30 weeks

As we head into the final stretch, we're FINALLY beginning to take steps towards making room for little mister numero dos. We're pretty much decided on the name and I've even been sharing it with a few so maybe we'll just start calling him by his name soon. I thought it was a lot of fun not to disclose Mateo's name before he was born for several reasons:
1. When you tell people the name of your unborn child they inevitably give you their opinion ("Oh, I like that." or if you're my mom, "How about _____ instead"). It's tough enough to give a child a moniker that will take him through his life without having to listen to what other people have to say about it. Unless they have been asked of course ;-)!
2. These days people know so much about the baby before the birth so at least the name can be a surprise!
3. It can just be strange for someone to call your unborn child by name ... seems like a right that should be reserved for the parents only, but I definitely understand this one. It's just simpler and other people want to get on with calling the baby his name.

But I digress. I'm excited to post that we are taking baby steps (no pun intended) towards prepping the house. For me, it was a HUGE goal for us to organize the garage. I don't necessarily think Javier was as excited about it (definitely not!), but I knew JUST how to get him moving .... called California Closets to have them over for a quote! When other 'professionals' start coming around his territory it has a pretty consistent effect of getting him moving :). I'm very proud to say that what California Closets quoted us $7000 to do, Javier has been able to accomplish pretty much the same thing for under $800. Although sure has spent a LOT of time in the garage. But I'm happy we've been able to save the money and he's happy to do the work himself. Next project - baby closet. Javier has done most of the closets of our house, but the spare room/office/room for new baby closet has not been completed yet. So we're going to do something interesting there by turning a small portion of the existing closet into a linen closet so that we can turn our existing linen closet into a partial coat closet as currently all of our coats are in the new baby's closet. A lot of words to basically say 'we are creating space'. It's a good thing our home has a lot of storage space to play with. The more we talk about how to shift things around, the less excited I become about us not having an office/spare bedroom so it looks like little mister numero dos will have his own bedroom only until he is sleeping through the night. Plans always subject to change, but I think it would be a shame for us to give up our spare bedroom. We love visitors and people are a lot more likely to come if there is space for them. We're thinking the boys will want to share a room anyhow, right? We'll see! And maybe it will be just more than I can handle. I can just imagine it now ... the constant bed diving contests and wrestling noises coming from upstairs. Hopefully this will become music to my ears ;-).

I ordered the crib bedding today just to jump start me in thinking about paint/window covering options. That's the fun stuff though and everyone knows babies don't need much so I'll try my best to refrain from getting to pushy and stressed about this stuff.

Junior League has kept me super busy this month. I took over the presidency in May and this month planned a Board of Directors retreat (for 11 ladies), a Leadership Retreat (for 30+ ladies), my first general meeting (for 100 ladies) and a board meeting tomorrow night. It's a lot of work, but I truly am enjoying it. It's an honor to serve the Junior League of Santa Barbara. Everyone thinks I'm nuts, but it's making me uber productive to have all this stuff going on at once. We've also begun to look into preschool options for Mateo. So far we've looked at a Montessori preschool and the Jewish preschool (even though neither of us is Jewish). I don't know much at all about Judaism, but read "The Blessing of a Skinned Knee" and really liked the Jewish principles and values as they were described in this book. It seems for Jewish people, respecting and honoring parents/elders is a very big deal. I like that :). I get concerned with the amount of child-centered parenting I see today.

Just had my 30-wk blood work done and it appears I am gestational diabetes free. Yippy!

photo - 29 weeks

26 weeks

Wow, this pregnancy is running away from me. So hard to believe this little one has been incubating for 26 weeks. He's a little trooper as mama is really busy right now and definitely not getting enough rest, but I can feel him all the time kicking away and enjoying life. He is extremely active. So much that he can give me quite a surprise at any moment. You can physically see my stomach move around pretty wildly if you're looking in just the right moment. Sometimes it's difficult to concentrate on anything else. Mateo is somewhat interested in my belly as well. He'll say hello and give me some pats. I really think kids are smarter than people give them credit so I'd like to think he kind of knows what's up. I don't expect that he completely understands the complexity of it, but I tell him that he used to be there and soon he'll have a brother. It's clear there is something in my stomach ;-)!

Fortunately, I've been blessed with two wonderful pregnancies so I don't want to complain, but juggling work, the house, a husband, a toddler, the Junior League presidency (hooray!) and general social outings is seeming like a lot. I'm doing my best to remember to breathe as I know that so much of how I feel right now is being transmitted to him.

It's 8pm and I feel like having a bowl of cereal and crashing for the night. I feel this way quite often actually. Too tired to think about food or anything else. Javier has been a champ and has been cooking lots of wonderful meals when he's been home, but he seems to have been out of town a lot over the past few months. We're about to face a pretty massive transition as the last day of his job is June 30th. As if adding a 2nd baby were not transition enough. I'm hopeful and optimistic about change. Everything will be great!

I've been trying to figure out if I'm bigger this time around or not and I don't think I logged my weight well last pregnancy. The midwives have all the info, but at 26+ (almost 27) weeks in this time around, I've gained 15 pounds.

21 weeks