Room Switch-A-Roo

My parents came for the weekend to help get things ready for the new baby. We undertook a massive cleaning/re-arranging project. When we moved Hannah into her new room when she turned two, we moved our guest bed into the nursery. Now, we're moving the nursery into the office, but since I wasn't quite ready to give up the office upstairs, we're moving the office into the guest room.

To accomplish all of this room-switching, we had to move A LOT of furniture. We had to move my giant desk out of the office (which involved taking the bottom off to fit it through the door), 3 bookcases FULL of books, and my scrapbooking supplies that are stored with a sewing table in the closet. Then, we had to move the crib (taking it apart to get it through the door) and changing table into the "new" nursery. Finally, we had to move the spare twin bed to the basement to complete the conversion into the guest room/office combo. (We'd actually tried to leave the twin bed in the guest room/office combo, but there was just too much furniture in one room.)

In addition to all of the moving, we also were painting! We painted the nursery a very, very pale blue and part of the guest room -- no more primary paint "clip art" and motivational sayings that were done by the old owners....we painted over the back wall and motivational sayings with a nice lilac color. Both rooms look really good and it is nice to have a change. While we were in the midst of all of our moving, Mom & I decided that while the nursery was empty after we'd finished painting that we should rent a carpet cleaner and clean the carpets.....so we also cleaned the carpet! We're crazy, and yes, I am a pregnant person doing all of this work. Like I said, crazy.

We had two REALLY FULL days of work to get everything done, but it does look great. I'm so thankful my parents are able to come and are willing help with big projects like this. We were working pretty-much non-stop, starting around 7am and working until dinnertime. We even managed to do all of our painting and moving furniture with Hannah underfoot most of the time. She was a big help unloading the bookcases...even after they were already loaded post-move : )

Here are some pictures of the new guest room/office combo, and I'll post pictures of the nursery once we move the rocking chair out of Hannah's room and add some artwork to the walls!

Say Cheese!

I absolutely adore this smiling girl!

She loves to cheese it up for the camera.
Hannah is so long and lean!

16 Weeks

Here's a quick photo of me at 16 weeks. At this point, similar to my pregnancy with Hannah, what I wear really changes whether or not I look like I'm pregnant - and this side view makes me look a lot more pregnant than "normal." I haven't gained much weight yet - it's just shifting around, but my doctor is fine with everything so far. For the most part, I'm still wearing my regular clothes, but have started to use a Bella Band to make my pants more comfortable. I think I'll be breaking out the bin of maternity clothes soon.

Speaking of maternity clothes....I have a 20-gallon bin of maternity clothes that likely won't work this time around. When I was expecting Hannah, I bought sweaters, turtlenecks, and jackets to wear at work with dress pants and corduroy pants since I would primarily be pregnant in the winter.....unfortunately, my detour to the hospital meant that most of what I'd purchased (fortunately, secondhand) was never worn (at least by me). In fact, one suitcoat that I received for Christmas when I was pregnant with Hannah (after I was already in the hospital and banned from work) still has the tags on, despite my clothes being loaned out to a friend who used them for two pregnancies in between mine.

When I was in the hospital, I had a nurse who told me how hard it was for her to never get to wear her maternity clothes (she delivered at 24 weeks), and I didn't really think about it much at the time, but as I packed up my maternity clothes at home the week after Hannah was born, I really felt a sense of "loss" at not getting to wear them. It's funny how by the end of a pregnancy most people are so sick of maternity clothes they never want to see them again....but if you never get there, you mourn (yes, I think the word choice is appropriate) the loss of not getting to wear this new wardrobe. I realize that most people who have term babies won't understand these feelings, as they do seem weird, but they're real. I also really struggled with seeing pregnant people for months after Hannah was born because I never really looked pregnant. I absolutely hated to go to Babies R Us because there were always pregnant people there. Fortunately, between counseling and other preemie moms, I've had my feelings from that time period validated as being normal and have been able to work through those feelings.

I made a quick shopping trip to the secondhand store where I get a lot of my maternity clothes and bought some "summery" tops to wear this time around. If I'm still wearing size small and x-small maternity stuff this fall before this baby arrives, maybe I will get to wear some of my "Hannah collection." We'll see - a lot of my friends went up a size in that last trimester, so we'll see what happens with me. It certainly would be nice to get a little more use out of those clothes!

On a health-front update, my doctor hasn't seen any signs of problems, but we're going to start doing ultrasounds every 3 weeks to get me through the time period for when we started to have problems the last time. We're not that worried about placenta problems since you get a new placenta with each pregnancy. My doctor thinks my pre-term labor was tied to the placenta problems, so "we" aren't going to worry about that this time around (however, they are going to monitor me for it, since once you have it you have increased risk to have it again). Apparently, one of the symptoms of a placental abruption is a fast and relatively painless labor, which has my doctor thinking I delivered just before completely abrupting (which would have been bad). Thank goodness there were a lot of people praying for us and Hannah came just on time (even though we thought she was 10 weeks early!).

Gavin's Cousins

As I mentioned in my previous post, Gavin's cousins from Chicago, Olivia and Evelyn, were in town when we were over to play with Gavin. We had never gotten a picture of all of the cousins together before (the only other time they were all together was very briefly at Gavin's birthday party in December because Olivia left to go to an OSU basketball game with her Dad and Grandpa), so we got a few shots of Gavin and "the girls" while the "other Ely's" were in town this time.

L to R: Olivia, Evelyn, Hannah & Gavin

(this is about as close as we got to everyone looking at the camera and smiling)

This picture is included because Gavin is actually smiling (even though no one is looking at me -- Gavin DID NOT want his picture taken and he let us know it).

Fun head-shot of the cousins (although I'll admit, not the best picture since everyone was moving around!)

I Love Friday's Off!

I love my Friday's off from work. Although I may still end up checking my BlackBerry (because I'm required to be "available/accessible"), I don't often have much that I'm required to do....and usually anything I need to do can happen during naptime. As a result, I have all kinds of time on Friday mornings to do fun stuff with Hannah. During the school year, I do a women's Bible study at church, but during the summer I "skip" to do more with Hannah - we go to the zoo, go swimming at the Rec Center, play outside, or (as we did this Friday) hang out with friends.

Gavin got a new pool, so we went over to check it out. Hannah was loving splashing in the water, but didn't like the sprinkler that was attached to the side. Check out the pictures! Gavin's pool is a lot fancier than the plastic $5 pool from Hills that my parents had for us!!!

Gavin and Hannah
Splashing away

This was a smile, but she made a face at the last second!
Bad picture of Hannah, but good picture of her cute little ponytail -- she almost never lets me do stuff to her hair, so I had to get a picture with "proof."

It seems like I never get good pictures of Gavin....
Ah, finally one where he is smiling!

Hannah also enjoyed some time in Gavin's sandbox
Gavin's other cousins from Chicago, Olivia and Evelyn, stopped over to play too. Hannah and Olivia played together in the sandbox quite a bit.

The pay cut that I took to work an 80% schedule (with Friday off) is more than worth the extra time I get with Hannah and the time to do fun last minute activities like this. I'm so glad that I have the opportunity to keep working at a job that I really enjoy and that challenges me, but yet I still get to have quality AND QUANTITY time at home. Not every working mom is as lucky as I am.