So I’ve reached the 35 week mark.

It’s weird, I didn’t really feel like I grew that much these past 5 weeks, but when I saw this picture I had a holy s#@* moment. I had no clue my stomach was protruding that far.

I decided not to put my hand over the center of my belly like I usually do so that my hand didn’t take away from the belly. I also decided to take a bonus frontal view this time, since who knows.. this may be the last time!

It’s crazy to think that I’m almost done. So many people now ask me if I’ve had enough… the answer is yes and no. I wouldn’t say I’ve had a rough time, so I don’t feel like I’m at my breaking point yet. I also have a ton of things to do before the baby comes. I know everyone says you’re never fully ready, but I’m sure those people have at least taken their car seats out of the box and have a closet for their baby. I’ve been insanely busy at work and drained on the weekends (which have also been busy), so in my fantasy world I would like to sit in a glider and read some baby books, knowing that everything is settled and mostly put away. I know there’s a fat chance of that happening at this point, but hey, I can dream.

I would like my baby here, that is one reason I’d like this process to speed up. Maybe once I start to waddle I’ll say I’ve had enough 🙂

I’m seriously amazed at how much my body has grown in the past 15 weeks or so. I can’t imagine what a 40 week picture would look like?

My brain hurts today and my to-do list is massive. We have loads of things in the works for the nursery, but nothing is completed for after pictures and stories. So! A random post of what’s going on it is!

First there are the things we’ve sort of done, or rather, started…

1. Buy dresser

(via Ikea)

Two weekends ago we bought a Hemnes dresser from Ikea. Last weekend, Mike started putting it together and did everything but the drawers. I’ll also have to share how we decided on this dresser and my little email exchange with Ikea.

2. Buy mattress

(via Naturepedic)

We picked up a Naturepedic crib mattress since I wanted to give it a chance to air out before the baby comes.

3. Buy changing pad

(via Buy Buy Baby)

We also picked up a Naturepedic changing pad. Both the pad and the mattress were chosen for their non-toxic, safer, compositions. But they’re both still in their packaging at the moment.

In the very near future (like maybe this weekend), we plan to…

1. Stencil the closet

I have a polka dot stencil waiting to take over this closet! I know it won’t take me long, but my energy levels depend on the day. I think taking a break from painting for a couple of weeks should be sufficient 🙂

3. Install Allen + Roth closet system

(via Lowe’s)

We hope to pick this up this weekend so that whenever we’re ready to get it installed, we have it on hand. I went through all of the baby’s things and I’m itching to put it all away somewhere!

3. Install giraffe sconces

(via Macy’s)

Yes, our first nursery purchase is still in the plans! That is, as long as we think they would be okay with the dresser once that’s in position. Hopefully this weekend will tell and all of the electrical won’t be too tricky.

Then there are the things we need to do somewhere in the future….

1. Buy glider…the glider that STILL has not gone on sale. I’m losing my patience.

(via Babies R Us)

2. Make some curtains out of the 10 yards of chevron fabric we bought to complete either one of our color schemes…

3. Find a bookcase, which depends on how much space we have after all major pieces are in the room

4. Add some wall art! I admittedly don’t have any concrete plans for this. I have to see how everything looks, since the room gets smaller with each piece added. Then I can decide if I want to add a canvas, gallery wall, paper laterns… I’m not sure!

That’s not too much for 5 weeks, right? RIGHT?!?

::blows into paper bag::

I mentioned last week that we desperately needed some mulch. Okay, I’ve been mentioning for the past year that we desperately needed some mulch. After all, our front yard was looking like this…

And this…

So last week, Mike drove around looking for mulch places. We actually did this last year, since the first year that we moved in we used bags of mulch in the middle of July and it was aw.ful. It took a lot of bags and many weekends in 90 degree weather, so we wanted to get some yards of mulch delivered. The problem we came across last year was that there was no landscaping supply place close enough to our house to qualify for free delivery. Every single place wanted $50 to deliver, so we finally decided to suck it up. Unless we wanted to pull weeds constantly like we did last year (uhhh no thanks), we didn’t have too much of a choice.

Mike ordered 3 yards of dark brown mulch, which was delivered at 8am this morning.

He worked at putting the mulch down all day and by the time I got home, the pile looked like this.

The 3 yards we ordered was just enough to cover everything out front in a nice, thick layer.

Not only did Mike slave over a hot stove pile of mulch all day, but he told me he planned to surprise me by planting some new flowers. Unfortunately, he ran out of steam, but I am just happy to finally have some mulch!

I would still like to add some things to our landscaping, especially on this side.

We added those tiny little daylilies here last year, but the rest of the bushes are near death. We also need to add some plants to the area in front of the garage where we pulled up those flat fern things that I hated at the end of last season.

Overall though, at least we’re no longer at a messy point. I just wanted to at least be able to maintain what we have after the baby comes. Not having to pull weeds is a major plus!

Keep it coming spring, we need some more blooms like this…

Usually the only deer I post about are those that live in our backyard (who seem to have returned in the past few weeks). Mike and I spent a good 20 minutes yesterday sitting together in front of our sliding glass door watching the deer. We’re like old people… but now we’re old people with a ride on lawn mower 🙂

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago how we began our search for a ride on mower. Previously, we had been paying a service $40 per cut to mow our grass. This was supposed to be a temporary solution when we moved in and our grass grew to abandoned house status because we didn’t want to buy a mower. Last year we were so busy that we never cancelled the service and figured we’d just keep it. This year we cancelled it super early, then it got warm and we were like oh crap, we’re going to need to cut this grass soon. Since Mike left his full-time gig at Merrill Lynch to work on his own full-time gig at SongMeanings, we figured he’d have a little more time this year.

We started our search at Lowe’s where some nice young guy (okay, now I really sound like an old person but he looked like a 20 year old) gave us a nice, honest run down of mowers. Our requirements were simple… 1) something suited for a 1/2 acre of land 2) automatic instead of manual 3) cheap as possible. We also wanted something that would last a very long time and that wouldn’t be difficult to maintain. At Lowe’s the mowers started at $1000 for a manual and went up in price all the way to the thousands. The first automatic mowers started at about $1499.

There is a John Deere store very close to our house so we decided to check it out on Saturday. The man there was also very nice and very honest and gave us a run down of all of their mowers. The one we’d been thinking of was the D110, their smallest non-manual mower.

(via John Deere)

The nice sales man answered our questions about maintenance, storage and whether or not this was too much for our property. The good thing about John Deere is that the store is literally down the street from us, so any problems we may have with the mower we can bring it into them. He assured us that any other maintenance was easy enough to do on our own. He then also told us that they couldn’t match the deals they run at Lowe’s or Home Depot (okay we asked him, he didn’t offer this info out of the blue). None the less, we appreciated his honesty.

After some online stalking, I knew that Home Depot was running a deal where you receive a free dump cart with the purchase of a John Deere mower (a $199 value).

 (via Home Depot)

Plus if we opened a credit card we could receive 0% financing for 2 years and the mower would be delivered by a John Deere representative who would show us how to use everything. The price of the D110 was otherwise the same at Lowe’s, Home Depot and the John Deere store. So we headed to Home Depot!

We then looked around at some of their other brands (Cub Cadet and Ariens) and debated whether the free dump cart was worth the extra $200 or so in price. As we stood there debating, one random guy overheard us and told us to go with the John Deere. He said he owned a Cub Cadet before and hated it and that John Deere is, well, John Deere for a reason. We thanked him and went about our discussion. Then 5 minutes later another customer came by to look at a bagger who told us he had a John Deere and loved it. That was two completely random happy customers in a matter of minutes, so we decided to go with the Deere.

At first we were going to go with the 10% off promotion for new Home Depot card holders, but we learned that John Deere products weren’t eligible. Whaaamp whammmp. But that was okay because we were still able to get 24 months of 0% financing, which gives us a chance to pay for this bad boy with less pressure, as we have so many other expenses going on. We figure if we put the money we were using for each cut with the lawn service towards paying off the mower, we should be set.

Our new mower and dump cart will be delivered tomorrow. Once I am no longer pregnant, you bet I’ll be looking like this….

Image not to scale.

(original image from John Deere)

This weekend Mike and I came to a sad realization– our family room carpet has to go.

This was not a happy decision because a) I’ve always wanted to keep our sunken family room carpeted and b) the timing is god awful.

It’s no secret that one of our cats, Darwin, has been battling renal lymphoma. In January, he successfully completed 6 months of chemotherapy and was declared to be in remission. This was an absolute miracle considering that the type of cancer he had was especially deadly and the oncologist had never seen a cat make it through a full course of chemo. Darwin did and continues to thrive, despite the fact that he was in such bad shape at one point that the oncologist suggested we stop treatment. We begged for just another week or two of treatments and it worked. We could not be prouder of him and of ourselves– for making the tough decisions we had to make, standing up for what we felt was right in our hearts and never giving up on him.

The downside to this happy story is that Darwin will forever have damaged kidneys. His kidney function did improve with chemo, which is how he is still alive today, but he is still in partial kidney failure. And with that comes the taboo pet owner topic of… accidents.

Darwin spared our family room carpet for months. We replaced our carpeting upstairs and considered ourselves lucky that he never went on our family room carpet. Anyone that has experienced cat accidents knows that they are extremely, extremely hard to stop once they start. Even if you cannot smell cat pee, they can and they continue to reuse certain spots.

Somewhere within the past few months, it finally happened in the family room. Our Bissell Spot Bot and Nature’s Miracle are our best friends. We even have a full sized Hoover carpet shampooer that we use often. While not ideal, we felt like we were managing the issue. One good thing (which is actually a very bad thing) is that Darwin’s pee is not very concentrated because his kidneys aren’t fully functioning. We could get rid of any smell rather easily, at least what us humans can smell. He generally stuck to one small area of the room, in front of our entertainment center (ps- this is an old picture with our old tv with wire hanging…)

After running some additional tests at the vet, we determined that Darwin’s family room issues are mostly behavioral at this point. It’s not that he’s not making it to the litter box in time, it’s that he thinks it’s actually okay to go on the rug since he’s had accidents there in the past. The past several weeks we’ve tried “potty training” him, since we can tell when he has to go. He only uses the family room when Mike and I are watching tv, so we watched him like a hawk. Any sign he had to go and we jumped up, walked him to the litter box and put him in there. If he didn’t go, we kept walking him back. Then we noticed something even stranger– he would only go in the litter box if I personally walked him there. So here I am, super pregnant and jumping up several times at night to walk my cat to the litter box and stand there until he went. Since I don’t sleep well at this point, sometimes I fall asleep on the couch and if he was with me, I’d have to jump up at odd hours in the middle of the night to walk him to the litter box. Needless to say, this method wasn’t fool proof and we still ended up with a few accidents when we weren’t vigilant.

I declared this past weekend as “Re-Potty Train Darwin” weekend. We planned to shampoo the whole carpet and use one of our new baby gates to discourage him from getting into the family room. Yes, we know that cats can jump, but poor Darwin also has a neurological disorder that makes him not the greatest jumper. Any obstacle we could use would help. We planned to have the carpet professionally cleaned before the baby comes to solve any remaining issues.

Well, plan backfired. We had twelve accidents this weekend. TWELVE.

I never wanted to get rid of our carpet, even up until a few days ago I was trying to come up with solutions to save it or be able to get a new one. I didn’t want to do hardwood and we tried to think of other materials we could use that would compliment our existing hardwood, but add some contrast and be pet/baby friendly. I didn’t want to lose this battle. Finally a few nights ago I looked at Mike and told him we should just do the hardwood.

We’ve been stressing over the constant accidents and carpet shampooing, worrying about the baby having a safe and clean place to play and embarrassed that we always have Spot Bot circles on our rug. We just need to be done with it and I have to be okay with that. These things happen and it is no one’s fault. In fact, we are lucky that he is still around and still so incredibly happy.

The problem is that hardwood is expensive and was no where near in our upcoming plans. We still have to buy things for the baby’s room, planned to replace the playroom carpet and there’s the issue of that mower we need. But this is important and urgent. We want to have it done before the baby comes to save our time and energy and also to keep this place as clean as possible. I can’t imagine I’d be able to feed the baby AND stalk Darwin for signs of a pee-pee dance in the middle of the night. We have savings for times like this, but I’ve just trained myself to never touch it. It took me a little while to be okay with using some of it to save our sanity. I mean, that’s what it’s there for.

We did consider trying to install the floors ourselves to save money. John from Our Home From Scratch happens to live in our area, has the same flooring and offered us his nailer. Oh and his floor plan is nearly identical to ours, so we have a nice visual of what our family room will look like with new floors!

(via Our Home From Scratch)

Because of our time constraints, my inability to help and the fact that we’ve never done this before, we don’t think it’s a good idea to take this on ourselves. What would take someone else hours would take us days, which we don’t have too many of lately.

We plan to pick up a small, inexpensive area rug for now that the baby can play on while we’re in the family room. We plan to put it away when we’re done with it. Maybe someday we’ll get a nice, big area rug to warm up this room, but we try not to think that far ahead. Being able to get an area rug may mean that Darwin is no longer with us, which we don’t want to think of.

After all, things are easily replaced, lives are not.