Girls Day Out!!!

Today my mom, sister, sister-in-laws, adopted sister-in-law :), and I had a girls day out. My mom has had this day planned out for awhile, and we had no idea what was in store until Valentines day. Personally, I thought she was having us save a Saturday so we could help her clean out her garage... Just kidding. :) We had breakfast at her house, then went to La James for a spa morning. We started out with massages, then had facials, and ended with pedicures. I think we all enjoyed the massages the best! Then we had lunch at SoHo and finished the afternoon shopping downtown Cedar Falls. Thanks to the guys for watching the kids! And thanks to Mom for such a fun girl's day!!

A sneak peak of Baby Henry's room

We got some good work done on Henry's room! Well, most of it was done by Aaron as it was lifting boxes, moving furniture, and putting together the dresser. I just put his crib bedding together. :) We have a few more things to do, then I'll post more pictures!

Can't believe he'll be on his way in 4 weeks!

Update on Cholestasis

So, today I had yet another OB appointment. I've had a few blood tests - the bile acid test came back borderline, but just within the normal range. My liver test came back high the first time, but after I was on the medication, it was back in the normal range. The medication seemed to make the itching stop, so my doctor had me quit the medication on Friday to see if the itching would come back. If it did, then we would know I have cholestasis; if not, then it was a fluky thing. Well, Sunday night it came back and was driving me nuts, so I went back on the medication. Today the doctor told us that since my symptoms came back, we are going with the cholestasis diagnosis. I got to have my blood drawn yet again... yay. :) And, we set a date for me to be induced. She wants to induce labor somewhere between 36 and 37 weeks when she is on call, so the date will be April 6th! Less than a month away! So, needless to say I am feeling motivated to get everything ready before the baby gets here!

First trip to Four Queens!

We were brave - we ordered a baby cone with barely any ice cream over the top. I happened to have a bib in my purse... He did really well! He's still working on it now in his high chair at home.
I try to take a picture of Aaron, and this is what I get... Sigh. :)

The best thing ever - Chocolate and Strawberry stacked ice cream cone. Yum! Now that I've eaten it, the baby is kicking like crazy. I think he likes it too!

32 week update

I'm 32 weeks as of Friday! I'm getting to the lovely uncomfortable stage of pregnancy. Large. Very large. :)

I went to the doctor on Friday for another check-up. The blood tests came back, and my bile salt level was borderline, but just in the normal range. However, with my symptoms improving by taking the medication, it's unclear if I have a mild case of cholestasis. So, the plan right now is for me to quit taking the medication and see if the symptoms come back. If they do, then I have cholestasis and we have to induce around 36-37 weeks. If they don't come back, we assume it was a fluke, and go on with normal appointments. We'll see what happens!

Big boy bed update

So... Aaron has been out of town since Thursday afternoon. Wyatt and I have been fending for ourselves the past few days. My mom helped me out of a pinch on Friday by picking Wyatt up from daycare - I had to have my second non-stress test to check up on the baby. No test results back yet - I was really hoping to hear if I have cholestasis or not. I go back on Tuesday, so hopefully I will know by then! They did have one part of the test back - one of my liver enzymes is high, but it's not diagnostic for the condition. Anyway...

The big boy bed update: Wednesday night Wyatt did great - he only woke up once at 3 am and then he went right back to sleep. Thursday night he got up three different times and the first time he wouldn't go back to sleep for about an hour. Last night I lost count of how many times he got up. I think I ended up sleeping on his bed with him from about 5 till 7 this morning. So... not exactly how I'd like it to be going. I guess it's training for when the baby is born. Still, it makes me wonder if we are rushing the big boy bed thing. But I don't think it's safe for him to be in a crib he can fall out of. Today I have to figure out how to get him to nap on his bed - he naps on a mat at daycare, but they have peer pressure going for them.

Aaron is coming home tonight - yay!

Big Boy Bed!!!

Today is my day off (and Aaron's too), so we took on this little project of taking the crib out of Wyatt's room and setting up his big boy bed. Last night when I put him to bed, he tried to climb out of his crib, and he even got his leg up and over the side. So... it seems like it is time to retire the crib!
We got the bedding at Target - I've had my eye on it for awhile. I had to get the little lamp that goes with it - too cute! We showed it to Wyatt, and he was very excited. We'll see how bedtime goes! I hope to get some sleep tonight - it just might be on a twin bed. :)

Itchy, itchy hands and feet...

I haven't blogged much about this pregnancy. I hope Baby #2 doesn't feel slighted by this. Life is just crazier the second time around, as many of you know. Anyway, I am almost 31 weeks pregnant now - getting to the large stage. The last two nights I've woken up with seriously itchy hands and feet, and just generally itchy all over. It's been better during the day, but it gets worse at night. So, I googled "itch and pregnancy" last night, and I was surprised to see that there is an actual condition during pregnancy called cholestasis of pregnancy. Basically, the bile duct gets blocked and bile salts accumulate in the blood, making a pregnant woman very, very itchy. It's typically the hands and feet, and happens more at night. It made me kind of nervous how much this sounded like me, so I made an appointment to see my OB doctor today. When I told her my symptoms, she said it sounded like a textbook case of cholestasis. Awesome. So... I had a blood test today and they monitored the baby for about a half hour today. He's still doing great, so that's good. I'll find out hopefully in less than a week if I have cholestasis, but in the meantime my doctor put me on medication in case I do have it. Basically, the biggest complication of cholestasis is that it can cause premature labor or stillbirth after 37 weeks if it's untreated. If I have cholestasis, I'll have to continue to take the medicine and be induced early. And as of right now I have to go back to the doctor twice a week so they can monitor the baby. So... it's been a lot to process today. I can feel my hands and feet starting to get itchy all over again, which makes me think it's pretty likely the test will come back positive. I hope the medication will start to work soon!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Wyatt had a litte Valentine's party today at daycare - he took car valentines and Hershey kisses. He came home with a little bag of valentines from his friends - very cute. Tonight we gave him a little card, a Sesame Street coloring book, and some crayons.

Coloring with Daddy - I just love how big he looks, lying on his tummy coloring. SO CUTE!! :)

Hope you all had a very happy Valentine's Day!

How to keep a clean house

Wyatt is really starting to want to do everything that we do. Case in point - vacuuming! Today I had him help me pick up his toys, then we vacuumed the living room. He likes to help me push the vacuum, but today I let him do it all by himself.

As you can see, he thought this was the best thing ever! I hope his wife will enjoy his domestic abilities someday. :)

Wyatt's toddler room - stage 1

This morning we (I mean Aaron) put together the storage unit for Wyatt's room that we got at IKEA last weekend. As you can see, Wyatt already likes to takes his toys out of the bins and put them into different bins.

We are going to do a cars theme for his room, so we also got this rug at IKEA.

We got the table and two chairs there as well. Wyatt really likes to play with his magnets when he's sitting at his table.

The storage unit... You can see half of the bedside table that goes with the table and chairs. We will hopefully in the next month or two move the crib out of Wyatt's room and transition him to a twin bed. I think we'll probably just start out with the mattress on the floor. There's a twin bed that has a trundle that we liked at IKEA, but it was out of stock. They thought they should get it in by March, so we'll see. I think it'd be a good idea to start out with the mattress on the floor though.

Close-up of the table.

Wyatt and his "eyes." That's what he calls sunglasses. The weather has actually been fairly warm yesterday and today - it makes me believe the groundhog that there will only be six more weeks of winter!

Hope you all have a good weekend!

Playing in the snow

Today I got out of work a little early because of the impending blizzard, so I got to pick up Wyatt early from daycare. We got home and it was snowing, and Wyatt kept saying "no", which is his way of saying "snow." :) He kept pointing at my boots (he calls them "boops") so I asked him if he wanted to go play in the snow. As you can see, we got all bundled up and went outside briefly. However, he kept taking off his left mitten, so I decided to call it quits outside after about 10 minutes. He was quite mad about this, so I compromised.

Snow in the house! :) I filled a tub with some snow, put dry mittens on him, and he had a ball.

What's a little mess when you can play in the snow in the warmth of your house?? :)

He's very curious about the "no."

Here's a little clip of him saying "snow."

Success!

So... because you are dying to know how our meal-planning and budgeting is going, let me give you an update. Since I bought Quicken, it's been doing my budgeting for me (well, categorizing items and then compiling it so I can see what we are spending). It downloaded from our bank website December's info, so I can compare last month's spending to this month. Can I just say how amazed I am at how much money we have saved??? We cut our overall food (including eating out and groceries) budget in HALF! Wow. It makes me realize how much convenience really costs.

Tonight I went grocery shopping after Wyatt went to bed and I stuck to my list for our meals and such for this week. It really makes shopping so much more rewarding to know that what I'm buying is going to get eaten! I'm not a big coupon cutter, but I'm fairly happy with my cereal deal I got tonight. General Mills cereals were on sale at Hyvee, I had a Hyvee coupon and two General Mills coupons, so I ended up with three boxes for $5.53. Not too shabby. Now, I know there are some ridiculous coupon blogs out there where the store basically pays them to buy food - I will never have the patience for that. I'm happy with my semi-cheap cereal purchase. :)

I'm hoping we don't get too much of a blizzard these next few days, but I'm happy to have my cupboards and fridge stocked. :) Hope you are all staying warm and safe!

Cookie time

Today we have stayed in all day. My last post was about how Wyatt and I were sick - well, on Friday Aaron came down with a nasty stomach bug and even today he's still been recovering. Wyatt seems just fine - extraordinarily playful even. I'm still not sleeping well at night and totally stuffed up and hoarse. Yuck. So... we stayed home to keep our germs quarantined. Naturally, by dinnertime Wyatt had exhausted playing with just about every toy, so we made cookies. How can I say no when he says "Mommy cook?" Too cute. So we made oatmeal cookies per Daddy's request.

Wyatt "helping." He's great at smashing cookie dough. :)

Making cookies just went by too fast, so we made Play-doh cookies.

He tried to sample some Play-doh, but he didn't eat much. The homemade version has so much salt in it, I'm sure it tasted gross!

Yay for cookies! :)

*Yes, he wore his jammies all day. No, I don't think there's anything wrong with that - it's environmentally friendly. :)

*Please don't judge my hair - it was in a ponytail earlier in the day... I napped when Wyatt did. I'm sick and pregnant. :)

Mommy's boy

Wyatt has been all about Mommy the past few days. I think it's mostly because we are both sick - we went to the doctor this morning, and he has an ear infection and I have a sinus infection and lots of junk in my lungs! Yuck. Aaron didn't go to the doctor, but he's got a sore throat too... We're not the healthiest house right now. I'm hoping the antibiotics will kick in by this weekend!

So... Wyatt and I vegged out on the couch tonight, eating a brownie and watching Elmo. Life is rough. :)

My cute little 18 month-old

I just think these are some seriously cute jammies, and Wyatt is even cuter! He just had his bath tonight, and now he is brushing his teeth before bed.

"Elmo?" We hear this word at least a hundred times a night!

"Fine, I'll just play for awhile. Please don't make me go to bed yet!"

Meatloaf

Tonight I made meatloaf, and I was very happy with how it turned out. I got the recipe from allrecipes.com, but I made a few tweaks of my own.

Yummy meatloaf

2 lb. ground beef (I used 85/15)

2 eggs

1-2 T. Worcestershire sauce (I eyeballed it)

~1 cup of crushed saltine crackers

1/2 c. milk

2 T. dried onion flakes

1-2 t. garlic powder

a few pinches of salt and pepper

I shaped it into a loaf in a 9x9 pan (I couldn't find my bread loaf pan, and I think I will do it this way again!) and baked it at 350 for just over an hour. I did turn the temp up to 400 for the last twenty minutes because I put in the tater tots and garlic bread.

Aaron liked it and I liked it. Wyatt turned his nose up at both the meatloaf and tater tots. What kid doesn't like tater tots??? :) Crazy kid.

I'm taking the leftovers for lunch tomorrow, and I'm actually pretty excited about it. :)

Life lately

I'm afraid I haven't been very good at keeping the blog up lately. As pretty much all of you who read my blog know, my grandma passed away last Tuesday. So, our week revolved around that, and yesterday we had the memorial service for her. It was a very nice service, and I think she would have been happy with how she was represented. We will miss her!

I didn't make any New Year's resolutions this year, but Aaron and I are going to try to cook more at home and go out a little less. We've never been good at planning out meals, so that makes grocery shopping a guessing game. So... we are trying to plan out our week so we only buy what we need. This week is our first experiment! :) Tonight Aaron made Bubble Pizza - very tasty. :) On the menu for the week:

Monday - Pork chops

Tuesday - Pizza

Wednesday - Meatloaf

Thursday - Chicken helper

Friday - go out!

Wyatt's first haircut

Wyatt has had a mullet long enough. Daddy took it upon himself to cut it off. :)

The finished product. Pretty good, eh? :)

"Mom, quit taking my picture. I'm trying to play!"

Poor kiddo has my thin hair - hopefully it will grow in fuller as he gets older.

Aaron thinks I'm a nutjob for saving a lock of his hair. I can't help it - I'm a sentimental when it comes to Wyatt! :) I'll probably save the first tooth he loses too.

More Christmas Eve fun...

Well, I don't think Wyatt has had any fun all day. :)

Wyatt and Justin bonding over crackers and a new farm toy.

A new Elmo flap book! Good thing Rachael can help open all of them!

Wyatt's new slide! (and check out the Elmo slippers. He didn't want to take them off!)

Wyatt's new dump truck from his aunt and uncle - "Vroom! Vroom!"

He's starting to figure out that you have to tear off the paper to get to the present.

Yay for a new book!

Wyatt's first ride in Mommy's new Moby wrap! While it's mostly for his little brother, it's sure fun to carry Wyatt around in it!

I think Wyatt is pretty spoiled... :)