A lot of people I know are very open about their pregnancies, and I’m finding that this isn’t the kind of person that I generally am. I’m not willing to disclose an exact due date because I don’t really believe in them. I’m not sharing the sex of the baby or even any possible name choices. I just feel like a lot of these are personal decisions. Due dates change, sex can be inaccurate, and how is it possible to know you have the right name until after you’ve met the baby.

The due date of this baby has changed at least 3 times for different reasons. I feel comfortable choosing the latest possible date and sticking with it, but I wonder if I will have the same high spirits about it as some of the earlier due dates start to fly by.

I’ve now passed the third trimester landmark, and I’m still going strong. The second trimester is supposed to be the easiest, and it WAS much easier than the first for me, but I’m still having issues. The vomiting really hasn’t let up a whole lot, and at this point, I don’t think that it’s going to go away until after I had the baby. When I was pregnant with Daphne, I was able to stop taking medication to handle the vomiting around week 16. This time, I’m absolutely miserable without it well into the third trimester, how discouraging.

However, as I head into the 8th month, I can’t help but think that I am feeling really good. I believe that the baby has turned head down, which has made a lot of additional room for breathing and my vital organs. I think that my belly has actually shrank a little since the baby decided to turn. I was gaining weight steadily for a while, but that has kind of dipped off a lot recently, mainly because I’m still having a hard time eating, and I had some extra weight to begin with. I’m told it would be totally safe for me not to gain any more weight, so I’m not looking to balloon up or anything.

I was having some steady contractions at 25 weeks that had me worried about preterm labor. I eased up a lot on what I was doing, and that seems to have been useful. I’m not having any more contractions that are cause for preterm labor at this point.

It is also comforting to know that I’ve passed the viability mark as well as the mark that makes me statistically sane. Even if I had the baby tomorrow, it would have an 80% chance of surviving and having no lasting lifetime problems. That said, I’ve no interest in leaving my baby in the hospital for 12 weeks to grow up to be strong enough to come home. I’m happy carrying the baby with me everywhere that I go now.

I am starting to feel limited in my actions because of my belly. Squatting and getting up and down from sitting aren’t great, neither is rolling over in bed. I’m also finding that my usually sewing stuff done on the floor is a little difficult to do as well.

At this point, I’m thankful that I’m not too tired that I have to go to bed with my 2 year old at 7pm anymore. I’m rushing to get my household and organization stuff done before I do get any bigger. There will be a time when most of my time and energy will be occupied simply by being pregnant.

Despite the bumps, I really am enjoying growing a baby and making space in our family for another life. How exciting is that?

I keep declaring that it is Home Improvement Day (or week or month) around here. I keep making lists of things that need to be done and then demanding that they get done. The most notable thing that got done was staining the deck, and I must say that I am proud how spiffed up our house got simply from having a pressure washer for a few days.

Despite that, the list making has continued, and if anything, it’s growing even longer. Yesterday, Jared was kind enough to humor me and get some simple things done around the house that I’ve been nagging him about for weeks. We set up the bed so that the box spring isn’t ugly and showing (you’d have to see our bed to understand). He got the cords sorted out on the DVD player and TV in the bedroom so that it doesn’t look like technology is going to suddenly come alive and take over planet Earth. Jared even went way out of his way to put the closet doors back on their tracks and repair the tracks so that they won’t fall off and kill me or a child. There are many other small tasks that got done, but I’m really starting to feel like progress is being made.

It feels like someone lives in our house again. In fact, I should have done all this stuff when I moved in. Organization seriously is a wonderful thing. When everything has a place and everything is in the place that it has, it starts to become easy to keep the house clean. I’ve always had random piles of stuff around waiting for a home to be found for them.

I spent yesterday scrubbing the dust, dirt, fingerprints and fly specks off of walls and doors. All the doors in the house (except the front door) are super clean and spotless. You know I am a crazy pregnant lady looking for spotlessness. When was the last time you put cleaning the doors in your house on the to-do list?

Today, we went to a birthday party for a friend’s little girl. When we got back I declared that I was very tired and that I didn’t feel like making any progress on the house. Jared told me to take it easy.

The next time he saw me, the living room and dining room was completely torn apart. I decided it was time to handle the windows. Nico did help clean the windows while she was here, but the entire effort was eradicated when the porch got pressure washed. The windows got super wet and the residue from the deck got stuck to the windows (and the sides of the house).

I got the broom out and cleaned off the sides of the house and then went into a deep clean of the windows. I cleaned the sills of the windows as well as the tracks. I cleaned the blinds of all the windows as well. I even took all the screens off and brushed them off and washed them down.

Once every surface around the windows was clean, I managed to clean all the windows on the inside and the outside. What a crazy woman. I also decided the curtains weren’t clean enough either so I took them all down and washed them. It was not my favorite project at all, and I’ve only done about 2/3 of the windows in the house. All the hard and tall windows are left. I was planning on hiring someone to help me do the tasks that I thought HAD to be done but that I still found unbearable. Unfortunately, since we did the deck on a whim, it’s not in the budget, so I’ll buck up and get it all done myself. There can’t be THAT much more on the list can there?

Jared’s last project is a pretty big one. Whoever caulked our house did an incredibly TERRIBLE job at it, and the caulking around 90% of the house is completely coming apart or messed up. After 2 attempts, Jared decided to try to find another way to get it done. I just can’t wait until all the surfaces of my house stay together. We’ve got an ant problem that would be solved if someone could properly caulk a baseboard.

That’s my whining for now. I hope to get a lot more done over the next week, but God knows the list goes on and on.

I have been having a lot of trouble recently with cooking, and it was starting to make me doubt my own skills as a chef.

Most notably, I made a cheesecake a few weeks ago. It was supposed to be done in 25 minutes of cooking and well over 2 hours later, it was still raw in the middle. I was starting to wonder what was different about what I was doing, and why was my food taking longer to cook.

As I think about this, it has been happening to me for about the last year at least, and let me tell you, it is terribly frustrating.

Last Sunday was Iron Chef. I had a ham that I really wanted to cook. I preheated the oven, and I started to realize something was TERRIBLY wrong when the oven spent 3 hours preheating. I put the ham in it and let it start cooking. I had gotten an oven thermometer earlier in the day. When I put it in with the ham set to 400 degrees, I found the oven was only 200 degrees. Ouch, that’s really not good. I did eventually get the ham cooked through after some persistence.

However, it was clear the oven was a goner. Jared did some research and found that we just needed to replace the element. A quick search and 24 dollars had the element on its way to us, and Jared got it installed this week.

I decided to bake some chicken for dinner tonight. I put it in, thought it would take about 25 minutes to cook and went away. Not only did the oven perform, but the food was ready in the exact amount of time that I had guessed. This is great news.

Bottom line, buy an oven thermometer, you need one, trust me! I can’t tell you how many times dinner has not been ready when it was supposed to be lately simply because I never bothered to check the temperature I was baking at.

Last year, I didn’t bother to start any plants inside, and I really did regret the decision. Though the garden produced a LOT of food, some of the things were started much to late. My spinish just went to seed and was not useful. HOWEVER, the seed did drop in the bed, and I’ve now got a whole beautiful bed of spinach that overwintered nicely. I’m going to cut it all as soon as I am done with this post.

I decided to start some seedlings inside this time around so that they would have a longer growing season. It turned out that this really didn’t work very well either. The only space I have available is the window sills, and since they only get afternoon sun, it really wasn’t enough light to get them to germinate. Many of the plants that did germinate really didn’t like the low light situation they encountered.

I managed to get a few beds prepared despite the plants not being very happy and I’ve transplanted many of the seedlings. I have an entire bed of artichokes. They take over a year to produce, so that will be a LONG experiment. I’ve also got another bed that has peppers, eggplant and melons in it. That is 2 beds down and three more left to plant. I’ve got to get the spinach out of one of the beds first, so that’s the project of the afternoon!

I hope to post some photos soon because things are really starting to look good.

Yesterday was Earth Day, and I must say that I wasn’t that inspired. For being someone really naturally minded, it really doesn’t get me excited. There seems to be a lot of hype going around trying to get people to be more “green”. Though I do like that focus, the intention doesn’t really work if attention is only paid during one day out of the year.

I know there is a lot of volunteer work available to clean up roads and parks and to do other beautification. I think that is fantastic and wonderful, it just seemed like a whole lot of superficial hype to me.

However, I did take the opportunity to look at what it was that we were doing around here so that I could do an even better job being “green”. I’ve got a few more ideas that will show up in my life in the near future.

Until then, really this whole cleaning and organization project is a greening up project. I am passing on the things that I don’t want and fixing up the things I have that I do want. It’s a whole new level of recycling.

I am enjoying the time that I am spending outside SO much. The backyard is really starting to look decent, and things are coming together. I actually enjoy spending time in the garage and the backyard now that I don’t feel like it’s just one huge junk pile that needs to be sorted out.

Jared and Daphne are going away for the weekend next weekend and leaving me behind. I think I am going to take that opportunity to really get some projects finished that would otherwise be difficult to do with “help”. I’m putting together a to-do list, that I’m hoping to share with you soon.

I was working on a test today for school, and when i finished, I picked Daphne up to snuggle her.

I asked her if she was mine and if I could keep her. She said, “Yes.”

I then asked if I could keep her and play with her and take care of her like a pet. I said I needed a good pet. To that, she started to pet me all over.

Wrong definition. Oops.

My friend recently told me about a local place that is maintained by the Yamhill County Soil and Conservation District. It is called Miller Woods. It’s a little place not too far outside of the city of Mcminnville that you can go out and go hiking through. There is a day use fee of $3, but they opened the place to the public today considering that it is Earth Day.

Julie and I went out with the kids and did a nice long hike. I’d say we probably hiked a few miles up and around the trails. I know I am tired, and Daphne is for sure tired. It is just nice to have a local place to go and hang out and enjoy nature without having to drive hours away.

I plan to return more. I’m hoping to stay more fit as these last weeks of this pregnancy roll by. All I can say is that the hike really and truly was a challenge.

Check it out if you are in the area. What a cool local resource. I wish someone had told me about it before last week.

After all of that complaining about school, I just can’t stay away. Although I have my degree now, I have decided to take on another educational opportunity for my own benefits, and for nothing else.

I enrolled in an online class devoted to helping people get much more knowledge about preserving food. My sister and I looked at the class together a few weeks ago and decided to invest in doing it so that we can be better at preserving this year.

This is something that I am doing strictly for myself–for my own good and happiness, and I am excited. I started the class tonight. So, for the next 6 weeks, I’m back in school, but its different this time. I KNOW I will LOVE this class!

When we found out we were going to have another baby, we started slowly saving money so that we would be able to pay off the birth in advance. Many midwives give a discount if paid in full by 36 weeks. Honestly that’s not too far away for us at all!

I called the birth center today and paid in full for the prenatal care and the birth of the baby! What an amazing thing! I am glad that this is one less thing that we have to worry about, and we can start to focus our money on paying off the rest of our debt.

I went into labor with Daphne the day that I made the last payment for her birth, and though I’m definitely not wishing to have this baby early, I’m happy to know that I’m not going to have any more medical bills to deal with after the birth.

I feel like I’ve been in a race against time. I was hoping to get all the household things done before the weather started to get nice so that I could move on to doing fun outdoor things.

I was reading facebook statuses last week about snow, and now everyone is complaining about the heat. It’s supposed to get over 80 here today, so I totally understand! I’ve gotten started on a LOT of outdoor projects, but I still have some indoor projects to complete.

With the nice weather, I have been outside all day getting things done, and it sure seems to be working.

I finished shearing my 4th rabbit today. It is always a big project to get the angora rabbits all sheared because they are on the same shearing schedule. I did one every day for 4 days. It was a lot more simple with my new clippers because I was able to just get the shearing done without a problem at all It used to take me hours and hours to do each rabbit (an entire afternoon really), but I was able to get the rabbits done in good time in between everything else I had going on. I need to take some photos because I feel like they always look super funny with no hair.

The meat chickens have moved outside (from the bathtub and then the garage). They are happy to be outside, and they’ve been moving around the yard slowly working on destroying it as quickly as possible. Our lawn in the back has always been really crummy. After the chickens were on it last year, it seems to have improved a lot. This is the ONLY batch of meat chickens that I am going to do this year. I’ve got an appointment to butcher them on June 13th. They are going to be BIG suckers, but it is totally worth it. I love having wonderful chicken in the house available to eat at any time. I love knowing that I grew it myself. So, they are happy to be out in the grass with lots of food and water.

I put up a piece of fabric to keep the laying hens from getting out in the yard. I am about to plant some seedlings, and it is going to be a HUGE problem if they get out and eat the seedlings I’ve been working for 6 weeks to grow. That would not make a happy mama at all. The gate has been a work in progress for almost a year, and I think the solution I came up with is fantastically brilliant. The good news is that it is doing a VERY good job at this point, and I anticipate that it will continue in that fashion.

I’ve got more on the list to be pressure washed, but that will have to happen tomorrow after the deck is all the way painted and dry. I don’t need dust and water and god knows what else settling on it while it is trying to fully dry.

Nico is working on the deck today, and it should be completely done by tomorrow. I am excited that we have actually done some home improvement. I feel like a responsible homeowner. Additionally, though I would rather live on a farm, the neater it gets around here, and the more organized, the more I realize that I am incredibly lucky and that the things I have going on here are wonderful.

I’ve got to get enough gumption up to be able to finish the garage because a wonderfully organized the garage is enough to boost anyone’s mood!