Here comes the son

Announcing Caleb Knox Johnson

Born at noon on July 16, 2009
7 pounds, 13 ounces
20 inches long

The day he was born: One Week Old: Two Weeks Old:Three Weeks Old: Four Weeks Old:

Baby on the Way

Here is a rundown of my day so far:

4:30am- Wake up feeling nauseous (not unusual) and contemplate moving to the couch so I don't wake up Jared tossing and turning.

5:00- Roll over, and feel the baby give a big kick and my back pop simultaneously. Thank you, Baby J, I no longer need a chiropractor!

5:03- Get up to go pee. Feel a stream of something run down my legs when I get up..... Realize, hmmmm, maybe that wasn't my back that popped.

5:04- Try to figure out what to do now...

5:06- Grab my pillows, a blanket, and the bed wetting pad I purchased for precisely this reason, and move to the couch. Try to sleep for a while.

5:30ish- first contraction

5:37- Hear Jared get up to use the bathroom, and tell him the news. No work for him today! Encourage him to try to sleep.

5:40ish- 2nd contraction. They continue about every 10 minutes for quite a while.

6:15- Decide I am not going to sleep, and turn on the Tour de France. Become thankful for the fifth time this month that there is something interesting on to watch this early in the morning.

6:30ish- Jared joins me watching the Tour.

8:00- Jared decides to go into work to change his phone and email messages, etc. Contractions still coming every 10 minutes.

8:45- Tour is over. Mark Cavendish wins his forth stage this tour, and I am happy that George Hincapie's team is doing well in sprinting. Decide that I am going to get up, pack, and take a shower, and anticipate my contractions speeding up a lot because of all the movement.

9:15ish- Jared comes back home, and plays the new video game he got yesterday, which he is very happy about. No recent contractions.

10:30- Contractions have basically stopped. Decide to be more proactive.

10:45- Jared and I go on a walk. I get sweaty, but only have one contraction while we are walking. Lame sauce.

11:30- Finish walk. Take a shower to cool off. Call doctor to ask about getting labor moving again, and am told to come to the hospital at two.

12:05pm- Sit on couch. Have a contraction!

12:15- Still on couch. Have another contraction! (repeat every ten minutes until 1:00)

1:00- Bored-move from couch to computer. Decide to blog, and continue to have contractions about every 10 minutes.

1:55- Time to get ready to go to the hospital! The rest of the story is yet to come....

I want these prints. For my bedroom or for the nursery.

10 Days and Counting

Ten days until Baby J's due date... I had a Ob appointment this morning, and I am about 1 cm dilated, 30% effaced, and my cervix is pretty anterior (pointing toward the front of me instead of toward my tailbone, which is where it points through all pregnancy until the end). My doctor said this was more progress than he expected, though nothing that says labor is imminent. I reminded Baby J today that if he came tomorrow, he would have a very cool birthday (07/08/09), but that he would have a more stressed out daddy than if he waited a week. Then he gave me a good kick--only time will tell if he was feeling sympathetic for daddy, or showing that he wasn't going to be deterred from his plan...We shall see! I only hope he doesn't hang out inside of me after next week.

In other news, it was Jared's birthday on Sunday, and we had a casual little party that he enjoyed a lot. This year he got a new TV, after he saw our friends nice TV and decided he couldn't possibly have a newborn without a new TV. There went our (loose) plans for our kids not to be exposed to TV before they are two....

Here is our old TV: (29")

Here is Jared happily putting together the pieces for the new TV (notice he is wearing his suit pants--he didn't bother to change before he opened the box and got everything out).

And here is our new TV: It will get put on the wall as soon as we get the mounting brackets, but for now, it is taking the place of our fireplace. It is a 50" 1080p Panasonic Plasma, if anyone reading this cares. The biggest purchase of our married life so far, surprisingly, besides the house. I am glad Jared feels like he gets a reward for all the work he does.

mobiles

I finished making two mobiles recently. I think they turned out pretty cute. This elephant one is for Baby J's room:This butterfly one is for our friends' baby girl, who is due two weeks after Baby J.

Any Thoughts?

We have a ton of extra dirt in our yard now, and we've been brainstorming ways to get rid of it inexpensively. However, now I'm considering leaving at least some of it and shaping it into a nicely landscaped hill, or dry riverbed looking corner. Here is what it looks like::

Counting Down

Here I am, 37 weeks (full term!) as of yesterday. I also got my hair cut, which I am pretty happy about...it feels good to have it off my neck, and it's a lot easier when it's that much shorter!



I have my list of projects that I am trying to get done before Baby J arrives, but starting about two weeks ago, Jared and I got caught up in one we were not planning on, but are excited about--our back yard! My friends Emily and Brittany showed up one Friday morning to see what they could do with my "garden," and Emily and Jason came back the next day (and the next, and a few more after that) to make things happen. Now we are hopefully not too far away from changing our low maintenance, rock-and-juniper back yard to one Baby J will want to run around in in a year or so! Here is the before picture (taken before we moved into the house, which was definitely the best its looked):




Here are Emily and Jason chainsawing some junipers--the very last of many!

And here are some after pics. We (really Jason, Emily, and Jared) ripped out a ton of bushes, scooped up about 1000 pounds of rocks, and moved dirt around trying to make the yard flatter. Emily and Brittany also transplanted plants, and planted vegetables and herbs. Check out the very cool rock wall Jason started building.

The belly-it's growing

Today I am 33 weeks, but here are some pictures from the last week (when I was 32). It seems like the baby is going through another growth spurt. (Last time I thought he was going through a growth spurt, I was right, and the doctor sent me in to get an ultrasound to make sure everything was alright. Everything looked great; he's just huge.)













Most of the time, Baby J is good to his mommy, and makes me like being pregnant. But sometimes he enjoys spending his days pressing his butt into mommy's rib cage and making it uncomfortable for her to sit down or leaning on mommy's sciatic nerve and laughing when she hobbles around like a 75 year-old.

Like my mom

Just in time for Mother's Day, I had a entire weekend where I felt just like my mom. It was great--my living room was covered in piles of fabric, the sewing machine, glue gun, iron, etc., and I had a great time making all kinds of things. It started because I wanted to make a valance for Baby J's room, then I had an unexpected day off work and made things till every scrap of fabric was gone. Here are my favorite, two turtle onesies (I only made the turtle, not the onesies.)














I also made a diaper holder, a hooter hider, and the valence. I also did most of the work for two mobiles that I am making for friends. I'll post pictures of them when they are done.

Kitchen Now

I was having problems posting pics before, so I got up the before pics of the kitchen and dining room, but not the after shots! We got all new knobs, new light fixtures, new curtains, etc. We also took down the 70's gold flecked mirrors, and painted a cute display shelf. (Thanks for making that happen, mom!) Here is what the kitchen looks like now, with no more wallpaper!: And for Chach, here is a picture I just took of myself (28 1/2 weeks). Notice the wallpaper in the background--someday that wall is going to be chocolate brown.

One Year Ago...

We moved into our house on May 1, 2008. Almost a year ago! Since then, we have completed quite a few changes, starting with stripping wallpaper from every room in the house. (To be totally honest, we still have wallpaper left in two bathrooms, and it may be another year before those get tackled.) I thought it would be fun to look at some of the before and after pictures, starting with our kitchen and dining room. Here it was before: For those of you looking closely, YES, there was wallpaper on the ceiling. It was very exciting. Here are some picture of us taking it down: If it seems like we were always working on the same wall, it was because that was when we first discovered that most of the house had TWO layers of wallpaper, not just one. And the bottom layer was like a piece of cardboard stuck on with cement. You can see me trying to sand it off in the picture above--we eventually gave up that tactic.

Order

I've been feeling pressure lately to get organized before the baby comes. I get panicky thinking about how my house barely maintains a sense of order now, so when you add a lot of time spent taking care of Baby J and a lot more stuff for taking care of Baby J, I feel like ultimate chaos is eminent. It is no secret that I am not a neat person. I pile things up, begin one thing without finishing another, I put off until tomorrow what can be done today. It made my mother crazy. The thing is, I don't live happily in an unorganized environment. The mess itself doesn't bother me, but the list of things I know I should do can make me lose sleep at night (though rarely enough to get out of bed and start cleaning.)

A few days ago I was reading an article about keeping your house clean in twenty minutes or less a day, and I found a website called flylady.net. I actually read a great article on this website a couple years ago about streamlining beginning-of-the-year preparations for teachers, but I haven't looked at the site since then. I decided that I was going to try to implement the site's strategies into my life, beginning with the 31 Babysteps for Beginners. Proudly, I can say that I spent today completing my own "Weekly Home Blessing." This is basically spending an hour doing 6 things for ten minutes each. I swept, mopped, vacuumed, collected and took out the trash, cleaned the toilets, and unloaded the dishwasher. My house is not perfectly clean now, but there are big improvements! Especially because it is hard to clean the floors of my bathroom and let the counters continue being cluttered. It feels good to make progress towards having more order in my house.

It also makes me feel like a nerd that keeping my house clean is something I think about so much. Aren't I still too young for this? My high schoolers told me yesterday that I already act like a mom because I had a Tide Stick in my purse. I hope that's a good thing!

Starting something new

Sooo, It's 2009, and I decided we should start blogging. It's going to be a big year for us, after all. I suppose this means that I need to go out and buy a new cord so that we can download pictures onto our computer again. (The last one disappeared when we moved back in May. Oddly, we haven't run out of room on our memory cards in the last 9 months.) Stay tuned...