Fair warning

Just in case you've never been through renos, or haven't been through renos with young kids, or haven't been through renos with a flooded basement with nowhere to store stuff...let me enlighten you and say that if you come to visit, there will be no judging. Our house is a mess. There is stuff everywhere. And it'll be like that for a while yet. Just understand that it's because renos have vomited over our entire house and it's not an actual representation of how we housekeep. I'll let the pictures tell the rest :)

Pregnancy and Renos...

Feels like pregnancy and renos are the two big things going on in my life right now. Not that either of them are keeping me particularly busy. Pregnancy isn't really a "busy" thing and when you're pregnant, renos aren't busy either. At least not for me. Nathan has work to keep him busy every waking moment of the day. Between working a full time job, mowing 6-8 hours a week - pregnant wifey tried to help a few weeks ago but that was a mistake, renos with no end in sight, helping me with a few of the things that I can't do right now (putting up pea fences for one), and spraying our yard for dandelions...never mind having some sort of down time and family time...it's been a long month for Nathan already! Hopefully the next month brings the end of bedroom renos so we can ease up a bit with that and enjoy our transition to life as a family of 5 with a bit more down time! I honestly can't believe how fast it's gone. Not so much the pregnancy - this one has been full of "adventures" (more on that later) which has made it feel unpredictable and drawn out. But I think about this time 5 years ago and Nathan and I were still just the two of us. And in 5 short years we have become a family of 5! That's the part that's crazy to me. How quickly a family can grow and change!

As mentioned, pregnancy has been interesting this time around. I feel like my first pregnancy was full of fears and worries but was fairly comfortable as far as sickness and discomfort. My second was higher on the pain scale but not so bad with sickness or fear/worry. And this one has had on and off worries/pain but I feel like I've been more sick this time around than both the other pregnancies combined. Desperately rushed trips to the bathroom in more places I care to know, emergency ultrasound at the beginning, cardiologist appointment, emergency optometrist appointment...it feels like this pregnancy has has soaring hormones that have brought out every weird pregnancy symptom there is. Just goes to show that each pregnancy can be so different! Needless to say, I'm ready to be done with the pregnancy stage and meet this new little one! At around 35 weeks is when I always get really excited and the arrival of a new baby starts to feel much more real. I can start to see the due date on the calendar without flipping so many pages. I can start to think in terms of "only five more Sundays in church before the big day!" Those are the things, for me, that make the arrival feel close. Sure, I've long outgrown my maternity clothes and I can feel little feet and arms inside rather than just whooshing round shapes. Yes, those things make it feel close. But the calendar is what really does it for me. Events are being planned for after the baby's birth (I saw a sign on the side of the road for an auction scheduled to happen after baby's arrival)! And I can't wait until our milk won't expire until after we're home from the hospital! Then I'll really know it's close :)

Well, aside from pregnancy and renos I'm not sure what else is happening. I have much less energy for gardening this year. I've got my seeds in but haven't done anything beyond that. I pull a few weeds here and there around the house but bending down is getting less and less possible (hello heartburn and basketball trapped beneath my ribs). The kids have been great lately. Being able to get outside every day has made a world of difference in their behaviour and attitudes. It's lovely. Levi is such a helpful, smart, and funny four year old and Kayden is an increasingly independent yet still fairly sweet and agreeable two year old. We are STILL dealing with potty regression with her, unfortunately. There is often a small accident these days before she tells us and then finishes on the potty. Some days I feel like we are making progress and then other days, like today, we almost don't have enough shorts/underwear to make it through the day. The regression all started a couple days after renos started which is a month ago now. I totally blame the change (chaos) in our house and routine for the regression but I expected her to bounce back to where she was by now and that just hasn't happened. I'm not sure what to try next. If she doesn't want to sit on the potty and try to go, there is no forcing her. And yet accidents usually come minutes after I ask if she needs to go and she says that she doesn't. She has been dry overnight more in the past month so that gives me hope. But the daytime accidents...oi. So much laundry! We just never had to deal with regression to this extent with Levi, or at least not that I remember. 

Anyway, enough potty talk. Wanna see some pictures??

Wearing daddy's hats, because they're so much better than our own. 

Reading stories together this morning. Levi loves to read to Kayden and I'm pretty sure she doesn't mind one bit. 

"What are we doing, mama? Can we look in the mirror too? Can we? Huh? Can we please?"

35 weeks

Sneak peek at the colour scheme for our new living space!

I hope they're always good friends who choose to play together, even when the park is full of other kids!

Planting the garden. 

What happens after planting the garden. 

Visiting the bunny. The last lone bunny that survived the winter. I think he needs a friend but the kind of friend he won't kill will only result in many, many more friends than he needs...

34-35 weeks...like I said in an earlier post, I take tons of belly pics over the course of a few days and then realize I have a bunch and stop...and then realize a that it's been an entire month since I've taken one so I take a bunch more. I don't do regulation very well, I guess!

Since we are so close to the end now, does anyone care to make guesses on baby's gender?? Leave your guess in the comments, I'm curious to hear what people are predicting!

Renos during pregnancy...why?!

One of the most frustrating things in the blogging world is when you spend half an hour writing out a witty, entertaining post on your phone, only to put your phone down to put your kids to bed and to come back to find that none of it saved. Why on earth would the blogger appnot have an automatic save?? Anyway, now you all get the shorter, less entertaining version!

Why is it that renos often happen in the latter stages of a baby entering a family? Sure, it's probably pretty logical. You need more space, or a more usable space. It's nesting to the extreme: "honey, let's renovate! Oh, except I can't help you really very much at all..." Doesn't quite seem fair, does it? In our case, we are looking for more bedrooms. I'm hoping the baby has their own room by the time he/she arrives, not that they will use it for the first little bit. But I really want to go through the process of getting the baby's room ready...and to do that, we will need to have the older two in their new room(s). It's yet to be determined if they will continue to share a room for a while or if they will have their own rooms right off the bat. 

The first week of renos was done by a crew during the day and Nathan did cleanup in the evenings. By the end of the first week, we had our garage framed in, windows added, a subfloor and ceiling built and bedrooms framed. Since then, we have been working on drywalling the bedrooms and covering the studs in the addition with particle board. Considering this is one of Nathan's busy seasons with work (wind-ups, grads, etc), he hadn't had much time to work on the house. But he has been devoting what little time he has to do what he can. And he also manages to spend some quality time with the kids every day. He's pretty amazing. No complaining either. How great is he? 

Speaking of great...ok, so this is kinda opposite...our house is a wreck right now. We have displaced furniture all over the place and thanks to a spring flood in our basement that happened just as renos got going, we don't even have that space to store the things that fit down the stairs. It's lovely. So now we're not only trying to finish up the upstairs renos, we are trying to eliminate our basement water problems. But once it's done, our list of things that we want to do to this house will be much shorter! And that is just.plain.exciting!

Speaking of exciting...oh wait, opposite day again...Kayden has had some serious potty regression with the chaos of renos. She had been trained for three months and we were at the point of not needing to take along extra clothes when we went out but now we're back to "how many changes of clothes will we need if we're out for 6 hours?" I know that regression happens and that they just need consistency and patience and they'll be right back into their groove before too long. But right now it's discouraging. I just hope that baby's arrival doesn't bring on potty regression #2! 

Speaking of baby's arrival, we should be welcoming baby in 6-7 short weeks! I'm getting so excited to meet this little person. It always becomes more real to me once I can see the date on the calendar and count the number of doctors visits left before the big day! This is actually happening! We're actually going to have three kids! THREE! That's exciting! I'm sure it'll have its moments of "what have we done?" but when I see those sweet little faces...there's no going back :) I thank God for each one of these miracles! 

Weird Pregnancy Dreams...Oi!

Anyone else out there just have the most bizarre dreams? I've always had vivid dreams and often remember them in the morning. I love how entertaining they can be! That said, they can also be just plain disturbing. When I'm pregnant, I seem to have the weirdest dreams ever...if I ever sleep long or deep enough to dream, that is. (I'm usually up every 3 hours to pee all throughout pregnancy and I find that I have the best dreams when I've slept at least 4-5 hours in a stretch).

The other night, I had a dream of the terrifying variety. I dreamed that something was going wrong with the pregnancy and I was told that I would lose the baby. It was only a matter of time. I was still pregnant in the dream, and at about the stage I am in now, but knew that there as nothing that could be done...nothing that could save our precious little one. What a tragic dream. I told Nathan about it in the morning and just nodded and said that he remembered me having dreams/fears like that at this stage in each of my pregnancies. While I have always been afraid of the possibility of stillbirth, the fear becomes especially real as I near the end and get more excited than ever to meet our newest. My heart breaks for anyone who has ever experienced pregnancy loss at any stage.

The dream I had last night was much lighter. It was one of those dreams where no matter how hard or long you try, you just can't get everything to work out the way it's supposed to. I was traveling across the country to visit my sister in Ontario with our new little baby. I was in the airport, ready to board the plane and realized that I didn't have my passport! I'd left my passport at home because I didn't think I needed it for a domestic flight, and besides, our baby didn't even have one yet. The issue was that I was scheduled to have a layover in New York! Why on earth a flight from Saskatchewan to Ontario would have a layover in another country is beyond me but dreams rarely make sense. As I was trying frantically to get on another flight that didn't require a passport, I realized that I'd forgotten the baby at the other end of the airport! And this was a Denver/Chicago size airport - also ridiculous if you know anything about Saskatchewan - so I was running all over the place trying to change flights and get to the right gate and remember where I'd last left the baby to make sure it came with me. (Did I leave the baby at Gate 9? Or was it at Information last time I saw it?! Aah!) I was so glad to wake up this morning and realize that baby was still tucked safely inside! What a ride. Whew.

I never know quite what to expect when I go to sleep at night but I must say, it does keep things interesting! Levi loves to tell me about his dreams too. I always get a kick out of hearing what my four year old dreams. Though I must say, sometimes they seem an awful lot like *hinting* and less like a true, sleeping, night-time dream!

"Mom! Last night I dreamed that we made a big tent and slept in it for lots of nights!" Hmm...did you? And you conveniently remembered right after lunch as you're thinking about what to do during quiet time?