Thanksgiving and other ramblings

This past weekend was nice.  It started out on Wednesday afternoon, at which time we were sent home pleasantly early from work for the holiday.  So that meant I had plenty of time to get in a good workout at the gym, to preemptively counteract the effects of my upcoming foodings... I got done at the gym, then went to get Preston from Cassandra.  After that, he said he wanted to go meet "Oweeen," so I obliged :).  Guess what?  Owen is still really stinkin' cute!  Preston was very curious and very sweet to the little guy, which was good to see, since a.) this is really the first newborn Preston's ever been around, and b.) he's going to need to get used to it by March!  After our visit to Froedtert, we came home and made dinner.  Skip was a bit of a bear to wake up that evening, and once he actually woke up, he got a call from Meda-Care asking if he'd want to take a quick nurse call.  So off he went, but that kind of thing is totally fine since he makes some pretty darn good $$ when he gets called in like that.

Thursday morning I got up and went to the gym again, then left with absolute jello legs from all the lunges and squats we did.  That class was TOUGH!  Skip and Preston went down to Racine while I finished getting ready, then I met them down at the Yacht Club.  Charlie and Mary sort of oversee the serving of Tom & Jerry's every Thanksgiving morning, and we've made it a tradition to go down and visit the RYC.  Too bad I couldn't partake in the late-morning buzz that I've come to enjoy each year!  Oh well.  We hung out at Mannings for the rest of the afternoon, then had a really nice dinner.  After some relaxing, Skip came home and rested before work, while Preston and I went down to Crystal Lake.  An hour-and-a-half and a wrong-turn-in-Wilmot-that-landed-me-in-Twin-Lakes-so-I-had-to-backtrack later, we got to my mom and dad's.

Friday morning Preston stayed at the house and hung out with Papa, while I went out shopping with Sarah and her little blonde clones.  We managed to go to Kohl's, Target and Joseph's all without feeling the need to murder anyone on Black Friday.  Preston took a good nap at while I vegged for the rest of the day, then we went to Harrison's for Megan's 2nd birthday party.  It was very fun to see Megan, Preston and Sarah and Andy's niece Allie (November, October, and September-born, respectively) all playing so well together!  We had a little scare when Preston and Elizabeth took a bit of a tumble together down the stairs... but they were okay, so it was not the disaster it could have been! 

I ran some more errands on Saturday with Mom and Preston before coming home, then basically had a leisurely rest of the weekend.  Got my Christmas lights up, and Skip and Charlie got our new windows installed!


Now, some recent musings regarding Preston:

He LOVES the movie "Cars."  Especially Mater.  He'll go straight to the TV and say Cars? Mater? Watch?

He's obsessed with wearing his green shamrock hat these days.  He has to even wear it to bed.  Good thing he looks darn cute in it!  He will freak if you take it away!

The boy has about a 300 single-word vocabulary.  He doesn't string them together too often, but there's never any doubt to what he's saying, because he can say so many things!

He's so sweet at night time, and always says "Good night, Mommy" and "I yooou" (i.e. I love you) before he goes to bed.  It absolutely melts my heart.

11/22/11

Yep, total fail on the "post every day" thing... oh well.

So, I got to meet Owen August Ziemer yesterday!!  We are all SO happy for Sarah and Andy to have welcomed this tiny guy into their lives.  It turns out that Sarah had a little more than she bargained for when it came to delivering him, but all seems to be going well, and boy is he a cutie!  What a wonderful thing to be thankful for, coming right before Thanksgiving!

In other news, we had a nice weekend this past one, including driving down to Chicago to surprise my dad for dinner at the Parthenon.  We had all missed his birthday (the 11th) last weekend when we were up here celebrating Nancy, so my mom and he were downtown celebrating together.  We ran into some snaggle-traffic on our way down, but got there in time to have a great meal with the family (including Nancy, Jim and Mark). 

On Sunday, we took it easy in the morning, then went for a long walk around the VA grounds.  I tell ya, pushing a stroller with 24 lbs of Preston and a couple extra pounds on my own self is becoming a good workout!  After lunch, I headed down to the South Milwaukee H.S. Performing Arts Center where we were having our Knightwind Ensemble fall concert.  I think the concert went really well, and was a good "note" to end on for a while (I won't be playing in the spring since I'm due like the day of the concert).  Skip, Preston and I went to Guanajuato for a quick dinner afterwards, then home.

Bryan and Tamara have been making great progress on the drywall upstairs, and they are almost finished.  It's looking good so far, and I look forward to being able to paint then finish the floors and get up there!

As for Thanksgiving, we will be having our annual Tom & Jerry's at the Racine Yacht Club in the morning, then hanging with Mannings for the rest of the day.  After dinner, Skip's going to come home and sleep a little, then he works Thursday and Friday nights.  Preston and I will be going down to CL for a couple of days, mostly to celebrate Megan's 2nd birthday on Friday (her actual birthday was this past Sunday).  Should be fun times!

11/17/11

21 weeks today!  Yay!

So that garbage-diving Scotch did the other night set off some massive GI issues in him... He's was throwing up all Tuesday evening and yesterday.  And of course he only had the decency to puke on the kitchen floor or a crappy carpet runner once or twice - the rest of the time it was on the livingroom carpet (we had our carpet professionally cleaned just before Preston's birthday, so it had been looking pretty stellar).  So I had to go on my way to band last night and get some industrial-strength spot shot to get the stains out.  When I got home from band, I was totally awake so I cleaned up the spots.  I must say, the stuff worked wonders, although it was pressurized from being in my cold car for 3 hours... it squirted uncontrollably when I first opened it (that's what she said...).  In all honesty, though, Skip and I were pretty worried about him because he normally has an iron stomach and rarely gets sick.  Skip said he was laying on the couch shivering last night.  Poor pup. :(

As of this morning, my dog seems to be better, although he totally and completely commandeered the bed last night, which made it basically impossible for me to get much sleep (we had him cordoned off into our temporary room so he wouldn't puke in the aforementioned livingroom).  When I did try to move him, he just sat (and he sits really tall) and STARED at me for god-knows how long, because I eventually fell asleep.  When I did wake up from my hips being sore from not moving from not having any space, Scotch was laying ON me.  And he's almost 70 pounds.  Yay...  Back to the couch tonight, pal!

The Evil Red Dog is on my shit list again

Urgh... I got up this morning in plenty of time to actually blow-dry my hair for once, until I looked out into the kitchen and saw this long drip of something that was reddish brown.  Scotch had been a little restless last night, so I was worried at first that maybe he had pooped or something from an upset stomach... nope.  I glance toward the living room, and every foot or so there is about a 6-inch drip of the same thing from the kitchen, leading to the middle of the living room where the empty GIZZARD BAG was from the turkey Skip cooked last night.  Freaking GIZZARD BLOOD was the stains on my NEWLY CLEANED CARPET.  He must've gotten the bag when he went garbage-diving in the middle of the night.  And in retrospect, the stuff in the kitchen must've been what I stepped in when I went to fill his water bowl at 2:00 this morning (I had just thought it was slobber).  So, instead of blowdrying my hair, I spent 20 minutes scrubbing blood out of my carpet.  And it's definitely not gone yet.  I foresee an evening of scrubbing my carpets... not like I don't have anything better to be doing...

Anyways, we also have drywall on the walls upstairs!  Bryan and Tamara got some serious progress done this past weekend, and it really is all starting to come together.  I am so excited!!

A girl's weekend in one-liners.

Hello everybody!!

Random Saturday night.

Do they make maternity club tops?

Big white pole.

Red and green shit.

These aren't maternity pants, they are my eatin' pants.

Wouldn't be a Saturday night without some random guy.

Let's get Grandma a Rascal.  "See ya, suckers!"

Mom, YOU get out of the car!

Falafel is awful (a couple hours later).

Sorry Grandma!

Edited to add: Amazing, White Amazing, Namaste and Cluck Cluck!

And also Bust a Cap!

20 weeks - half way there!

Okay, so I'm not very good at this "post on blog every day" thing, but oh well.  I'm 20 weeks today!  Half way there, or, not quite half way there if this little one decides to come almost a week late like his/her brother did... :)  I had a weird lightheaded spell just a few minutes ago, though, so that was a little disconcerting.  "Head issues" are really the only thing that I've had to deal with this pregnancy.  I started taking loratadine (Claritin) a few times a week to help with headaches, since my doctor thought they were most likely sinus in nature.  It's helped quite a bit, but I think my blood pressure has been acting up (or should I say low) lately, too.  It always runs on the low side (I'm regularly in the 106/60 range), but at the onset of the pregnancy Skip took it at one point and it was like 90/50... pretty low.  So I just have to stand up slowly and let my body readjust so that I don't get lightheaded.  I suppose if this is the worst symptom I have, I can handle it!  I almost forgot to say that I have my big ultrasound tomorrow, so that should give us a nice update of how things are going with little Bean!

I'm looking forward to this weekend, for two reasons.  First off, my drywall is being put in!! Yay!! Skip's good friend Bryan and his wife Tamara will be doing the job for us, as they do construction work on the side.  As soon as the drywall is done, we can paint, put the floors in, then LIVE up there.  I'm SO EXCITED!

Secondly, all of the Hart/Preston ladies (well, most of us) are getting together this weekend up here in MKE to celebrate my aunt Nancy's 50th birthday!  My grandma's maiden name is Hart, and there will be 12 of us celebrating: Grandma, my mom, my aunts Nancy, Pat and Emily, my mom's cousin Marie, one of her daughters, Megan (we'll miss her other daughter Caroline), my cousins Amy, Allison and Cate, and me and Sarison.  We plan on visiting the Domes, the Milwaukee Public Market, dinner at Joey Buona's and who knows what else!  It should be a GREAT time!

Stay tuned for another post with updates from the weekend!

11/7/11

Calm the crazy!  I swear Preston is a total nut job sometimes!  Tonight, he decided he wanted nothing to do with dinner, but would rather whine for literally 30 seconds at a time... straight.  The kid can hold a note longer that an opera singer!  So, we decided to go for a ride in the car to get the crazies out.  It sort of worked... until when we got back he started climbing up on the backs of the couches.  Scotch is a bad example... Then Preston thought it would be funny to wear Scotch's choke collar as a hat, until I heard him around the corner going "uh oh." Apparently the "hat" fits over his head, which I did not think it did.  Oops, Mommy fail.  So we fixed that, and he proceeded to whack the hell out of Scotch's face with the now-weapon he had.  That warranted a little staredown until he said sorry to Scotch, which he eventually did.  I'm so proud of my dog these days, he's so patient.  Every once in a while, though, they will be horsing around and he (Scotch) will get Preston's arm in his mouth (soft mouth), and look up at us with this "just a little taste?" look.  Stinker...
Then, wham, he decided he'd go to bed.  5 minutes later there was silence in the house.  Boy am I lucky to have a little one who sleeps so well!

Weekend in Review

Welp, let's see.  Skip was working both Friday and Saturday night (which he rarely does), so I had P to myself this weekend.  So we got up Saturday morning, had some breakfast, then hung with Skip for a little while when he got home from work.  When Skip went to bed, Preston and I headed downtown for the Veteran's Day parade.  We got a nice spot to sit, and Preston loved seeing the horses, and listening to all the bands.  It was a pretty long parade, so he reached his limit after a while, so we came home for lunch.  After lunch, we both took a nap for a while, which basically ate up the rest of the day.  I had a list of stuff to get done, but have been getting tired in the middle of the afternoon lately, so I just needed the nap (taking advantage of being able to nap on the weekends, since I can't at work, obviously...).  Yesterday evening we had dinner, then just vegged for the night.

This morning was an early one, since two-year-olds obviously don't get the memo on sleeping for an extra hour, but I was prepared for that.  Since Preston isn't one to eat his breakfast first thing when he wakes up, he played for a little bit while I cleaned the shower and tub.  Yep, 6:45 and I was cleaning the shower!  By 8:00, we had already finished breakfast, I had washed the dishes, and had even scrubbed the stovetop.  Skip got home from work right about then, so we hung out with him for a little bit before getting ready to go to the zoo (should've been going to church, but it is seriously too hard for me to keep Preston still for an hour by myself these days at mass; I give him a couple months to work out his crazies, and we should be okay).  We got to the zoo by 9:45, which was perfect since barely anyone was there.  We had a really good time, and Preston was ecstatic when we got to ride the choo-choo!  I've never seen such a goofy grin on his face!

We came home, had some lunch, then napped again.  I've decided I love napping, even though I rarely ever do it!  After our naps, we got outside to clear some of the leaves that pile up in our driveway and front.  Preston had fun with his little lawnmower "mowing" the  leaves up. After dinner, we watched Beauty and the Beast, then the little beast hit the sack.  It really was a great weekend!

11/5/11

I've decided that though pomegranates are delicious, they are just too much work.  I just ate one (rather, the seeds from one), and not only did it take me like 15 minutes just to get the seeds out, my fingers are all pink now!

11/4/11

Two posts in two days, sweet.  Anyways, I thought I would write about Preston in this one again.  We had him sleeping in the pack-n-play in the front room again while the renovations are going on.  We are on a full-sized (ugh) mattress in the other room.  So, Preston went to stay with my mom and dad one night, and my mom let me know that "the party is over" and that P can get out of the pack-n-play now... uh oh!  I was a little worried of him getting out now in the middle of the night at our house, so he was nice enough just to get out for the first time during his nap... stinker.  We had the crib mattress just up against the wall down there, and I thought to put it next to the pack-n-play, just in case he fell out.  Well one day, after trying for the third time to get him to stay in the pack-n-play at naptime, I asked him if he would rather sleep on the mattress, to which he shook his head yes.  Okay... So, I put a pillow and blanket on there, laid him down, then didn't hear him for 2 1/2 hours!  Let's just say he's been sleeping on his big boy "bed" ever since. :)  We plan on having him in a toddler bed when we get back upstairs, so this will ease that transition immensely!

I, on the other hand, cannot WAIT to get back into our queen-sized bed upstairs.  A full mattress is way too small for me and Skip's ginormous legs.  Not to mention I don't have space to toss and turn like I am doing frequently these days!

A few pics from P's birthday:

NaBloPoMo and House update

Apparently November is National Blog Posting Month, so I am going to attempt to write a blog post for every day in November (stick with me... no promises).  This is an extra long post to make up for missing 2 days.

I have been attempting to put a big post up about the renovations we've been working on in our house, but I can't seen to get the pictures to upload correctly.  So, since most of the 2 people who read this blog are also my friends on Facebook, I'll let the pictures on there speak for themselves, and here's the description of what we did:

Pre-renovation set-up
If you've been in our house, you know we have 2 bedrooms downstairs (the back room has a sliding door out to a 3-season porch, and no interior door, so it's kind of a den; we put a door on the other room, so it's a real bedroom), and technically 2 bedrooms upstairs.  You would walk past a lovely array of tan shag carpet on the walls of the staircase, to come to a room at the top of the stairs.  A good-sized room with a big closet, but you had to walk through it to get to the 2nd room.  The second room had old carpet and weird paneling on the walls, but was otherwise useful.  There is also a 3/4 bath up there.  When we first moved in, Skip and I were sleeping in the back bedroom downstairs, while Preston was in the front room, the one with a door.  After a few months of our ridiculous schedules making it impossible for us to sleep, we moved just our beds upstairs.  Ours in the big room, and Preston's crib in the other "room."  It worked okay, but every time one of us walked past P, we'd risk waking him up. Not to mention all of our stuff was still downstairs (clothes).

Plan of attack, steps completed so far:
1.) Remove carpet from walls.  This was easy.  Unfortunately, it allowed us to notice ants were in the walls.  Jim and Andy went to town and opened a hole in the wall, only to have hundreds of gigantic carpenter ants fall out (*shudder*).  Orkin has since been involved, and the ant problem is gone.  We still, however, have a gigantic hole in the wall.  At least it's now insulated and vapor-barriered, ready for drywall...

2.) Cut wall at top of stairs down to 1/2 wall.  After removing the door and frame from the top of the stairs, this was relatively easy.  It now is sort-of a loft space at the top of the stairs, and will allow a lot more light into the upstairs hallway.

3.) Make a hallway and new bedroom walls.  We cut out basically all of the existing walls in the walk-through room, and now have framed a hallway, and pushed back where the old walls were so they are more into the attic.  The room will be small, but plenty functional for 2 little kiddos.  We also rebuilt the closet, which was a necessity to be able to consider it a bedroom.

4.) Pull the weird paneling off the walls in our bedroom, and build a new closet.  This was surprisingly easy, since the paneling was very weakly secured to the framing.  We have since re-insulated the open space, and put up a vapor barrier.  The huge closet is also framed and ready to go.  It will be great to have so much storage space in a style/age of house that usually doesn't.  Our room will be a little smaller, but still plenty big for all of our stuff.

5.) Drywall everything.  This is sort of at a standstill.  We're getting professionals to come in, but have been back and forth with pricing.  The hope is to have this done within 2 weeks... ha, stay tuned on that one!

6.) New flooring.  Thanks to Charlie and Mary, we have really nice new Pergo flooring and quality wood subfloor ready to go as soon as the drywall gets in.  We will do that ourselves.

7.) Put in windows.  We currently have vapor barrier and plywood nailed up over the gaping holes that were and will be windows.  The new windows are waiting in the porch to be put in.  My dad says we will be upgrading 5 generations worth of windows with the new ones, compared to the ancient ones that were there before (and by ancient, I don't mean orginal to the house, like most of our downstairs windows are.  The upstairs ones were just old, leaky (when they wanted to open) and ugly).

Hey, after all this is done, maybe we can actually get to moving our stuff back up there and living there, just in time to have our lives thrown around some more with the arrival of a new baby!

Speaking of baby, I'm 19 weeks along today!  Everything has been progressing wonderfully, albeit a bit faster than things did with Preston.  I've been feeling well.  I have my 2nd trimester anatomy ultrasound next week, so we are looking forward to seeing the baby again.   We'll stay on "team green" again with this one, waiting until March to find out if it's a boy or girl!

Preston is 2.  Holy cow!  These past 2 years have absolutely flown by, but in the best possible way.  We had a few people over for a low-key birthday celebration last weekend, which went well.  Elmo was the theme, and Preston loved it.  What a laid-back guy he is.  He is just spitting out words left and right these days, so we have to be very careful about what we say around him! (Ex: Skip, and his sarcastic potty mouth, said last night "What's up, bitches?!" only to hear 5 seconds later: "Up bishes!"   Oops...)  Other than that, I think potty training is in the mix now, since it's like wrestling an alligator trying to change that little dude's diapers.  He seriously doesn't have an ounce of fat on him!  He was 23.5 lbs and 33 inches at his dr. appointment last week, which is still pretty tiny.  But back on the charts, so we're happy!  Everything else with him is wonderful!