What a day

First of all...

Apparently, the right side of my uterus is the comfortable side.

Eleanor always did the exact same thing.

Today was a long day.  Eleanor went to school this morning and I ran a bunch of errands.  One thing I did was get my oil changed, my car washed, and I vacuumed out the inside myself.  I decided this was a good time to turn Eleanor's car seat around (after vacuuming out massive amounts of Cheerio's that had fallen down in the cracks of the seat), so she is officially forward facing now.  I really wanted to keep her rear facing longer, but our car is too small for two rear facing seats.  Anyway, you should have seen the amazed look on her face when she got in her seat after I picked her up!  She's never complained about rear facing, but I can tell she's happy to be turned around.  It feels a little weird to me now that she watches every little thing I do though!

Anyway, the last errand that I ran before picking her up was to get a few groceries from the store.  There was water on the floor (I'm pretty sure a customer had spilled something and it wasn't the store's fault) and I slipped and fell - pretty hard - on my rear end.  I felt fine, but panic quickly set in.  I wasn't bleeding or having contractions or anything out of the ordinary, and when I drank some juice Arthur started moving all over the place, but I was sore on one spot on my belly and I was really worried about the placenta.  So, I called my OB and they made sure I got scheduled for an ultrasound later that afternoon.  Of course, Hunter was out of town giving a presentation and had left his phone at the hotel!  Thankfully I have great friends to watch Eleanor and a wonderful sister-in-law who was able to come be with me during the ultrasound.  Everything turned out to be completely fine, and as a little added bonus we got to see Arthur's cute face and chubby cheeks!  At 35 weeks 5 days they estimate that he weighs 6 lb 11 oz.

Check out that brain!

(I don't know why this picture rotated, but you're looking at his face upside down.)

Also, the technician pointed out that Arthur is for SURE a boy.  I wasn't too concerned, but confirmation is always reassuring, especially since I just washed all of his clothes.  The ultrasound ran kind of long at the end so I asked Monica to go ahead and call Hunter (poor guy, sitting in an airport worrying) to let him know everything was okay.  She told him that everything was fine, but that there was one little surprise...  "It's a girl!"  She said he got very quiet for a few seconds.  :)

So now it's nearly 11:00 and Hunter is finally on his way home from the airport.  I'm glad I got to see my little boy today, but otherwise this is a day I'd rather not repeat!  I am exhausted!

Eleanor quotes

While running through the house:  "El-nor running like the gingerbread man!"

I climbed into the back of this school bus at the playground, and from the outside I guess Eleanor thinks it looks like a cage.

Eleanor:  Mama is in the zoo!

Me:  What animal am I?

Eleanor: [pause] Kangaroo!

Eleanor climbed into the back of the school bus with me.

Me:  Now you're in the zoo too!  What animal are you?

Eleanor:  A camel!

Me:  What do you think that the camel eats?

Eleanor:  [pause]  Honey

Me:  And what does the kangaroo eat?

Eleanor:  Orange

So there you go, camels eat honey and kangaroos eat oranges.  And since I'm not exactly sure of what either of those animals really do eat, I guess I can't argue with that!  :) 

When I picked her up from school yesterday she had a scratch on her nose.  I asked what happened and she said, "El-nor fall down and the teacher pick her up."  I said, "Which teacher?" and named the two out of three whose names I could remember.  She answered, "Miss Cheryl.  Pick El-nor up with TWO hands!"  I'm glad to know the teacher used two hands!

When Eleanor and I are downstairs I often put my phone/ipod in a docking station to play music. Last night I wasn't home - and I had my phone with me, of course - and Eleanor asked Hunter to play music. Hunter told her that he couldn't because Mama took the music. Her response: "Mama not nice to take the music."  I've been trying to teach her to advocate for herself by saying "that's not nice" if another kid takes a toy from her or something (instead of just crying), but as far as I know this is the first time that she's put the phrase to use....about ME!  :)

And there's no specific quote here, but I love hearing her go around pointing out "Ar-fur's crib" or "Ar-fur's clothes" or talking about hearing "Ar-fur's heartbeat" at the doctor.  She sometimes puts her hand on my belly and asks to feel him kick.  I don't think she understands how much her life is going to change in just a few weeks, but I can't wait to see her meet her little brother!  :)

Eleanor's first trip to the dentist

Today was Eleanor's first trip to the dentist and she did a GREAT job!  I was afraid she was going to be really scared and cry, but she almost seemed to enjoy it!  She now has all but 1 of her teeth and the dentist said the spacing between her teeth is just about perfect.  It will make it easy for us to floss them and, if they continue to grow the way they currently are growing, she probably won't need braces.  Yay!

She enjoyed brushing the creepy fish's teeth.

She made this sad face for about 30 seconds, but then was fine!

Letting the dentist floss her teeth

And getting her teeth cleaned

(And yes, the dentist is about 38 weeks pregnant)

Picking out her prize

All smiles back in the car!  She's showing off her ice cream cone that she picked out...of course that's what she picked at the dentist's office.

We made a quick stop at the park on the way home

And there's more!

I have discovered the joy (addiction?) of small projects.  I think I know I do much better at actually finishing projects when they take, say, 15 minutes rather than 8 hours.  I'm still working on Eleanor's baby quilt that I started when I was 6 months pregnant with her and I'm determined to finish it before Arthur arrives, but I have to force myself to work on it.  These little projects are much more fun!

Eleanor has outgrown all of her baby hooded towels and we don't have any for Arthur that aren't pink.  I got a few gift cards to Target so I decided to put them towards towels and make my own hooded towels.  I think the ones for Arthur are way too big for now, but I guess he can just use pink ones at first.  ;)  I followed the directions here to make the striped ones, and they really took less than 15 minutes each to make.

These next two were a bit more complex, but they weren't hard.  I sort of combined the directions from the other two towels with these instructions.

My new favorite onesie!  Even Hunter got a little excited over this one.

And Eleanor is all ready for Thanksgiving!

Fabric alphabet for the wall!

We decided to turn our guest room into a playroom, and one thing I really wanted to do with the room was to put the alphabet above the chair railing as a border.  I looked all over for vinyl clings, but they were either too expensive, too small, or I just didn't like them for some reason.  Then I saw this website and this website and got the brilliant idea to make my own alphabet...out of fabric!  Who knew you could put fabric on the wall with corn starch?  I did test this out with two letters and let them dry overnight, and then was able to peel them off with no problem at all the next day.  You could never tell they were there!  Oh, and the best part of this project is that I didn't spend a single penny, thanks to my great scrap supply.

Materials needed:

• Stencils of whatever shapes you want to make - I just printed the alphabet in size 600 Ariel font on my computer and then cut out all the letters.  Tedious, yes, but also free and very easy.
• A fabric pen that disappears when it gets wet.  I made the mistake of tracing my first few letters with an ink pen, and when I hung them up there was a huge ugly black outline.  Thankfully I tested a couple before doing them all that way!
• Fabric scissors
• Iron
• Starch (optional)
• Corn starch

Step 1

As I mentioned, this was to cut out all of the letters that I printed out.  Of course if you already have stencils that you want to use, that saves you some time.

Step 2

Pick out your fabrics.  I lined the alphabet stencils up on the floor (Eleanor called it a "choo choo train"), got out my fabric, and then figured out which fabric I wanted for which letter and lined the fabric up too.  Then I cut out a small scrap big enough for that letter and put all of the remaining fabric away.

Step 3

Iron each piece of fabric using starch.  I'm not sure if that's totally necessary, but I did it to try to avoid fraying as much as possible.

Step 4

Trace and cut out each letter of the alphabet.  Make sure you use a fabric pen that will disappear when it gets wet!  Also, be sure to trace the reverse of each letter.  This didn't take quite as long as I thought it would - it helps if you have something good to watch or listen to.

Step 5

Hang your letters up where you want them to go.  I'm really glad I did this because it helped a lot with the spacing.  I used masking tape, but that did pull some threads loose when I pulled it off.  Double sided tape might be better.

Step 6

Make your corn starch mixture!  I used the recipe from one of those sites I mentioned earlier, but I only made 1/4 as much so I didn't have a ton left over.

1 Tb corn starch

2 Tb cold water

Mix together, then add 1 C boiling water and mix

Step 7

Paint the letters with the corn starch mixture and put them on the wall!  I put the corn starch in a cup and just used an old paint brush.  I got the letters completely wet on the back and then spread them out on the wall.  It was really easy!  Also, if you mess up, you can just peel them off and try again.

Ta-da!

close up

Update:  Over 4 months have passed and the letters still look just as good as the day I put them up.  Also, my daughter loves them!

Projects, projects!

I don't know if it's pregnancy hormones or what, but lately I have been making one thing after another.  My motivation tends to come in spurts and I doubt this will last for more than a few weeks, but I'm pretty happy with the stuff I've made!

New nursing cover

I made one before Eleanor was born that I used with her, but I never really liked it.  And I think I paid $2.15 for this fabric, so that's not too bad!

The majority of boy clothes that I see in stores don't excite me, so I figured I might as well make some of my own!

Baby boys + ties make me laugh!

Go Clemson Tigers!

32 weeks, 6 days