Until Further Notice

Today’s the day! It’s the first day of the rest of your life! Things don’t change unless you do!

And all that lovely, inspiring, gag me stuff.

I hate new year’s resolutions. The idea that life is suddenly going to become different because it’s the new year drives me up the wall. I’m all for self improvement, working on you, and striving for better. But do we all have to decide it needs to happen on January 1? I firmly believe self improvement should be a year round process and should happen as you discover that it needs to happen, not on a designated day, once a year.

That being said, I feel like I haven’t done a whole lot to work on me lately. Probably because I have a 4 month old who thinks he was born to be attached to my hip. Gosh I love the little leech, but it makes it awful hard to do anything outside the necessary cooking, cleaning, and….nope, that’s about all I get done. But if you don’t know what direction you’re headed, you’re bound to go nowhere fast! So I wanted to do some goal setting.

SO- in lieu of the continuous improvement I would like to seek (and will still aim for), I have a New Year’s list- a list of things I would like to accomplish this year. Because let’s be honest, everything takes longer and more motivation when you have a giggly (sometimes), grouchy (sometimes), little guy who thinks he needs to learn to crawl as soon as possible.

It’s a list of some small things, some big things that I want to accomplish this year so I can continue to seek improvement at a pace I can actually achieve in this season of life. But my number one goal is to continue to enjoy and soak up every moment I get to spend with my handsome husband and ornery little boy.

My 2017 List- in no order of importance or due date

Make jerky with our new dehydrator (Thanks Mark & Danielle!)
Make progress on my t-shirt quilt
Clean out closets and donate to Salvation Army
Find a weekly workout routine to start (This one I am not even going to think about until JL is sleeping through at least half the night.)

Sleep by myself? No way!

Start monthly meal planning
Finish the first Game of Thrones book
Hang up more of our decor around the house
Put up our new TV antenna (Thanks Leroy & Julie!)
Make my first leather project (coasters don’t count)
Put together JL’s baby book
Breed Dezi (provided mother nature cooperates) (I seriously CAN NOT WAIT for little aussie pups!!)
Start a vegetable garden
Can at least two things from our garden
Make a paracord water bottle carrier- it’s been on my pinterest craft board forever and would take about 10 minutes, I just never sit down and do it!
Read my jewelry making book (again, Thanks Leroy & Julie)
Set aside time to practice roping on the dummy
Get back on a horse (it’s been a year and a half thanks to living in town while we were in Great Bend and having JL)
Make homemade laundry soap and softener
Snowball our payments to pay off some of our loans #DaveRamsey
Baby proof the house- as needed when the little guy becomes mobile

Lance and I have a lot of other goals for this year for our house and property. But I didn’t want to get too ahead of myself!

I would love to hear what’s on your list for this year! (even if it is a new year’s resolution, because let’s be honest, you gotta do you, however you can get it done!)

Boredom Bonus: count the number of parentheses I used in this post. #excessive #cantstopwontstop

Ok, I hadn't planned on doing another post on Baby Wright until he/she was actually here...but every time I sit down to blog something, my mind gets caught back up in baby things. Turns out it is pretty difficult to focus on much anything else when you only have 12 days (give or take) until you get to meet your brand new addition.

So, what to do with all that time you are spending (impatiently) awaiting the new arrival? 12 suggestions:

*Disclaimer: None of these methods are proven to actually make the time go faster...or benefit the pregnant lady psyche. But they are guaranteed to cause frustration for your husband, which tends to have an entertaining effect of it's own.

1. Scroll through Facebook & Instagram to see the ridiculously cute baby pictures all your friends and family post. Go on an envy induced rant about how it's simply not fair that they all have little babies to cuddle while yours is still stubbornly in their primary residence of your uterus with no signs of vacating soon.

2. Research ways to induce labor. Act disgusted that people would actually try some of the things mentioned just to get their baby out ahead of schedule. Secretly consider trying some of them anyway...

3. Eat at least six meals a day. When your husband looks frightened at the amount of food you are consuming, reference that "The baby needs cupcakes/watermelon/two helping of noodles/grilled cheese/ peanut butter bars/ french toast/ sweet corn/ ICE CREAM/ licorice/ biscuits and gravy because it needs to grow healthy and strong." Do not under any circumstances step on a scale. Feel free to avert your eyes at those weekly appointment weigh ins. Additionally, do not even consider thinking about how big your baby is getting from all this nourishment and how that correlates to labor. If you do, accidentally consider this, assume the fetal position and wait for your husband to come offer comfort through junk food. (DO NOT consider how counter-intuitive this is)

4. Go pee for the 17th time in the past hour. Consider the benefits of a catheter as a time saver. Then realize you literally have nothing better to do than walk back and forth to the bathroom and getting out of the recliner probably provides certain health benefits.

5. Organize the baby paraphernalia. Decide that your organization method makes no sense and re-do it. Then decide you liked it better the first way and put it all back. Ignore frightened looks from your husband. He'll see how important it is to have the burp rags in prime location..He'll see.

6. Make a list of all the freezer meals you are going to make ahead of time to make supper easy when baby gets here. Realize that spending multiple hours in the kitchen sounds like the equivalent of maximum security prison combined with living on the sun from all the extra heat the oven puts out. Use the excuse that you have no room in your freezer to store freezer meals and try to believe your husband when he says "You'll be home all day with the kid for six weeks. Surely making supper won't be that hard."

7. Obsess over the fact that your house isn't clean and it really really should be considering people will probably be dropping by soon. Make a list of all the cleaning that needs done. Become frustrated that you aren't supposed to use the cleaning products to accomplish the cleaning. Do the minimum amount of cleaning and decide the rest can wait. Except that if the baby comes, it will be too late. Lay awake at night considering this, but don't actually do anything about it.

8. Was that a contraction? I think it may have been a tiny little contraction. Does my back hurt? I think it might. Is it time?!!?!? Focus intensely on every nerve ending for about five minutes before realizing no, that was probably just your stomach telling you it's hungry again and/or a well placed knee jab in the kidney.

9. Craft fun new responses to people's questions. Realize pregnancy is not a good time to have a dry sense of humor as people don't always understand you are joking, not literally attempting to perform ancient rituals of witchcraft to expel the obnoxiously jabby spawn from your body.

10. Try a fun new game called "Are you Ready?!" The rules of this game are simple. Wake your husband in the middle of the night under the pretense that it's baby time! Watch his facial expression change from excited, to terrified, to just really tired. Beware, this game tends to lose its luster on repeat attempts and may lead to a "crying wolf" syndrome that may cause unnecessary hard feelings, particularly if it really IS time.

11. Recount your creepy-weird dreams to the hubby to make him question your sanity. Having him sleep with one eye open to make sure you aren't trying to put diapers on the dog is great practice for middle of the night diaper changes that he will most certainly be doing :)

12. Describe all your gory pregnancy symptoms to anyone who will listen. But be prepared...if they have gone through labor before, they will probably share their gory labor stories with you, which may cause panic. Again, it is best to enter the fetal position and wait for junk food offerings to lure you back into a normal (yet still hormone crazed) state of being.

For those of you waiting on little ones (which is like NO ONE according to my Facebook feed- you lucky ducks that already have babies!) to make their appearance, I hope you are enjoying finding new ways to cope! Please pass along anything that has been working for you....or that hasn't been working so I can share in your pain :)

On a side note, we did finally get the baby room done (YAY)! Before, during, and after pics below. Thanks to my baby sister (almost 16 year olds can still be baby sisters right?) for helping paint, and my loving husband for all his hard work.