A few more notes on my HBAC September 4, 2008

I just got off the phone with the doula (F) who was in training during Bella’s birth.  She was taking notes during my labor, so I had asked her to share some, so I could better piece together the story.

Before my chicken-scratch becomes un-readable, I thought I’d type out the notes here, and then encorporate them back in to the story:

F got the call from my doula (S) at 4:12am

She arrived at our house at 5:30am — my contractions were 3 minutes apart.

she noted that my husband was very involved

I then had a hard time and cried

“it won’t leave my back!” i cried out

while I was in the pool, my midwife checked the heart-rate (130)

she had me get out of the pool b/c my contractions had slowed

6:30am I moved to the birth ball

I was still talkative between contractions and would also joke

During a contraction my husband and doula would lean in and stroke my forehead and back

rice sock was being used

I said “They’re getting WORSE” and my husband replied “They’re getting BETTER”

at 6:45am I was laying in bed on my side

8:15am my contractions slowed and everyone left to give us rest

F didn’t return until 8:15pm, when I was in the bathroom with the urge to push and we moved to the pool

(she quit taking notes here)

New House To Do List & Wish List September 3, 2008

This list will be a work-in-progress.  But since my mind is racing this evening about all sorts of things, I thought this would be a good use of time.  Some of these are distant “to do’s”… others, hopefully are more in the now.

• New floors in kitchen and downstairs landing/back door entrance… this will have to wait ($$)
• new lighting in the kitchen and/or:
• Ceiling Fan in kitchen
• Ceiling fans in upstairs rooms (it gets a bit warm up there) – we got a great deal on a beautiful light for our bedrom
• some sort of climbing flower for the lattice near front door
• a small vegetable garden in the spring
• buy a beautiful dining room table and chairs
• built-in microwave over the stove
• continue to find rugs for the house
• pick and print black and white photos of the children for the hall / middle room
• figure out what to put on shelves in screen porch
• make a canopy for the playroom
• coffee table with storage for living room
• make or buy curtains for most of the house
• landscaping… learn and do
• Buy:  gas grill, new lawn-mower
• Update electric in the house
• Save up for a new furnace
• Jazz up what will be my sewing room

Flooring September 3, 2008

So we went by the Flooring Gallery today to check out and price flooring options for our kitchen.  Both the kitchen floor and the back-door entrance/steps-landing needs some updating.

We had gone in pretty sure we would like a checkerboard flooring.  But left with samples (cool, huh?) of something we both really loved!  We took the checkerboard sample, too, but after seeing it in the house (which reaks of paint thinner, yuck!), we really like the other options:

In the kitchen:

On the landing:

What do you think?

for the record, I really liked this one for the landing…

Oh, and we’ve decided that being “grown up” costs a lot of money and is really hard.