Natural Labor?

I am 27 weeks pregnant and it's all starting to hit me that I am going to have to give birth sooner than I think. Since I've been so busy with everything I haven't thought much about being pregnant. 

Matt asked me the other day if I wanted to try to go with out the epidural this time around. Of course, I laughed at him and thought he was insane. But it seems like everyone I talk to lately tells me how amazing and quick recovery is when you do it naturally and how they never want an epidural again. Again, I always thought they were crazy...but now I'm actually considering it, or playing around with the idea. 

When I had Luke I didn't receive my epidural until I was dilated just past an 8. I almost couldn't even have it, but it did make a huge difference in actually giving birth. However, I am dreading recovery more than anything! And this is why I am considering doing it naturally. 

So, for those of you with strong opinions either way I want to hear them! And those of you who have done it naturally I would love to hear why you wanted to do it and if there are any good books or websites that you recommend me looking at. Because if I do decide to do it, I think I need to commit before I get there and be prepared. 

Blessings

Yesterday we were very lucky to bring our 2nd car home. (Which is waaaaay easier than buying a house!)And we are proud to say that we own a minivan. I never ever in my life wanted a minivan and swore I would never drive one....but after becoming a mom and realizing it was the best choice (better gas mileage and cheaper than an SUV) for us. 

We weren't planning on buying one for two more months but we were thankfully able to get it early enough so that our visitors this summer wouldn't have to get rentals when they come. I am just SO happy to finally have my own car. I haven't had one for over 3 years. Freedom at last!

We ended up going with a Honda Odyssey. We looked at a few cars and almost got suckered into buying the same car and year, with less extras, for more. We waited one more day and found this one. We love it!

We were just looking for the most basic model, but lucked out with getting leather interior, dvd player, towing package, etc. We feel very blessed!

Only one problem...as you can see, it doesn't fit in our garage. 

We knew that, and oh well! Maybe we'll have to fix our garage door at some point. 

We are just so thankful and feel so blessed that we now have our own house, a second car, a job (which Matt started today!), a healthy boy and a healthy baby on the way. 

We are now more than ready for visitors. We have an extra guest room (or a whole extra floor if you want to put it that way!) with brand new bed and plenty of room in our van! 

I don't want to hear anymore "we are planning on coming to Cleveland..." and then two months later, "sorry, we decided to go to ____________ instead." 

Why wouldn't you want to come to Cleveland?
At least our parents love us and come visit us occasionally. 

Cannot wait to see you Mom and Dad!!!

Living in Ohio

This past week we took a little trip out to the country side of Ohio to our favorite farm, Monroe Orchards, in Hiram, Ohio. It's right next door to probably my favorite church site, the John Johnson Farm. I absolutely LOVE it out there, all times of the year it is just beautiful! It's definitely worth the 30 minute drive.

Since we've lived here we've made a tradition out of picking fruits during the summer months. We love to pick strawberries, raspberries, peaches and apples. We're going to try blueberries this year too. They are so much better than the store. Anyway, we picked 20 something pounds of strawberries this year! Mainly because I wanted a plentiful supply of jam to last us until next year.

It was a breezy day in the 70's. It was so nice! And I say the picking is addicting!

Maybe not so much for Luke.

But he was a good sport.

We had (and still do) a ton of strawberries!

And now we have about 20 cups of freezer jam. Shesh.

In this next segment, I can't say it's one of my proudest moments in mothering...but since we're living in Ohio, I guess he'll fit in somewhere. Maybe in Amish Country?

In one of my last posts I mentioned that we were growing Luke's hair out. I decided to try trimming it. Apparently I REALLY need some hair cutting help.

His hair is so long and I was just using the scissors....well, you get the picture. Poor kid.

It's not too bad, but it's pretty embarrassing on my part. I hope no one noticed that we brought a little Amish boy to church today. At least he didn't have a mullet that hung over his collar.

It's going to be one of those pictures he looks back on and wonders what his mother did to him. Like our mullet or bowl cuts when we were growing up.

And for those of you who haven't heard the World Cup started this past Friday. It only comes around every four years, so it's a pretty big deal around here.

We only have TV set up in our kitchen right now...so this is how we spent our Saturday afternoon while England and US played. Notice Matt is wearing an England jersey...trader. :)

Just as a side note, I have some major blogging catch up to do from our trip to Williamsburg, that happened back at the beginning of May and of when Matt's parents came out to visit us. Matt put all of our pictures on our hard drive and cleared them off his computer temporarily-so I need to get them back and catch up. 

Stay tuned.

Also, pictures soon to come of our house. I feel like we're now in the "final stages" of unpacking (are we taking a ridiculously long time?). We are hanging pictures, decorations and finishing up organizing. Hopefully we'll have it all squared away very soon!

Little projects

Well, they are minor projects, but I don't know if little is the best word to use considering the amount of time that went into them. I know some people don't care about these kinds of posts, but we're really just posting them because our moms and sisters ask about them...so here they are!

This first one makes me SO HAPPY! 

Matt "built" me a pantry!!! I know that most of you are thinking, "whoppie, everyone has a pantry," but out here in Cleveland that is clearly not the case. Most of these old houses don't have any kind of pantry or closet in the kitchen. In our apt we had to use one of those big ugly utility racks for our food. I hated how it was always out in the open and that everyone could see what we ate (is that weird?). Anyway, when we got here we were still planning on using the same rack, even though I really didn't want to. But we have this little closet off the side of our kitchen and decided to put shelves in it and I LOVE IT! Good-bye ugly black rack, hello pantry that hides all of our food.

Before:

After:
Notice the little door in the back of the closet? That's our laundry shoot or "intercom" (because there is one on each floor) whichever one you prefer, either way it's so nice to have! 

Food!

I'd say this was a much bigger and much more expensive project...our curtains for our bay window.

For weeks, since I knew we were buying this house, I tried to figure out what I was going to do with this window. We knew it'd be expensive, but it had to be done considering you can see our whole first floor through it. 

We were lucky enough to get some nice looking rods at JoAnn's for 80% off! It was weird because you had to cut them down to the size you needed (with a hand saw), but it worked out perfectly for us. We were able to customize them to fit our window perfectly. We got them for two other windows by our stairs and two windows in the master bedroom. I'll have to post pics of those later, because those ones are beautiful! 

These aren't great pictures, but you get the idea. This was before we painted. The yellow was fine, it just was too much for my curtains and other furniture/colors in the room. 

The curtains open:

And closed, and a freshly painted room!

You probably can't tell the color that well, but it's Mushroom Bisque, if that helps. Haha, it's a darker shade of tan I guess you could say. We love the way the walls turned out. Now we just need to get some things hung on them!

We are planning on getting two big book shelves in there, eventually, possibly recovering the green chairs, adding a love seat and removing one chair, and replacing the coffee table....at some point. :)

I love how the curtains hang on the floor.
 Matt did an awesome job of putting this all together.

He's quite proud of the rods, so he wanted me to take a close up.

Today he spent the entire day cleaning out or hobbit garage and doing yard work, while Luke and I played and vegged at the pool. He's the best.

The biggest project of all...is still coming along.

Hello third trimester!
Today I'm 26 weeks.

Baby is doing great, I'm not gaining too much weight (hooray!), but I still feel like I am getting huge.

Feet are swelling, cravings are out of control, and someone is very excited about the world cup and wants to play too (and it's not Matt).

Hello belly.

Fun Stuff

This week is Matt's last full week off before residency begins...before real life begins (sniff, sniff). We decided to do some fun things and not just all house stuff, which is what we've been doing all day, everyday the past two weeks.

We took little Lukey to the Natural History Museum here in Cleveland on free day. It was fun, but a little above his level. He liked to see all the animals, even though he's not a huge fan of animals-he's a little scared of them.

He really liked the dinosaurs.

They have a cute, little outdoor walk way where they have (live) animals that are native to Ohio. We saw some foxes, squirrels, vultures (yikes), otters (who'd a thunk?), bald eagles, beautiful birds (namely cardinals and blue jays) and a few others.

Now this is just random.

We've been growing Luke's hair out for a while now and it's getting really long. I love how it gets curly after we give him a bath, but it only stays curly if I make it. It usually just goes flat. It's super cute huh? But if he wears a shirt with a collar, he looks like he has a mullet, due to his bigger forehead :). Should we cut it or let it grow and maybe just give him a trim?

Back to the fun, today we went to the zoo (another free day). The weather couldn't have been better. It was upper 60's, no humidity-perfect! We packed lunches and saw the animals.

We just got our pool passes so we'll be living at the pool this summer as well. I'm trying to come up with several outings for Luke (pool, zoo, park days, museums, etc) and to help the time go by during this long summer. Matt will be working night float until the end of August, so we won't see him much and with me being very pregnant, with a two year old-well, you can see why I need things to pass the time.

We're going to hit up the strawberry patch this week and pick us some strawberries and then make some yummy jam. We might also go to an Indians game. Any other good ideas for fun activities we can do this week?

A little break from the chaos

We're still alive. 

I guess you could say we are in the "survival mode" of moving....we have only done it once before (well, I have) when I moved out here after we got married to join Matt. It was easy then, we shipped all of our stuff and it was sent to our house and it was not nearly as much as we have now. If I haven't already said it, I hate moving!!! In our next move we are getting rid of all of our hand-me-down/tree lawn stuff-which is most of what we own. :)

We have been here for a week and half and still love having our own place. We cleaned the carpets, repainted our dinning room and living room. Now I feel like we can get everything into place, since those big projects are done. We also had to hang some curtains and they were a huge project of running from store to store a million times to get it just right.

Our Realtor gave us this framed watercolor painting of our house as a house warming gift (and two free tickets to a horrible play that we walked out of).

And here are a few pictures of some of the rooms right after we moved in. My sister asked me for some pictures...and these are as good as they get for now. :)

It was a disaster!

Trust me, it has gotten a lot better than this. But doesn't this overwhelm you just by looking at the pictures? Whew.

Meanwhile, Luke has been surviving. I try to take him on a walk, to the park or library-some kind of outing a day. He's been a good little guy through the move, but it hasn't been easy on him. I think he's starting to get used to everything now.

Luke loves his food in stick form. Matt served his lunch this way the other day, he loved it!

Hot dog sticks, carrot sticks, cheese sticks and apple sticks. Whatever works!

Now that we are getting things put away, our house seems more like it's empty! I knew this would happen. 

I took this picture today before we started painting. We repainted the dinning room from a putrid, mustard yellow color to an olivey green color and the living room to a tan color.

So the break that I mentioned was Memorial Day. There is parade that comes right by our street, so we sat on a friend's lawn to watch and get some candy. It was hot and humid. Luke kept asking if we could go inside. It was only an hour, so it was fun I thought.

One float gave out water instead of candy....I had to take a picture.

As soon as we get everything else into order around here I will post some more decent pictures of our house.

Tonight we're taking a break, watching Wipe Out (because are feel that way), in our kitchen. I think I'd rather be on the couch. :)