Still Here

Hi. No baby yet. 12 days until the estimated due date. And not a peep. Everything is tight as a drum and baby boy is partying it up like it's NYE every night in there.

Here's me, Giganto, on Christmas day:


He's probably afraid to come out. With all the drama over these past 9 months, from seizures and hospital stays, to medications and memory loss, to falls and broken bones... who can blame him. I'd want to stay in that protective cocoon too! Whenever you're ready, buddy. We'll be waiting as patiently as possible.

Christmas was lovely this year. Although I wasn't feeling my best, we hosted Christmas Eve at our house with the help of everyone in Tony's fam. It was our first Christmas in the 'new' house. If I wasn't so tired I would have decorated more, but it was just enough and looked nice. I spent most of the evening on the couch. The stress of the holidays and everything going on had caused my legs/ankles/feet to swell up to a disgusting degree. Pregnancy! Yay! But other than that, everyone seemed to have a great time.











Tony and I spent Christmas morning relaxing on our last holiday as a family of two. We treated ourselves to a new DSLR camera, which takes some amazing photos, although we're still learning!





The day was spent in Braintree with the Cawley clan, as is tradition. Despite being exhausted from the night before, I had a fantastic time with the fam. Even treated myself to a glass of red wine. Merry Christmas to me!













Leaving Braintree was strange. It hit me then that the next time I see most of these people, the people that I love most in the world, we are going to have a little baby with us. Everyone was wishing us luck, giving us advice and kisses and hugs, asking us to call, etc. It was just surreal.

I am so excited for next year! :-)

Slow progress, shower, and holiday traditions

Today marks 36 weeks of pregnancy. On one hand it seems like time is finally flying, and on the other hand... good lawd, this gestating thing takes for-evv-errr.

Say it, Squints.

At this point, every day is a little more uncomfortable than the one before. Which makes me nervous for the weeks to come. But the craziness of everything going on lately will hopefully make it go by quickly.


35 weeks


36 weeks

In the midst of all the craziness, our families threw us a beautiful baby shower and we are so grateful for all the work that went into it, as well as all the amazing gifts!






I didn't get many photos, as I was too busy stuffing my swolen face with delicious food and tallying up our loot. Class-ay.

Now that we're heading in to the home stretch, nights and weekends are mostly spent getting ready for baby. I've come to the conclusion that not everything has to be be D-U-N DONE RIGHT NOW OMG BABY'S COMING QUICK FREAK OUT!! As long as we have all the essentials ready, which we pretty much do, everything will be fiiiine. But sometimes the panic sets in and I get all crazy irrational (i.e., pregnant) and something might be chucked in the trash or bitten off at the neck. (Sorry Tone. Luvs ya.)

That this is one of the busiest times of the year, both at work and at home, adds a bit to the stress. Lots and lots of holiday parties, birthday celebrations, dinners, showers, doctor appointments... all in between work (which is nutso) and sleep. And taking a few breaths here and there.

Speaking of holiday parties, it's a Cawley family tradition to hold Christmas a few weeks early for the siblings and all our kids. It helps to make Christmas day not so CRAZY with the whole family around. It's typically held at my mom's house in Marshfield, but my sister Maureen stepped up and offered her house when mom caught The Bug a few days prior. No matter where it's held, it's always a great time. The kids love it, and us big kids love it too.






Crazy to think that next year there will be another little boy in the mix!

How many times did I use the word 'crazy' in this entry? Tons. That's about right.

Oh, we're also hosting Christmas Eve with Tony's fam this year. I'll be 38 weeks pregnant. Should I use that word again? I think I should... CRAZY.

Happy holidays!

Long awaited update

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

It seems that every year we have more and more for which to be thankful. This year is above and beyond the norm. Not to get all corny, but we've been through a lot recently and it's made us realize how lucky we are. As Tony put it so simply lastnight, "I like my life."

So in honor of the holiday, and in a lame attempt to summarize what's been going on with us over the past month and a half, here is what we are especially thankful for:

1. Tony turning 30 and all of the friends and family who helped us celebrate:


It was our first real party in the new house, and I was so preoccupied with being the hostess that I got very few pictures. But I assure you, it looked beautiful. Tony had a slide show of 'before' pictures looping on the TV and it helped to show everyone the amount of work that has gone into our home over the past 10 months. So many compliments for us and the boys at Choice Woodworking, Inc. And the party was a great time also. We fit about 50 people into our open and airy space. We couldn't have asked for a better way to ring in Tony's 30th year. And I am eternally grateful for everyone who helped me out before/during/after the party, as I wasn't exactly in top form in my delicate state.

2. The growing Butterball basting in my bellah:




I am almost 34 weeks at this point and it's absolutely surreal. I can't say it's been an easy road, but we're headed into the home stretch now and I'm feeling pretty good. We're not nervous yet, just excited and anxious. We want to meet our little man! As they say on St. John, baby soon come. :-)

3. Having such a big amazing family with lots of kids, and reaping the benefits!
This will be grandchild #9 for my mom and Tony's family has a couple little ones as well, so we've been lucky enough to be given many hand-me-downs... Furniture, decor, clothes (for me AND the baby), etc. We're not ones to need everything to be new and fresh. In fact, I kinda like the idea of using items that have been lived in and passed down with our families. We're still working on getting the nursery together. Once we do we'll post plenty of photos for the ol' blogosphere.

4. And lastly, we are thankful for the 15 years and hundreds of memories with our beloved Barkley, who went up to doggy heaven just last week.

He was a good dog, our best friend and first 'baby.' We miss him terribly... the house doesn't feel the same without him in it. But it was almost like he wanted to give us time to get ready for our human baby. So thanks, buddy. For all the happy times and for making us learn to work as a team when things got tough toward the end. Hopefully we're a little more prepared for this time in our lives because we were lucky enough to take care of you.

So have a great holiday everyone. Remember to tell those around you how much you love them, even your pets. And thanks to all for reading! We'll try to be better with the updates.

Stairway and Artwork

We've slowly been checking projects off of our list. Sometimes things get started, half-way done, and then left for a while. Life gets in the way.

A big one that we touched upon in a previous entry is the new stairway built by the boys of Choice Woodworking. Everything is brand new, from the treads to the risers to the railings, etc. Nick and Paul stained the treads and railings dark to match the wood floors upstairs. And everything else is a crisp white.

The boys finished their beautiful handy-work a while ago, but Tony still had to do some touch-ups on the white paint. So it only recently became officially completed. Here is the finished product:

So preeeeetty.

Although I can't seem to find a proper 'before' photo, here is the old stairway mid-demolition:

Dirty white paint and a blue carpet on the treads and risers. They had seen better days, obviously.

The crafstmanship is admired by all who see the new stairs... including by Nick and Paul themselves who are over all the time anyway. ;-)

A more minor project we've been gradually catching up with is hanging stuff up on the walls. We have so many random mis-matched frames and mirrors, it's hard to make sense of everything. So I tend to overthink where pictures should be hung, therefore leaving blank walls throughout the house. But here's one spot that's done:

Dining room. Photos of our trip out to the Southwest.

An obvious choice for the bathroom... photo to be hung on the wall. We purchased this at an auction, piece by the one and only Jenny.

We also put a mirror up in our entry way, which looks decent. So many more to go.

And here's some progress on the biggest project in our lives, Project Baby:

25 weeks

26 weeks

Getting there!

Sick Day

Here's what my day looks like:

Lots of tissues, digital Yahtzee, and the remote control. I figured after spending all day yesterday sneezing and coughing my way through work (with plenty of Purell at the ready), I'd give my coworkers a break. I'm home resting in the hopes of kicking this annoying cold. The good thing is there's no fever or body aches, and just a minor sore throat. So I think we can rule out that dreaded three-letter-word... starts with f and rhymes with shoe. That one.

But I don't have a wide array of choices when it comes to cold medicines right now, so a day of sleep, water, and back-to-back episodes of A Baby Story will have to do. Let's hope it does the trick.

Speaking of A Baby Story, here's the latest progress:

23 weeks

24 weeks

Pardon me for sounding indelicate, but it would be nice if the boobs would stop growing at the same rate as the belly. It's just getting awfully.. crowded. In the frontal area. I know, I know. I have a long way to go. Alls I'm sayin is, donations to the New Bras Every Two Weeks foundation are welcome.

But in terms of the pregnancy, I have been feeling pretty good lately. At the risk of jinxing it, things have been uneventful. Baby boy is moving around like crazy in there and Tony has finally been able to feel it from the outside, which is exciting and fun. I'm getting a lot of nice comments from strangers and coworkers who are just realizing the extra poundage is not just from chocolate donuts.

And typing those words was all it took... I just texted Tony to pick up a chocolate donut for me on his way home from work. The cravings for sweets are out of control. This is definitely his father's son!

Windows... and a bump update

Before we did all the work on the house, there was more separation between rooms, i.e. walls. So each room had it's own style... And I use that word loosely. My style consists of throwing together craigslist finds, clearance items, and hand-me-downs that look like they kinda-sorta go together, and then hoping for the best. Tony's style is whatever is cheapest and the wife likes, in that order.

Now that everything is opened up we've had to rethink the different styles and try to keep everything somewhat cohesive. In particular we've found this challenging with the windows. There were different blinds and curtains to suit the 'style' of each room.

Although I don't have any true "before" photos, here is an idea of what we had going on:


See that thing behind the 3 drunkards? That's our bay window in the main room. It's pretty indicative of what was going on throughout. Raw wood trim, yucky white horizontal vinyl blinds leftover from decades past, and whatever cheap curtains we found in the clearance bin.

Here it was yesterday:

Just painting the trim white was a huge improvement, which was done months ago. But we weren't sure what else to do. Instead of getting custom-sized (read: expensive) blinds for each window, we decided to go with a double curtain rod. Then we'd put a sheer curtain closest to the window for privacy, and a real curtain on the outside rod. Here's how it looks now:

We like it. In case you can't tell, the sheers are ivory and the curtains are chocolate brown with a checked-pattern texture to them.

A sidenote to all those shopping for 84" curtains... Apparenly, 84" sometimes really means 82". So the brown curtains ended up being 2 inches shorter than the sheers. Ugh. Luckily after a quick phone call to my mother, we let out the 2+" hem at the bottom and re-hemmed the bottom with some Stitch Witchery (great stuff). Thanks Mom!

Anyway... These brown curtains we bought recently are not only energy efficient, but they happen to be the exact same curtains we hang over our french doors in the fall/winter. Seen here in this blurry pic from Christmas last year:

So when it becomes cool enough to hang these again, the room will be balanced and warm (literally and figuratively).

For the rest of the standard-sized windows throughout the living room, bar area, and dining room, we wanted something easy, natural, and cute. So we went with my fave, bamboo blinds:

We could put some curtains up over these, but I think this look is nice enough to stand on its own. Also of note, these are cordless blinds, so no choking hazard! Gotta think of the bambino.

Speaking of the bambino, here are some pics of the ever-growing bump from the past couple of weeks:

21 weeks

22 weeks

In the last photo I am wearing my new maternity jeans, that I believe were stitched together by angels in heaven. You have been good to me, Bella Band, but it's on to bigger and better things.

And things are definitely bigger!

Project Baby: A Progression

Maybe it's just because I am knocked up myself, but I am fascinated by baby bellies and seeing the progression through the weeks. Going through it myself and seeing others go through it on various message boards and email groups, I realize that every person is different. I hadn't gained any weight in the first 16 weeks, and then BAM. What's up 8 pounds. Nice to see you there... on my rear. And everywhere else.

So here is my progress so far, in photos. (Please don't mind the messy background. I haven't made it to the nesting stage yet.)

13 Weeks -


14 Weeks -


16 Weeks -


18 Weeks -


19 Weeks -


20 Weeks (halfway there!) -


I'll continue taking photos, as painful as it might be the larger I become. And believe me, I'm getting bigger by the day. I figure this will be something interesting to look back on.

And hopefully a few months after delivery I'll be able to post a proud photo of myself back in fighting form. Wishful thinking?