Sex and stuff....

Oh boy! It's been so long! I've been doing so many things!

Scott and I have been discussing what our plans are after the new baby comes along and we feel like (maybe...this changes weekly) it might be time for me to become an official stay-at-home Mommy. The idea is exciting and yet I find myself being extremely nervous.

I often feel like I can't decide what to do each day. I am torn by my love for being out of the house and the fact that we constantly have messes EVERYWHERE! I admit that I'm not the cleanest of housewives. I don't think I've ever let things get too, too bad, but at the end of the day, don't be surprised if the dishes aren't done, there's still tons of laundry, and there's (YET AGAIN) crumbs because my sweet child took his cereal into the living room and proceeded to crumble it all over the floor.

I often feel like I am embarrassed to have people over, but when I think about making changes and working harder to stay on some type of schedule to get everything done, I end up feeling overwhelmed and depressed. Usually, that is when I start to schedule more outings! I keep thinking that maybe I'll be better when I'm at home all day and my house becomes my "office", but I'm not sure.

Some things have been getting in the way recently though. For a while, we had that extra bedroom remodel going on. That left us with stuff all over the house that didn't belong anywhere near there. It also helped us realize just how full our attic was and how much we needed to get rid of stuff. Which, we did, but there's still a lot more to go.

After we got the room all finished, we started moving Scott's stuff up to the new room, which is now an office that both of us use. I do enjoy it. The former "Man Cave" has become the new redo. We decided that it was going to be the new playroom for our kiddos, but before I would let anything move into the room, I just HAD to make changes. So, we took off the old baseboards and have been joint compounding and sanding for a while now. We are finally at the point where we can prime the joint compound and paint. Then, we'll just need the new baseboards! Then, (and I can't wait for this) EVERY SINGLE TOY is moving into that backroom and I get to have a dining room again! AMEN!! And really...I don't miss having a dining room table on carpet, but I do miss not seeing toys everywhere as soon as I walk into the house.

Last weekend, we also got new (to us) furniture from Scott's parents. That was also another major change. Now, I have plenty of room for clothing for both Matthew and the new baby! I was having a field day fixing up their bedroom and was bummed when I got to the point that I couldn't do anything else without getting the toys out of the room.

Matthew now has a big boy bed in his room. I wanted to put it into his room so that he would start to realize that it belonged there rather than just force him into it one fine day. He seems to love it though. I don't know when we'll be ready to have him sleep in it. It would be awesome if he could sleep in the crib forever!

So, we have all of that going on. The hope is that after everything gets organized into the place that it belongs, things might get a lot easier around our house.

Aside from that, I have also been working a little hard on my baby signing business. Here's a link to my site. It would be awesome if you visited it and told your friends and families about it. As much as I see people very interested in taking classes, it has been difficult for me to actually created a second class with the commitment that my first one had.

I know that one of the ways I can fix this is with advertising. I know I have not saturated the area at all! Recently, though, I've had a lot of people find me. In fact, I was contacted by a group called Urban Mommies to do a one day demo for a group of interested Moms! I was very excited about that! A few weeks later, I was contact by someone from "Learning Express" to do something for them as well. Amazing! I decided that with their advertising help, I need to get out there and really put my best for forward this summer. I have been working with Macaroni Kids - North Hills and soon they will be featuring me in one of their newsletters.

I really only started doing this, because I wanted to be able to bring baby signing into the Pittsburgh area, but now I'm trying to set goals for myself so that this money can be our "special money" for stuff like family trips and vacations. Maybe I'll get to the point where this could be the place where all of our childrens' college savings comes from or something. For now, the goals are small. I tend to think more about short term goals for stuff like this, simply because when I think long-term I get too excited imagining what it could be and overwhelmed by the fact that I'm not sure how to get there. Baby steps.....

And speaking of.....

We found out the sex of the baby!!! Our families (particularly my mother-in-law) are dying to know, but we're not telling yet. We decided to wait until this coming weekend. Most of the reason to wait is for a really silly reason. Basically, I am known as the one who can't keep a secret. When I was little, I always used to find Santa's gifts and tell my brother what we were getting. Birthdays, I'd start searching for my own gifts, and if you left me alone in the house...I was probably snooping through old papers in the basement trying to find out if I was adopted (that last one was a real doozy...I actually found my parent's Will when I was maybe 12ish and it happened to be on the day they left on an airplane to go to a convention. I convinced my poor younger brother that they left the Will out, because they were afraid they weren't going to make it back to us)..............

And well, those ones were kind of "intentional", but there are also times that I "word vomit" things and don't even realize that I'm doing it. Like when I told my sister-in-law that she was getting a Kuerig and didn't realize that she hadn't already received it. My bad!

Anyway, I've decided that I need a secret to keep and this a good one! Another reason for the secrecy had to do with the craziness that has been all of our lives lately. My Mom was working on a big event last week and was very stressed and busy and my Mother-in-law was also dealing with some stress that should all calm down this week. So when we tell them this weekend, everyone will be in a happy, celebratory mood!