Four Days??

Well, that's what the counter thingy says. Me? I say the baby can just keep staying in there for a while yet. It's kind of funny, everyone around us is asking if there's any sign the baby is coming soon, if we're all ready, and basically displaying their anxiousness for this little one to be born, and I'm perfectly happy for it to not be born for another week or two. Maybe even three weeks! Yes, we're all ready for it (as much as one can be!), but signs the baby is coming soon? Umm... like... the head being engaged? That'd be about it. And, the really *big* drop of the baby only happened a little over a week ago, and with first pregnancies it often is two or three weeks before labour happens from that drop, so I'm not expecting much this week, lol. I do need to go looking for some Evening Primerose Oil capsule thingies, as I was told to start taking some of those every day, so perhaps I will do that today when I take some things to the post office.

While we wait for the baby to come, I have things I can get done. Like cleaning up the frog for my parents to stay in. It needs the bathroom to be thoroughly cleaned, as I haven't had the chance to get to that one since moving in. I also need to clean our main bathroom, as it hasn't been done in a little while (not nearly so scary as the frog bathroom though!). And organizing our bedroom so the baby will actually fit (LOL). Dishes and laundry of course are necessities, and currently I have a load of laundry in the dryer, and will have a load in the washer quite shortly... and then another load for the washer, that third load is going out onto the line though (it's waaayyy too nice today to use the dryer for all of the laundry!!). I've got winter wardrobes to put into the closet and summer wardrobes to put away. It's finally starting to feel halfway like fall in the mornings, but by mid day it is still quite warm, so I'm a little hesitant to change the clothing over already... but if I don't, it will never happen!

I should probably also figure out what to make for supper... I was thinking beans and rice last night, but I never got a chance to soak the beans last night, so that might have to wait until tomorrow. I ended up falling asleep really early. Of course, considering last night was the most sleep I've had in a night for seven days, somehow I doubt it was a bad thing for me to be asleep! Justin wasn't overly appreciative of the 7:15 wake up, but that is also better than the times I've been waking him in the past week! We've had wake up times ranging from 4:30 to 7:00 all last week.

We cleaned all of the kids' stuff out of the frog and our house yesterday, because they are no longer coming here each day. Their mother and grandparents decided to put them in the Christian school down the road instead. We'll probably still find a few things of theirs as we go along for a few weeks (in fact, I KNOW there are still a few things of theirs here!), but the majority is gone. Now I just have to tidy up the few manipulatives and teaching aids that belonged to me, and the frog will be completely cleaned of school stuff, and I will be able to organize it to be a guest room. We even happened to find frog face cloths, towels, and a bath/shower mat to put into the frog bathroom! The only annoying thing about them, to me, at least, is the butterflies on the facecloths are not the same colour as the butterflies on the bath towels, but I don't suppose that is really much of a problem... right? Now we just have to find a shower curtain, soap dish, and toothbrush holder! Of course, seeing as it has taken us... two months? to find the towels, it could very well take us that long again to find the other things. :-)

The baby birds are still thriving. We're expecting to see at least the oldest one attempt using its wings sometime this week. It's nearly the size of its 'parents' so that should mean it is about time to fly, we think! The other babies are getting their feathers and starting to look more and more like real birds, which is quite exciting! We're enjoying watching their development, though the bigger they get the louder they get as well! Last night we enjoyed terrorizing Bamboo (the father), while we turned out the lights and caught him so we could actually hold him. He's soooo tiny under all those feathers, it's like trying to hold on to a squirmy little twig or something! Perhaps we'll be able to get the babies to tame a little better than their parents did.

A mostly finished bedroom

All that is left is to paint the two doors, put the closet door back ON the closet, and paint the trim around the window. Basically, that means this room is done!

Here's the "before" picture, looking toward the closet...

and, here is after looking the same direction.

Here's "before" looking *away* from the closet...

and, this is after, looking the same direction.

So, there you have it, pictures of what we have done with one bedroom, at least. We haven't got our room in an orderly enough state at the moment to have pictures of it up. We should very shortly!!

In bird news... We have one week-old baby finch in the nest, and we now also have four newly hatched babies (1 Friday, 2 Saturday, 1 today). We're getting to listen to a lot of noise now! All we hear is little squeaks and squawks coming out of the nest! It can be VERY noisy at times. They seem to think that we should have to attempt to be heard over their noise, and it's rather difficult to hear oneself think, let alone talk over them at times!

Diaper Covers and other things

Well, I never thought I would be excited over diaper covers, but... I really like the covers! They arrived yesterday (yay for quick shipping and delivery!), and they are SO nice. Nothing like the cheap Gerber version of the same thing. I'm glad I decided to go with them instead! The bands around the waist and legs are so nice and soft, and the fabric on the actual cover just looks and feels so much more durable!

Now, while I'm very satisfied with my order of diaper covers, I am extremely irritated with Toys 'R' Us. That's where I ordered the only bassinet mattress that I've been able to find that would even come close to fitting our little bassinet. They cancelled the order, because for some reason, even though they list the item as being in stock on their site, their manufacturer apparently doesn't make them anymore or something. So, even though they're advertised as available, they're not available. So now I'm stuck having to figure out how in the world to make one! I seriously have no idea. I guess I'll end up getting some twill or something, and making one kind of in a tied quilted fashion, but I don't know. And, since I have to buy fabric and such anyway, I guess I'll figure out how to make the little bumper thingies at the same time.

My nephew is here on his own today. I think he's a little bored. He normally has his sister to play with all afternoon, but today he was done his school work by 10:30, and now he has a whole afternoon in which there are no play mates! The poor child. I'm not even sure what to do with him, because normally I would be willing to do something like cook with the kids or something, but I don't have any baking that needs to be done, and we're having soup for supper and that doesn't require a lot of cooking... He doesn't colour for very long, he doesn't draw for long, he doesn't do crafts much, unless you tell him exactly what he needs to do and when, and I'm lacking the creativity to make something with him right now. I guess we could go to the library, but that only takes 1/2 an hour of our afternoon. We could go to the park, but again, he'll be bored in 30 minutes. We could go for a walk at the nature park, but that only would take us 45 minutes... I guess if we put all of that together, it would take care of most of the afternoon, but seriously... I don't want to drive all over the city just to entertain the child! He has a ball, he has sticks, there's a tree to climb, but no... he wants to play with a person at all times. Is this the joy of caring for a youngest child? They've ALWAYS been entertained by another child?? *sigh*

Oh, and the baby bird is still alive. I'm impressed. I thought it would be dead by the end of the weekend, and actually, I thought it was dead at one point yesterday, because they had filled its crop soooo full that its head was at a weird angle and it looked like it had a broken neck. Anyway, I suspect the baby may survive, so I've decided to name it Twig, in keeping with the names of its parents, Willow and Bamboo. I don't know if we'll actually be keeping it, but it is quite cute, and I decided it needed a name.

Bird Eggs

Those finches that were added to our pet collection are currently sitting on ten eggs. I'm not sure if I should be hoping they all do hatch, or that only the four most recent ones hatch, or that none of them hatch, LOL! The birds are very faithfully tending the nest, and I'm having the hardest time getting them to keep the paper on the bottom of the cage. They keep tearing it into little strips and putting it into the nest, despite the fact that I've given them little strips of cloth/thread to nest in, and they've been plucking their feathers non-stop. Ah well, I suppose in about a week we shall see how many babies we are dealing with (YIKES!). Imagine... I'll be 38 weeks pregnant, and we'll have baby birds having just shown up out of their eggs. This could be a noisy end of pregnancy!! At least the female (a.k.a. Willow) has quit laying eggs. I was afraid we were going to be looking at the possibility of 14-16 babies in that tiny nest! Now that wouldn't have worked at all! I can't imagine that a nest that is only about 4 inches diameter would fit more than perhaps 8-10 inch-long babies, which is how big these things will be when they hatch. I think if they all hatch they're going to be crawling over each other constantly! Hopefully the mass of wiggling bodies won't be tall enough that they end up crawling out of the nest and falling on the floor (ie, possibly breaking necks and dying).

I ordered a matress pad for our baby bassinet. It's the only oval one I could find that was close to the right size, and even so, it is still a few inches too long. We're guessing it will squish in okay though, so it should be fine. It's an awful lot easier than having to make one, anyway! Now I just have to figure out how to pad the edges of the bassinet. Any ideas? I don't even know what one would make the little bumper thingies out of! Perhaps flannelette? Or just plain cotton? There's a lot of really cute stuff out there, or I could just do white, but white stains so easily that it seems it would make more sense to use something coloured... hmmm...

I have also ordered our initial need of diaper covers. Probably a good thing, seeing as currently we only have one cover in the 8-12 lb size range or whatever it is, and then strangely enough, I have ones that will fit a 2(ish) year old. I happened across them in a bunch of stuff we were given... the person who gave them to us apparently used them for panty covers for toilet training though, rather than for cloth diapering. I'm not sure where the little cover came from! Anyway, I ordered one little package of newborn sized ones for the "just in case we need it" thing, and then I ordered two packages of the 0-3 month sized ones, figuring that at that age they are most likely to have very runny messies so probably will need to wash them more often (and thus need more of those!). So, now we have three newborn, and six 0-3 month sized covers on their way, and then we'll see how big the baby is and all that before ordering the next size(s) so we know how many we need of what sizes.

Update on those ten birds eggs as of Thursday morning: There is now one live baby in the nest. Not sure if it will survive, not sure if we're going to have one baby a day for the next ten days... but if it survives, we may be on the start of a very noisy home!

Following my instincts?

Well, for the last month or so, I've been trying to tell myself that I really don't need many newborn items. Diapers, yes. Those are a necessity, lol. We now have newborn sized disposables to last (hopefully) the first week or so. Then we'll go to cloth. However, on the clothing front I kept telling myself that two sleepers in newborn size was plenty. I didn't need any more than that, because the baby will grow out of the size so fast, and will fit the 0-3 month sized stuff anyway. Well, telling myself that really didn't work well at all. I wound up dragging Justin to a store where I knew you can get newborn sized stuff in neutral colours so that we would have enough for the baby. Strange when I also know that most newborns will fit the 0-3 month stuff, but I really had this feeling that I needed a few more sleepers in the smallest size available (aside from premie sized!). Now I'm happy... I have all the newborn sized sleepers in neutrals that I feel we'll need. And, of course, I feel weird, considering I don't even know how big the baby is yet! For all we know, this kid is going to be an 8 or 9 lb baby, and won't fit the newborn stuff at all! But... for the sake of making my "instincts" happy, we have the sleepers. We also have the receipt so we can exchange if necessary, lol.

Oh, and, we're travelling about 4 hours away from here on Saturday, to Lynchburg, so I have everything (I hope?) we are likely to need for an "emergency birth" if we happen to have to birth while on the road/away from home. Towels, sleeper, onesie, blankets, hats, clothing for me, etc... Am I weird or what?! The only things we're NOT taking on Saturday are the baby seat (oh, we need to get a baby on board sign thingy... hmmm....) and the baby sling. Somehow I doubt we'll need a baby sling even if the baby were to be born en route! I figure if we were pulled over they would excuse us from having the baby in a car seat given the circumstances!

We got the baby's room completely tidied up, so I'm very pleased with that! Pictures will be coming soon. We had to find my camera cards before I could take pictures, and now I just don't feel like spending the time putting the pictures on my computer and from my computer onto here. Soon though. And, our bedroom is almost cleaned up completely as well, so I guess I'll take pictures of it as well.

So, now I'm trying to figure out sleeping arrangements for the baby. I'm a little afraid to try actual *co*sleeping, because I don't want the baby to end up getting squished by accident. I'm not quite sure how to fit the bassinet in, because of space constraints in our room, so I'm really at a loss. How does one do co-sleeping with a baby, anyway?? I would be afraid of the baby falling off the bed if it was on the outside, or being rolled on top of by mother or father if in the middle...