Baby 5: Week 40

How Far Along: 40 Weeks (Yay! Due date is here!)

How I'm Feeling: This week was much better than last week. Excluding some mild greenness on Monday (which produced no more vomiting) we've been in fabulous form, particularly since Wednesday. I have sudden reserves of energy that makes me want to tear the house apart and put it back together (which I'm not! I'm not CRAZY). Baby is sitting approximately between my kneecaps, which is giving my lungs a little more room, thus I have about 2 seconds more stamina than I had even a week ago. For those of you who love the details, when we saw the Doctor on Wednesday I was a stretchy 1cm dilated and %30 effaced (for those who are not savvy I need to get to 10cm and %100 effaced for baby to come out). I'm also starting to get some signs that my mucous plug is slowly starting to come out. I know, fascinating details that you all desperately wanted to know. haha!

What I'm Thinking: We've reached that inevitable point at which baby is definitely coming. I am a delightful mix of totally panicked (over stuff that I know intellectually just doesn't matter) and ridiculously excited. I want baby to stay in so we can clear away those last few details, but honestly am ready to meet our little man. Like yesterday. I'm really grateful we made it through the stomach flu of doom so we can hang our kids off joyfully to their friends while we're in the hospital without worrying if we have enough clean sheets and outfits in case of vomit.

What I've Done This Week: On Friday we went on the big grocery shop-a-thon and got what should hopefully be around two weeks worth of groceries. I usually shop once per week, but in the off chance I go into labour the day before grocery day I don't want our friends left scrounging in our cupboards for food. We also picked up a cool tool that looks like a paper cutter at the hardware store that cuts laminate floorboards manually. We immediately put it to good use and got to work laying the flooring for our baby's room. This wasn't easy as there is some furniture we're having a tough time finding a place for while we're working, but it was totally worth it. I tried my hand with the flooring and did about half of it myself why Hubby moved things around and worked on the baseboards. He did all the hard corners, vents, etc, but I did the square section all on my own. And didn't destroy it! And if I do say so myself it looks fabulous. Today we finished up by assembling the crib and setting up the room. It look so sweet even with the little bit of clutter left in it. In less dramatic work, I managed to keep on top of the dishes and laundry all week. No worries that the kids will end up without socks or underpants! Oh, and I re-packed my hospital bag for the millionth time. Neurotic, I know.

What I Hope To Do Next Week: Have a baby? Haha! That's really the only big thing left. The room is ready. The Godparents are prepared to come sit with the kids. And best of all, we've reached our due date. It's time, little man. Come meet your family!

Baby 5: Week 36

How Far Along: 36 Weeks (4 weeks to go!)

How I'm Feeling: I suddenly developed a chest cough this week, but I think that's due to the pregnancy congestion dripping down my throat. I don't feel especially miserable about it. Whenever I cough and I hear the rasp from my chest I'm surprised. Other than that, I'm feeling well. I have lost my ability to keep my balance as it turns out. I tripped and fell twice the other day. Both times I landed on my legs so no worries about the baby (who by the way is rolling and kicking and being wild). I clearly need to spend less time trying to move. Sorry housework. haha

What I'm Thinking: Honestly my thoughts have been dominated with just surviving the next 4 to 6 weeks. I have a little laundry list (quite literally) in my mind of tasks I want to accomplish. I'm also spending a lot of my time thinking about how best to enjoy this last little bit of calm before the beautiful storm of a new baby hits the house. I'm working hard to take special time with each of the kids so that they feel as treasured and important as they truly are.

What I've Done This Week: More cleaning! I found another stash of baby clothes which I'm working on getting in the baby's dresser. I also brought down all the extra broken furniture and things of that nature that were taking up space in the nursery to put them out in the trash. My husband and his Dad also installed our new main floor toilet (no more preggo Mama running upstairs to pee or dragging on the two potty training kids hoping they don't pee on the floor first). We put the broken one out with the trash. What a satisfying feeling that was seeing the garbage collectors take what had only been taking up unwanted space in our house! I also spent some time while the kids were napping and sorted through their living room toys. I got another full blue bag of toys they either don't play with or ones they have double of. A few kids out there are going to be very pleased with some big yellow Tonka trucks their parents will find at our local good will! In other news I finally cleaned off the memory card for our camera (which also has batteries!) because it was pretty much full. We also made time on Friday to run by the hospital to pre-register. Happy to have accomplished so much!

What I Hope To Do Next Week: Because of the general mess in the laundry room, I haven't called yet for someone to pick up our unwanted appliances yet. Hopefully I can get that done this week. I also want to go through the kids upstairs toys one more time as I suspect there's at least another blue bag or two worth of stuff that would be better appreciated at good will. We're going to rearrange some furniture in the bedrooms upstairs so that we can start doing the flooring in the baby's room. I feel like we're finally getting a vision for how the whole upstairs will look. I'm very excited!

Baby 5: Week 35

How Far Along: 35 Weeks (5 weeks to go!)

How I'm Feeling: I'm feeling ungainly large and am having some Braxton-hicks, but otherwise I'm feeling very good! This week I've been finding myself wanting to just get everything done! In a way it seems like my body is making up for the fact that my entire 2nd trimester was eaten up by colds and flus. I've been taking as much advantage of my new found energy as possible, getting things done around the house and cooking real food for my family.

What I'm Thinking: I realize in my mind that there's always a remote chance that I'll go around my due date, but I have really been coasting on the feeling I probably have at least an extra week of pregnancy coming my way. That being said, in the off chance I don't go overdue (like always) I've been thinking a lot about how quickly our lives are going to change. Baby girl is getting very close to her 2nd birthday and she's been the baby for the longest of any of our kids, so I've been trying to treasure my extra time with her while also getting her ready to be a big sister. I can tell she's going to be an amazing big sister. This week I've spent a lot of time thinking about how suddenly she's going to go from my baby to my big girl (which clearly a toddler bed, potty training and her sudden language skills didn't do for me! haha).

What I've Done This Week: I took all the bags and boxes of toys, clothes, and general household gear that we didn't need and put them out for a local charity to pick up. I had forgotten we had our third bathroom in our essentially unused basement full of stuff we boxed away before baby girl was born (yeah, we REALLY don't use the basement) so I took the chance to clear all of that out. Of course now that I have a taste for cleaning this up I want to do even more! I also got to cleaning a bit. My kitchen hadn't been properly cleaned (nor the dishes) since Easter, so I took a day and got busy doing that! Since then I've been cooking more real food for the family, including the pea soup I posted about yesterday, some of which I stored away in the freezer for after the baby is born.

What I Hope To Do Next Week: We got the number for our local used appliance pick up so we'll be saying goodbye to our unused (but perfectly functional) second fridge and freezer. If we're lucky they'll take the dishwasher too! We have two renovations to get done urgently, so this week we have to pick up the underlay for the flooring in the baby's room as well as a new toilet for the main level bathroom. We've been doing without for a few weeks and now that baby girl has decided she wants to potty train I know I'll need access to a toilet close by! We hope to install the toilet right away, and then move the last of the heavy furniture out of the baby's room so we can lay the flooring. Each project should take a day or two, so maybe by this time next week it'll be all about setting up! Once the baby's room is all together, I'll make sure to post some picture!

Changing Spaces

We have big plans this week. We are starting to talk about getting rid of a bunch of bulky furniture to make room for less cluttered, cleaner living. We've already started down that road by taking dressers out of the kids rooms in favour of using our hall linen closet for their clothes. The baby's room seems to be a magnet for furniture, so we're going to tackle that room next. Just to give you a sense of what's in there:

1. A double mattress
2. A dresser
3. A couch (that folds out into a bed)
4. A coffee table (which has a glass top and has huge sentimental value)
5. 2 side tables (made in Italy and also huge sentimental value)
6. Glider rocker with pop up footrest
7. 2 Cribs (was a crib and a toddler bed, but baby girl is in her toddler bed now!)
8. Closet full of boxes (clothes, papers, toys)
9. Bag upon bag of clothes, toys, etc for donation
10. Newborn/infant baby gear (carseat, bumbo chair, rocking chair, you name it, we got it)

This is the smallest room in the house. How did we manage this? Everything is just piled in there willy nilly. Not so welcoming for baby boy. We've finally decided we've hit that point that we need to just clear everything we can out. What'll be staying: one crib, the glider rocker and one of the little side tables (Mama needs water while she feeds!). The coffee table and second side table will be finding a better home somewhere else in the house, but everything else will be finding a new home at the good will (except the mattress, we'll just give that away on Kijiji).

All this baby room clearing out has inspired us to check out the state of our livingroom. After seeing how well Lent has gone without TV, we want to take the TV out of our livingroom entirely. We'll probably set it up in the baby's room (which will become a TV room for the kids once baby boy moves into the boys room) and have a DVD player with it. Don't worry, I won't be putting on movies for baby boy at night or whatever, but it would reinforce that watching a movie is something special that we have to go to a different room to watch one. I refuse to use the TV as much as I have in the past when I have a newborn. I've been sick and exhausted for most of Lent, and yet I haven't had to turn to TV more than once. I realize with a newborn I'm going to be way more put out, but I've noticed of late that my kids actually prefer a dance party to zoning out in front of the TV (are these really my kids? haha). With that in mind we'll also be disassembling our somewhat massive TV stand that my lovely husband made for me a few years ago, and in its place setting up a proper play area. they already have a little table a friend made, so all we'll need is a proper bin for their toys (which, SHOCK, we already have upstairs taking up space).

The great thing is that we won't have to buy anything new to make this happen. To have a space we're happier to live in, all we'll have to do is rearrange a few essential pieces, and clear stuff out. Thank God for our van, because we'll be able to get pretty much all the extra stuff in just a few trips. Once all the extra stuff is gone, we'll be able to take a break in the middle to lay down some new flooring to ditch the nasty, stinky, puke-green shag carpet that is inhabiting that room. Anything else that we're not %100 sure we'll need again we're going to pack into watertight boxes and store in the attic because I am TIRED of all our closets being the dumping ground of stuff we can't get rid of but don't need for every day. I'm hoping that very little will need to be packed that way. I know some papers from University will make it up there, but I plan on being ruthless with as much as possible.

Wish us luck!