Quick update on Clara

I had my 36 week doctor appointment on Monday.  I saw the nurse practitioner this time.  She said I was 1cm and had not started thinning at all.  I have another appointment on Tuesday, November 2.  Then my last pre-baby appointment will be Monday, November 8.  I then go for my pre-op at the hospital on November 11.  We have to be at the hospital on November 12 at 5am and should head back for the c-section at 7:00am.  That means in  less than 15 days I will be holding my sweet baby girl! 

More creativity!

So I don't know if maybe Clara is going to be a very creative person and some of her creativity is wearing off on me while she is in utero or what, but I have been more creative than ever lately.  My latest project came because I was wanting to find ways for Gray to work on his fine motor skills.  I looked online and one suggestion was lacing cards.  I liked this idea, but then decided to take it a step farther and make them number lacing cards so he could work on number recognition at the same time. :)  These were pretty inexpensive to make and I made them basically from start to finish during one of Gray's naps.

Last night I had printed out numbers to use as templates, but had not cut them out or anything like that.  Today the first thing I did was pick out 10 different colors of craft foam.  Gray and I bought these this morning at Wal-Mart.  The entire pack (50 of them) cost about $5.

I then cut out the number templates I had printed and placed them on the craft foam.  I traced around these numbers with a pencil.  The pencil leaves a slight indention which is nice, especially when it came to the black foam.

After I traced all the numbers onto the foam, I cut out the foam numbers.

I then went around the edge of the numbers with a hole punch and made holes all the way around.  I knew that sometimes kids thread the yarn in loops instead of a straight line from one hole to the next so I chose to do it this way knowing it was the way that would need the longest yarn.  I looped the yarn through all the holes and then cut off the extra yarn and tied it to a hole near the bottom of each number.

This is Gray's first attempt at lacing one of his new numbers.

 This is a picture of Gray this morning playing with rice while waiting on breakfast.  I had him dump it out on his tray and pick up each grain and put back in the bowl.  He loved the dumping it out part, the picking it back up part lost some of the fun once he realized he was hungry.

Creative things :)

I have had a little bit of a creative bug lately, well creative for me. 
Last week I made Gray some fabric numbers that I stole the idea for from several other blogs, including Counting Coconuts and Happy Together.  Gray really likes to nap with them.  Two of the numbers (5 and 7) were in the room with a sleeping Gray when I took the picture so don't think I just don't know my numbers. :)

Another project was making Gray new crayons.  I took old broken crayons and removed all the paper.  I then put them into a silicon muffin pan.  I picked out square molds. 

I then baked them in the oven at 200 degrees until they were as melted as they seemed to want to get.  I then took them out and let them cool completely.

After they were completely cool I popped them out of the silicon muffin pan.  As soon as I gave them to Gray he figured out they make great blocks and started stacking them.

Here is a picture of one of them up close.

Me growing

Since I started this blog after I had already grown a good bit I have decided to show pictures from the entire pregnancy up to this point.

18 weeks

20 weeks 2 days

24 weeks 1 day

26 weeks 1 day

28 weeks 2 days

30 weeks 3 days

32 weeks 3 days

35 weeks 1 day

Baby Shower Luncheon

Saturday I got together with some of my friends for a luncheon/baby shower.  It was very nice!  We had a small group, which turned out to be perfect because everyone was able to talk to each other easily.  Clara received lots of cute stuff.  Now I really need to go through all her stuff and see what she is still needing and what she has plenty of.  Once the shower was over Christina (one of the hostesses) sent a balloon home with me for Gray.  In case you are not aware, balloons are not fun for me.  I cringe watching children play with them because I hate to hear them pop.  The cringing was totally worth it though because Gray loved playing with it.  Sadly the next morning it was already not floating, but Gray has still been playing with it some.

Please pay no attention to the crazy faces I have in the pictures.  

34 week appointment

I had a doctors appointment on Tuesday.  Everything went well.  My blood pressure was in the normal range for me and Clara's heartbeat sounded great.  The worst part is I had my biggest weight gain yet during this pregnancy.  My doctor wasn't concerned, and I really am not either.  I am just annoyed because I want to be done gaining weight.  Oh well, Clara is totally worth it.  I found out I for sure have a c-section scheduled for November 12th (unless Clara Beth comes earlier).  It is scheduled for 7:30 that morning and so we will have to be there at I think 5:30.  That is pretty early, but that is better than having to wait until 11 like I did with Gray, especially since I can eat that day.  I go back to the doctor October 25th and then November 1 and 8.  On the 25th I should start getting checked to see if I am dilating at all.  With Gray I was only ever at 1cm, so we shall see how this one goes.  Of course, he wasn't head down and so wasn't pushing on my cervix.  The doctor said that is probably why I never dilated or had any contractions or anything with him.  We THINK Clara is in a head down position and so it makes it more likely that I will actually go into labor with her. 

I was out of town when I turned 34 weeks and kept forgetting to get pictures taken.  For those that don't know I try to take pictures every 2 weeks of my growing belly.  I turn 35 weeks tomorrow so I will try to pictures taken tomorrow to make up for missing last week.  It is funny how even though I am THRILLED beyond belief that I am pregnant with our second child, I just can not seem to devote the time to this pregnancy that I did with Gray.  I know it is because I am busy with Gray, but it feel so much different this time to not have the baby growing inside of me be the vast majority of what I think about.  I will do my best to get pictures of my belly posted this weekend.

My little smartie

Gray has really started showing his intelligence lately!  He knows his shapes and colors and has started working on counting and his abc's.  He can count to 10 when it is his idea, but for some reason the last couple of days he has been skipping the number 9.  We just started working on abc's, but I think he will pick up on those quickly.  The other morning he woke me up saying, A, B, blah, blah, blah, A, B, blah....  It was pretty cute and pretty obvious that he only knew the first 2 letters.  He also knows a LOT of signs and has a more words in his spoken vocabulary than I can really keep up with.  Basically anything he hears he says.  Probably one thing that amazes me the most about him is his ability to remember EVERYTHING!  For example, his friend (Gavin) came over to play probably more than a month ago and was playing with a train that Gray has.  To this day when Gray picks up that train he usually tells me, "Gavin."  I sometimes have to stop and think about things he tells me and then realize he is talking about something a good bit before that day.  One day he refused to take a nap, as in he sat in his crib for 2 hours and I finally gave up.  When I got him out of his crib I said he could get up if he didn't cry and if he did cry I was going to put him back in his crib to nap.  He did really well at not crying that day and so was allowed to go without a nap.  Then 1-2 weeks later he had finished his nap and when I went to get him he told me, "All done, no cry."  I guess he had been thinking about the fact that he couldn't be all done with his nap unless he didn't cry.

I haven't been all that great at taking pictures of him lately, but the other day he had just finished eating lunch and still had his shirt off.  He then grabbed his fireman helmet and was posing so cute that I got my camera and took tons of pictures of him.  I felt like I should be taking pictures for some calendar or something. ;)