Still Slightly Staggering (Summer To-Do List).

Display kids' artwork. 
Hang shelves in my room.
Pretty up the front yard.
Paint/ organize my night stand.
Clear off the top of both of our dressers.
Organize my shoes,
(Purge at least three pairs).
Frame the pile of loose prints. (need more frames)
Take Shamus to the dentist. (August)
Take a new family portrait. (before August)
Choose baby party desserts. (before August 4th)
See 45 Grave. (August 11th)
Make invitations for Chance's birthday. (before September)

Submit financial aid papers for Fall.
Go to the DMV. 
 Paint, fill, and hang hallway frames.
 Tour the hospital.
Make treasure boxes.
Make Peter Pan hats. 
 Choose Shamus' birthday desserts.
Schedule a 3D ultrasound.

Take Shamus to an allergist.
Hang all of the kids' frames.
Finish decorating the baby's corner.
Organize bathroom closet.
Diabetes lab work.
Find a bulletin board.
Hang a shelf in the kids' room.
Mail birthday invitations
Mail bbq invitations (July 1st).
Wrap Father's Day gift/s.
Choose Father's Day dessert.
Wrap and mail sisters' birthday gifts.
Mail package to Sierraville.

The Usual.

We were all nesting for most of our three day weekend.

Changing table has been de-stickered, contact papered(!! J is the cutest thing ever), lugged upstairs, and filled with baby stuff. We also hung some Goodwill curtains Shamus liked. I was going to make something a little more neutral, but whatever, they were $2.

 Tiny shoes, tiny knitted hats, tiny diapers in all the colors of the rainbow. Tiny, tiny, tiny.
I have a propensity for things with skulls, stripes, and overalls. I LOVE overalls on little boys.

 Shamus has been really fun this week. And surprisingly helpful when I'm immersed in all the stuff I "absolutely have to get down right NOW for some reason". I try to repay the favor by giving him lots of focused attention. Mostly he wants to play dress up, build things out of chairs, take silly pictures of ourselves, and play Bananagrams. If I sit in one place too long he starts trying to decorate me. Like a big fat Christmas tree. Then I move and ruin his decorations and I get scolded.

This is his "choo choo train".

He asks me regularly to spell "Shamus". Then he spells "Mommy". It always has a Q in it and I can't bring myself to correct him, but I think he might already know it's wrong. Look at that diabolical face he makes when he does it.

James comes home every day and asks how my day was and what we did. I just smile and say "the usual". I doubt this is what he imagines I mean.

 (I have now reached that magical point in pregnancy where I'm stealing all of James' clothes.)

My mission to spend one on one time with Shamus during break has been extremely successful. Now I just need to figure out how to do that with Chance and I'll be happy. Harder to do with the schedule we have now but in another month he'll be around a lot more. That'll be weird, but nice.

Eternally Busy.

I asked James to go into the attic and bring down every box marked "baby clothes" or "kids clothes". I had no f*cking idea how many there actually were. They just kept coming!

Some of them are going into the baby's dresser. The empty ones were re-filled with Shamus' clothes that don't fit anymore and are being sent back up for the baby. It took forever to unpack, sort, and then re-pack everything, though I'll admit it was fun for me getting to rediscover all the cute stuff people have given us over the years (TINY OWL SHOES!). A whole lot of them ended up being Shamus' "new clothes". It's going to suck when he gets old enough to realize hand-me-downs aren't super exciting. I was lucky- like Chance, I was the oldest kid so my sisters all had to wear MY old shabby stuff. Ha HA! For all the boxes full of kid clothes we saved, I wish we'd been more stingy with our little baby clothes. I gave all the non-sentimental stuff away and kept the rest to eventually make a quilt or something with. Thankful I never bothered to cut them up (If anyone has hand me downs to throw our way, I never say no! We're pretty short on everything 12 months and under.)



We've been using our old baby changing table as storage in our dining room for a year now. I bought it when Chance was a baby and we lived in Vallejo. After Shamus grew out of it, we were never certain about whether we were going to have another one.. We almost purged it several times, but ended up repurposing it just in case. Like our mountains of toddler clothes, I'm glad we held onto it! After months of Craigslisting every few days and seeing nothing I liked for that spot/ purpose, we made a trip to Urban Ore Saturday and there it was! I'm several hours of sanding and painting away from having a dining room I'll want to photograph. And then several MORE hours of sanding and painting away from having a changing table that doesn't look like two sticker-happy children have already loved it to death. Anyone want to join me for several upon several hours of sanding and painting? You know you wanna!

The Boys' Room.

It's a good place to start since it's my favorite room in our house. (You won't see pictures of the baby's corner since it's still a work in progress!)

I <3 bunk beds. And IKEA, clearly.

Shamus' bunk. He's only pretending to look disgruntled. He was actually more than happy to give a photo tour of all his stuff. There are usually A LOT more stuffed animals on his bed, but I'm trying to keep him down to three. (He managed to grandfather Spongebob in since technically he's a pillow too).

Chance's bunk. He likes to keep it kind of spartan, though I've noticed he's inherited my pillow hoarding problem, but with blankets. Even in ninety degree heat, he's gotta have five or six up there, it's puzzling. His comforter is Batman, but like me he hates making the bed and I'm too pregnant now to climb up there and make it for him.

The red table's kind of like their command center. James found it next to a dumpster right before we moved in. Perfect kid size.

(If you're wondering why Chance is in none of the photos.. He IS here, but has been on the potty refusing to poop the entire time we were doing this. Fun times!)

Play kitchen, Batman, and a nicely-growing lunchbox collection. I want to hang a special shelf for them soon.

Their closet. It's like stuffed animal apocalypse in there.

Their bookshelves. I had a picture of something similar saved on the computer for a long time. When we bought this place, James made them. He is a very handy guy.

It's amazing how many books they hold. We have a whole lot of them that I try to shuffle around to the front so they'll read something they forgot about. I hate reading the same books over and over. We keep all the much younger/ "baby" books on the bottom shelf so Shamus can easily access them. He can reach the middle shelf well enough  but not the top.

They have all these posters I need to hang up. Plus a very large changing table that'll be making the trip up the stairs any day now. Plus you haven't seen what I'm working on for the new baby...

EDIT: I took a little break to sit down and type this and when James got home this is what he found. Cleaning, sorting, and then photographing your room is hard work.

Werk.

Now that I'm on break for a month, I'm noticing how neglected everything gets when I'm in school. Yesterday I finally went to the OBGYN, which I had been rescheduling for the past couple months. Had lunch with my sister in law.. Can't remember the last time I had lunch with an adult. Then Shamus and I went to the big library. Mocha (Museum of Children's Art) is doing these free art classes every week. It was World Turtle Day so everyone made watercolor turtles. Shamus was by far the youngest kid but I thought his turned out beautifully. Everyone else had green turtles in a blue ocean. Shamus made his rainbow. They are proudly displayed on our refrigerator. It was so nice having time together to do something purely for fun.

After we got home from a loooong day of running errands, I cooked a real dinner and everyone sat and ate together. These are things I miss terribly. I can't wait until the day that we all work and go to school during the same hours and can come home and be in the same place. I hope those of you who have that don't take it for granted.

I'm determined to catch up on the disturbing amounts of laundry around the house this week. My side of the bed had a massive stack of paperwork covering the entire floor that took me two hours to sort/ file/ throw out. I was thinking about targeting a different room of the house every day and just cleaning my heart out until it looks great. I could document my progress with before and after pictures. Though, honestly, the idea of anyone seeing the condition my house is in currently fills me with serious dread.

On a more fun note, I'm going to make an effort to read books that aren't comic books. Haven't made progress on my 2012 reading list in a while. When I chose it, I wasn't aware yet I'd spend most of 2012 pregnant and there's only so many books about rape, murder, and the Holocaust you can read before it starts to wear you down. After picking up some of the less heinous ones at the library, I found a couple little moments to read here and there yesterday while I was hanging around school. I was getting funny looks.. Doesn't that seem strange getting stares for reading on a college campus? Now I've put it together it might be the fact that a rather pregnant woman was reading Rosemary's Baby.. Maybe.

D-D-Dita.

I'm always really hesitant to buy tickets to anything that exceed twenty dollars, but I'm really glad I did. They were very explicit that we weren't allowed to take photos (and they confiscated quite a few), and I'm not an asshole, so I didn't. They would've just been blurry, tiny, crappy ones anyhow. Luckily, there's already enough (and much better quality than any I could take) circulating so I don't have to.

There was a lot of this.

And this. She did not skimp on the glitter, let me say.

I was excited she did her powder puff compact number. It's always been my favorite visually and to see it in real life far beats seeing it in a photograph or a grainy youtube video.

 

She finished it off with her Opium Den number. It's supposed to be her most expensive and detailed number ever. It was so polished that it felt more like being at the ballet than being at a burlesque show.

The acts that ran in between were all very different but great in their own way. To be able to cross seeing Dita and Dirty Martini perform off my list at the same time was incredibly cool. Catherine D'Lish, Perle Noire.. Lots of really cool perspectives in the burly-q spectrum.

Getting there was a little rough. I was running so late that I basically ran out of the house. I was in such a rush that I forgot to put on mascara (and stockings, oddly enough). Also, my house keys which meant I had to get James out of bed to let me in. Poor guy. I should have taken a picture of myself but I forgot to do that too. Vintage hat, gloves, sparkly dress, fox stole, tiny vintage repro purse.. It had some nice stuff going on. All I have is this dark, grainy club photo. It'll have to do.

 (I loved how that girl Carrie (red hair) showed up wearing the dress I've been staring at for months. It's called the Mon Cheri dress. If it ever goes on sale, I'm snapping it up. It looked amazing on her).

Drag Queen Moments (Yeah, Yeah).

 Friday night offered a rare opportunity to wear loads of makeup. Love those. What a fantastic night. Babes, burritos, lots of sparkle. Opted out of a dress and stockings for stretchy pants and a tunic but under a fab fake animal so I think it fairly balanced out.

 

Me being silly in my new coat. It was twelve dollars! It's missing a button so I'm currently using a safety pin. Very glamorous. The tag says XS but completely covers my ever-enormous bump, so who are we kidding here?