36 Weeks and (Some) House Pictures!

Here is my 36-week picture!  I have an OB appointment tomorrow (Thursday); I'll update everyone on how it goes.

35 Weeks

36 Weeks (excuse the pajamas)

And finally some house pictures.  For some reason it is very difficult for me to find the initiative to take pictures of the house and post them.  Perhaps because I want the rooms to look perfect, and that usually seems too daunting whenever taking house pictures crosses my mind.  Anyway...

Our street is a cul-de-sac, and our house is right smack in the center of that cul-de-sac.  There are woods behind the house.  I love our location, because you can see everyone on the street coming and going, and no one can see our backyard unless they're lurking in the woods (creepy).  Also, there are three bedrooms and 2.5 bathrooms (all the bedrooms are upstairs; the half bathroom is downstairs).

Cul-de-sac View (from our driveway)

We are in charge of maintaining the flower beds and the backyard (which is fenced), which is a first for us.  (The management company mows the front yard).  Chet and I have not lived in a place where we've had to do any yard work, so our flower beds need some work.  I like our little front porch though.  (That's my autumn wreath.  It's been hanging since the beginning of August...my hint to summer to get out of here and let the fall weather take over.)

As you can see in the first house picture, we only have a one-car garage (better than no garage!).  Thankfully the driveway is normal-sized, so we can park both of our cars in the driveway.  We use the garage strictly as storage, but it turned out a lot roomier than we imagined before we moved in.  There is plenty of room to walk around and even work (Chet, not me).

As soon as you walk through the front door, the stairs are right in front of you. 

A Close-Up of Miss Priss

Top of Stairs (The little table you see is purely functional.  It either holds the gate open, or I use it to put stuff on that I need to transfer downstairs.  Very useful!)

The upstairs is literally just a landing with six doors.  Here are the first three doors (this is what you would see if you had reached the top of the stairs and looked to your left).  The right-most door is Sydney's room, the middle door is Lorelei's room, and the left-most door is a linen closet. 

Here is a close-up of the gorgeous wreath on Syd's door.  My cousin Shelby made it, and she is making one for Lorelei too!  They will be so cute hanging side-by-side.

Sydney's room.  It looks pretty much the same as it always looks.  By the way, the carpeting is horrendous.  You can't really tell in the picture, but it looks like something they would install in an arcade.  And it's not soft.  And it clashes with both Sydney's and Lorelei's rugs.  Oh, well...

Going back out onto the "landing", here are the next three doors (which are all to the left of the first set of doors I already showed you).  The door with the light on is the girls' bathroom, the middle door is the master bedroom, and the left-most door (you can barely see the doorknob) is another linen closet.

I redecorated the girls' bathroom (which, in all of the former houses, was a shabby chic guest bathroom), and I really like how it turned out.  Not much to it, but still cute!

That's all the energy I have for this post.  To be continued!

35 Weeks, Doctor Appointment Update, and Name!!!

Here is my 35-week picture.  35 weeks...that means I have about 35 days to go!  (Actually, my cute little countdown clock says 32 days...eek!)  The last two days I have felt VERY pregnant, so I am glad there are only 30-ish days to go, but at the same time I'm apprehensive, because it's impossible to know what life is going to be like once she's born and I have two little girls to take care of.  But, don't worry, I'm mostly excited!

I had a doctor appointment last Thursday.  It went well, but was pretty uneventful.  My next doctor appointment is September 29th, and I'm assuming I'll go again two weeks after that (although they may want to see me every week after the September 29th appointment, since I'll be nearly 37 weeks along by then).  By the way, it would be GREAT to give birth a week early, like I did with Sydney.  That means October 15th, so everyone pray for that date!  (It would be much easier, logistically, to have her then, because Chet is due to leave for a field exercise right around the actual due date.  He will probably be home for the birth, even if he's already left for the exercise, but having him here to drive me to the hospital when I go into labor would definitely help my nerves.)

34 Weeks

35 Weeks

Finally, our second little girl will be named Lorelei Ann!  We decided on the name quite a while ago, and I don't really have a good reason for not sharing it until now.  (We have shared it with our families and anyone who asks.)  We've both always liked the name Lorelei, but didn't really consider it for some reason when naming Sydney.  Ann is Chet's grandmother's middle name, as well as his aunt's middle name.  And his other grandmother's middle name is Anna, so it works well! 

I finally finished painting her letters, so here they are, hanging on her wall.  Sorry for not taking more pictures of the room yet.  It's coming along, but isn't quite finished, and I like to take finished pictures.  :-)  There is very little we need to buy for Lorelei, because she will be able to use most of Sydney's hand-me-downs.  But there are a few things we need to finish off her room, such as another changing pad for the changing table...things like that.  On that note, I FINALLY registered at Babies 'r' Us and Target for some things.  A few different people encouraged me to do it, even though we really don't need much.  We didn't go into the store to register; I just did it online.  (Side note: The nearest Target is 20+ miles away, and the nearest Babies 'r' Us is in Louisiana...not what I'd call convenient.)

Back to the room.  It may be hard to tell in the picture, but the letters are mostly navy blue and lavender.  Her furniture is brown, and it looks much more grown up than Sydney's room.  Probably because of the colors.  Anyway, my inspiration for the room was from Pottery Barn Kids.  I really liked this nursery (even though it's a boy's nursery):

But it needed to be more girly, and I was adamant about not using pink.  So I chose the navy blue/white bumper and navy blue/white crib skirt from the boy's nursery and combined it with the purple dotted sheet:

And here is the rug I'm using:

Anyway, I am very happy with it, and cannot wait until it's finished!



34 Weeks, "L", and Shoes

Here's my 34-week picture!  Not much to report pregnancy-wise; I have an OB appointment Thursday afternoon, but that's about it.

33 Weeks

34 Weeks

Here is an updated picture of the "L" I posted a picture of a few days ago.  This is the only letter that is totally finished, but all of the rest are really close.  Mostly I just have to attach the ribbons.

Here is Syd walking around in a pair of my flip flops.  She's pretty good at getting the thong between her toes, and she loves to shuffle around in them.

Because I couldn't resist...

I've been having problems with Blogger all day, and I finally conquered the problem at 10:30 p.m...I'm usually sound asleep by now!  Anyway, because I'm up, I'll go ahead and post a sneak peak of the letters I'm doing for our little girl.  This actually isn't a very good picture.  I took it as one of my "progress" pictures, because I wanted to show how the tape I was using to paint straight lines damaged the letter.  (Sydney's letters were already-white wood...these are some sort of cardboard, but I like the font.)  Anyway, I stopped using tape as soon as I realized that it was going to pull of the top layer of the letters.  Even though these letters were far from finished when I took the picture, now you know she has an "R" and an "L" in her name!  Also, the two main colors I'm using to decorate her room are lavender and navy blue.  I wanted as little pink as possible in her room since Syd's room is pinked out.   

33 Weeks and Some Updates

Unfortunately, I did not take a 32-week picture, but here I am at 33 weeks (although today I'm closer to 34 than 33!). I can't believe how quickly this pregnancy is going. Every now and then I feel like I've been pregnant forever, but usually I'm shocked (and a little frightened...in a good way) at how soon our new little girl will be here! (I didn't take a 32-week picture because Sydney and I were in TX August 25th - 30th, but I'll do a separate post on that, even though I don't have many pictures from the trip.)

31 Weeks

32 Weeks with Sydney

33 Weeks

I haven't done much work in the new nursery lately, but I have been painting letters like I did for Sydney. I'm not quite finished, but I think posting pictures of the letters will be a fun way to "reveal" her name, even though we're not really keeping it a secret like we did with Sydney (most of the people who read this probably already know the name).

Sydney's Letters (right after I finished them)

Tropical Storm Lee kept us inside pretty much the entire Labor Day weekend. It's too bad, because Chet had Friday off, as well as Monday, so it was four days of trying to keep each other from going crazy inside the house. We couldn't really even venture out to the mall for Sydney to run around because of the constant tornado warnings. Oh, well. Here are a couple of things we DID do while stuck inside (not much, ha!):

"Worked" on the Computer

Folded Laundry

The most exciting thing that's happened around here is that Chet got a new job! He reported to his current command as the MLO (I can never remember what it stands for or what it entails), but it's a job that doesn't require much effort. Mostly because the Seabees who run the MLO Shop do a really good job, making the MLO position nearly obsolete. Anyway, having a low-key job allowed Chet to float around and ask questions and observe how a Seabee Battalion ran and worked. His goal was to be "promoted" (not really promoted, because his Naval rank will stay the same the entire time we're in MS no matter what his job) to a Company Commander within a year (there are three Company Commanders per Seabee Battalion). Well, he came home late from work Tuesday and announced that he had been shifted into one of the Company Commander positions! After only four weeks of work, bum shoulder, bum appendix and all! I'm so proud of him; this job will be a healthy challenge for him, something I think he's needed for a while now.