Happy Long Weekend, with a little personal update

I was supposed to write a Craigslist post today but then I thought ‘What if I just yammered on about my life instead?’ I know that I always like a checkin from the bloggers that I read so I figured I’d just tell you what’s happening on the personal front these days.

The second pregnancy is a lot easier, especially the second trimester of second pregnancy. I don’t have the late night energy that I had during first pregnancy, I’m assuming because I have a toddler, but the whole thing is going so much faster. I’m 19 weeks this weekend which makes me almost 1/2 way through which is just terribly exciting. I started to feel her move around a few days ago which means the fun part is just beginning. This pregnancy is relatively painless – no sever nausea or anything, but I seem to get waves of what I can only describe as ‘self pity hormones’ which turn me into an irrational sad person, crying for no reason and then crying out of frustration/embarrassment for how much I’m crying over nothing. This happened last time, too, and its only about once a week, but I’d say that is the only bummer part so far. Nothing really to complain about (but, you know, I will).

Yesterday, I came to terms with the fact that we will indeed need another baby room. I think I was kinda in denial because well, we already have one, and having two rooms with cribs seems insane in a three bedroom house. I still might have them share after a year as soon as they are on the same sleeping schedule but for now I’m going to turn the guest room into a girls baby room in the simplest way possible, then turn our old office in the basement into a guest suite. More projects to do the next 5 months but very fun ones.

We need to start prepping little Charlie for his sibling but the kid so far doesn’t seem to grasp the concept of ‘your little sister is in mama’s belly’, yet, despite how much I show him this freakish mound under my skin. He just lifts up his shirt and shows me his belly, which is quite impressive as well. If anyone knows any good books we can read to him about siblings let me know. He’ll be 22 months when she is born so the poor kid is going to be a bit thrown. I watched his birth video last night (you know, because I put it on the internet) and I’m just all abuzz with even more excitement now. That first moment, those first few weeks …. they were just so incredibly special. But we didn’t have a toddler then and it was the holidays so I felt no work pressure. Trying to recreate that might be hard, especially if we get a normal baby that, you know cries. But I don’t care, I’m still so excited.

Which brings me to work: the business has grown so much this last year with 3 full-time people and in-house photographer and video team. So I actually have to plan what is going to happen when I have this baby or else the blog will disappear and everyone will be out of a job. I can’t be running the day-to-day anymore, so instead I’m overseeing other people running the day-to-day and I think it might be working (mainly because they are all so awesome). Thanks to these lovely people we are so much more organized and producing such better content with more quality control.

My goal has always been to maintain this blog as a personal blog – not a big conglomerate website with nameless/faceless contributors. But ‘personal’ doesn’t have to mean just me because the blog really isn’t just me anymore, plus if it were just me I fear the burnout with two kids. So not only is Orlando writing and documenting his projects over here, but Ginny, Brady and Sarah will start to, too. I’m running out of rooms/projects to do and while we will forever blog about our client projects, we have to be a bit more careful about giving away the design that they pay for, for free to you guys. Some clients like it, and some don’t. It’s a bit trickier. But I’m not the only one working here, and I’m not the only one that is obsessed with doing projects around my house, so instead of having random roundup posts or too many ‘I’m in love with my new baby posts’ like last time, come November you are going to get some makeover takeovers by my beloved crew. OOOOOHHHH sh*ttttt. Looks like I just came up with the blog content theme for November. MAKEOVER TAKEOVER. Please use a WWF announcer voice when you read that.

Speaking of makeover, the blog/site relaunch is supposed to be launching June 1st. We hired a creative design agency Project M Plus to basically take this blog to the next level, functionally and aesthetically. And they totally did. I highly recommend them. Stay tuned for that coming in less than 2 weeks…

We are shooting the deck makeover today, while the bathroom is being redone inside (tiling starts today). After the shoot I’m planning a very relaxing weekend full of friends, parks, toddlers, bbqs, movies and napping. Sleeping in is impossible, but enjoying sleeping through the night for the next five months is important to me. Although Charlie is teething (the molars) and so its been a bit brutal at nights. Also he just gets frustrated so much faster, insisting on doing everything himself, using a spoon for yogurt whilst just flinging it EVERYWHERE. When we decided to have another baby Charlie was barely mobile so he was still pretty easy to control. Now that he’s hit full toddler-hood, I’m realizing the next couple years are going to a lot trickier than the last one. Whoops. I keep telling Brian its only 4-6 years of our life and then they might have some self sufficiency and we might be able to go out with friends without the dread of the 6am wakeup but for the next 4 – 6 years …. man. When do they start sleeping in and making their own breakfast????

Meanwhile we are taking advantage of the whole ‘one kid’ thing for a long weekend starting in about 9 hours. Happy Memorial Day, folks. See you Tuesday …

*Family photo by the lovely Stephanie Todaro