Things I have learned in the past month...

My little Mr. celebrated 1 month this week - time flies I tell you, time flies.

In the past month...well really in the first week of Owen's life I realized some lessons:

You actually don't have time to have a shower. When I heard this about new mothers I would always think Really?! You can't just put the baby in a bouncy chair outside the bathroom and shower? Well you can, but when they are really young they will be wailing before you even set them down and you can't let a one-week old "cry it out". Water savings here we come.

People say the first two weeks are the hardest. Yes, they are hard - you have no clue what is going on, but there's nothing magic about the 2-week mark. Week 3 and 4 (and probably many more to come) are just as hard! We are settling into our days, but what has helped me the most is the appreciation that a "schedule" is not attainable right now. For a Type A like me this was / is a really hard thing to adjust to - feeding and sleeping patterns change daily and you just have to role with the punches (thank god for Canada's long mat leaves).

Sleep when the baby sleeps - this is also advice countless people will give. I couldn't understand how you can sleep when the baby sleeps considering you have to shower, eat, and maybe talk to your partner at SOME point. This has gotten a bit easier in that I have realized that if I rest while the baby sleeps - even if he wants to be held - I can rest with him on my chest or in my arms and still get some rejuvination.

Even on the tough days the little one has more cuteness than you know what to do with. Frowns, tears, and wailing can be all be the cutest things you've ever seen...no wonder parents will do anything for their children...they suck you in from day one :) Countless minutes are spent staring at that little face - thinking of how the face will change, and how it will stay the same as the baby grows up. 

And my final lesson learned...a baby demonstrates the strength of your relationship - when your partner is there to give you a break after a tough day, when he makes dinners, cleans up, does the dishwasher, laundry, cleaning all without a comment you realize how good you have it, then you see him with the baby...melt.

I will be back at some point with nursery details and other fun stuff...until then, Happy Fall :)

Introducing #babygroupie: Owen

I've had a really really good (and cute) reason for my most recent blogging absence...

We had a baby boy! Everything is going well, Owen is growing and happy, we are learning and learning and learning and trying to figure him out :) A few other things happened the week Owen was born - we had our contractor in doing our tiling and baseboards (yes, he was the first person outside the hospital to meet our son...), and we celebrated our 4th wedding anniversary on Day 3 of Owen's life.

I'll be back at some point with more on the nursery, our flooring project (finished!!), and other news!

Flooring Update

Well friends, I am still alive and well, and baby is still cozy in my belly :) I thought I would have tons of time for blogging since I finished work last Friday, but turns out that I've been cooking, cooking, nesting, cooking, nesting! Today is an exciting day though - install for our tiling and baseboards starts (which means no oven until the tiling is done...so blogging it is).

Here is what we are going with for baseboards and tile:

 6x24 tiles in a charcoal colour

This will have shoe moulding added (new term for me too...basically a finishing piece on the bottom)

Yes, the flooring was installed more than a month ago...but these baseboard / tiling people are B-U-S-Y. So we're hoping the guy we have coming in can do the job cleanly and quickly so we can have some more normal life before #BabyGroupie (leave it to my friend Lindsey at Recreated to come up with a hastag for my baby - Lindsey IS the one who talked me into joining Twitter after all!). I'll have a #babygroupie post coming up to update everyone, and will post the finished photos of our main floor (finally) when it's done!

Friday faves - What I'm wearing with my pregnant belly!

Happy Friday!

It has been another busy week...each week is ticking by closer to my due date at the end of September (I am 35 weeks right now...or 8 3/4 months...getting up there)! Some things have come together in the nursery but there are some tricky things to figure out (anyone know a good place to take a rug to be cleaned / de-oderized??) and a lot of other things to finish up.

I have been taking photos throughout my pregnancy and looking back the changes are amazing! I'll post a series of photos once I get them organized...until then here are some of my favourite outfits that I've been wearing to work during my pregnancy:

1. Tahari Dress, The Bay
2. H&M navy blazer, H&M Mama white t-shirt; Mossimo striped skirt (Target)
3. Merona Floral dress (Target)

All of these outfits (except the white t-shirt) are non-maternity items. I have found if I go up a size or two and the cut is right I can generally wear whatever I want for stretchy skirts and dresses (which is amazing). I was also lucky enough for a great friend to give me a huge lot of maternity and non-maternity clothes that I can wear to supplement my own finds above. Here's another fun Target mint and gray maternity tshirt (and a shot of my shower curtain!):

Enjoy the last weekend of August!!

Project Baby Room - Moodboard

I have a lot of ideas floating around in my head of what I want the nursery to look like...I'm getting to a point where I really should get going on some of these ideas, so to help me visualize it better, I created a couple of mood boards.

 

Since we don't know whether this little baby is a boy or a girl, I want to do a gender neutral nursery without doing green & yellow or gray & yellow. I like a lot of nurseries in those tones, but I want something a bit different so I am thinking navy, gray and coral. The current walls are a green-gray and we won't be painting (there are enough other projects going on around here!), so I also wanted something that would coordinate with that.

We have all of the pieces of furniture - crib, dresser/change table, and a glider. I was debating getting a really nice glider / rocker, but I just can't picture it in an area of my house after the baby grows up. So instead, I got a great deal on a glider from craigslist and will be recovering the cushions to zhush it up.

The plans above are me playing around on the internet, so who knows what we will end up with but what do you think?

Project Baby Room - before

Alirght...now that the flooring is done it's time to get moving on Project Baby Room! I intended to post this post a million years ago...before the flooring project...but then life (and flooring) got in the way so here we are (our progress on the baby's room in those million years has been null). Like many other people, this project could easily be named Project-get-rid-of-all-of-our-junk.

The baby will be taking over the room that we used to use as our office. To be honest, the only time we used it as an office was when we were working from home (and not working at the dining table). Overall it provides extra storage for my clothes and shoes, some books, university textbooks (ha!) and an old computer (we both have laptops that we use day to day).

Here's a picture in all its beauty:

In a word: Messy.

This is not how it was day to day when we had it as an office, but more of a transition photo where we are getting ready to get rid of stuff.

The Mr. sold the desk and the chair via Craigslist in less than 24 hours. He has a real knack for posting things at the right price and the right time (sort of like when he sold our window A/C unit last year in the height of a heat wave...Sales 101).

Now we need to figure out what goes IN here. And there comes the fun, and the challenge. We will be leaving the wall colour as is, which is a greeny-gray colour, and we have some unique challenges along that back wall with the radiator, the window with no room for curtains on either side, and the angled closet. At least it's all on one wall so we can make full use of the other walls. And, as a reminder, we don't know whether this little human is a boy or a girl, so gender neutral territory is where we're heading.

We currently have a dresser/change table, crib, and glider (to be made over...) Do you have any "must haves" or key tips for the baby room (or babies in general...let's get serious I'll take all I can get!)