First Baths

Check out these twinners:

Oliver Wesley

Back when I was pregnant with Eliza and I didn't know whether she was a girl or boy, I thought it would be cool to name a boy Oliver Wesley. Ben hated it, so the name was vetoed. When Eliza turned out to be a girl, we decided we would call her Ellie for short, so I came to terms with the fact that I would never get my Ollie.

Three years later, it turns out that no one really calls Eliza "Ellie." Or so I thought. I talked Ben into naming our baby Oliver, and suddenly my parents and Ben's parents have started calling Eliza "Ellie" all the time. I can't figure out if they're messing with me or if they have been calling her Ellie the whole time.

Either way, I got my Ollie. And I love him.

Sweet & Sour Sauce

Our baby came yesterday, and we're all madly in love with him. I didn't think it was possible for a baby to look more like Liam than Eliza does or more like Eliza than Liam does, and yet, I think this guy might have the other two beat. He's like a 50/50 mix of his siblings.


He doesn't have a name yet, but Eliza is hoping for Sweet & Sour Sauce. I guess we better come up with something fast, before it sticks.

False Alarm

I told a bunch of people that my baby was coming today. I forgot to tell the doctor, though, so by the time he tried scheduling the hospital it was too late. They're booked.

The new date is this Monday, March 5th.

Sorry if I lied to you!

A Glimpse into Our Future

Eliza had a nice little freak-out while I tried buckling her in her carseat this morning. I told myself to try to remember this version of her, before a screaming baby joins our world, so I would know it’s just normal behavior sometimes. Screaming and thrashing won’t always mean she’s feeling left out because she just became the middle child.

Luckily, Liam had a similar reaction when I insisted he take a rest this afternoon, and you better believe I got it on film. And again, since this is pre-baby, I know this has nothing to do with needing extra attention because his world just got turned upside down. This is a simple case of my genes overriding Ben’s genes.



How lucky that most of the time, Ben's genes win.

The Boys' Room

Eliza’s crib was a little too girly for my taste, but when I got ready to sell it on KSL, I found out it had been recalled. So instead of selling it for half price, I returned it to Babies R Us and got a full refund! I told them I felt guilty, since we had used it for 2½ years, but they told me not to because the manufacturer really didn’t want me using it anymore. Score! Guilt-free store credit!

So I used my refund to buy a less-curvy crib, then sold Eliza’s crib bedding on KSL and bought some that sort-of matched Liam’s bedding on Overstock. I wasn’t a huge fan of the red crib skirt, though, so I switched out two sides for blue. (I’m much too lazy to spend any effort on the sides that don’t show.)


I also painted Liam’s bed white, to match the crib.



I found this dresser on the side of the road on Bulk Waste Pick-Up Day, but I forgot to take a "before" picture of it. It was old and gross, with chipped light blue paint and nasty, painted-on knobs, and it had spider webs in every crevice. I didn’t want to spend money on it, since it was so trashed, so I just spackled, painted, stenciled some numbers on it and used rope instead of buying new knobs. Rope goes with the nautical theme, right?


The decorations were all in Liam’s old room, except “row, row, row your boat…,” which I made with my Silhouette machine and some contact paper.


And now that the fun's over, I guess it's time to get ready for a real, live baby. Only 2½ weeks to go...YIKES!

Uninsured

Ben started a new job three months ago, and the health insurance doesn’t kick in until February 1st. We’ve been on COBRA since the job switch, but this month I thought it might be fun to not pay the $1,100 and just be uninsured for a month. All of our doctors and the new insurance provider said it was fine to have a lapse in coverage. Plus, if we needed it, we could have still sent in the check and been covered in January up until the post office closed today.

So really, there are only about seven hours between when we could have been covered in January and when the new insurance starts. Right now we’re in the middle of those seven hours, and I’ve never been so paranoid.

First I thought Ben would definitely get in a car accident on the way home from work. Then I just knew Liam or Eliza would fall off their chairs and crack their heads open during dinner. And now I’m imagining that every movement my baby makes is a contraction, and I’m probably in labor.

Here’s hoping the next three hours go by faster than the last three.

The Great Bedroom Switch of 2012

We have three bedrooms on the main floor of our house, and we’re not ready for Liam to move to the basement. This means someone is going to have to share a room when Baby #3 comes, and we’ve had a really hard time trying to figure out whether it should be Liam and Eliza or the two boys.

We finally decided to start out with the two boys together. Eliza was in the bigger bedroom, so last week Liam and Eliza switched bedrooms.

So far it’s worked out perfectly. We’ll see what happens when the screaming baby arrives.

Here is Eliza’s new big girl room:



Ben’s parents gave us two sets of that blue and white bedding when they redecorated one of their bedrooms last year, and we already had the pink stuff from Eliza’s nursery. I did a google images search and found out that dark blue and light pink were, indeed, allowed in the same bedroom, so this room was practically free to put together.

First, we borrowed the box springs and mattress from my cousin (Thanks, Leah!).

Next, I took apart the bed skirt from the second set of bedding and recycled Eliza’s old clothes hamper.


Then, I cut up one of the pillow shams (also from the second set of bedding) so we could keep using this memo board.


The lamp spent its former life on my nightstand, and then buried in storage, so I’m sure it was happy to get a makeover. It took a $5 lampshade from Hobby Lobby, a little bit of polka-dotted fabric, and a package of something called wooden doll heads, which I found for $1.50 at JoAnn. They had big holes drilled halfway through them, so Ben just had to drill them the rest of the way through before I could glue them on the lamp and paint it.


And finally, my google search gave me the birds-on-a-branch idea. The branch came from a tree in our backyard, and the birds came from scrap fabric, mostly from that second set of bedding. I made the quote out of contact paper on my Silhouette machine.


I can’t believe how amazing it has been to have a second set of bedding. I didn’t even touch the sheets or comforter, so Eliza can wet the bed all she wants and she’ll still have a second set of matching bedding to swap it out with. (Don’t worry, Leah—the mattress is covered in plastic.)

Next up: the boys’ room. But I still need to paint a dresser to go in there, so it might be a while.

Sleeping Arrangements

Last night we came home from our Christmas vacation to a thermostat with dead batteries and a 47-degree house. Liam and Eliza had fallen asleep in the car, so we carried them to their beds, loaded them with blankets, and blasted space heaters at them.

By 1:00 a.m., their rooms were pretty toasty, so I turned off the space heaters. By 4:00 a.m., the whole house was pretty toasty, so I went in to remove their extra blankets.

That’s when I realized that Eliza had taken matters into her own hands. I found her sound asleep on the floor next to her bed.


She's pretty new to the whole "big girl bed" situation, so it's perfectly understandable that she didn't know how to just take her covers off.

The Soak Zone

We tried to give our kids an up-close and personal experience at Sea World yesterday, but Eliza didn't appreciate our thoughtfulness at Shamu's show.