Weekend, Caden’s room *pics*

Good weekend!  We actually didn’t do a whole lot.  Saturday morning we played outside a while until Emily’s nap.  While she was napping I went to Whole Foods.  It’s so much easier shopping child-free, lol.  Got home right when she woke up, we had lunch, then went to explore the lake by our house.  We’ve lived here like four years now, like 5 miles away from a lake, and we only looked for stuff to do around it once!  The problem is we didn’t like the beach we found the first time.  It seemed dirty and crowded.  So we tried again, and first found a big dock that had a bunch of ducks around it.  We didn’t bring bread, but I had an entire bag of those crispy snap peas and we fed the ducks.  Emily LOVED it!  She loves animals.  She was laughing the whole time.

After that we drove around looking for a beach where we could play in or near the water, and we found a great one!  So she played in the sand and splashed in the water a while.  Our bathing suits are officially missing.  We went to the pool last weekend and I watched Bryan wrap Emily and my swim suits up and put them in his bag..but now he claims they were never in his bag and I’ve searched everywhere for them. =/ Not a huge loss since Emily’s was getting too small anyways, but I sure as heck am not buying another swimsuit now.  So it could have been more fun at the beach with swimsuits, but we still had a good time.
 
The rest of the weekend was boring.  We cleaned and did laundry.  We went to visit Bryan’s grandpa on Sunday morning.  It was a good visit in the sense that he was very alert and in a good mood, but he just doesn’t follow what you say anymore and I can only maybe understand 10% of what he says.  And what does come through is very random.  He has a pretty big preoccupation with death right now. =/ He reads the obituaries over and over, thought the bottle of Gatorade in our bag was an urn with ashes..just stuff like that. I think he’s scared to go and that’s hard.  You would hope after 93 years and a good life you would be ready at some point, but I guess not for everyone.  It really was a good visit though and he told his daughter (Bryan’s aunt) when we left that he thought we were doing really well and that made him happy.  We are always very happy and smiley and positive when we see him (which he probably doesn’t get too much in the facility he’s at) and he loves watching Emily and seeing how happy she is, so I feel like we brightened his day a bit at least.
 
Emily is a freaking angel.  I can’t emphasize enough what a good girl she is.  We were in a little room with them for 2 hours, left a half hour past her naptime, and she just played and smiled and laughed with her toys.  She was obviously so tired in the car on the way home, eyes real heavy, but no complaints or whining or tantrums.  She went down for her nap a happy girl.  I am terrified that Caden will be so, so different and we won’t know how to deal with a difficult toddler, lol.  Emily is just such a JOY.  I wish I could spend every second of every day with her, but sometimes I think because I work I go out of my way to make our time together more special.  She’s my baby. <3
 
Her sleep is still pretty good.  She’s been waking up at night lately, but not needing us to go get her.  I’m not sure she’s even totally awake.  She just talks for a few minutes and goes right back to sleep.  Definitely better than the crying and bouncing and all the other stuff in the middle of the night that we were used to.  It really is like a switch flipped and she’s now finally confident that we haven’t abandoned her in her crib and that we will be there the second she wakes up in the morning.  I am feeling very unsure with what to do as far as Caden’s sleep when he gets here.  A big part of me just wants to co-sleep again..I want those nighttime baby snuggles so bad!!  And also having him away from my body while sleeping just feels unnatural to me.  I didn’t expect that with Emily, but even standing over the bassinet while she slept and then laying down by myself felt so *wrong*.  I would be exhausted and not able to sleep because I needed her closer.  But that caused a whole host of issues in itself.  I feel like I should do something different, anything different, just so we have a chance at a slightly better sleeper.  And I don’t see co-sleeping working well after maternity leave, or really much at all if I want to be a part of Emily’s nighttime routine still, which I do.  She goes to sleep late and it would be nice to put him down to sleep and still get some quality one-on-one time with her before bed.  It’s going to be hard, but I am going to try my hardest to put him to sleep in the bassinet next to my bed and not in bed with me.  It’s so easy and nice sleeping next to a baby, but to start out with it and then take it away when it becomes inconvenient seems mean..and will probably begin the bad sleep patterns we created with Emily.  Must.be.consistent.
 
I spent so much damn money this weekend, but Caden’s room should be almost complete in a few weeks now because of it.  I bit the bullet and ordered the crib.  Not on sale. =/ But get this..I always google coupon codes for checkout, because you can usually find something, even if it’s only $5 off, and I found some code, plugged it in to see if it would work, and it took $99 off!!  Hell yes!  And it has free shipping! =D  So that made me happy.  I haven’t gotten a shipping notice for it yet, but I’m assuming it will be in the next two weeks or so!  

The crib mattress will be here by the end of this week.  I got the Moonlight Slumber Little Dreamer Crib Mattress.  It got good reviews and when they are older you can flip it over and there’s a softer side:

We could not for the life of us figure out what bedding we wanted for the crib, but finally settled on this:

It’s cute and I like it, but it adds yet another shade of blue to the room and I’m not totally confident it’s going to come together the way I want in the end.  If I hate it I’ll have time to return it at least.  I got a matching changing pad cover and this lamp, too:

Ordered the letters for his wall last week.  Bryan wants them brown to match the crib, and I have to paint the changing table to match the crib anyways so I figured I’d just do the letters at the same time, but I just can’t picture what it’s going to look like in my head in the end.  Blue and white stripes, white trim around the room and windows, dark brown (espresso) crib and changing table and letters.  So, different shades of blue, then white and brown will be the colors.  I just don’t know.  If I hate the bedding and the brown letters don’t look good on the wall, I’ll have to think of something else.  
 
I cleaned all of Caden’s cloth diapers this weekend.  They are supposedly one size fit all, but they are too small on Emily.  I was hoping to be able to interchange them somewhat at first so Caden could sleep in the BumGenius diapers at night too, but that doesn’t look like it’s going to happen.  I did have her wear one for a while and it held up really well and didn’t leak even though she peed quite a bit in it, so that’s good.  It ass just a bit too tight.  They will ultimately serve the purpose I got them for, which was to have diapers for him until Emily potty trains and can pass down the good ones.  It’s not like she won’t be potty trained by the time they’re too small for him, so it doesn’t really matter.  They are really soft and cute, too!  Harder to stuff than the BGs, but oh we’ll.  A good buy overall I think, especially for the price.  
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I’ve been feeling pretty good physically, but getting comfortable at night is becoming a challenge.  Once I’m asleep I seem to sleep well thought the night (at least for the moment), but getting comfortable enough to fall asleep is beginning to not be fun.  And sitting on the couch in one spot for a while is no fun either.  We started watching Orange is the New Black, but it’s so hard to sit there that long without my legs or back starting to hurt.  And I don’t have the stamina I’m used to when out and about.  I find myself dragging behind Emily a little on walks or at the park, taking a break to sit more and more.  I can’t take quite as deep of a breath as usual, so I’m winded more often.  I started snoring at the end of my pregnancy with Emily just from the weight I think, and I think that will start up again in a few weeks, leading to poorer sleep.  I remember it would wake me up.  At least it went away a week or two after birth.
 
All of that aside, I feel pretty good though, considering.  I have quite a bit of energy at the beginning of my day at least.  I’m still happy.  I feel heavy and big and that’s not fun, but no more shooting pains in my legs or anything like that.  I walk pretty comfortably.  I believe he is still head down.  In fact, I think he’s stuck that way for good now.  He’s tried to turn unsuccessfully quite a few times.  He is very active. =) I wonder what that will mean for me towards the end of the pregnancy.  I don’t know if having a baby head down will make me actually dilate towards the end of pregnancy, or what.  I just never had any pressure or anything down there since Emily was always heads up.  I don’t know why but I’m very nervous about my water breaking or going into labor before the c-section date.  I just have no idea what my body is going to do!  I would welcome him coming early (at a healthy gestational age) but the unknown is a little scary.  78 days until the scheduled c-section!
 
We are going to my mom’s this coming weekend!  Excited for that.  Although I will have to put her to sleep Friday night.  I think I’ll attempt to bounce her since her sleep has been SO good and she’s in such a great routine, but I’ll obviously have to stop if it hurts or I just can’t do it.  I have a feeling it might be the official end to her good sleeping pattern, but I’ll try.  I don’t have another option since Bryan won’t get there until around midnight. 
 
All right, I think I’ve blathered on long enough. =)
 
~Sheralyn