Overhaul

So there has been a lot, and I mean A LOT going on since my last post. I've been wanting to post for so long now, but I wanted to wait until the right moment to reveal all these new things. I have been working on some projects, but I couldn't blog about them without telling everyone my secret. Though I am sure that a lot of my readers also know me on Facebook and so this is old news to them. But this is what has been going on in my life:

About a year and a half ago, we decided that we wanted to start a family of our own. We wanted to keep it a secret from our families, especially since this would be the first grand child on my husbands side. The next year to come, were filled with monthly disappointments, tears and hundreds of peed on sticks and many temperature charts that always told me about my disappointments to come. At the end of the year, we were considered an infertile couple and the appointments with the specialist were set up. About one week before our appointment with the fertility specialist, I was looking over my latest temperature chart. Now on a normal chart, your temperature should be bi-phasal (an average temperature pre-ovulation and a higher average post-ovulation) but as I was looking at my chart, my temperature had gone up an extra jump to a tri-phasal when it should have started to fall. I just sat there and stared at my computer screen, knowing where my thoughts were going and knowing it would only lead to disappointment if I let my hopes get up like this. I had some other women look at my chart via a forum, and my thoughts were confirmed by another. Fritz told me it would be better to test that night (a Sunday) and be able to deal with my grief that night rather than in the morning, right before work when I'd have to face other people. So I opened yet another testing kit, like I have so many times before. Only this time.....I'm pregnant!
(from the mouth of a frugal mom-to-be: stop paying $15 per preggo test at Walmart and go to the dollar store. You pay $1.25 for the same strip in a cheaper package. Especially worth-while if you pee on ten of them per month.I just think it's a waste of money to spend $15 on something you pee on for 5 seconds,and then throw it out. The same goes for OPK's, buy those at the dollar store too)

How we revealed the news to our families:

We found out that we were pregnant on December 2nd and we wanted to wait until Christmas  to tell our families. A lot of people don't share the news with their families until 12 weeks but by Christmas I was 7 weeks, and should the worst happen, we would want our family's support. We wanted to tell our families in unique and creative ways so here's how things went down: We planned a family barbeque for the Sunday after church. We told them it was nothing special, but just to have lunch together. In the morning, before church, we stopped off at several A&W restaurants, and asked for the wrappers to the Grandpa, Grandma and Uncle burgers that their chain is so famous for. Unfortunately the Grandma burger got discontinued a month prior but after stopping at around 4 or 5 A&W's we finally managed to get a hold of a Grandma burger.
Eventually the family arrived at our place, we had the patties cooked and the toppings on the table, but the buns were placed inside the wrappers and stored on a plate in our cupboard. Once everyone was seated we told them that instead of barbequeing we just stopped at A&W and picked up burgers instead (though we did actually BBQ burgers ourselves) My father in law was the first to clue in and then Rudi, my youngest brother in law. Charl, my other brother in law simply stated "there's only a bun in this wrapper!" and didn't bother to look at the wrapper until it was pointed out  to him by Rudi. While all this commotion is going on, my mother in law, is just staring at her wrapper in utter confusion. and all I hear her say is quietly "prime rib?" (Prime rib is written in small print just above "Grandma burger" and then a couple seconds later, the loud scream of realization occurred!

My family was told in a different way. My parents already have three grand kids, so we couldn't do anything related to new grand parents. So instead, I made use of my nieces and nephew. Since they have no cousins yet, I picked up two little t-shirts, and a onesie, and created shirts that said "I'm going to be a big cousin" . I tucked these shirts nicely inside their actual gifts, in hopes that they would pull them out and reveal what's on them, but instead my three year old nephew just tossed it aside, without even giving unrolling it a thought. and my niece...well, she was in some sort of 2 year old mood. eventually my sister in law picked up one of the shirts. There wasn't as much screaming as with Fritz's family, but everyone was still very excited. My mother already knew (in fact she knew before I even knew!), even though I never told her and denied the fact that I knew she knew....mothers, they seem to know everything.

(my nephew is covering his, but it has dinos on it.)

The week before Christmas, I had my very first ultrasound at 6 weeks. I couldn't see a whole lot, just a little bean, but I did see a tiny blinking pixel, which was amazingly the heart beat, and for maybe 5 short seconds we heard it beating...at 6 weeks! it was incredible!
Then on March 22 we had our 2nd ultrasound this one would reveal the gender of the baby. The ultra sound was incredibly clear. We were able to count our baby's toes and fingers! they are all there!

Hans at  almost 22 weeks.

I am currently 26 weeks and we are expecting our little boy, Hans, to arrive August 11, 2013! Now we are not doing this the traditional North American style that is to say, seeing an OB, and having a hospital birth and most people would expect to do. We are planning (though I know things don't always go according to our plans) to have a non-medicated home birth. I watched a couple documentaries, one of which was "pregnant in America" about hospital vs home birth, and the women who did it both ways always said they wished the had all their kids at home rather than in the hospital. They mentioned an empowerment that comes from going  all natural, and that is what I want to experience. So I am taking that advice and I am starting right off the bat with a home birth with my first one. Plus this has always been normal in my family, to have your kids at home that is.The only reason you would go to a hospital is if something was medically wrong with you or the baby and lives are at risk. People in hospitals are sick or dying, I'm neither of those and so I don't feel the need to be there.  Statistics even show that it is just as safe/beneficial, if not safer/more beneficial to have your children at home in a familiar place where the mother has control over the process. Not that I am anti-hospital birth, or feel the need to defend my decision,  I just think this is the better way to go for my family. But should anything go wrong, midwives are equipped  just as much as your general hospital, and I can always be transferred there should I have to have a hospital birth at the last minute.

Pregnancy Brain
I didn't think this was a real thing. I thought most women just say this as an excuse.... but your mind really does seem to disintegrate around 4-5 months. Here's an example of what pregnancy has done to my brain: I was at IKEA the other day ( and by other day I mean more than a month ago) I saw an item I really liked for the nursery, it was a poster frame with a really cute picture of a quilted looking world with little children and animals and rocket ships. The colours work so well with our nursery. I get to the cash, and the cashier guy looks at the item, then looks at me and says " did you take our display item down?" turns out that I did, since the frame and poster don't get sold together and the display tags were hanging off the item. My mother didn't want to make a scene, because she knew what I did, even though I swore I didn't take the display item. It sure was a good thing we weren't shopping for couches!

So here is what I have been working on for the last while:
1. Our basement:
              The basement is starting to come to an end. All that is left is little projects related to the basement. That is, Fritz is working on building a pub, the frame of which is up, I am working on getting a proper crafting desk put in and I have a couple of paint touch ups to do plus some curtains for the windows and then this should be totally complete. It's amazing how much space a finished basement adds to a house!

2. A new room
Now with a baby on the way, I am working on the nursery. This project is my baby...no pun intended. The details of this will have to go in another post because there are a lot of projects just inside one room! Also it's not complete yet (almost) and I don't want to blog about an incomplete project. But soon enough.

3. Diapers.
I plan on cloth diapering, it's much cheaper and it's doing the environment a huge favour. I will blog about my diapers in a separate post also because it's a big topic on it's own, but I have been working on them and I'd love to share my diaper adventure with you.

4. Gardens.
 I just finished putting a bunch of flower seeds in my flower beds, o none of those have sprouted as of yet. but a lot of my other plants are growing and blossoming!We have extended our vegetable garden  from about roughly 12 square metres to 20 square metres. We have planted a great variety of veggies, and accidentally grew pumpkins. You see, we used our own compost and we composted a pumpkin from Thanksgiving/halloween and now the seeds are in our veggie garden and they seem to be the first ones to sprout ( aside from our rhubarb). Does anyone want a pumpkin plant?




















I also made a new wreath for the summer using twigs from my back yard and some leftover paint:

So from now on a lot of my posts will probably include the frugal ways of a new mom. But fear not, I will still continue to craft and refurbish and reupholster and do all sorts of money saving things. It's just that there is a new dynamic to my blog.