Pregnancy: 31 Week Update

How far along? 31 Weeks

Size of Baby:  Coconut (3.5lb!!!)

Weight Gain: We all know the answer to that from last week....so let's not talk about it again until next week, shall we? 

Nursery: It is coming together!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I'm so excited. 

This week I ordered the monitor as our item of the week. Only a few things left on the list! 

I did add a white noise machine to the list, however. After some research, I picked this one: 

The humidifier I picked that we've ended up using in LW's room bc his kicked the bucket isn't as noisy as our previous humidifier. I really like it (once I painted over the nightlight which was actually like EXTREMELY BRIGHT HEADLIGHT) because it has great output, is small and lasts all night long on one tank, but I specifically remember needing white noise for LW in his newborn days, and really until recently we had the really noisy humidifier in his room that buffered out sounds. This is the humidifier we have now: 

So since the new humidifier is so quiet, I decided a white noise machine is a good thing to have. For LW we used an old iPhone in a docking station with a free white noise app. Problem with that was the home button on that iPhone didn't work consistently, and if I forgot (in my sleep-deprived state) and hit "play" on the docking station, Carrie Underwood would start BLASTING through the speakers at the volume we had been playing soothing waves sounds previously. 

That made for plenty of panicked mommy moments, LW jumping awake, and a lot of frustration. So, I'm not doing that again. $42 will be well-spent on that little noise maker machine. It's gotten great reviews. 

Movement: This little dude is a WILD MAN. He's moving around so much lately! It's really fun. I feel like he's very long because I already always feel him very low in my pelvis while simultaneously feeling him up at my rib cage. I have a feeling my dreams of a baby under 8lb may just be that....dreams :)

Symptoms: Well, this is where it gets interesting. Thursday afternoon LW and I visited my dad in the hospital (he just had both knees replaced) and I got stuck in traffic on my way home. I had to use the bathroom REALLY BADLY by the time I finally arrived to my door and had been contracting from the need to use the bathroom (or so I thought). Turns out the contractions didn't stop once I "emptied my tank" and continued fairly aggressively for over an hour.

I contacted my midwife and made a plan on what to do if they continued but thankfully after a lot of water, sitting with my feet up and completely relaxing 100%, the contractions slowed and eventually stopped.

That said, we're considering Mo a bit of a flight risk so I'll be taking it easy more often than not the remaining 8 weeks....as much as I can possibly stand to do so.

Also, I have SO MANY BRAXTON HICKS lately! It's like my uterus doesn't realize it's done this before and thinks it needs to practice. Earth-to-uterus: YOU GOT THIS. CALM YO'SELF.

I've had a little heartburn this week, but nothing crazy (thankfully). My back hurts now and then. I'm tired. You know...third trimester woes.

Cravings: I think it's probably just residual from Easter, but CHOCOLATE THE MINUTE LW GOES TO BED. As much as possible, get it in my belly. Just thinking about it right now I think I need to bite the ears off of a bunny.

Looking forward to: Getting the final items done in the nursery. I have a craft list of things I want to do and between that, freelance work (blessed!), Jamberry, What I Feed My Kid, housework, LW, sewing ring slings, and oh, trying to "relax" I don't know how I'll do it all!!! One day at a time, I guess :)

Things I can't stop thinking about: Nothing, really. I'm just trying to take it one day at a time and get all of my tasks done on my various lists as I go. 

Read More

Autism Awareness Month

UPDATE: Jamberry launched a BRAND NEW Autism Awareness wrap for 2015 TODAY!!! It's GORGEOUS! 

Autism Awareness: Jamberry donates $2.00 for every sheet of charity nail wraps purchased to the Autism Society of America. 

I'm excited to launch a new section in my Jamberry business - fundraisers!

This month I will have a party open all month in support of Autism Awareness. A portion of all party proceeds will go straight to the Autism Society of America.

Want free tax and shipping? I have selected seven adorable wraps that look gorgeous together and if you submit your order using this form I will cover your tax AND shipping, all month!

Do you have a charity or organization you'd like to raise money for? I would love to help you support that mission through Jamberry! Email me and we can make it happen.

Don't have a charity to support but want to earn free wraps? Every ten wraps sold in a party earns the hostess a FREE sheet, so let's talk if you'd like to start earning Pinterest-worthy nails for free!

These are a few of my favorite combos of my featured wraps for April:

All images sourced from Instagram using the official Jamberry hashtags (#autismawarenessjn, #prepschooljn, #puppylovejn, #sunnylotusjn)

What charity would you like to help support?

Read More

A Wild Weekend

The month of November has F-L-O-W-N!!!! Is it just me!? I don't think it is.

Hubs asked me last night while I was writing thank you cards to my Jamberry customers why I hadn't blogged and I said I guess I'm just not inspired enough to write right now.

He said "If this week wasn't something to blog about...then I don't know what is." Let me recap:

Thursday night: LW woke at 8:45 vomiting kielbasa EVERYWHERE. Hubs and I rush in, I handle LW, Hubs handles bedding/vomit/carpet and within 25 minutes, LW is back to sleep and Hubs and I can go downstairs.
9:30 Princess starts whining and acting up...sniffing ferociously at the basement door. I said "She has something....no....there is something ALIVE under that door that she has trapped there". Hubs goes to investigate. A mouse starts hopping down the stairs. Hubs gets his "mouse catcher" (a box from new blinds and a broom) and escorts the mouse to the far side of our property.
9:35 Princess still losing her mind... I say "Can you just go down there with her and see if there are more...?" Hubs opens the door and P runs to the bottom of the stairs and into LW's play area. Where Hubs finds another mouse. This time dead, and exploded...all over LW's toys. ACK. Hubs cleans up.
9:45 Princess AGAIN losing her mind and I'm about to lose mine. She's following something that appears to be in the ceiling and as I'm sufficiently getting more and more creeped out I look, and there is a wasp on the wall – what she was following. A wasp. In Chicago. In NOVEMBER. ?!!?! Hubs kills and disposes of wasp.
11:30 Hubs and I are finally nestling into bed, drifting off to sleep and I hear that horrible, terrible, awful sound, as clear as day. LW puking. Again. Repeat steps from earlier, this time even FASTER since we were expecting it. Clean up, bathe toddler, new jammies, clean sheets, scrub carpet, new blankets, rock, rock, snuggle snuggle, out like a light. 15 minutes. Can I just reiterate how horrible the smell of vomited kielbasa is? UGH. Really horrible.

Finally, we were able to go to sleep Thursday evening. Friday Hubs was off work so he ran all of our family errands while I worked. Friday evening we moved a family heirloom from my in-laws over to our house. A 1915 Victrola. We don't have many things in our new house yet, but we are acquiring cool things!

Friday night we designed and ordered our Christmas card. CHRISTMAS!! My FAVORITE TIME OF YEAR! Some of my friends have referred to me as a "real life Buddy the Elf" because I love Santa so much. And Christmas. And snow. I can't wait to share our card with you! But, it's no fair showing you before it mails ;) Plus, it's not even Thanksgiving. I have some respect, you know.

Saturday morning I woke up feeling like it was Christmas because it was the Old Navy cardholders Black Friday Sale. WAHOO!!!! I spent way more than I planned (shocker) but I FINALLY got some real pants that fit LW and I bought myself the most comfortable PJ pants on the planet. I've asked for 150 more pairs of them for Christmas.

I learned this weekend that Old Navy toddler 18-24m pants aren't as long as the "baby" 18-24 month pants. However, the toddler 18-24m pants have the zipper and button like real jeans, which helps TREMENDOUSLY in getting pants over a cloth booty. Plus, the toddler jeans come in skinny and WOW are they cute. We love Project Pomona pants but for $8/pair at Old Navy, I couldn't resist giving their jeans a shot to try with his cloth bottom.

Saturday evening we had a church pot luck and worship rather than having worship on Sunday morning so I made our favorite brisket recipe.

I usually must let it slow cook 8-10 hours because this time I only did 6 and it wasn't as tender as I like. BUT, the brisket was gone in a flash and I used the leftover BBQ sauce to make sloppy joe's on Sunday. YUM! Waste not, want not :)

For Christmas this year we have already finished our shopping for LW because he is getting the most tremendous Christmas gift ever. A SWING SET! He'll have things to "open" also, but a family member of a close friend offered us a deal we couldn't refuse on this beauty. It may not look like much now, but I can't wait to look out the window and see LW and his pals playing on it for years to come.

Finally, Sunday. We didn't have church in the morning so the plan was to "sleep in". Which, originally we laughed at the thought. "Sleep in" with an 18 month old?! HA! Well.... we've recently moved LW into a toddler bed and the beauty of that is that instead of crying when he wakes up, he gets out of bed and (typically) knocks on his door to let us know he's awake. Sunday morning he unplugged his monitor and proceeded to cruise his room. For I'm not sure how long....Hubs and I lazily opened our eyes and started chatting at 8:45am and looked at the clock. "OH NO IT'S ALMOST NINE". I leapt out of bed and ran to LW's room to make sure he was okay and sure enough, he was twirling and dancing around his room, jolly as you please. He looked up at me like, "Oh, hey! You're up!"

LW and I had a 2nd birthday party in the afternoon for a friend from the old neighborhood at this SUPER fun play spot very close to our house. If you're in the NW burbs - check out Kids Club Party & Fun! Apparently they have Groupons often and it was a FUNNNNN two hours!!

I love giving gifts that aren't toys and take a little creativity to construct. For our birthday boy friend, I built a gift basket full of all organic and gluten-free snacks! Birthday Boy's mom has Celiac's so I know diet is really important to her for her son. I had a BLAST constructing it and with a World Market coupon, it kept the gift totally within my "birthday gift" budget.

For some people on our lists that seem to have "everything", a gift basket full of treats they may not splurge on normally is a really fun and inventive gift. Hubs and I love giving baskets full of wine, cheese, crackers and sausage to his dad for Christmas every year. And every year we have such a great time building them! Then all year long when we visit, we munch on the little treats from the basket.

What's your favorite creative gift to give?

Read More

Some Notes on Me Lately

Hi! I've been so busy lately I haven't been able to fill you in on much via blog - however I have been posting little nuggets on Instagram, so follow me there to stay in the loop! Here are some notes on my life lately:

I feel more at home in the new house than I have ever felt anywhere but my childhood home – actually, I feel more at home here now than I do at my childhood home. Maybe because Hubs grew up here and knows every finicky light switch, every creak in the floor and every stubborn door knob but maybe just because we know this is it. We've reached our final 'landing' place and we couldn't be happier. I absolutely love our new home.

Working full time from home with a toddler is hard. Like....HARD. But, every day I seem to find new tricks to make it a little better (like hiding grapes around the kitchen so I can work and he stays off my keyboard!). Toddlers are delicate because one day they hate watching TV, the next they will sit and watch a whole show. One day they love playing blocks and will stack/knock them down for an hour, the next they think blocks are stupid and cry if you suggest them to play with. I'm constantly changing and evolving as a mom just like LW is constantly changing and evolving as a boy! 

I have taken time for myself a lot lately because I have learned I really need it. One way is by putting new Jamberry Nails on every week. Last week I sported Midnight Celebration and this week I'm sporting Alphabet over Deep Sea (both discontinued). I feel so girly and fun when I have cute nails! It's like they belong on Pinterest all the time. I also got a massage this weekend. Whoa. 

Slowly but surely, Hubs and I have started to acquire pieces that will make this house 'our' style. For the first time ever we have matching bedside tables. I can't even begin to say how exciting THAT purchase was! Plus, at the same garage sale we scored a vintage, ornamental mirror for our entryway and a super cute bench for LW to sit at in our bedroom and look out the window, one of his favorite past times. I thought the blue color in the Greek key pattern on the bench would be close to the blue on our walls and it is nearly the exact shade. All four of these items (two tables, mirror and bench) were $40. We win! 

Oh, and window treatments!!! I scoured Bed, Bath & Beyond this weekend and came up with a winning combination that won't break the bank. I found the rod ($6) and valance ($4 on clearance) plus bought a set of honeycomb cordless blinds that are regularly $39.99 on clearance for $16.99 and I used a $5 coupon....That would mean I just dressed that whole window for roughly $22. Bang. I'll post another pic once Hubs hangs the blinds and when I know the size works, I will be going back to buy them hopefully for the all other windows we need blinds on! I knew I was hoarding those $5 coupons for a reason. 

As more pieces of the home come together, I will share more photos. For now...don't hold your breath for a "home tour" like the one on the old house because I just don't know if we will ever be "done" decorating this house! 

And, if any of you are in the Chicagoland area or know someone house hunting in the Northwest Suburbs of Chicago....please SHARE OUR HOUSE THAT IS FOR SALE. THAT is the real home-tour to see ;) 

In the coming weeks I hope to at least decorate the front of our home with festive fall items. Bales of straw, pumpkins, gourds, mums and the like. I follow John Colaneri on Instagram and not only do I want every beautiful accent in his home to be in my home, this weekend he and his wife decorated their front steps. Swoon! 

Here are a few other front steps that I love for fall...Happy Decorating! 

Read More

Jamberry!

News update: I am now an Independent Consultant for Jamberry! 

I got sick of having to schedule my manicures and pedicures around when I had three hours to leave the house. Plus, with dry time it meant I wouldn't be able to clean anything up or do a dish for an entire day...so that meant going out to eat to prevent dishes from piling up and frankly I'd had enough! When I discovered Jamberry Nail Wraps my idea of mani/pedis was forever changed. Now I can give myself a mani/pedi in minutes with no dry time! Check out all the fun patterns and learn all about Jamberry on my official Jamberry website: http://jessbedsole.jamberrynails.net/ 

If you'd like to host a party, reach out to me! I would love to help you earn free nail wraps and other great hostess rewards. Online or in-home, Jamberry Parties are fun for all the ladies in your life! 

Read More