The pressure is on

I’m at 30 weeks now, so in 9-11 weeks, life is going to get MUCH busier and harder for a bit.  Let’s not forget that there are 2 major holidays within those 9-11 weeks that also need to be celebrated, shopped for, decorated for, etc.

I feel like I’m just now getting over the burnout that Jenson’s birthday party and refinishing the play kitchen brought on.  That sounds dramatic, and everything worked out just fine, but things did not go as planned for either.  And I still need to write thank-you cards.

We had a great October – we did lots of seasonal things with Jenson…pumpkin patches, apple-picking, farm visits, and I’m thankful that we got to do those things with him and that he had so much fun.  We even got to go on a date to the Paul McCartney concert (which puts us at about 3 nights out for 2015) while my mom stayed for a few days after Jenson’s party to stay with him.  And we still have a few Halloween events and trick-or-treating to go this week.  But now it’s time to buckle down.

We need to get things ready for winter with the house, and get things ready for the baby.  Even though we are probably going to go with a pole barn-type structure for the garage and they can be put up quickly, we are giving up on that for this year.  There’s still lots of planning that we need to decide for that, and we’ll need quite a bit of fill brought in to level the ground, and all of that stuff.  (I don’t even know what that type of building entails, so those things that I don’t know are “all of that stuff”).  We need to have the electrician put in the bathroom vent – I’m planning to schedule that tomorrow.  We are planning on having 8 windows and 2-3 outer doors replaced, plus one interior door mounted (for the nursery).  And we bought 5 spruce trees that we need to arrange delivery and figure out how to plant.

And the nursery.  I understand that it doesn’t need to be ready when we have the baby, because he/she won’t be sleeping in there for a month or so, but it’s not like it’s going to get easier or we’ll have more time after the fact.  At this point in my pregnancy with Jenson, I was probably still working on refinishing furniture for the nursery and painting birch trees on the walls, but I had completely free evenings and weekends to work on things, and DIDN’T have a toddler.  In the last 2 days, the nursery went from this:

To this:

I have scraped off all of the painted wallpaper that I can reach, but still need to remove the backing and the glue.  Then we’ll need to assess the damage from a prior roof leak, and do a few patches and possible a large patch that was already patched (fun discovery while tearing off the paper).  And then pick paint colors for that room and and bathroom that is attached to it.  Leaning towards navy and gray, that can be accented with other colors (yellow, green, coral, pink) depending on the gender.  Since this room is directly beside Jenson’s room, I can’t do any work in here while he’s napping because it would wake him.  And Lo can’t help when he gets home because Jenson is stuck to him like glue and doesn’t let him out of his sight.  So it’s all me, all evening until he goes to bed, trying to get this done.

There are plenty of things I know Lo wants to get done…but he can’t.  Evenings and weekends are totally dominated by Jenson.  “Daddy, daddy, daddy (no, mommy!), daddy”.  Boof and Jenson vie for his attention all night.  Boof will lay on his arm while he’s trying to interact with Jenson, or paw at him.  It’s kind of sad (for her).

I can’t say that I’m mad that I get a little break after he gets home, because Jenson is on me like glue during the day, but then it means I need to get to work…and it also means that Lo isn’t getting any work done.  Nap time is my chance to get a few simple things done (laundry, cleaning, cooking, and sometimes just sitting or laying down for 20 minutes).   He doesn’t even ask to watch any tv anymore, so I don’t even have that 30-60 minute break that I used to get after his nap.  As long as he isn’t asking, I’m not going to turn it on for him if he’d rather play or read.

I spent some time on Jenson’s baby book in the last couple of days and FINALLY got it caught up.  Yeah…it only goes through year 1, so don’t be impressed.  So much that we want to remember has happened after year 1, and I can’t find a toddler memory book that I like.  Luckily I capture lots of stuff on this blog, but I want it written down in a book.  So I’ve decided that I need to “make” the book that I want.  I think I’m just going to get a binder/journal/album thing and print prompts that I can fill in.  It honestly shouldn’t be that hard to come up with the prompts because it’ll pretty much be the same for each year.  Now filling it in…that’s a different story.  I think I have pictures from his first 3 months of life in an album, and that’s about it.

And the 2nd baby is already getting ripped off.  I did a full pregnancy journal and weekly pics with my pregnancy for Jenson, and this time around, I’ve filled out about 6 pages in the journal and taken 3 pics.

There’s still a lot of organizing in the house that needs done…just in general and with baby stuff.  And poor Jenson’s room still remains completely undecorated.  Part of that is because we hadn’t decided if we were going to switch his room.

I’m struggling to keep up with posting as much as I want on his blog and the Columbus blog, which is why I stay up until after midnight every night…

And I’m about 6 months overdue for a haircut because it’s too hard to figure out when I can go one evening after Lo gets home from work.

I know that this is just a stage in our lives…having toddler, expecting a baby, and still getting settled in a new (old) house and doing the necessary repairs…but that doesn’t make it any easier.