Life Update: March 2023

Welcome back to the blog! It’s be a while since I’ve done one of these, and now that I’m in my third trimester of my second pregnancy, there’s a lot going on over here. Let’s catch up!

First are foremost, we’re approximately 10 weeks out (give or take) from meeting our baby girl and the nursery is coming together! I’m a huge nester when I’m pregnant, so it’s no surprise to anyone that this has been a big focus of mine. We live in a three bedroom house, so what was once our guest room/Justin’s office (more like gaming station because he doesn’t work from home and it’s where he games on his computer he built) will now be a nursery/office. We figure the dual-purpose room will work as long as we need it to. I’m going to miss having a guest room just because it makes things easy, but it honestly only got used once every few months, so I keep reminding myself of that. I’m hoping to get a nursery tour up soon since we’re almost done, but to give you an idea of where we’re at with it, we have a crib, mattress, rug, dresser, mirror, shelves and other wall decor hung. Pretty much all that’s left is hanging the mobile lower, finishing touches on organizing the drawers/clothes and getting blackout curtains. I’m having so much fun putting this room together and it’ll feel so good to cross it off my list!

As for updates on Clay, we’ve been working on getting rid of the paci and we’ll be starting potty training during Justin’s spring break this month. This is the potty we ended up getting (the thought of dumping a free-standing little potty is not fun to me 🙅🏻‍♀️) and I hope it works for her! Justin has two weeks off and Clay has been showing signs that she’s ready for a couple months now (pretending various things are potties and sitting on them, talking about the steps of going potty all on her own, etc.), so it seems like a good time. For the paci, she only uses it for naps and bedtime, but she’s pretty dependent on it for falling asleep… so that’s been tricky. We cut the tops off of two of them and she threw one away because it was “broken,” so that seems promising. I don’t want to take the last paci away while she’s also potty training because I feel it will overwhelm her, so we’ll see. I don’t want to rush her and we’ll definitely feel things out and see how they go, but it would be great if she could be potty trained and off the paci when the baby comes in May, since that will be a whole new change in itself. Any tips you have for potty training and paci weaning: please send my way!

Here are some current things about Clay that I want to remember:

• She sings the ABCs, Twinkle Twinkle Little Star, Ba-Ba Black Sheep, Happy Birthday and more songs constantly
• She can recognize almost all of the letters of the alphabet by name and say something that starts with that letter
• When she’s trying to get me to come into her room while she’s in bed, she’ll yell “mommy, kiss boo-boo!” and hold her hand all limp. There is never a boo boo. 
• When she pretends to eat a lemon, she says “so sour, oOoOoOo!” in the screechiest voice (courtesy of Ms. Rachel)
• She has started saying “oh my goodness” sometimes and often says “that’s so silly”
• She loves throwing pretend birthday parties and tea parties
• She likes to play teacher
• She yells “noooo!” when we sing or dance without permission from her
• She holds up random objects and says “take a picture!”

I’ve been feeling so tired and run down lately in my pregnancy, and I suspect that may be due to the low iron levels that my doctor informed me of after my glucose test (which I passed). It’s hard to have the energy to do the things I need to some days (or most days…), so let’s just say I really look forward to crawling into bed every night.

I’ve also been preparing things in my business to be able to take the month of May off. When I was pregnant with Clay, I had 6+ weeks off for maternity leave at my job at the time, but now that I run my own business, there is no such thing as paid vacation or maternity leave. Trust me though, the benefits of working for myself far outweigh any of that, but there is definitely some stress about getting my ducks in a row and all of my clients’ May content written and scheduled before then. Basically, I have to put in a lot more work and bust my butt now in order to take time off later, but I know it will be worth it. It can be daunting though knowing I’m in my third trimester and just all around very tired. Nonetheless, I’m determined!

I have a few more goals of things I’d like to do before the baby comes, which includes taking more maternity photos. We took them ourselves last time and I loved how they turned out (view those here), so we’ll be doing them again. We have since gotten a new and better camera, so I’m sure that will make them even better. I have some inspo photos save for what I want to do, I just need to find the time and energy to actually do my hair and makeup one weekend so we can get it done. Unfortunately, staying in my sweats has sounded way more appealing than ever before these days. 🙂

That’s life over here lately! Mama is out of breath, run down and a little overwhelmed, but grateful. Thanks for reading!