving around!" It was one of the neatest moments. Ever.

Things have been kinda crazy around here lately. I've been really busy at work, editing pics from photo shoots and getting things ready at home for this little girl's arrival. I have also been making tons of extra meals to freeze for after she arrives. My goal is 60 meals... I've got about 25 so far and just really started making them, so I don't see meeting that goal being a problem. It's a bit of extra work now, but I just know that it will help me out alot after she gets here, especially with Joe working and going to school and being gone so much.

I have also been going through the munchkin's things to sell stuff we won't be using and earning some money for some new stuff we need. We are selling her bedding set. Since I didn't use much of it and purchased lots of the matching accessories, it's gonna be a great deal for someone. I still have all of the original packaging too. I was actually planning on cloth diapering the munchkin. I bought everything I needed but never actually did it. The diapering system I chose just didn't work well for us and with how hard things were on us all when she first arrived with her extreme acid reflux and digestive issues, I just didn't want to mess with it. We have decided to cloth diaper this time for sure (hopefully) with the peanut and I am very excited about it. We are selling all of our old diapers (I just posted an ad on Craig's List yesterday and someone is coming out to see them tomorrow already!) and will be purchasing all new ones.

I have done much more research and am going into it with a much better idea of what I am doing. I am also very excited about the new diapers I have chosen to use and am going to be testing some out on the munchkin before the peanut arrives. The money we will be saving is my biggest motivation, to be honest, although the impact to the environment and the my little girls bum is a wonderful bonus.

I am hoping to get a new belly pic and post it soon. I am getting so big!!

As far as the nursery.... any thoughts? Opinions? Anyone have any good tips or tricks or suggestions on where you go online to get great deals on stuff like this??