Happy Fourth of July on the Fifth of July!

I was a little too busy to post yesterday, but I will try to post two posts today to make up for it.

What did you do to celebrate Independence Day? We had friends and family come over. It was a small get together, but very fun. I made Ranch Burgers, a huge green salad, deviled eggs and an ice cream cake. A friend brought over homemade potato salad and my in-laws brought a yummy appetizer. We had chips, wine, beer and some mixed drinks. It made for a very full night. I decided I need to workout before the guests arrived, so it took me a few minutes to finish getting ready once they came over. I don't think it was a big deal; although, I wish everything was ready before they came, including me. We had a wonderful Fourth of July and hope that you enjoyed celebrating our countries independence in your own special way.

Potty Training Update: The boy (Little A) stayed dry all night long. We are so proud of him. Never mind that the has had two BM's in his pants today. We are focusing on the positive.

Warmly,
Jen

Mini-Blog Make over

My little blog got a much needed update. I was fortunate enough to win a bloggy make over a few years ago and Deanna at Domestic Chicky did a wonderful job; however a lot has changed in two years and it needed to be updated. I actually was able to design the header using the professional designed one as my guide and My Memories Suite scrapbooking software. I then exported it to a jpeg file and cropped it in Photoshop Elements. I am a lot more comfortable designing the MMS scrapbooking program than I am in Elements.

Old


I was so excited that I was able to do it on my own. Then when I tried to upload it to Blogspot and I ran into some difficulty. The header was really large and only partially showing up. I went back and tried again and again. The third time I got wise and looked at the exact pixels and dimensions of the previous header. Bingo, I saved my new header with those dimensions and it worked. The only thing is the crop was a little off and there is a smidge of white space especially on the bottom right, but I am okay with it for now. If I get brave I may decide to attempt to fix that. I am pretty tech savvy, but I have never been taught or shown how to do anything in the blogging world or digital scrapping world, so I am a bit of a beginner to say the least.

New


I hope you enjoy the new header and simple layout. I am hoping to be able to change my background paper soon. I am going to be heading to bed soon. I have been working on two upcoming posts. One is on square foot gardening and the other is on cloth diapering.

Speaking of diapers, we are potty training Little a this weekend and are hopeful to only have one child in diapers in less than 72 hours. I am prepared to change some sheets tonight though. He went to bed in just undies for the first time tonight. We will see how it goes. I am a little scared, but the book said to give diapers up completely so we are. Wish us luck. Maybe I will write a post on potty training after this. If you remember correctly it took us over a year to train our daughter to use the potty regularly. This would be a HUGE improvement if it works. I also will have a ton of diapers to de-stash. There are only so many diapers one baby needs and having gone from three in diapers to one in diapers in less than a year means I must part with some of my lovely cloth diapers. :)

Warmly,
Jen

MOPS Carnival and Painted Belly...

This morning was our second to last MOPS meeting for the year. The year has flown by so fast. I am thankful to have found MOPS. It has been wonderful to be a part such a great team this year that works so hard to put MOPS on for the local moms. We had a carnival for our second to last meeting. It was fabulous. We had games, prizes, carnival food, face painting, group photo session, and a picture frame craft. We also had a few group games to start out. It was a blast if I do say so myself. We had a great turn out and I think all the ladies really enjoyed themselves. I am excited to continue to be on the steering team next year.

So while everyone was cleaning up (usually I help as well) the face painting gal was kind enough to stay and paint a design on my HUGE belly (see the design above). This is something totally out of character for me have done. I mean I am very modest and usually don’t just show my belly to anyone, anywhere. There is another gal there who is a totally cute pregnant gal, unlike me and hers looked so cute so I thought I would give it a try. I guess I am glad I did because I would never know unless I tried. After this experience, I have decided that nothing really makes me cute when I am pregnant. I am just huge (and still have a few months left) and not cute and that is just how pregnancy is for me. I am learning to accept it. I mean this is my third pregnancy in less than four years. I have had a lot of practice with it and should just know by now that I am not cute and have not felt good about me since I got pregnant the first time. I am hoping one day I will feel better about myself and that I will feel more like me eventually. I am still working out (not that you could tell) and I try to eat relatively healthy. I don’t use being pregnant as an excuse to eat more, but it doesn’t seem to matter, I am still huge. Oh well!

I remember when I was first pregnant with Big A. I had all of these grand plans of how great pregnancy would be and that I would just stay the same, but add a belly. Boy was I wrong. Pregnancy and I just don’t mix. I gained weight everywhere with my first and then I got pregnant seven months later with my second and couldn’t seem to lose the weight from the first before getting pregnant. I gained less with my second and I have gained less with my third (I haven't gained anything in two months, but I am still gigantic. No, I am not a cute, glowing pregnant lady, more like a huge, unattractive, blob. I have lost hope now that I will ever be the same again. Oh well, such is life. I was definitely not blessed with good genetics that is for sure. I often wonder how and why God made me this way. One day maybe I will feel better, but for now I am just pregnant and positively miserable. The good news is the pregnancy will come and go and out of the whole ordeal I get a baby to love and raise for the next however many years. The good and bad news is I will never be me again now that I have had children. I am still trying to wrap my mind around that one. Some days are okay and I can accept that. There are other days where I just want to run back in time and be me again.

An update on the potty training journey…Big A didn’t have any accidents at MOPS, but she did have two accidents within an hour of each other at a MOPS lunch that we had after tear down and clean up. I was bummed that I had to leave, but I didn’t have any clothes for her and I told her if she had another accident we would be going home. She started to throw a fit, but ended up making it out of there without kicking and screaming. I don’t know what I am going to do with that girl. I am thinking of having the two older neighbor girls make fun of her for wetting her pants. Is that just mean of me or what? It sure doesn’t matter when I tell her that “Babies pee and poop in their pants. Big girls pee and poop in the toilet.” She doesn’t seem to care about anything. Nothing motivates her, but the little girl at the babysitters. What am I going to do?

Well I hope everyone enjoys a great weekend. I am still going to try to keep positing once a day for the next eight days. 