(ALMOST) 33 WEEKS!

RENOVATIONS:
 Great news!! Lowes is stupid.. They called and told us our carpet is being installed this Thursday (in two days!) Not in two weeks! The race is on to finish all of the trim work and possibly the baseboards before then. Here is what Barry looks like working at night.

I'm so glad he knows what he's doing. haha! Belle, your daddy is the shit! Or as he would say, "jack of all trades, master of none." Even though I beg to differ and have photos to prove it!

Lets transition to bullets for the rest.

• I have a doctors appointment today.
• After today, my appointments will  move to every other week. :)
• Today I am stressed.. about money, credit card bills, Belle's healthcare, money, maternity leave, my whole work-force future, money, and money.... 
• Barry says we have enough other things right now going on and to not let those things bother me right now. Especially when we're making such excellent progress on the house.  I think he's right. Everything will work out. It always does. 
• I got me car washed for the first time since March. Which means I get to buy reindeer antlers and a red nose for it on account of the holidays! AND I made myself a deal, once I get it washed, I get to install the car seat! So I guess that'll be happening soon. 

Without further adieu:
Here is a side by side of October 14th - December 14th

Renovating.

I'm not even sure where to begin. I want this to be informative and  memorable without sounding too much like ranting.

Lets start with the progress that's been made. We got the walls and ceiling in the west wing primed and painted. They look fantastic!! We got all of the baseboards, window trim, and door trim, cleaned, sanded, cleaned again, primed and painted. We have all of the pre-primed crown moulding bought, it just has to be measured and cut, then hung, nail holes spackled, painted, and caulked. The window and door trim is a bit more tricky. Because the drywall is much thicker than the previous wood paneling, Barry has to cut thin pieces of wood to slide in between the framing and trim when hanging it. This wouldn't be as big of a deal if we had a table saw at home, but we don't. So he will just have to take as good of measurements as he can, pick up the wood and take it to work to cut, and then bring home and install it. Then we can hang the window and door trim up, spackle the nail holes, paint, and caulk the seams.

The carpet is finally paid for after a huge ordeal and two trips to Lowes to sign the MFing contract. The only other time I've dealt with such horrible customer service was when we bought phones through sprint and cancelled them after 1 week of dealing with horrible reception issues. I spent almost every day on the phone with those nitwits for TWO MONTHS trying to get things cancelled, refunded and out of paying a $2000 bill that they said we owed them that it finally took me having a nervous breakdown on the phone and literally crying and begging someone to help me for someone to finally feel bad enough for what they had put us through and to get everything straightened out for us. This Lowes carpet ordeal is literally coming close to being as bad as the sprint situation got. I've reached my limit with these idiots.
But back to the point.... after paying for the carpet and finally getting the contract signed, they called us 3 or 4 days later to inform us that the carpet we picked out is on back order until the 21st and they'll call us when it becomes available to schedule the installation. That's two weeks away! Now we will have to move everything out of the nursery and put it....I don't even know where... so we can paint her room. The word "Stress" does not even begin to describe my current emotion. It's so beyond that point. I literally come home and cry almost every day looking around my house wondering how in the hell we are going to finish this.
And I pray that she doesn't come early...

We've missed quite a few gatherings with friends and/or family due to these renovations that I feel absolutley awful about. It doesn't help that we've been using the "we're working on the house" excuse for over a month now. Thankfully almost everyone is empathetic to our situation but I think a few might be beginning to undermine the seriousness of the approaching deadline that haunts nearly every waking thought Barry and I have. Let me clarify that we don't have until my due date of Feb 4th to finish all of this. I might, if I'm lucky, have a couple more weeks left in me before my extremely exhausted, sore, and tired body is no longer capable of doing the this kind of work. I know Barry can and will finish on his own whatever still needs to be done at that point, but I can't leave him with the amount of work that still has to done to so all alone. Not only is unfair to him, but it's a lot more productive for two people to be doing it than it is for just one person. I'm just really glad that for the most part, when we tell people "sorry we can't... we have to get our house finished.." they are pretty understanding of the time constraint we are looking at.
This isn't fun for us. We'd much rather be lounging around and hanging out with friends and family. Afterall, it's the holidays... and I'm 32 weeks pregnant!! But we NEED to finish this. ASAP.

Anyways. Here are some (grainy, obnoxious, low-lite photos) for you :)

 Primed

Gray!!

Window trim and base boards. (not including the door trim and crown moundling)

Aside from my lovely husband, these are the other two things keeping me sane after a long night's work.

Oh, and does this count for a belly shot?

Life happenings. Lots of pictures with a 30 week bump pic

I am so sorry for going silent for 2 weeks! Between work at work and work at home, I've hardly had a single minute to myself it feels like.

So here is what's been happening:
(dummy me forgot to take actual before photos but here is the den. The 3rd bedroom, not pictured, looked exactly the same with green, stained carpet, and faux wood paneling walls from floor to ceiling with the dark brown stained/shellac trim throughout.) So far we removed all of  the carpet, paneling, trim, and baseboards and installed insulation and drywall. We spent the long holiday weekend taping, muding, and sanding the new drywall and will be hopefully sanding the last coat of mud tonight. We will begin painting the ceiling and walls either tomorrow or Wednesday and then work on refinishing trim and baseboards until the carpet gets installed sometime within about 10 days. Once the new carpet is in place, we just have rehang the trim, and baseboards and install the new bedroom door and closet doors in the bedroom. Then we can move all of the stuff that currently is Elle's room into the den and begin work on the nursery!! The only thing we have to do in there is fix a few spots in the wall and then paint the walls, replace her ceiling fan/ light fixture, finish sanding and painting her closet door, and then just move all of her furniture in. WHICH BY THE WAY, with a little help from Barry on the crib, her changing table and crib are both put together.
I even managed to put the Christmas tree up :) Even though the ornaments are currently buried in the dining room (aka- storage unit) under 3 boxes and behind a 60 pound (+) piece of solid butcher block counter top that we had leftover from the kitchen renovation. So that's no happening until we finish the den and can get that room cleaned up and everything put back where it belongs.

 Den:

Baby Shower

So.. the baby shower that I was so against having..... went well.. In fact, it went really well. Elle made out like a little bandit. Its kind of hard to not go home and start unpacking her stuff and putting everything together, and washing and organizing all of her stuff but hopefully it won't be too much longer.
My fear is that by the time we get to that point, I'll be so big and uncomfortable that I'll dread the amount of work ahead of me to get all of her stuff ready before she arrives. Right now I just have to take it one day at a time and try not to get overwhelmed. We do have an overwhelming amount of work still to do... Just getting all of her stuff out of boxes and bags, and washed, folded, organized by size, and put away is an entire weekend's worth or work. And we haven't even started on her nursery yet! However, as much as I have to complain about, at least I'm not going to work and then coming home and doing hard labor until 9 or 10 at night like my darling husband is. I've just been working on all of the trim and baseboards that have to be refinished, which is hard enough for the third trimester but that doesn't keep me from feeling guilty that I can't do more to help Barry. I can't even fathom how sore his body is and he just powers through it day after day. And I don't even have the energy to cook him a nice meal, we've just been eating shitty frozen meals almost every night or getting greasy drive thru meals.  Some wife I am! 
Any ways.. I just wanted to drop a line about how I survived the shower. It really wasn't that big of a deal in retrospect, even though my heart palpitations and contractions last Sunday would probably state otherwise. But it was really nice to see everyone! I just wish we would have invited a photographer friend. I didn't get one single photo of anything and the decorations were done so perfectly!! It's probably something I'll regret for a long time but I've already told Barry we are hiring someone for the birth. I have ZERO non-iphone photos of this pregnancy so far and it sucks. Being into photography as much as we are, I thought we'd be the couple that kept a very good digital/film record of everything but so far, we've pretty much sucked. lol So having photos of Elle's Birth Day is really important to me.

28 WEEK (hot flashes, renovations, and baby shower talk) W/ PICS

Let me just start this off by saying Elle's survival rate if born this week is a whopping 95%!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
In light of pregnancy symptoms, I feel like they have all waited until now to hit me. The honeymoon phase of pregnancy is officially over. Although my spirit is still on cloud 9, sleep deprivation is settling in. Still, and thankfully still, after a couple nights of a horrible sleep, I'm usually greeted with a couple nights, back to back, of incredible slumber which is nice. For the most part, heartburn only strikes at night when I lay down for bed... AFTER I get all nice and comfy. But it's still no match for tums which I'm also incredibly thankful for. The renovations at the house are coming along. Drywall has been postponed to next weekend due to Barry's sweet grandpa passing away last weekend. As is exhausting and at times, stressful, as this all has been, I feel incredibly fortunate that we are able to get the things done that we need to get done using our HELOC loan. It's nice not having to worry about money at the moment when things like health insurance premiums and maternity leave consume almost every waking thought you have.
Oh and our baby shower is this weekend. There are a few outofstaters that I really wish could make it, but I know they'll be there in spirit. As nervous as I am about all of the attention I'm about to receive, I'm so excited to see all of our friends and family. Some of them we haven't seen since shortly before starting IVF! And the weather is suppose to be PERFECT this weekend. Well... perfect would be low 60's but considering we've been breaking record highs for November almost every day this month, low 70's is more than welcoming! Especially on account of all these insanely, anxiety provoking hot flashes I've been getting this week. These things hit fast and out of no where and some are downright painful. My whole entire body feels like it's boiling and I'm sure turns as red as a beet! The worst one yet was the other night while in line at the grocery store. I felt it and immediately started chugging my ice water which I don't think did anything.  I felt like everyone was staring at me which only added fuel to my internal blaze! My heart was racing, my skin boiling... I just looked at Barry ready to ball my eyes out... Within a minute or two were outside and I was beginning to calm down and cool off again. The fact that I have no idea when one will strike only adds to my anxiety and now I'm that much more afraid of socializing or even being in public for that matter! Hopefully this resolves itself after pregnancy and my internal temperature goes back to normal.

SISTERHOOD OF THE TRAVELING HUSBAND

FOR AS ANXIOUS AS I AM, YOU'D THINK I WAS THE ONE TRAVELING.
AT WHAT POINT DOES THIS FEELING TRANSPOSE FROM JUST MY HORMONES TO A PREMONITION.
GOD FORBIRD.
I DON'T EVEN WANT TO GO THERE.
I CAN'T GO THERE.
I FEEL LIKE A CRAZY WIFE...
I JUST HAD TO LIE TO SOMEONE WHO WALKED INTO MY OFFICE AND ASKED WHY MY EYES WERE ALL RED.
"OHHH BECAUSE MY HUSBAND IS OUT OF TOWN FOR 2 DAYS.... " HOW RIDICULOUS WOULD THAT HAVE SOUNDED?
I TOLD THEM MY ALLERGIES WERE KICKING MY ASS. WHICH ISN'T A TOTAL LIE.


WTF IS HAPPENING TO ME?


I SHOULD TREAT MYSELF TO A MILKSHAKE.

26w6d (pictures to be added)

Bullet points.. Its the only way we'll get through this!

• The lovely nights of sleep last week gave way to a train wreck of sleepless nights this week. 
• The 1.5-2 hour range I use to have before my feet and back began to hurt now rests at about an hour. HOWEVER, tennis shoes seem to give me endless relief.
• We went to Ikea. Got a few new lamps and new black and white rug for the living room which after getting home and seeing how much of a mistake that was (white dog + foot traffic), we have to go back and get another new rug for the living room and put the black and white one in our bedroom. Also got a table lamp, wall sconce, shelf, dresser, and rug for Elle's room which we'll have to get another table lamp because Elle's made itself nice and comfy in my bedroom :) Lastly we picked up a beautiful glass shelving unit for the kitchen which was totally unplanned but it was too nice not to get and it was only $70. Unfortunately one of the sides was damaged when we took it out of the box for assembly so we either have to wait for them to send us a new piece or return it all together for a new one. Since we have to go back for another rug and lamp we may just return it. We also tested a new mattress out that I'm still day dreaming about. Barry, if you're reading this, please buy me that comfy new mattress in a king size with a new king size bed too. :)
• We are finally getting started on renovations this week....I think. This weekend we are suppose to remove trim and carpet from the den and 3rd bedroom and purchase all of the drywall needed for both rooms. Then next weekend, Barry has a coworker coming by Saturday to help us hang it. We had an estimate on the floor leveling which we're waiting on a proposal to be written up so we can have permits pulled. Hopefully that job will be done by the end of November so we can have the carpet installed by December. THEN we can move on to Elle's room. In the meantime, I have no idea where we are going to put everything from the den and 3rd bedroom while we renovate it, much less what we are going to do with everything we get at the baby shower the following weekend.
• Heartburn has subsided to pukey reflux which thankfully, for the most part, is only occurring near the end of the day/night.
• I'm still reaaaalllllly excited about Thanksgiving food. 
• I'm also very depressed that my husband is out of town. Like.... I've been crying off and on for 2 days and literally cried myself to sleep last night. I don't know what is happening to me but I told him that my hormones absolutley can't handle him leaving town again for the remainder of the pregnancy. The only silver lining is that he's in Cape Cod... during the fall.... and I know he's enjoying himself. Or at least I hope he is. 
• I have my Glucose Test tomorrow morning. Hopefully I don't turn into a jittery, sick mess afterwards.