20 weeks!

I am 20 weeks into my pregnancy!  I can hardly beleive I am already halfway through.  Last pregnancy I carefully documented each week with a picture and a little happy dance that i was one week closer.  This time around it is going so much faster I hardly have time to appreciate all that is happening inside of me.  I am much more tired, crampy and cranky.  Add to that running after a toddler and there hasnt been much time for weekly pictures.  
  This week we had our 20 week ultra sound and I was forced to stop and appreciate how far our new little baby has come already!  We did not find out the gender and hope to wait untill the birth.  i debated over the ultra sound at all but thought i would feel more relaxed having baby at home knowing everything looked good and it did!   Here is some of baby's progress

A day at the beach

We have been in Oregon for a few weeks now.  So far we are really enjoying the city of Eugene and the area around it.  3 weeks and today was our first day of rain!

Last weekend we went to the beach directly west of us and were glad to discover that is a very cute town surrounded by sand dunes and ocean!

Spending time with dad at the beach

Smelling flowers with Grandma

First haircut

Hanging book art

It has been several months now since I have sat down and looked at blogs let alone had time to write a blog entry. My time has been filled with keeping up with my sons daily activities as well as lots of doula things. I am glad my doula business is doing well but I haven't been able to quite catch up with it yet. It feels like i am always on a prenatal visit, setting up interviews or mixing herbs for sitz baths and teas. I love what i do but it felt nice to take a break from it all and sit down and do a craft today!

I have been wanting to make this hanging book art since I saw it on pintrest months and months ago.

Source: whimsicalworldoflaurabird.blogspot.com via Sara on Pinterest

I would like to think that I have the creativity and motivation to figure this out all on my own, but for this project I relied heavily on my mom. She figured out the project, made a beautiful hanging book, and then sent me home with instructions and supplies. I simply followed her directions. I used one book for the cover and an old copy of winnie the pooh for the pages since it will be hanging in the nursery. The entire project start to finish took about 30 min. Here is a little tutorial on how to make your own:

Supplies:

Book with hard cover

Glue gun

stapler

eye hook

To begin rip all of the pages out of your book

Then gently staple both ends of the page together width wise to make a little drop shaped page

Continue these steps untill you have a large stack

Staple 6-10 pages together to form the base of your hanging piece and glue to inside of empty book cover

I then placed this on its side and began placing glue along both sides of the edge of pages and inserting where needed. I had some printed off copies of other book mobiles for inspiration.

Continue untill you have desired look

Place eye hook in middle of cover and hang!

1 year!

Happy birthday jude! I cant believe it has already been one year since he was born.

Goal - Baby food

One of my goals for the new year was to begin to make my own baby food. I had intended to make my own food from the start but was quickly drawn in to the world of easily bought pre packaged baby food. I justified it by buying the organic kind, I was spending a small fortune. So for the welfare of my son and our bank account, I decided to make my own.

Making your own baby food is a lot easier then I thought it would be. If I had realized how cheap and easy it was I would have started doing it as soon as Jude began eating solids. One thing that makes it so easy is this awesome Christmas gift from my parents

Source: shoppingnexus.com via Krista on Pinterest

I simply make up a batch of whatever organic fruit i could find for a good price and freeze it in those cute little trays or keep in the fridge. a few hours before mealtime i pull out whatever I want to use and it is fresh and ready. I feel so much better feeding my child food that has nothing other fruit/veggies with a little bit of water and for a fraction of the price. I realize that you could probably use any blender and ice cube trays but i am the kind of person who is deeply motivated by how cute the things I am using are. Doesn't that smiling face make the process seem happy? I think so.

Family Pictures

Life has been a little busy. Jude has decided that he will not nap in his bed and will only nap while being held. This is why there have been no blog entries for some time now. I also have been very busy with doula stuff. I have several births coming up that I am VERY excited about.

I have been meaning to write the entries on my new years resolutions, but it seems more fun to post some family pictures we took a few weeks ago. Few of them turned out good as Jude decided he NEEDED to eat dirt and crawl around so it was hard to get a picture where he is not lunging out of our arms reaching for the ground. Here a few that turned out OK.

10 months

I was a little late in taking my sons 10 month photos and even later in posting them. 10 months! Now its almost 11.

10 months:

• He dances when he hears music of any kind
• he loves pointing at things
• he creates all kinds of games to play
• he still fights sleeping
• he is eating a ton of solids
• his favorite food is yogurt

Here are a few pictures of him at 10 months

DIY: Feather hair clip tutorial

I saw some hair clips recently that I loved. They were simple feather and button hairpins so I decided to see if I could make my own and share the tutorial with you. They are VERY easy to make and pretty cheap. I think they turned out looking pretty classy and would make a great gift!

Materials:

-feathers

-hair clip

-button (vintage?)

-felt

-glue gun

Step 1: cut out a circle of felt the size you would like the body of your pin to be

Step 2: Use your glue gun to place feathers on felt

Step 3: Glue (or sew) button at base of feathers

Step 4: Glue creation to pin back or Barrett (or whatever you want)

Easy right? The whole project only takes about 2-5min. I made several at once so I have some for myself and some to give away as gifts.

Happy New Year!

Happy new year! Its the time of year where everyone has great hope for the future. The new year brings promise of a better you, a better year. 2011 was hands down the most eventful/important year of my life as it brought me my son. It also ended with me becoming lazy/overtired and not doing many of the things that I had hoped to be doing. One sandwich leads to 2 months of eating gluten. Eating gluten leaves me feeling sick and tired. Felling sick and tired leads to me not feeling up to all the cloth diaper laundry and using way to many disposables. So on and so on. The bright side is that i have lots of 'resolutions' for the new year!

2012 goals:

-eat gluten free/organic (again)

-Make my own baby food

-return to full time cloth diapering (disposables are a slippery slope)

-Figure out why i feel sick all the time and try and remedy the problem

-Begin training for Holistic Health Practitioners license.

-Find a local community of like minded people and really invest in them

-Expand my doula business

-Set goals and organize Hope and Heritage shop

I hesitated to post my goals because once they are out there people might see how far I come from acheiving them. I dediced that it might prove to be some kind of accountability for me. So in the name of oppenness and accountablilty i will be taking some time throughout Jan. to do a blog post focusing on each of my goals for 2012! If i can follow through and actually post about each gaol this month, there might be hope for the rest of my resolutions after all.

Happy Holidays!

These holidays we have been super busy. On Christmas eve we arrived in Toronto Canada to visit tylers family. We have been spending the last week enjoying family, relaxing and a white christmas (almost). While Christmas itself was warm and not so snowing, the days after provided lots of snow. Jude loved watching it fall and was not to sure what to make of it on the ground. I hope everyong had an enjoyable Christmas week!

very very busy

These last few weeks we have been VERY busy. We have completed 2 holiday markets, one of which was 2 days long. I came down with a horrible cold for which i could take no medication due to breastfeeding, which turned into a sinus infection that has lasted forever. I have had a few doula interviews that resulted in my having a doula client every month from now till April with lots of scheduled prenatal and interviews coming up. I also gave my notice as a counselor, last week will be last week. With all of the busyness we took some family time this weekend to get our house ready for the holiday.

Picking out our Christmas tree

Pretty exciting

Jude had a traumatizing encounter with Santa

With lots of things going on and even more things to catch up on, it was nice to take some time to do one of my favorite things, setting up the christmas tree. This year we got a small tree and put it up on a table. Now that Jude is moving around we figured it was safer.

9 months

My son is now 9 months old. He has officially been out as long as he was in (a few weeks longer then he was in actually) and I can hardly believe it. 9 months ago was hands down the most amazing moment of my life as I meet my son for the first time. 9 months before that Jude was just a tiny little guy and I was confused and wondering why I was so tired and why I was craving cheeseburgers SO badly. This month has brought with it tons of change. A few new tricks that Jude has picked up:

-Pulling himself up into the standing position

-walking with help from mom and dad

-blowing spit bubbles on purpose

-commando crawling

-eating bites of mom and dads food

-fake crying to get attention

Each new change is so exciting to watch. Even now after all this time with him both in belly and in home, I am still constantly blown away that i have a son and that my son is so amazing.