SNOWING LIKE CRAZY!

This morning we barely had any snow on the ground...just a patch or pile here or there. WELL...NOW we have a ton! Claire started asking to play in the snow ALL day. I told we would wait until Daddy came home. Well, so we finally went out about 5 and BRR! It was really really wet, heavy, sticky snow. PLUS it was windy, so it was blowing sideways. I started freezing my face/eyes off after about 5 minutes. And she didn't want to come in! But I told her we could go out again tomorrow. So hopefully it will stop coming down. It's not so fun to play in when it's falling because then it melts on your face and makes your face all cold and wet and freezing. Maybe I should invest in some ski masks and goggles? :)

And I figured out why her boots get full of snow. Her snowpants are only a 2T. Yeah...they were a tad big on her last year, but this year, too small. I could barely get them zipped on her today. Her jammies that she sleeps in, you know the footed ones...they are a 5t and a 6T...insane. This girl is freaking tall...like me I guess. I'm just glad she's slender enough to still fit into the 2T snowpants, even if they are like floodpants. :)

Today I did a "deep clean" vacuum of our bedroom which involved pulling out furniture and cleaning under things...something I've never done since we've moved in. AND YIKES!!! Well, in my defense, we've never lived in once place as long as we have here! In May it will be 5 years. That's a lot of dust, let me tell you! And Claire had a blast, too. For Christmas, she got a gift card from her Glama Lynn and Grandpa Jason, so I ordered her among other things, a toy vacuum, which finally arrived. Who knew toy vacuums would get back-ordered?!!? But our neighbor Christopher has one that she loves to play with so I thought she'd enjoy it.

It's really cute watching her pretend to vacuum. I watched Christopher all day yesterday, and boy, I don't think he put that vacuum down for more than 10 minutes!!!

She also has recent fascination with this Strawberry Shortcake puzzle. It's 15 pieces and says ages 4-7 on it. She LOVES it. She seriously will sit and do it 10 times in a row and still want to do it some more. It was actually one of my puzzles when I was little so it's extra cute! I think I want to shoot myself in the foot if she wants me to "help" her with it again. I guess she just wants me to "play" with her because she can do it by herself! Today I had to laugh when I saw her doing it UPSIDE DOWN! Like, she flipped all the pieces over so they were the brown cardboard and put it together that way, with no help from the picture! I was actually really impressed!

While cleaning up our bedroom she wanted to get in the pack-and-play. I plan on setting up the bassinet feature for the new baby. Yeah...gotta find all the parts! But Claire climbed in and can't even lay down sideways in it anymore! She still said "MY PACK-AND-PLAY!" I told her we were cleaning it up for her brother. I also shoved her bed (aka mattress) on the OTHER side of ours. I had it by Josh's side. But then she kept rolling off. So I put her mattress against the far wall today. Hopefully that will keep her in it better. I wedged the Pack-and-Play against it since it has soft mesh sides. I think it will work and we won't have to buy another baby-gate-fence thingy for the bed.

I need to make a to-do list of things I need to do before the new baby comes. I feel like we are down to crunch time. And like I said before, I am feeling exceptionally huge. So I think I'll try to get all the big moving and stuff done. Then if I have time, I really need to get scrapbooking and organizing print pictures!!!

There is just so much to do. It seems like just normal daily things take longer. I want to have Claire help me with daily routines instead of parking in front of the TV. And she loves it. The other night I made red potatoes. She helped me wash potatoes! She'll go get her footstool anytime that she gets to help. She basically had a blast "scrubbing" the potatoes and playing in water for awhile. Then she wanted to help me cut them. This is where helping is bad sometimes because, um, she so cannot use a sharp knife yet.

So I got out her playdough and told her to cut up "playdough" potatoes, which she was really pleased with since I gave her a real butter knife to use. She was begging me though, "PLEASE MOMMY! PLEASE LET ME CUT A REAL POTATO!" She'll also get really mad if I start the dryer. She wants to press the button! Luckily that's an easy fix!

So while it's snowing like crazy out there, we're trying to get a lot done in here because, well, once the new one comes along, there will be like, oh, say a year of slacking again. ;)

How am I feeling?

I've been feeling fine...other than the fact that I feel like, well, as big as a freaking house. I swear I am as big now at 30 weeks as I was at 40 weeks with Claire. I know they say that you get bigger sooner with the 2nd plus, but DANG. I think they say boys are bigger and second babies are bigger too.

Some things I've done because I forget I have a big baby belly:

Spit while brushing my teeth and gotten the spit all over my belly.

Have to fold in the mirrors to walk between our 2 cars in the garage. Can't squeeze through sideways anymore.

Hit my belly on various doors/doorjambs/counters. No bruises yet. I did bruise my belly one time with Claire in a parking lot. I turned sideways and smacked into a rearview mirror. Dang that one hurt.

Given up sleeping on my back in the past few weeks. I am a huge back sleeper. :(

If all the Raindrops...

Claire's newest favorite song we've been singing in this storytime session is "If all the Raindrops..." Watch the "music video" here:

Oh so Organized?

Well. I'm organized for now. Ha. I took Claire to pick out bins this morning. She wanted to climb in them...

I needed some different sized toy bins for toy organization. I had gone almost a whole year or maybe a tad longer before I got 2 large clear rubbermaid bins for Claire's toys. I just keep the lids in the closet so they are like toy boxes.

But...all the little toys would fall to the bottom and get "lost"---and she would only play with the toys on top! So then about last year at this time I got about 5 small baskets for toys, but they are really too tiny.

So today I got some smallish to mid-sized bins to organize toys. So now there is a bin for her Barbies, a bin for baby-ish toys like teethers/rattles (got to keep this out for littler friends!), a bin for things with wheels (and here I thought she had a lot of girly stuff!), a bin for random little "crap" toys/figurines, etc, and finally, a bin for blocks. I put one of the big bins in the closet to rotate the bigger stuffed toys/dolls. Her wagon is actually empty instead of full of toys, so she can play in it, which she did tonight, which kept her nicely away from the toys I was trying to sort.

The upstairs always seems more organized for some reason. It's mostly just books and stuffed animals/dolls in her "playroom." Plus, I think we spend a lot more time downstairs.

Now...I wonder how long this will last....ha! Actually, I'm trying to get into an evening routine of picking up. She thinks it's still fun at this age. Of course she gets easily distracted, but I think it will be easier if she knows Barbie stuff goes in the Barbie bin, etc.

She is pretty good about keeping her toy food stuff by her toy kitchen and her books on her book shelves. She knows her shoes go by the back door and her pens/pencils/papers go in her little desk. Yeah...I found a little plastic desk at a yard sale when she was like 11 months old! They were nearing the end of their day, and basically gave me anything I touched for 20 bucks TOTAL!!! It's the same garage sale I got her bike seat at.

I saw the exact same desk at Big Lots around Christmas for $30 so I was excited that it's a "new" desk, that's still being sold. It even has a little drawer in it and shelves on the side. The top is angled with pockets and places to put stuff. I decided to just let her keep her "own" paper, pens, and pencils in it since she LOVES that stuff and wants to play with it everyday. And knock on wood, she has never drawn on a wall or anywhere she shouldn't...knock on wood that she won't do this tomorrow just because I said she hadn't yet. Way to screw myself! :)

I actually got her craft stuff organized too. I re-purposed a 6-drawered mid-sized caddy thing that I've had forever. So she has all her crafty fun stuff there, which I stashed in the cupboard under the microwave. I couldn't do messy crafts anywhere but at the kitchen table. She's still pretty messy with the paint/glue.

We've also started leaving the baby gate at the bottom of the stairs down because she doesn't play on the stairs or anything anymore. She would the first several times because of the whole novelty of the thing...but I'm still a little leery to leave the top one down. I know that most home accidents are on the stairs. Kids fall mostly from stairs, highchairs, and changing tables, right? Hmm...so maybe I should leave the bottom one up?

I have to keep the top gate up though because otherwise she would have no boundary and be free to roam the upstairs, and that's just too far away in this house!

So I'm feeling a little bit organized, but not nearly as much as I'd like to be. I feel like there is still a lot that I need to do soon AKA...before baby boo two arrives. I guess picking out a name would be another good thing to do...ack. We are so not going to decide on this until like, um, he's born! Yeah, it sometimes feels like when you start organizing, that you just realize how much more stuff there is to organize.