My Mom is Going to Kill Me...

My mom hates the idea of giving Oliver sweets.  She doesn't want to ruin him.  I'm pretty sure I was addicted to Coca-Cola from birth sooooooooo.....while I don't want him to have my food issues, I let him get in some yummies since he eats pretty balanced overall.

First, I digress-

Last week was so terrible for me.  Baby Daddy Natey Poo worked soooo hard and so long, and evil me felt bad for myself.  I wanted to run away.  I wanted to cry.  I wanted to just be alone! The stress of being a SAHM and the idea of adding another on top of Nate's unpredictable schedule really hit me hard.  Oliver watched wayyyyy too much TV, and I just felt even worse about myself for it.

To correct my mood and 'tude I will be trying extra hard to keep both Oliver and myself busy.  Today didn't drag on nearly as long as any given day did last week.  So day one of keep busy was pretty successful I think.

My friend introduced me to Pinterest.com- no it's not internet crack or anything.  I can stop searching and pinning anytime I want to.  What addiction?  Anyway... she loved this and so I re-pinned and executed: Frozen Banana Bites

I combined 1/3 cup of milk chocolate chips and 1/3 cup of peanut butter, microwaved for 30 seconds and mixed it together to make the dip.

To include Little Monkey in today's activity I spooned just a litttttle bit of the dip into a bowl for him, gave him a plate of sliced bananas and some nonpareil sprinkles to add another step and a different texture.

Don't worry, don't worry....I took pictures.

   

Yeah...none of Oliver's made it into the freezer (in case you couldn't tell).  But here is the finished product of my version of today's busy project.  Nate loved them, and it was easy so we will be doing it again.   

Tuesday Tummy Time! and West Haven Beach

First things first- Belly Baby at 28 weeks:

Courtesy of Babycenter.com

"By this week, your baby weighs two and a quarter pounds (like a Chinese cabbage) and measures 14.8 inches from the top of her head to her heels. She can blink her eyes, which now sport lashes. With her eyesight developing, she may be able to see the light that filters in through your womb. She's also developing billions of neurons in her brain and adding more body fat in preparation for life in the outside world"



It's a little too late now to wonder....WHAT THE F WHERE WE THINKING?!?!?!  We PLANNED babies this close!  20 months?!?!?! Good thing I don't think that too often....but there are definitely moments.  Like when I realize the nursery is the perfect size....for Oliver.  That I get almost enough sleep...to last me through a day of Oliver.  That I love the budding independance... at Oliver's age.  A newborn is a whole 'nother barrel of monkeys!  Can I do this? And with BDNP's crazy work schedule...can I do this solo for a good portion of the day?  Will I be myself at the end of the day? 

I am so looking forward to doing more and more with Oliver...will a new baby get in the way of that?  And at the same time... I am so looking forward to loving on a newborn.  Will Oliver get in the way of that?  Oliver spent hours asleep on my chest in the recliner.  Owen will likely spend a good chunk of that time asleep in a swing or cradle.  That's kind of sad for him.

It's getting pretty close to baby time.  October will be here before we know it.  And October will bring our 2nd baby and our 2nd wedding anniversary...in that order!!! crazy! Two babes before we're married two years! That's true love!

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So here is how we wrapped up our weekend.  A Sunday afternoon trip to West Haven to get a milkshake and corn dog at Chicks, then walk it off on the boardwalk.

Yeah I'm kind of a whale these days.

And THIS ONE...seemed to forget how old she was and wanted to swim deeper and play with other dogs.  She certainly felt her age trying to walk back to the car and was very stiff the next day.

Better Late Than Never

Bad Mommy Blogger! Bad! Naughty, naughty me posted ZERO times this week.  Do you feel so abandoned lovely readers?  I apologize. 

We spent the weekend in Barrington, New Hampshire with my in-laws.  Traveling is so rough lately.  Oliver is miserable.  Any suggestions for a 3 hour ride with a 17 month old is greatly welcome!  With our move we lost track of where the portable DVD player to mount on the van's headrest ended up.  Oh what a difference that would have made!  Oliver resisted napping so hard that he made himself carsick.  Literally SECONDS from our destination: BLEHHHH! Projectile vomit from my poor miserable little boy.  I was so busy thanking God for his timing that I only gagged two or three times getting Oliver wiped and out of his seat to finish our trip on foot.  Imagine this fiasco on the highway an hour into the ride as opposed to in my inlaws development three streets down from their house.  I am one lucky Momma!

Can you believe that in my 17 months as  mom I have very little vomit experience?  Oliver did not spit up much as an infant; even with the switch to formula it was minimal.  There was a stretch of puking with every meal as a means of saying "I'm done".  Yeah that was annoying, but it wasn't really a full vomit, so even that didn't have me ready for the projectile vomit in the car.  Oh man it was a no good start to the weekend.

We were cranky to begin with, feeling stressed with Nate's work schedule and feeling like this was the first time we've had to spend together in the new house and we had to travel.  Belly Baby is getting heavy on my back and I had some horrible nights' sleep in my OWN bed...was not looking forward to the million-year-old sleeper sofa at the lake.

But once we are there we always get caught up in the gorgeous weather, beautiful scenery, and the slow pace of being at camp.  Got some gorgeous pictures! Would you expect any different from me?!  I may need the camera surgically removed from my face!

The drive home from NH was almost just as bad.  And when we finally got home at 9pm Monday night...after two hours of crying and only an hour of sleeping from Oliver... our power had been turned off!!!!!! I was so angry I could cry!  We fumbled around the house in the dark and got Oliver and the dog back into the van and drove over to the still empty condo (no dogs allowed there by the way) to spend the night and hopefully sort things out.  We had gotten a letter from the electric company the week before that we had 15 days to send a copy of my ID for them to be able to provide service.  Well we had the letter for maybe 7 days and the power was cut off Monday while we were in NH.  It wasn't until then that we noticed the letter was dated nearly a month earlier! 

Of course no one at the electric company seemed to care that I am very pregnant, have a one year old and a big hairy dog, or that their was a heat advisory for the state the entire day...apparently turning on the power is not as urgent as turning it off.  It was turned back on Tuesday evening (at about the same time I called to ask if it as on and they told me no).  We spent another night at the condo before finally making our homecoming on Wendesday morning.  Now you know why I've been too tired and preoccupied to post!

Side note- seeing Oliver running around and rediscovering his first home drove me to tears! I was so tired and frustrated and over emotional that I broke down watching him scream and run through the empty rooms, especially his old nursery that still has the alphabet I made him on the wall.

Most Stressful Experience EVER

When we were getting married I had heard that planning a wedding would put major stress on our relationship.  It didn't.  Things got frustrating at times but we never fought.  Having a baby- we heard what stress that would put on our new marriage.  We settled right in to being a family without any hardships.  So I really didn't expect buying a house to be as excrutiatingly horrible as I have heard. 

I figured we are realistic in what we are looking for and our budget (not like the property virgins on HGTV) and at the end of the day we are looking for a home.  A HOME.  Our own place.  For our growing family.  That alone would make things exciting and enjoyable, right?

NOT! It's been terrible.  Horrible!  We started our home search in a rush because my mom accepted an offer on the condo she had bought (it was a good idea at the time...dang real estate ups and downs) when Nate and I wanted to move off campus together.  We had 45 days to find a home and close before the closing on the condo left us homeless.  It was hard! We were all over the place.  Our low budget had us going where the prices were, as opposed to picking within a specific area we wanted to stay in.  I THOUGHT I wanted to live in the valley and did a lot of home searching out in Naugatuck.  It's a nice area...but driving out there made me sad to leave the convenience of the Greater New Haven Area.  Then we looked at several properties in Middletown.  Puts us closer to an equal distance between my family in NJ and his family in NH.  But it still took me away from where I really wanted to be/stay.  It didn't help that I fell in LOVE with a short sale that needed MAJOR work and wasn't giving up until we were able to see it.  It was the PERFECT location.  It would be our forever house, but it was way too much for us to take on.  Then we found an old home (love older homes!) that we put an offer on and went back and forth a little bit with the sellers.  Ultimately, they wanted more money than we could afford considering that, among other things, EVERY ONE of the 30 windows needed to be replaced and...we don't have that money!

Everything that looked promising to us turned out to be a short sale which we didn't have the time to deal with, or the money to fix up.  We had agreed to see a 2 br forclosure that had just been listed, even though with a new baby and frequent family visitors 3 br is much more ideal.  It was so tiny and I was so tired of the process I felt like we were wasting our time.  Then we went to the yard.  Nice.  May as well look at the basement...it's finished!  All of a sudden this house was saved.  I could see potential, Nate could almost.  We saw this house right before seeing the money pit house we had put an offer in on (which was HUUUUGE) and when we realized the buyer of that one wanted too much we decided to rethink the forclosure.  Turns out bids on the property were due within hours and there were already 3!  So my husband races to the realtors office to put in a bid on a house he wasn't 100% on.  Our bid was accepted! YAY!!!! Our closing would be scheduled for mid June and the condo's closing was the end of May, but we did it! We would figure out the temporary living situation.

We can eventually add a staircase and finish the attic to make bedrooms.  We can re-fininish the basement if we want to re-work the space.  Mabe add a dining room off the back of the kitchen since the yard is a good size (with a deck and sliding doors off it!).  Oh yeah, we just need to get in there and little by little the house can grow with us.
It has been nothing but problems, extensions and last minute rushes.  During the searching process Nate and I felt bad that we had our realtors driving all over the place and planned on a nice gift card for each of them when we finally finsihed our journey.  Well, we are nearing the finish line and our attitude has changed toward them dramatically!  I don't want anything to do with them and I'm afraid if I hear one of their whiny voices I may freak out on them.  Luckily now that we are past the searching phase and on the business phase Nate deals with them.

Oh and the rush to be out of the condo....Ha!  The buyer they brought in need extensions or whatnot and when were we told? O yeah..10 minutes after all of our furniture was put into storage because we had to be out of there!  Remember a previous post about living with family for a few weeks...where there are donkeys and a steer?  We were getting ready to head up there within 3-4 days and now that hasn't been necessary.  My 22 week pregnant ass has been living on an air mattress for weeks now.  I can tough it out.  The convenience of staying put was worth more to us. 

WELL! we are sooooo close to being done.  We have sorted out some issues and should still be good to close on friday on our house (still no word on the buyers for the condo, which until very recently we were pretty much banking on this sale for our own purchase!).  Our mortgage rep has said he sees no reason why we wouldn't close on Friday.  But the damn realtor keeps calling and texting my husband saying we need to sign an extension and there's no way we can close on Friday.  We will NOT go past Friday.  I am so beyond pissed at her.  I am sure she is trying to stall us while the condo is still up in the air because my mother has threatened walking away from the buyers who don't have their stuff together.

This has been the worst experience ever! Horrible!  Does anyone have an enjoyable experience buying a home?  Millionaires maybe.  Ugh this sucks! But hopefully it will all be done soon.  Very soon! I can start my nesting!  Can't wait to get into that nursery!