Frecklewonder

and we wait

hello, friends. i'm sorry i've gone on so long without an update of any kind. it's been an exceptionally difficult two weeks or so for me around here, and it's safe to say that the only crying baby in my house right now is me. i really want to thank you all for the nice wishes, it means a lot to me.

i wish that i could reach out and hug you all. or send you all something nice in the mail. or take you out for a girly lunch. i appreciate you more than you know.

i've been stricken with a pretty awful case of THIS. and let me tell you, it sucks. basically, i haven't had any sleep at night and i am walking around the world like some sort of foggy headed zombie, getting increasingly grouchier as the days go on. sleep deprivation will do that to a person. i could handle waking up for night time feedings, NO PROBLEM, i just can't take this awful numbness and tingling for one more day. i literally wake up shortly after midnight, and can.not.go.back.to.sleep. at times, i can barely use my hands, my grip is so weakened from the daggone numb tinglies.

anyhow. this is a real lesson in patience for me. i probably should have never gotten myself excited in thinking that she would have been here by now. it doesn't help much to see that most of my lady friends online are snuggling their new babies. i know i sound like a Super Crank right now. i am really happy to see all these healthy, lovely little things, i really am. :) i just feel so anxious about my own that i could pop.

oh, and speaking of "pop". a word of advice to those non-pregnant folks out there: it is probably not the greatest choice to use the word "pop" when you are talking to a woman who is 40 weeks pregnant. you know, as in: "you look like you're 'bout ready to pop!". yeah. i'm just sayin.

while i'm sharing my two cents, may i offer a piece of advice for all you pregnant ladies out there: tell yourself that your baby is due two weeks after the date the doctor gives you, that way when you find yourself at the 40 week mark, you won't be counting every second and wondering why your baby seems to have lost the directions on how to get out of the womb. just get that later date in your mind and stick with it. you'll thank me for this, i promise.

in an effort to sort of brighten my world, and occupy my idle time, i made some totes and a small update to the shop. i have these items packaged and ready to ship. should my uterus decide to get in the game in the next day or two (fingers crossed), i have some lovely assistants on hand here to get the packages to the post office.

until next time, i hope you all are well. xo

thinking and waiting

so i've been thinking, isn't 40 weeks technically ten months? i dunno. i'm just sayin.

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sorry it's been so quiet over here on the ol' blog. truth is, it is taking pretty much all i've got just to get the basic daily stuff done with myself and my family, and maintain the shop. i can't keep up with emails to save my life, and my house is a bit of a disaster at the moment.

the time is near. and, man am i happy about that. this has been a really long haul. thinking back on it all, it's pretty wild how different one pregnancy can be from the last. with henry, i had a really straightforward, simple, easy peasy time. i threw up twice. once was totally my fault, as i thought washing down a bowl of spaghetti with a tall glass of orange juice sounded rather tasty. imagine that coming back up. ew. i also worked on my feet all day long until the last two weeks before delivery.

this time, i can't even tell you how many times i barfed, or how exhausted i was, especially early on. i joke that i slept through the month of september, but if you were around my house at the time, you wouldn't argue with that statement. and there isn't a snowball's chance in haiti that i would be able to work outside the house, on my feet all day long, wimpy as that sounds. my back k-k-k-kills right about now.

i can only hope that one thing will be hold true for both, and that's the labor. i am definitely anxious about it, definitely nervous, but it is so near that i am also excited, and i am trying to remind myself that i did a darn good job of it the first time. with only about 2 hours of pushing, somehow i managed a natural birth which is what i hope for this time.

we shall see.

without getting into the nitty gritty, i had a check up on monday, and things are moving right along, all signs point to baby, if you know what i mean. she has dropped, and i can finally breathe again, which is a treat.

there is a good chance that i might package up all these orders from part 2 of this big sale and go into a bit of hiding until the big day. so if you don't hear from me in the next week, think good thoughts! i need all the good juju i can get!!!

lots of love*j

the long winter

dear old friends,

it's been a long time for us, and i'm guessing it's probably not much fun to be boxed up and tucked away in the basement storage. spring is almost here, and that means baby girl will be here soon too. i just want you to know that i hate maternity clothes, and they will never, ever be able to compare in cuteness or style to any of you, so please don't think that i have you packed up because you've done something wrong. believe me when it tell you that jeans with a big, elastic belly band are not a treat.

soon we will be able to scoot around town and go out at night for dinners and dress up together for good luck at yard sales. i promise.

missing your color and textures and patterns and pretty, girly styles more than you could know,
jenny

find these and more of my contributions to the flickr group: wardrobe_remix HERE

a week of lunches

hooray for daylight savings time

i think it was that extra burst of sunlight that gave me the energy this weekend to belly up to the ol' pfaff and sew the day away! more handmade totes on the way this week...

happy almost spring to you!

*EEK. i seem to be having a technical difficulty with the free shipping on handmade items deal. if you should purchase a tote before i have a chance to get this fixed (likely this evening, when my "web guy" gets home from work) i will refund you the shipping charges and include a little extra something special in your package for the trouble. darn technical issues, ugh!

riddle me this

why is it that the majority of maternity selections are horizontally striped? am i the only one who's noticed this?

as if a pregnant woman needs anything to look/feel wider!

sheesh!

there's an upside to my hugeness. i'm down to single digits, folks. have been for a couple weeks now. only a handful of weeks to go.

the cream i bought the other day had a sell by date of after my due date.

this is a good thing.

spring in your step

something i really don't have much of these days. perhaps something more along the lines of thick chocolate ganache might describe my step. i feel like i've been hit by a truck. or train? oh, wait. i'm pregnant!!! and feeling huge.

getting rest and getting comfortable seems next to impossible these days, and i think it's safe to say i've hit that stage of the game where i'm just sorta... over it. those of you who have done this before, and given the long 9 months of your life to growing a person know the kind of emotional tiredness to which i refer.

it goes without saying, but i'll say it anyway- of course this in no way means that i'm not excited or thankful, or happy. it's just that i'd love to not feel like i am waddling, and it'd be great to wear a cute dress again. and i love that little baby girl in there more than i even know, and i'd go through all of this again without question. i'm just tired and tired of moving like a slug. patience is something i am not always great with. patience with surprises, especially.

boy, do i sound cheery today, or what? how about i turn over a new leaf now- one of a springy, colorful, shop update kind?!

lots of newness in the shop!

brotherly, motherly love

i consider myself pretty darn lucky to have married into a big family of (mostly) boys. growing up, it was just me and my younger sister, and i kinda always wondered what it might be like to have some fellas around in the mix. matt comes from a family of 7, with 5 brothers and one sister, all of them are pretty close in age, too. there's dan, kari, matt, ben, josh, jeremy and ed, or "dude" as he is known in the family.

in a recent email exchange with my mother in law, i became even more impressed with her superwoman-supermama-like abilities. we were chatting about pregnancy, and all the stuff that comes along with it. and from what i could tell, the pregnancy part of things seemed to really be a breeze for her. in fact, i often get the feeling the whole darn thing was pretty easy for her. she's one of those women who is just an absolute patient pro at motherhood. i think because she just loved it so, so much.

and how could she not? look at those faces!

in later years though, when little sweet babies grew up into young boys, you'd think maybe she could have gone nuts, or found herself completely exhausted. just imagine- all those boys being boys! but my mother in law would never tell it like that. she loved having all those kids, loved every minute of it. and reminiscing stories to this day, you can tell she'd go right back in time if she had the opportunity.

raised in wyoming, matt tells stories of how they used to catch black widows and scorpions and bring them home and hide them in the house. they'd take off on their bikes and be gone for hours at a time, not telling mom a thing. they'd go through gallons of milk in a day. and don't even get matt started on how soda was such a hot commodity. he was maybe 10 or so at the time, and he thought he'd come up with a brilliant solution to hide a couple of cans of soda in the back of the toilet, reserving them all for himself whenever his little heart should desire. little did he know, his younger brother, ben, was onto him and when matt confidently strutted his way in one day to fetch himself a can o'coke, guess what! no cokes! ben was somewhere enjoying them, along with the last laugh too, i bet.

it's the funny stories like this that make me ask matt, "wasn't it just so much fun, growing up with all those siblings?!", to which he jokingly replies, "um, no!". but the truth is, it was. just think of all the all the memories- the birthdays, the christmas times at grandmas, the fishing trips, and most importantly, the friendships + bonds they have between them. 

i'm lucky to call them all family today, and wish that i had known them way back when.

sending a very special happy birthday today to my brother in law, ben. matt and i wish we could be there to take you out for a birthday dinner full of laughs and good times. have a slice of cake for us!

we love you!

worry wart

this little baby in my belly is due to come out sometime in the next 8 weeks or so (for some reason, i am convinced that she will be a little early, maybe that's just cause i already feel so big), and when i stop to think about that, i realize that i'm both totally ready and totally not. on the one hand, 8 weeks seems like forever to have to wait to finally meet her and hold her, smell her, kiss her, love her. but then, i think about all the things that i feel like we have yet to due, and i feel the need to put on the breaks just a bit.

these questions (and more) swirl around my head on a daily basis now:

when will we make that big ol' trip to ikea for things like a CRIB?
when will we decide on + purchase that infant car seat so that we can actually take her home?
when will the weather be nice enough so that we can crack the windows and start painting her room?
for the love of god, there are only a handful of weekends left!

if i didn't know better, i'd say i hadn't done this once before. i feel overwhelmed by things like purchasing a car seat. if any of you readers with infants want to weigh in on this and recommend a brand for me, i would be ever so grateful.

i am aware that she isn't going to know whether her room was filled with a giant welcoming circus upon her arrival just as much as she will be clueless if it remained in its painfully modest state, and that it really doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things, and that most of this is sort of for me at this point in time. but i also know that once she actually gets here, we aren't going to have time to do things like make trips to benjamin moore and have paint mixed, and drive around looking for the perfect dresser and i most likely will not have time to sit down and craft up that duvet cover that i want to make for her. i just want to have some peace of mind and get this stuff taken care of now.

in the meantime, i settle my nerves a bit by obsessively nesting what i can. her clothing is washed, hung, and impeccably folded. and sometimes re-folded. (i did this while waiting for henry, too. it usually involves holding little onsies up and saying to anyone nearby, "look! how tiny! how sweet!" and taking in big lung-filled breaths of the baby laundry scent. do i sound crazy yet?)

also. i am nervous about labor, and i'm not really sure why. last time i had pretty much a perfect textbook experience. quick, and relatively easy and i managed to pull it off naturally. perhaps it is the knowing that's making me a little scared? in this case, surely ignorance must be bliss?

mixed bag

it's very windy here today, and i keep imagining the roof blowing off as i sit here at the desk printing shipping labels. paypal is acting like a bad child, giving error messages, causing me to log out and log back in, and generally just crawling through my simple tasks. if only i could give paypal a little time on the naughty chair or something.

in other news, i fell last week. being 30 weeks pregnant with that clumsy-ness that seems to occur around this time doesn't really mix well first thing in the morning with icy outdoor steps and trying to walk and talk on the phone simultaneously. not a good combo, i tell you. my maternal wits were with me, however, as it seems my body did everything possible to *not* fall flat on my mid-section, but rather, i landed on both knees, an elbow and my palm, with my butt up in the air. kind of looking a bit like bambi when he is just learning how to walk and all fours are sort of sprawled out all funny. that was me, sort of. but probably not as cute. i got a nice, black bruise on my knee and managed to freak my boys out big time. it was a fairly rattling experience, but i am happy to report that no significant damage was done. my little lady girl in there is a-ok, just had a check up yesterday, in fact. heartbeat is great, movements are great, we're healthy all around.

had a parent-teacher conference last night and wow, she had such nice things to say about my little henry. nothing that i didn't already know, i suppose, but it sure is nice to hear, and i am so proud of him, i could pop. afterwards, we came home and had noodles + ice cream cause, you know, that's how we roll sometimes.

so despite today's arctic winds, i can feel the season changing. we spent a few hours in our back yard on saturday (as it was 60 degrees and impossible to resist), clearing out the beds and getting them all ready for the spring blooms. i noticed buds on trees and little new sprouts coming up from the ground. daffodils and tulips, and lots of other things are on the way. i can't wait.

5 quick things!

1. my feet are way too ticklish to ever be able to indulge in a pedicure.
2. swedish fish are one of my favorite candies ever.
3. i hate uggs, but i secretly wear them as slippers around the house.
4. we are settled on a name for the baby. (i think. at least, i am.)
5. i had cereal for lunch today

fyi- these are peanut butter bumpers, the healthier, organic version of captain crunch. *wink*