A Life Update

So life has been crazy. I was just starting to figure out the stay-at-home mom thing when we found out that I may be in the beginning stages of pre-eclampsia at 38 weeks pregnant. And so with a diagnosis of gestational hypertension, I was admitted to the hospital to be induced. Several hours later, which included 2.5 hours of labor and my husband literally catching our child after one push before she fell in the toilet (there was no one in the room with us at the time), and we had a perfect daughter. She's now just over 2 weeks old and my husband goes back to work tomorrow.

So that's the big news. In smaller news, I have been working on the decluttering challenge at my own pace. It was really difficult in the late stages of pregnancy, because I pretty much had to do the decluttering mentally and then expend as little energy as possible to get up and pull out the stuff I wanted to get rid of. I have continued pulling stuff off bookshelves and other places as I see things that we don't actually need. So while it's not going very quickly, things are moving along. I was able to remove enough books from my bookshelves to move some stuff around and put some of our baby books on a different shelf, where they seem to be existing largely undisturbed so far, while the board books that our son still loves for us to read to him, he has easy access to.

Finally, I tackled the kid's room for my dream house. I knew that I didn't want it any bigger than would fit a bed, a bedside table, a shelf, a desk and chair, and a closet. Since we have two kids, I would just do mirror image rooms for them and they'll look the same. With a good organizer system in the closet, they won't need a dresser either.

So first I figured out roughly how much space I needed for each item I wanted in the room. Then I started drawing. I wasn't satisfied with the extra space left in the first drawing (left), so I tried again. I think I like the layout of the second drawing (right) and that ends up at roughly 10 feet by 6.66 feet, or a total of 67 square feet per child, 134 square feet for both rooms.

I want the bed to be built in, either as a loft bed, or an alcove bed with storage underneath. I could see the desk, shelving unit and bedside table to be built ins as well, so that there is floor to ceiling storage in every square inch of the room. Not that my kids should need that much space for their stuff, but if they do, they'll have it. Hopefully they'll enjoy reading too, so they'll need some space for their books. One window at the end of the room, the bigger the better to let in lots of light.

So far that brings the total square footage of our house to about 218 square feet.

Feeling Lost

I haven't sewn anything in my house in over a month. I'm feeling a bit lost and frazzled and there's lots of reasons for that. The biggest is that I'm officially a stay-at-home mom right now to a very active 2-year-old, and have been for the past three weeks. My husband works at least 11 hours a day, 5 to 6 days a week, so I see him only briefly and I have to get up with our son almost every day, so by the time his day(s) off come around, I'm physically and mentally exhausted. Of course, the whole being 33 weeks pregnant thing isn't helping there either.

The other problem is that my husband and our friend helped me move most of my crafting stuff down into the basement, but it's still a pretty big mess and every time I go down there to try and put stuff away, I realize that I just don't have the space for everything, but don't know what to get rid of, and I feel defeated and just sit on the bed and stare at it all. My machine is sitting on my sewing table, but isn't plugged in. I haven't worked on my commission quilts, even though both tops are done and I know what I want to do quilting wise for at least one of them. I've got ideas for the other one. And I think the worst part is that I know I need a creative outlet in my life, but I can't make myself do anything.

On top of that, I miss our families. It's like a great gaping hole in my chest. We managed to get two Michigan trips in the past two months while we've both been looking for work. It was so nice to be near family, to drop our son off at his grandparents for a night or two and actually both get to sleep in, to bring dinner over to my sister who is dealing with a newborn and an active toddler, or just congregate at her place to eat dinner together. To be there to support my father-in-law through the recovery for his eye surgery and give him something to take his mind off having to be face down and just generally let our son run around with his cousins. We have a pretty good support system here as well, but it's not the same.

Announcement and DCMQG 2016 Quilt-Along Update

So it may have seemed like I've dropped off the face of the earth for a bit, and in some ways, you may be right. I have been growing a human (i.e. I'm pregnant with number two). My first trimester always takes it out of me both in terms of nausea and loss of energy/motivation to do much of anything. So I've had to table the Quilt Along for a bit. However, fear not, it will be back along with my motivation after the stress of the holidays is done. We just won't quite finish it in 2016, and I have to say, I'm very sorry about that!

I leave you with an image of the blob, taken a few weeks ago, as a consolation: