Prenatal: 32 weeks

This morning we had our first prenatal visit with our new OB... [read more]

Huntsville vs. Nashville = The Same Thing

Well, we've moved! We're now in our new apartment, and our beautiful townhouse is empty and ready for new residents.

The weeks leading up to the actual move weren't too stressful, in hindsight, mostly because we kept listening to each other's nonsense that there wasn't as much to pack as it looked and it wouldn't take much time, so we didn't do nearly enough packing.

The two weekends of moving were nightmares: stressful and hectic. But we got everything here. (Actually, that's not entirely true. There's a hanging storage rack, a workbench, scrap wood, and cans of paint in the townhouse garage. The cans of paint we were planning on leaving behind (they go with the house), but the other stuff we had hoped to get rid off.)

Then we had a few short days to try to unpack. They weren't quite as comfortable as those pre-moving weeks, nor as stressful as the actual move itself. We got things accomplished, but, of course, not nearly as much as would have been nice.

Now C has started work and it's just Z and me here. We're in a different place, our stuff is all in boxes (and therefore impossible to find), but it's the same as it was before all this "adventure": we're bored to tears, stuck in the houseapartment with nowhere to go, and I hate making lunch. Sure, I get work done. I've organized our bathroom and the laundry room, the kitchen's coming along, we can eat at the table and sit on the couch, and most of C's clothes are unpacked, but I don't look forward to doing that stuff. I don't wake up and think "Yay! Another day of figuring out where to stick all the stuff that was previously neatly hidden away in closets!" Have I mentioned that this apartment doesn't have enough closets? It's only 200 square feet smaller than our townhouse, and it was all closet space.

This post is sounding really negative. I don't mean it to be. I'm trying to set up what I really wanted to blog about. The point is that although I LOVE being home with Z, I don't really like being home. I'm tired of not having anywhere to go. There's a little playground near the mailboxes that we've visited a couple times, but it's been raining and the ground is soaked, so that was out today, along with even walking to the mailbox. C's work is really close, so I could drop him off on some days and get the car, but then the question is, where would we GO? I need to join a Meetup group and get involved with MOPS again. But even with those activities, it'll be just like it was in Nashville, and I wasn't entirely happy. Not that being happy is everything! I realize that. But maybe I need to shake things up... Another thing that's been in the back of my mind stems from a post I read on The Happiest Mom.

Have I mentioned my RSS reader before? I'm sure I have. It's how I keep up with all the blogs I read. I think I have around 20 now. They get downloaded to my phone and I read them when I have a moment to myself. I don't have to turn the computer on, and I can even read them when I'm out and about with Z. One of the blogs I read is The Happiest Mom. A recent post was titled "the type of mom you thought you were -vs- the type of mom you are" In the post, the author talks about discovering that she was happier as a mom when she had a job. I recommend you read the post, because it was an excellent post (as they all are) and it will help explain where I'm coming from with this post.

I sent an email this morning to just about every person in my address book with our new mailing address. One of the replies I got was from SR who is an AuPair Director (AD). She said they're looking for an AD in my area, and would I be interested? I know she's at home with her kids, which means it's a compatible position, so I told her I was interested and then asked about 5 million questions about it. I don't know if she's replied yet because my Blogger login is a different Google account than my gmail login because Good Grief you don't want to know! So after I post this, I'll log back into gmail and see what she's sent me.

But am I crazy for even thinking about it? We've just moved to a brand new area, don't know anyone here. We're still living out of boxes (and will be for the next month at the rate we're going) and have a baby due in November. How can I think of taking on the responsibilities of a JOB???

We (C and I) have learned that I'm not very good at the "self-employed" thing. I've always said that I work best under pressure. What that means is that I'm a procrastinator. I don't get things done until someone else is breathing down my neck. Occasionally that someone else is me, but only rarely (like when company's coming and I finally vacuum the cobwebs in the corners, or we're moving and I finally scrub the paint drips out of the bathroom sink). That's why I thrived at Kroll (where I worked full time for about a year and part time for another year) and floundered with Flair (the home business C and I tried to make a go of; the reason I was part time at Kroll).

So, what I want is something to look forward to doing, that I can do from home, around nap schedules (mine included!), yet has some structure, someone to report to, someone looking over my shoulder once in a while. Cutco didn't work for me, but maybe this AuPairCare opportunity will. I don't know. I'm intrigued. I want to do something. I'd love to bring in just a little extra income and relieve some pressure on the budget. I just hope I'm not getting ahead of myself and biting off more than I can chew. Well, all I've done at this point is ask for more information. We'll see what SR says, I'll talk to C, I'll probably talk to my mom about it too. But I tell ya, I'm excited at the prospect!

Townhouse vs. Apartment

So we decided on an apartment in Huntsville. We already have a truck rented and were planning on moving in on Monday, but we chose the one apartment complex with an office that will be closed on Labor Day. But they were able to process our paperwork quickly enough and we signed everything yesterday. Yes, that means we're paying rent for 4 days before we actually move in, but so be it.

Moving into a smaller place really made us evaluate what's important to us in our home! This is what we currently have:

It's over 1500 square feet (although the tax record shows 1618 so that's how it's listed, but it's wrong) and we bought the place new. Because we bought it (as opposed to renting), we've been able to plant a garden, landscape the front, paint walls, etc. Because it was new, we were able to choose the flooring, the colors, have the shower heads raised, and other little things that I can't even remember now. All that goes away when we move into an apartment.

This is what we will be living in for the next year:

It's just over 1300 square feet, so actually it's not too much smaller that our current home. The most striking similarity between the two is the large, open kitchen and the great room. We like the open feeling of not having walls in the "common" living areas. We're not really big fans of hallways. Most of the apartments we walked through last Wednesday seemed so small and dark, and so much wasted space used up in hallways! This one appealed to us so much because of the openness. But we're giving up a patio. There's not even an option for a patio/balcony with the floorplan at this complex. Not sure why. Seems like it would have been easy to put a patio/balcony to the right of the solarium, under the office. We're sad to not even be able to grow tomatoes in containers. We are going to grow some herbs, since they don't need to be pollinated, but that's about all we can do.

(Speaking of tomatoes, we didn't plant any this year because we weren't sure when we were going to move, but one came up from last year. We let it grow, of course. Turns out to produce large yellow tomatoes, a variety that never produced well last year! Funny how that happens. We also have a couple lettuces and turnips that we weren't expecting, and there's a basil plant that somehow came from our neighbor's garden. Do we blame the cats?)

Another feature we're going to sorely miss is the amount of closet space. In our townhome, we have a large storage space under the stairs, two closets in the master bedroom, not to mention an entire one car garage! This apartment has very little closet space in comparison. Although all three rooms DO have walk-in closets! But we're expecting to fill most of the office closet (and some of the office) with most of the stuff from under the stairs and in the garage. I'll be able to put some things in Zachary's closet, but I do want the closets in the bedrooms to be usable, not just full of boxes and such. Because we chose an apartment with (essentially) three bedrooms, we're planning on putting everything in the apartment and not renting a storage unit. If we had chosen a two-bedroom plan, we would not have had the space to put it all in the apartment! As it is, I'm a little concerned whether it will all fit. And it may all fit just fine, but it'll feel like we're living in a storage shed! I'd really like to contain the storage to one area so we can enjoy tidiness in the rest of the apartment. We'll see how that goes. If it turns out that we need to put boxes in our room or the living room, I'm going to insist on buying fabric and turning the boxes into tables!

So these next two days we're supposed to get EVERYTHING packed up, then friends are coming over after church on Sunday to get it all in the truck, then we drive down on Monday, unload (we've hired a couple guys for 2 hours), and that's it!

Pray that we don't bite each other's heads off as the stress builds, and that Z will get some good naps these next two days, since for the last three he's only been able to snag naps in the car, poor thing.

Bloggity Blog Blog

First off, a question. Would you rather read a post on a single topic, that neatly falls under a clever title, and that is, therefore, easy to comment on, or would you rather read a (longer) post that jumps around, covers multiple topics, and may or may not have a title that makes sense?

I assumed that blog posts were supposed to be on a single topic. Isn't that why there's a title bar at the top? Like reading a story. But a couple of the blogs I read regularly (particularly this one and this one) don't always post on a single topic (in fact, Julia's posts are rarely on a single topic) and they're fun to read. I find that I hardly comment anyway, so that doesn't change anything. (I don't read the comments either, but I'm a little curious as to whether commenters choose a single item to comment on or comment on multiple. As the auther of the post, I would want them to comment on EVERYTHING, but that's just silly).

So almost all of my posts were always on a single topic. If I had multiple topics to blog about, I'd write mulitple posts and space out their publishing. But that doesn't seem to be working for me anymore now that I don't get on the computer as much anymore. How long has it been since my last post? And you can imagine, I have tons of things I've been wanting to blog about! So my posts in the future may become more of the hodge podge that the last one was.

Anyway, it's closing in on 7am and that little boy is already awake. Why doesn't he sleep till 7?? You may have noticed that I haven't been calling him "LB" on here as much. I haven't been calling him Little Bug much of late. And in my twitter feed, I've found it's easier to just use his first initial, since the feed also updates my Facebook status, so my friends know who I'm talking about. So "LB" is now Z on here, and the same goes for "DH" who is now C.

Speaking of C, yesterday was his last day at Vanderbilt!! It's weird to think that he'll probably never work there again. He said Julie (his advisor) was getting nostalgic as the day wore on, but that he wasn't, lol. Two weeks from today he'll start working at his new job (his first "real world" job). In the meantime we have to pack up, move, and paint the house. Well, we don't HAVE to paint the house, but we'd like to. We're taking it off the market (I have GOT to remember to email the realtor!!) and renting it out.

Today is the fourth day in a row that I've gotten up early. Yay!! I've always loved sleeping in, but more often than not, doing so seems to kill the whole day. Getting some time to myself in the morning makes such a difference! I've started working through a Bible study book called The Busy Mom's Guide to Bible Study, so that helps motivate me to get out of bed (that, and the smell of coffee brewing, mmmm).

While I'm getting up early to study God's word, C gets up early to play computer games. Should I be comparing us like that? Probably not. I guess whatever motivates you to get up, right? 'Course, I KNOW he has headphones on and "can't" hear all that noise coming from the toddler's room, so I'll have to go rescue the poor thing soon.

Poor thing, hah! He can climb out of his crib now, without getting hurt. But he's only done it once. I knew he was awake, but wasn't ready to release him yet. Then things got quieter. I stood at the door and listened, and heard LEGOS. He doesn't usually have Legos in his crib... I peeked under the door, and sure enough! Cute little feet running around! But he hasn't done it since.

Oh! My reading experiment! It's been going okay. I still have a tendency to read at the expense of anything else. Mostly while Z's napping, which means I either have to get my work done while he's awake (which isn't always feasible) or vow to do it during the NEXT nap. I have now read 3 of Fannie Flagg's books: Welcome to the World, Baby Girl, Can't Wait to Get to Heaven, and Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe. I liked the first one, didn't like the second one so much, and enjoyed the third one (but I'd already seen the movie.) But they're quick and fun to read. The two I have right now aren't due back to the library until the 19th, and I've already finished them, lol. I wanted to read them before we moved, and now I'm wondering if we still have time for me to pick up a couple more....

My crochet projects are also going well. But I can't tell you too much about them because they're gifts and although the recipients don't read this blog, you never know.

I'm in my third trimester now. The uncomfortable trimester. Baby's getting heavier, and he's so low, there's a lot of pressure down there. Sitting is comfortable, standing's not too bad, but switching between the two is hard! Especially standing up! And the tail bone pressure hasn't really gone away. I did get a support belt, and it does actually make a difference, but not as much as I would have liked. And my belly itches. Ooh does it itch!! I remember this with Z too. Somewhere in my third trimester with him, I had awful, red, itchy bumps. It was miserable. They'd actually gone away by the time he was born, but I'm not looking forward to them again! Maybe Mary Anne will have a suggestion for me today.

Speaking of today, I have a really busy schedule, which is totally unusual! I have chiropractor this morning, Mary Anne this afternoon, and then a friend and I are getting Mary Kay facials this evening. (Hey, want to guess whether Z is coming with me or not? I'll give you one guess...)

Well, the sun's up, Z's awake, and I'm getting hungry, so I guess I'm about done. I would say something about trying to post more regularly, but we're moving, so I may not post at all until we're in our new place. Am I looking forward to moving? Um, parts of it. I'm looking forward to reorganizing some things and rearranging furniture (I love rearranging furniture!), but I'm sad to move out of this (town)house (since we're moving into a 2 bedroom apartment :( ) and I'm sad to move away from our friends, our church... But it's too far to commute and there's no job here, so there's no point in dwelling on it!