August 22-28

While the week was pretty quiet, we had some exciting things happen. On Monday, Todd flew to Kansas City for work. The amazing part was that even though he was so far away, he started grad school at the same time. His program is mostly online based so he can complete it from anywhere so he was able to travel for work and check on school stuff while he was gone. Its been less than a year since his company recommended he go to school and now here he is. So awesome.

On Saturday, I took a few hours to visit with my friend to take some pictures of her 11-day old Kaya. I was so nervous about taking newborn pictures but it really was a lot of fun. It helps that Kaya was a great sleeper and pretty much let me do my thing for a while. She did manage to poop on me, which was funny and served as a reminder of what I am going to be going through again in a few months. It was nice to spend some time with her and her family and I can't wait to get the pictures edited to share them.

The rest of the weekend was about cleaning our house and then relaxing. It was nice to spend some quiet time with just the little family and its something I appreciate more and more as life gets busier and busier.

She is thoroughly enjoying her new easel from Ikea. Best $15 we've spent recently.

Aubrey was excited for some cooler, less humid weather so she could get outside on her bike more.

She was working so hard to blow bubbles from that little wand so she was concentrating hard here.

Halfway Finished!

It is so hard to believe that I am halfway finished with this pregnancy. It really does just seem like I got my positive last week. So, going in for my 20-week visit today just didn't seem right. But, I went and it was a pretty boring visit, but boring is good so we'll take it. Mason's heartbeat was 150 and sounded great. The weight was no so great, but the good news is my weight gain has finally slowed down which is a positive. I met Dr. Bull for the first time today and I really like her. She has a great sense of humor and seems to be just as sarcastic as me, which is a great bonus. She said the uterus is measuring right as is should, the Group B strep is all gone my from my urine and all else is ok in my little pregnant world. So, she sent me on my merry way to schedule my 24-week visit. Checking out was the worst part of the visit because the lady wanted to give me grief about when I wanted to schedule my next appointment. After a few more words exchanged and a trip back down the hall to get permission from my doctor, she scheduled my appointment when I asked and called it a day. Hopefully, I won't have to deal with her again because she was not the nicest person and she made my happy little visit end on a sour note.

August 15-21

Another busy week for us. Monday evening was spent dealing with the stupid Toyota dealership and my expensive allen wrench debacle. On top of that, Aubrey decided to throw up in Todd's truck when he was on his way to meet me at the dealership. That was not a good night and there were many short tempers dealing with that drama.

We had a conference with Aubrey's day care director early on Tuesday after we had another short notice that Aubrey was being moved up. Just like the last time Aubrey was moving to the next room, we got notice she was moving the day they planned to move her. Todd and I were not happy about her moving because they next classroom gets no daily sheet because those children are usually potty trained. We get so little communication on how Aubrey is doing during the day, especially with potty training, that the thought of getting even less communication was not a good one. So, we asked them to hold off on Aubrey's transition until we could meet and discuss the multiple "communication" issues we've had with them. Right before the conference on Tuesday, we made the decision that we were done with day care. We are tired of the lack of communication, tired of getting the run around with the directors, and tired of not knowing what we were coming into every day when we picked her up. So, after a quick phone call to my mom to confirm that she can watch Aubrey full time for the time being, we made the decision to turn in Aubrey's 2-week notice. It was amazing the sense of relief that I felt after we made that decision. This day care has been nothing but drama for the past 6 months and knowing that we are leaving that drama behind is such a good feeling. We still had our conference with the director, expressed our concerns, and left things on a good note with her. So, after August 31, my mom will be keeping Aubrey full time for us and I am quite thrilled with it.

On Wednesday, it was like Christmas in our house. A coworker gave me another bag of clothes and little boy goodies to use for Mason. I am loving all the boy clothes. Even if girl clothes are more abundant, boy clothes are just too stinking cute. We also received Mason's bedding that day, as well as a stash of Bum Genius 4.0 cloth diapers. We only needed to replace about 6 of the girly diapers because I bought the last few more gender neutral than I started with the others, so we had quite a few to use with Mason. I also ordered the covers to go over the pre-fold diapers for the beginning because we are hoping to use cloth diapers 100% after Mason is born. It was so exciting to see those packages on my front porch when I got home and I can't wait to put those things to use.

Mason's bedding set. Vintage Aviator by JoJo Designs.

Friday, we prepped Mason's room for painting. We cleared out the rest of the junk in the room and made final decisions about what was going to the garbage dump. Dad came over on Saturday morning and hauled off multiple garbage bags of junk as well as a few bigger items we no longer needed. After Aubrey went down for her nap, we tackled the paint. We settled on a pretty blue color for the room and I must say, I am in love with it. For someone who has been a prissy, girly girl her entire life, I am surely embracing this whole boy thing. I am just as excited about Mason's room as I was Aubrey's, even if Aubrey's was my childhood dream room. It's just fun to plan and make the room come to life. While Todd tackled the 2nd coat of paint, I made the bittersweet move of taking all of Aubrey's outgrown clothes to Goodwill. It ended up being 4 large black trash bags full of clothes. While I was sad to be saying good-bye to so many sweet outfits, it made me feel good to get that much more out of our house. We celebrated our hard work and the fact that I am now officially half way finished with this pregnancy Saturday evening by grilling some steaks and relaxing.

Todd tackling the blue paint

Today was another busy day of chores, but Todd decided last weekend he wanted to use his grill as a smoker and cook some ribs for the first time so we invited my sister Lacey and her boyfriend over to be our taste tasters. It was nice to hang out with them and Aubrey ate up all the attention. I must say, Todd did a fantastic job with the ribs so they are definitely going to be a new grilling staple in our house.

Playing some family corn hole while the grill did its thing.

This week was such a great week that starting another week is a bummer. But, we'll always have this bath picture to make us laugh if the week isn't so great.

August 8-14

We actually made it a whole week with no one in the house being sick! Yay for tiny little happy things.

Even though we spent the majority of the weekend working, we did take some time off Saturday to go to a Charlotte Knight's baseball game. Todd's company was having family night at the game, so we bought some chicken and went early to tailgate. It was super hot when we got there, but after about 30 minutes, the  skies started to get gray and the temperature dropped, neither of which were good signs. Sure enough, about 30 minutes before the game was supposed to start, the bottom fell out of the sky. We made a mad dash for the car to sit out the storm. After about 15 minutes, we checked the radar and saw the storm would last well past the time we planned to leave, so we decided to come back home. Luckily, the game was postponed so we can go back for another game later. We came home and watched the Carolina Panther's game, which was much more fun this year since we appear to have the makings of a good team.

Todd and Aubrey "enjoying" the heat

Aubrey loved her watermelon

Sunday, I got up early to go get groceries. After getting the groceries and loading my car, I was going to put the buggy up, I heard a strange sound coming from my car. I happened to look down at my front passenger tire and see this lovely scene.

I called Todd with the bad news so he came to my rescue to change the tire. After he got the tire off, he pulled a stupid allen wrench out of the tire. There must be magnets in my tires because I am ALL.THE.TIME running over stupid stuff like this. And definitely not on purpose. Ugh. So, he put the spare on and since the Toyota dealership isn't open on Sundays we decided to get it fixed the next day after work. $225 later, we have decided that is the most expensive stupid allen wrench ever. We are still pissed at how the Toyota dealership handled it and that they charged us $225, but that's another post another day.

House projects

This past week (and next week looks to be the same) have been all about house projects. We spent last week preparing to paint the bathroom and then move items into storage in the bathroom loft area so we can start getting the nursery ready. The nursery (which is for the time being a guest room/junk room) is a disaster area and pretty much has been since we cleaned out Aubrey's room 3 years ago. We've been planning to paint our bathroom for over a year and just never got around to it, but the need to use the storage areas in the bathroom soon finally made us get it in gear to paint. We also planned a few upgrades in the bathroom, so we bought those supplies and set this weekend as the big day. Todd's parents came over Saturday and helped Todd take care of the painting since I really shouldn't be climbing or inhaling paint fumes in our stagnant air bathroom. It took them most of the day but they got both coats of paint on so  we could do the other work on Sunday. While they painted, I sorted through 3 massive tubs of Aubrey's old clothes. It really is amazing how many clothes she has accumulated over the past 2.5 years. The first bag was donated to a friend who's baby girl is coming into the world tomorrow (so excited!). The rest of the bags are going to Goodwill this weekend because I do not have the time or the patience to set up a yard sell right now. I then sorted through a few other boxes in the guest room before getting overwhelmed and quitting.

Sunday afternoon was about putting the bathroom back together. Again, Todd did most of the heavy lifting and work, but I cleaned and organized and did what I could. The final result is so awesome. I am so glad we finally got this project done. I am so tired of staring at plain white walls and it feels good to see some color. We took down the old mirror, put 2 new mirrors in its place, replaced the light fixture (which was actually done 2 months ago) and then put up the new towel holders. We still have one more candle fixture to hang, but we couldn't find the hardware to hang it, so that will be next weekend.

So, this week will be about clearing out the guest room and then painting the nursery. We still haven't decided on the room color because I changed the bedding at the last minute after Pottery Barn Kids made me mad by wanting to charge my $20 to ship a quilt and crib skirt. So, I found some new bedding (got more for the same price, plus free shipping) that will be here by this weekend so we'll decide on the color after we see it. This is the last room in the house that's not painted (well, besides our closet and the laundry room, both of which Todd refuses to paint). I am so excited to finally have color in all of the main rooms. We won't have the nursery done for a while though because we aren't putting Aubrey in the twin bed until around October. I am back to square one with bedding for her big girl bed so I am glad we aren't rushed for time. After we move Aubrey to her new bed, we'll move the crib and dresser into Mason's room. Its all coming together and I can't wait!


On old "before" picture of the bathroom.


The same angle after.


A better view of the new light fixture and mirrors.

August 1-7

We decided a few weeks ago that we would schedule a trip to Raleigh to see Todd's family. We planned the trip around the baby's anatomy scan so we could do the big reveal up there. The trip got off to a rough start because of all days, Mother Nature decided Friday would she bring flooding rains to the area. It poured rain from the time we left our house until we were in Salisbury. Luckily, it cleared up a bit after that and Aubrey and I both passed out for about an hour after that. The weather was nice in Raleigh when we got there, but super muggy and hot. Todd's aunt and uncle recently added some chickens to their farm and they were excited to show them off. Aubrey was fascinated with the chickens. They let Aubrey feed them and then gather the eggs for them. She picked up the first egg and handed it to Todd and said"Open it." She thought it was like an Easter egg and was completely confused that we couldn't open it. So, she decided to chuck the egg into the basket and chipped it. She helped gather the rest of the eggs and then asked to feed them again. One of the chickens got impatient waiting on her to drop the bread and tried to peck at her hand which freaked her out a little so she threw the bread at them and was over the feeding. After dinner, she wanted to feed them again but she didn't want them to peck at her, so she sat on the table to feed them. She talked about chickens the rest of the night and woke up asking to go feed them Saturday morning.

Friday night was a long night because it was Aubrey's first night sleeping on an air mattress. She is really too big for the pack-n-play so we thought we'd see how she did on the air mattress. It took forever to get her to sleep on it because she wanted us to stay with her which meant she could talk and sing to us. We finally got her to sleep around 10:00, only for her to wake up at 5:30 AM when I had to get up to use the bathroom. This made Saturday a long day because we were all so tired. Aubrey and Todd hung out with the family while I went shopping with Todd's mom, Traci, her boyfriend, and their cousin Donnie. I did some serious damage at Kohl's with tax free weekend, a 20% off coupon, and $10 in Kohl's cash. I also bought Mason's first new outfits and a little brother onesie to use in the big reveal. After shopping, we went back to the farm to enjoy family dinner with BBQ.

After dinner, we gathered the family and had them vote on the baby's gender. Everyone but one person voted boy so there was no big surprise when I handed Aubrey the little brother onesie to show off. Aubrey picked that time to get bashful and wouldn't show the onesie off very much so I had to show it to the crowd. Everyone was pretty excited about it so Aubrey was pretty worked up by bedtime. It was another long night except this time Aubrey decided to wake up up 2:30 AM and talk. It took me and Todd several hours to get her back to sleep, so we were exhausted again on Sunday. It was a tiring weekend, but we were glad to spend time with the family. We'll be going back in November for Thanksgiving since I won't be able to go back for Christmas since that is 2 weeks before my due date. Hard to believe we are already making plans that far ahead.

Aubrey feeding the chickens.

Asking Todd to open the egg for her.

During some downtime, I took some semi-macro pictures around the farm. This is a part of the muscadine vines and grapes that Todd's aunt and uncle grow. Super sad I couldn't enjoy the muscadine wine.

Todd's aunt has the greenest thumb I've ever seen and has some beautiful sunflowers in their garden.

Boy or Girl.....

We had our anatomy scan on Friday. Todd and I decided to take Aubrey with us because we thought she'd like to see the baby. It all went down hill as soon as we left the waiting room. She wanted to stay in the room with the blocks and threw a lovely fit when we wouldn't let her. After we walk in the ultrasound room so looks at the screen and said "I want to watch Shrek." We had to explain this was not a movie tv and we were going to see the baby. She spent the rest of the ultrasound climbing on and off the chair and walking to the door trying to open it so she could go back to the blocks. At one point I asked her to look at the tv and see the baby's face and she said "It is wearing sunglasses" because all you could see were the dark eye sockets. I was kind of sad she had no interest in seeing the baby, but the anticipation of finding out the gender beat my frustration with Aubrey. After she checked out the face, she went to scan the other half of the body and as soon as she found the genital area I knew what was coming. When she said "BOY" Todd got so excited. I was so surprised because I had convinced myself the baby was a girl. Nothing really seems different than my pregnancy with Aubrey so I just figured it was a girl. Plus, I made myself become ok with the fact we could have only girls in the family and it was ok. However, I am glad I was wrong because I really did want a boy and I am so excited. I feel like our little family will be complete once he's here and it makes me so happy that Todd will have his little boy.

So, back to the scan. The tech looked at every organ and body part she could and labeled them all. It felt like she took her time and we weren't rushed and I enjoyed every minute of it. At the end, she was trying to get a profile shot of him and had a hard time getting him to turn around. I told her that was usual for our babies because Aubrey was mostly uncooperative at all of her ultrasounds. She finally got the profile shot and called it a day. She printed out a bunch of pictures for us and I was excited to see them. She gave us several angles of the "boy" shot so there is no denying what parts he has. I was still in shock when I saw the pictures and looked at them many times to make sure the results didn't change. I still haven't gotten used to saying "he" and "his." Those are new words to me after being wrapped up in the girly world the past 3 years. I can't wait to meet him and see what this boy world is all about.

So, without further adieu, here is little Mason James:

The somewhat elusive profile shot.

Todd said he was flexing his muscles at us in this picture.

One of the "money" shot pictures. We will pay his therapy bills later when he is upset about me showing his man bits on the internet.

July 25-31

I cannot believe its August 1st. The month of July seemed to fly by. I heard someone talking about Christmas today at work and I am shocked that its less than 5 months away. Sigh..

I don't know what it is about our family this year, but we just cannot all get well. I've never used so much sick time in my life or vacation to cover sick time I don't have. This week's sickness involved Aubrey getting a stomach bug and being sent home from daycare after the 3rd diarrhea episode. By Thursday, she was back to her normal self, so I am pretty sure it was just a little stomach bug.

The weekend was pretty busy. Saturday morning my dad came over and helped us cart away some big space wasters in our garage. It was nice to actually see more than the 3-foot wide path we've seen the past year or so. After that, Todd's parents, sister, and her boyfriend came to help us swap out the beds. We gave them the full size bed in out guest room in exchange for 2 twin beds. One of those will be for Aubrey's big girl room and the other will go in the loft and be our guest bed/seating in the loft. While we were cleaning, Todd's college roommate's wife called and asked if Todd could go with her to CMC-Main because she was having problems with her pregnancy. Her husband is on a NASCAR race team so he's gone every weekend so Todd filled in as support for her. She and baby were given clean bills of health and hopefully their little one will stay nice and happy for another 20-ish weeks. After Todd came home, we went out to eat for his sister's birthday. Dinner was followed by dessert at his parents house before we came home to put the little one to bed.

Sunday was a busy day of cleaning, shopping, and doing some work for a little extra cash. Sunday night was church group, but I ended up staying home because Aubrey decided to protest nap time and was quite a little pill by the evening. So, she hung out and played while I did a little more work. While I enjoy being given the chance to make a little bit of extra money, doing the extra work is burning me out so I'm not sure how much longer I'll be able to do that. We've got so much going on the next few weekends so I won't be able to do too much more. Time is flying by and before we know it, we'll be starting the nursery and Aubrey's big girl room, which will take all of that extra money I made and a good bit of my time. But, I love it and can't wait to see it all come together.

Playing with G-ma and Grandpa's cat Callie.

She was being so nice and "playing" her guitar while I tried to work.