Monday, May 9, 2011

Baby Prep

Time is ticking away to the arrival of our next baby and as my due date comes closer and closer, my house is getting messier and messier... It's okay though - it's the productive kind of messy. So while my living room and kitchen had been spotless for nearly a month, they are now filled with furniture waiting to go into Gabe's new "Big Boy Room", items waiting to be donated that we finally decided to get out of the house, and evidence of my cooking 'fits' where I throw together 6 meals at one time.
My to do list is getting smaller too. "Clean the house" is really my last item on my to do list and I have help pledged for that one as well. But before I get to that stage we need to finish Gabe's new room, get the nursery back to factory specs, finish with the freezer meals and pull out and organize all of our old baby items. Gabe's room is nearly done - this weekend Matt and I moved out all the boxes that have been stored in there since we bought the house and then Matt put in the new flooring and got the baseboards on. Today I hung pictures and moved in some furniture and all that's really left to do is touch up paint on the baseboards and get the rest of Gabe's stuff in. Once he's moved then we can get the nursery going. We're getting a glider to replace the old rocker in the nursery and we're setting up a little table in there for me with a lamp, a place for some snacks and books and stuff like that. I have a couple chicken and rice dinners, a couple hashbrown casseroles and 3 enchilada meals in the freezer as well as a couple containers of sauce and some pre-cooked ground beef. Oh, and cookies and granola bars. My Mom is making up some Casserole Steak, barbque Pork Chops and Hamburger soup for our freezer too and I might conscript my MIL to make up some chili for us. After a trip to Costco the freezer should be set. Costco is vital though because while I made not have a million fully-made meals in there, I'm going to pick up a box of pre-cooked chicken cubes. It's cheaper than buying boneless, skinless chicken breasts and most of the work is already done for you. So if I'm having an alright day where I feel like I can put in a bit more effort towards dinner than turning on the oven and pulling something out of the freezer, it will take me roughly 10 minutes to get a chicken potpie oven ready, or chicken fried rice could be whipped up really quick too. Oh, and since I have to still worry about feeding Gabe three meals a day, plus snacks, we're stocking up on things like applesauce, fruit cups, animal crackers and the like.
I've already laundered and folded all of our old newborn clothes and all of our cloth diapers that we used for Gabe. Yah, cloth can be a pain but it really does save you money, so I'm going to try to do that again as much as possible. We're installing our infant carseat this week and borrowing a bassinet from some friends. Gabe's going to have three distinct play areas set up in the house, one of which can be completely unsupervised play and the other two will be hugely helpful when the baby is needing lots of attention and Gabe gets to play with his special toys.
I'm still hoping this baby doesn't come early even though my body hasn't been feeling great. My ribs have stopped moving in and out for now but it's getting harder and harder to move and my morning sickness has come back a bit. I am looking forward to the day when I can again breathe, move, not have heart burn and eat whatever I want, but since that means the baby has to come out I'm willing to put up with a bit of a wait for all those luxuries.
Well, I'd best get back to getting things checked off my to do list!

Mrs. Vander Leek ;)

1 comment:

  1. You truly are super-mom. I really need to learn from your example and get my butt in gear. I'll be praying that all the baby-prep gets done so you can have some time to relax before things get busy!
    Love you
    ~J

    ReplyDelete

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