Oh Summer Where Art Thou?

Okay I think I am getting a bit of cabin fever already in the crazy NC winter weather

Well maybe not exactly wintery, but cool/cold/wet enough to not be able to go outside with the girls. Which means we are homebound in the afternoons and weekends. Translate that into crayons and coloring books scattered about, dress up clothes COVERING their bedroom floor and books on most surfaces outside of their room.

The mess is temporary mostly because they clean it up or Lee gets so frustrated with the 150 crayons dumped - or about to be dumped - on the floor that he cleans them up which generally equals whatever mama and papa clean up it gets taken away for a while - unless we are feeling like we want to be the especially cool parents run around behind their kids cleaning up their messes. The ploy works well. But the crazy thing is the amount of STUFF that the girls have, drag out, play out and temporarily litter the ENTIRE downstairs with. AND what is scarier is that a good portion of their toys are upstairs from the re-no that we never brought back downstairs. They will go up and play with those occasionally.

Being inside with all the stuff causes me to go on purging sprees. So it needs to hurry up and get warm again... ASAP so we can go outside and leave all the mess in the garage and not run/dance/scream around the house like {cute} banshee children.

We are also in organizational flux in the laundry room. Everyone needs a cubby to put all their stuff because I don't know how much more I can fit on the rack plus the shoe bin is overflowing. Also I think it would be totally fantastic to have a craft cubby so that the crayons and markers and coloring books would have a designated home rather than just strew around on the coloring table.

Catch all kitchen counter... This is piled up with artwork, mail and other STUFF by Friday

MUST. HAVE. CUBBIES.

The playdough and dots live above the laundry... Might be breaking those out this week

Entryway... organized!

The Pottery Barn catalogue can just come to my house and set up shop and take all the fantastically beau-te-mous pictures they want and leave my house cool, calm and organized for my troubles. Seriously Pottery Barn sends out 100000 catalogues a week and I can't even look at them because I think everything in them is awesome.

I could go on but I won't bore you to death. Just want to get these pictures in my back pocket (the blog) so when we do get around to organizing the laundry room I'll have some clue as to what I think would work.

M's having an off kinda day/night so I am being summoned. Maybe she just wants to get back to the regularly scheduled weekly programa. Let's hope so!

T-Minus 28 days for Baby #2 and T-Minus a Hot Minute for Moving?

Today is officially 28 days until this baby comes - which is still mind-boggling. I went to the Dr. yesterday and said all systems are go and baby can come pretty much any time now --- but wait we are moving in less than a week!

The House Hunting process is coming to an abrupt (and welcomed) close so that we can get situated before Baby K #2 comes. I'll post pics from move day when it actually happens. Lee has 100% kept to his word about me not having to pack anything - which has been awesome for me. I just get updates about what has been packed and what is left to be packed - though I think I'll end up doing some stuff in E's room over the weekend because I am responsible for E's room and new baby's room in the new house - which is great!

So things I am trying to get organized about the two rooms I am in charge of:

1. Glider for new baby's room - check. Got that on Craiglist last week and LOVE IT! Expensive glider is totally worth the splurge especially if you can get one used.
2. Crib - TBA. I am checking out options on Craigslist and would like to have something figured out soon
3. Nursery set - PBK (love) has a new line of Dr. Seuss bedding. It is a bit more boy-ish than last season's. I was able to get last season's bumper marked down and I won't need the comforter this winter. I think I have an extra Dr. Seuss Crib sheet but now that our life is in boxes finding that low on my priority list
4. Unfinished small pic frames - I have book covers and scenes from Dr. Seuss books I am going to put up. We actually have them thumbtac-ed to the walls now but I would like to avoid them again. I have looked at Michaels but all their wooden frames are finished and I want to paint the frames with bright primary and secondary colors.

Hmmm... thats pretty much it. Which is perfect-o for me because I am not stressed at all about the move!

T-Minus 34 days...

Well well well... just pasted the "We'll see you in 35 days mark yesterday!" Better make that... please stay in for another 35 days mark so that we can get our lives reorganized mark! Had a bit of a nervous scare one night this week when I had some Braxtom-Hicks contractions - pretty much thought I was going to end up in the hospital that night. I did not have these contractions with E so I was kinda freaking out. I think it was also due to the fact that I wanted to go into labor with E (so that I would not have to be induced) but this time I was not ready to go into labor so I was trying to ignore the contractions and not really 'work with them.' Long story short baby #2 did not come (thank the Lord) and the next day at my OB appt he said I need to take it easy - less time on feet / carry E around less - like that is fair to her but she doing okay. 

In other news we have official close and move dates so that is very fun and exciting. I'll post pictures of the new house when its really ours. Good thing I'm not much into this whole nesting thing because there is nothing to nest around this house. Though I have been scoping out Craigslist trying to find a PBK glider - should have saved and spent the money on what I really wanted last time! and a crib/dresser set - either for E or new baby. I have found several I like but with the home purchase looming I am trying to be practical and wait out for the best deal possible.

I have Mommy-date - wait I mean - E has two playdates lined up for the weekend. We are going to lunch today with an MMO buddy - which I TOTALLY spaced out on earlier this week and felt like a complete moron. Fortunately mommies understand mommies but still this baby brain is getting to me! And after some plan changes we are going to meet E's baby shower friend for lunch. We we supposed to go down to Wilmington for the weekend but with vicious and impending illness we decided to keep the germ-ies to a mutual and public space. Basically we need to get the infant carrier and a few other odds and ends from some friends of ours who we have not seen in FOREVER! Also, this will be the weekend E gets to be a forward facer (yes I know I'm doing it early). I'll have to post pics of that because she is not going to know what to do with herself. She was forward facing for all of 15 minutes back in October when I did not want to fight with the Britax in someone else's massive SUV so I figured if we got in an accident we would totally win out and it was just to get pumpkins!

Many pics to follow. I guess I'll be doing an E update soon too!

In the mail...

We have 50 million thousand magazines come to the house and the vast majority of them only see it to our recycling bin. There are a select few that I really really enjoy looking at.

1. PBK - clearly. I have talked about Pottery Barn Kids before but I really like there stuff. The prices are generally high but the product quality is excellent. Nothing came of the PBK photo contest so E will likely end up with the a chair and not a kitchen... Another set of Dr. Seuss crib bumper and quilt will likely be in order for baby #2. (Read something the other day about how the recommendation is now to not use bumpers???)

2. Hanna Andersson - I'd pretty much take one of everything is that magazine. Again can be pricey if you don't get a sale - but St. Nicholas got free shipping on a Hanna order and that saved about 11% on top of the discounts. Also, if you have a little girl please don't waste another dollar on nylon tights. Get the Hanna 'loose' tights and save yourself the trouble. Yes they are $18 - you can get them for about $14 during a sale but E has some of her cousins and they are perfectly great and don't fuzz up or run.

Pumpkins and Stockings

Today I received an email today from Pottery Barn Kids about there is free shipping on stockings! I cannot believe that people are already thinking about Christmas. I mean really I cannot even think past this weekend! I guess that what having a baby does to you. Speaking of festivities, Halloween is coming up and of course we are going to take some pics of Miss E! I am thinking pumpkins because Lee and I can take her to a pumpkin patch right at sunset and get some super cute photos! More to come on that... So we went to Wally-world on Saturday and much to my disappointment there were more costumes there for dogs (about 12) than infant (maybe 4). What does that say about society??? Belk's is also already out of pumpkin costumes but I'm sure I can get my hands on one some how between BabysRUs and Pottery Barn Kids (I LOVE their stuff). Here is a costumer from PBK that think I will be investing in quite soon.


In other news it has been raining like cats and dogs! That is good since we need the rain. Tomorrow and Saturday we are having a Riviera spa and Big Green Egg sale at Swimworld. We are super excited about that!

Photo taken from PotteryBarnKids.com