Author: Becca Eby
A New House, a Move, and a Baby
So, a few things have been happening around here lately. If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook (which you definitely should) you know that we bought our first house, moved in, and have baby #2 on the way. You know, just a few small things. It has been crazy, exciting, stressful, and great, all at the same time.
The house is 1970s one story cutie that backs up to a creek and needs a LOT of work. I’ll post before and after pics of each of our projects as we check them off our list, but it is going to be a looong process. So far we have dealt with major plumbing issues, residual cat dander and pee, and some serious wood paneling. We’ve asked ourselves many times, “Why did we buy a house again? and have yet to come up with a satisfactory answer. We know deep down it will all be worth it eventually, but on most days I feel like we will be surrounded by boxes FOR-EV-ER. We are doing most of the work ourselves, and let me just tell you that HGTV makes it look way too easy. This junk is hard. Crazy hard. If you’re interested in coming over to remove wallpaper, I’ll love you forever. I’ve decided to affectionately call the house the Duck Creek Ranch, so that it will grow on me a little faster. Why Duck Creek Ranch? We live on a super cute creek filled with ducks, it is a ranch style house, and everyone in Texas loves a ranch.
For the first time ever, we hired movers. I’m a bit of a gypsy and have moved at least once per year since the age of eighteen. I’m now 33. That’s a lot of moves, people. I once could move all my worldy possessions in the back of my car. Alas, those days are gone. It took weeks of packing, 3 guys + us, a BIG moving truck, and many hours to get all of our crap into the new house. I was pretty much useless because of my first trimester sickness and generally being pregnant, plus herding a toddler. Poor Jed worked all day at his teaching job and then came to DCR every day after school to work until 9 or 10 pm. He is the best, that man of mine.
I can’t believe I’m already almost half way through this pregnancy. We found out the gender last week and have been slowly revealing it to family and friends. I’ll share it on the blog tomorrow, so vote now in the gender poll. After all, you have a 50% chance of being right. Mini Bear is growing well, and I’m feeling so much better now that I’m firmly in the 2nd trimester.
How many times have you moved? Share your craziest moving story in the comments.
A Graco Safety Party and Review of the NEW Graco SnugRide Click Connect 40 Car Seat
Recently I had the pleasure of attending a Graco Safety preview party for a brand new car seat, The Graco SnugRide Click Connect 40. At the party we learned a ton about car seat safety and the AAP guidelines, and about this new car seat. I was so excited to receive one of the car seats to review for you. The Click Connect 40 is different from our old Graco SnugRide 30 for a variety of reasons, the biggest being that it can safely hold kids up to 40 pounds and 2 years old in a rear facing position. The SnugRide 30 only goes up to 30 pounds, and has much less leg room. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends that kids stay rear facing until they reach age 2, and the Graco Safety campaign hopes to help parents reach that goal. Will the Click Connect 40 really hold a big toddler comfortably? We’ll find out.
The Click Connect 40 has 8 different seat settings from comlete recline for newborns to sitting up for big toddlers.
For The Bear to try it out we shifted to position 8 and put up the kickplate to protect the car.
The seat comes in 2 colors, Moonstruck and Mena. We received a Moonstruck seat, the more gender neutral of the two. Mena is beautiful, but has lovely pink swirls that aren’t little boy approved. You can see a glimpse of the Mena design above, modeled by our demo doll from the Graco Safety Party.
Here is the car seat set up for a newborn. It looks so squishy and padded, even more than the newborn pad I had to by when the Bear was new. I can’t wait to put Mini Bear in the seat in the spring!
The newborn pad snaps out easily, and the seat quickly adjusted to fit our tall toddler. Really, it took about 2 seconds..
We installed it in the car using our latch system. It seemed odd that the base hung off the edge of the seat by several inches, but that could just be our Honda Pilot. It still seemed secure. Please excuse my messy car. True Life: I’m a Blogger.
The major downfall of rear facing car seats is the loss of leg room in the front seat. This is a small price to pay for our kids to be 5x safer than front facing.
Does the Bear fit comfortably? Yes, he does. At 16 months old he is weighs about 30 pounds and is about 31 inches tall (it is difficult to get an accurate measurement on a wiggly toddler).
Pregnancy 2.0 Update – Months 1 and 2
Goat Cheese is My Love Language
Our Easy Cloth Diaper Laundry Routine
A Big Brother T-Shirt to Announce Our Pregnancy
I shot a few pics of The Bear in his t-shirt after I finished it, and sent them out to friends and family that live far away, with the caption, “The Bear has an announcement.”
It took some of our friends and family a bit to figure out they had to read the shirt to get the announcement.
Later we put the shirt back on The Bear to go see some of our friends at our regular Taco Thursday dinner. Such great reactions.
The Bear also wore his shirt to my Young Life “retirement” party to share the good news with all our YL friends.
Finally, I used the the pics to announce the pregnancy here on the blog.
To make the shirt, I used a plain navy blue shirt that was already a part of The Bear’s wardrobe. I have a collection of vintage felt and embroidery floss from and estate sale purchase years ago. I used orange felt and navy blue floss and an embroidery needle that was waaaaay too big to stitch the design. I fastened the felt into an embroidery hoop and stitched away after drawing the words with an disappearing ink pen. I used the hoop as a guide to cut out the circle, and then stitched the circle onto the shirt. Done.
I’m sharing this design over at Prudent Baby’s Embroidery Contest and at some other fun craft parties.
A Morning Sickness Cure – Seriously.
You can buy them off Amazon for $6-7, or at your local CVS for $11.
What morning sickness cures have you tried? What worked for you? What didn’t work?
The Bear has BIG News…
Double Rainbows in Colorado
These rainbows appeared one afternoon and alternately faded and glowed as the storm took its course.
You can see some of the collegiate peaks in the background, and the base of Princeton is just to the right.
Below you can see the storm over the top of Mt. Princeton. Princeton is over 14,000 feet high, a true Colorado fourteener. The summit is completely covered by the storm.