Sunday, November 10, 2013

Fall Photo Shoot

Luke and I have an agreement that every other year we do family pictures. We did the last one in 2011, which means that this year is the year to do them. But since I am a *nice* wife, I told him we could skip this year because I really want a family picture next year with Baby included. I could have done them two years in a row, I suppose. But we're quickly running out of time for me to not feel like huge uncomfortable mess, so I'm okay with skipping this year.

I still wanted a nice picture of the kids together for our Christmas cards, and I wanted to get a couple pictures of Raegan and I featuring my baby bump. I didn't get any nice pictures of myself when I was pregnant with Raegan, and I still kick myself over that. I think I only have one or two pictures during my pregnancy  that someone else took of me and aren't just me taking my own picture. :(

And because we are in Super High Gear Money Saving Mode right now, I borrowed my friend Christina's super fancy camera and Luke and I took pictures ourselves on the campus of the local college. I feel like we got so many great ones that I just can't decide which to use. And which to blow up and frame in our house. I do know that I'm going to go the do-it-yourself photography route more often from now on. And try to figure out how in the world to pinch even more pennies so I can get my own fancy camera.

Here's the results....














We are bad parents for taking this picture and laughing about it....















Monday, November 4, 2013

Our Weekend

Raegan got a wooden "ghoul bus" kit from school that her and Daddy put together Friday evening. She gets to use a hammer sometimes at school and she did quite well with it for this project too.
 
 
As seen on my walk on Saturday afternoon. I just love fall so much!
 
 
A very early Sunday morning art project. Because Daylight Savings Time means nothing to a four year old.
 
 
Sunday afternoon trip to the library. I've been trying to get back in the habit of taking Raegan again weekly and our weekends have been slow enough lately that we've been managing. We've found some fantastic new books to read (including "The Pigeon Finds a Hot Dog" and "Into the Castle") and Raegan gets to play with some different toys. She did this alphabetic order puzzle completely by herself. Which really doesn't surprise me, since she was able to do alphabetic order last year in preschool. But it's always nice to see the results of preschool, you know? :)
 
And while I'm talking about Raegan's learning, she's really starting to take off with reading and sounding out words. Yesterday while we were reading a book before supper, she sounded out and read "bed", "hug" and "bag", all of which were words that I had never had her try to sound out before. And she didn't even struggle - it was just a smooth sound out then she said the word. And last week she brought home a sheet where she had written numbers 11-19 and has shown us how she can count by 10s. Sometimes she just blows me away!

Pumpkin Carving

One of the activities we did in my classroom the week before Halloween was cut open a pumpkin to see and feel what was inside. I'm one of those boring teachers that wants almost everything to be a learning experience, so we didn't carve the pumpkin in class. Seriously, what does a group of 3 year olds get out of watching me carve a face on a pumpkin? Nothing. But I digress....
 
So I brought the pumpkin home that evening and Raegan helped me clean it out and carve a face on it. She was a little grossed out by touching the guts (she wouldn't really do it at all last year, so this year was a big improvement) but she was really into getting to use the small knife to help carve the face. :)
 

I love the mouth open face she has when she is really concentrating on something!

Baby Update

Today marks 23 weeks for Baby Girl. According to what I looked up on the internet, she should weigh just over a pound and be a little more than 11 inches long. Apparently that's the size of a large mango. She's a mover and a shaker just like her big sister was - in the evenings she really gets to moving around. I've been able to see my stomach move a few times, and Luke was able to feel her kick at about 21 weeks. Raegan always asks to feel her kick, but it's always during a time when she's still, so we've only had luck with that once so far. She pulled her hand away real quick and looked at me like it was the craziest thing ever. :)

I'm doing really well, although I'm definitely a lot more tired with this pregnancy than I remember being with Raegan. So far my feet have only swollen up twice, and both evenings were after I had to sit at inservice training all day long. I've had a couple bouts of heartburn (a little earlier this time than with Raegan - boo!) but I think I've identified the trigger as chocolate (double boo!). Last time it was peanut butter that always bothered me the most. Apparently I have super weird heartburn triggers. My cravings right now are All The Melty Cheeses and Special K. I would add Mexican food to the list, but I always want Mexican food pregnant or not, so I feel like it doesn't really even count.

I've had some luck in gathering up baby things. A gal I used to work with sold me her changing table, swing and activity mat, so we have some basic baby furniture and gear. (We still had the crib and high chair from Raegan, so there's that too.) A girl I went to high school with had a garage sale and I was able to snag enough 3-6 month clothing that I really shouldn't need anything else in those sizes. I also bought 6 cloth diapers off of her, and 6 more at a huge sale at our local cloth diaper store, so I'm well on my way to a good stockpile. I'm not really worried about newborn or 0-3 month clothing, because that's what people always get you at your baby shower. So really at this point my main focuses are the carseat, stroller, breastpump, and finishing up my diaper stash. Everything I've read says I should plan on at least 20 diapers to be able to do laundry every other day. I want to get a few more soon, but then I really want to wait and see what works best out of what I have then buy more of those. I've gone with either All In Ones or the kind you stuff with an insert (why can I never remember what those are called?!) just to make life easier for my daycare provider. I'm excited to use cloth this time and I'm really hoping that they save us as much money as I'm planning on.

Insurance company has been called and I got the lowdown on how much our out of pocket on the birth should be. Last time all we had was a super minimal hospital bill because I had my own insurance plus my husbands (we had gone that route because of the fertility treatment I was doing, to try to minimize those costs). So I definitely wanted to get an idea of what it was going to run us this time. We already have it covered by the savings that I've been doing, but I'm going to go ahead and keep socking as much as possible away every month to help buy some of our "big ticket" purchases still. As long as the Affordable Health Care Act doesn't ruin my insurance in January, then we should be good to go as far as the hospital bill. And I'm slowly siphoning out more and more money every two weeks when my husband gets paid to get us used to not having all that money going to daycare. At least we won't have to start paying daycare for two kids until July. Give us a little more time to get used to that punch in the gut. :)

So all is well with Mommy and Baby. Hoping the rest of the pregnancy continues to be as low key and easy as this one has been so far.