Author: Raptor Mama

It hit me the other day that I’m going to have TWO babies very soon!  I’ve been kicking the baby prep into high gear.  🙂

I got all of the newborn cloth diapers prepped and ready to go.  🙂  I’m super excited.  This time, we’re using Kissaluvs Size 0 with covers and y’all, they are the cutest softest diapers ever.  I have 30 which is going to be cutting it a little close with 2 babies, but I’m thinking if I wash every day we will be fine.  Plus, I have a few prefolds that we can use in a pinch.

They’re so tiny!  I wanted these diapers so bad when Raptor was a baby, but we ended up just waiting 2 weeks until her cord fell off and then putting her in Bum Genius All-In-Ones in a size small.  They worked, but they practically came up to her armpits.  lol.  Since the twins are likely to be smaller, I figured we’d get enough wear out of these to justify the cost.  They go up to 15 pounds so I figure we will probably get several months out of them.

 

And the covers.  OMG y’all.  So stinking cute.  I had to restrain myself from buying more.  Look at those little coordinating fox ones!  I have 7 covers which I think will be plenty.  We’re going with Rumparoos covers on the recommendation of a friend and the quality seems great.

Am I crazy for planning to cloth diaper twins?  I don’t think so!  After all, it’s not like it’s any more laundry than I was dealing with with 1 baby.  I’ll keep you guys posted.

And the sweet baby clothes!  I may have bought just a few too many given the fact that we have boxes and boxes of hand me downs, but check this out!  I think we all know that I’m a sucker for Gymboree, especially when I realized that they had coordinating boy/girl lines.  ::dies::  My big delima now is how to hang them up.  Coordinating pairs together?  Or half the closet with girl clothes and half with boy clothes.  Thoughts?

I’m hoping to get back to the craftiness soon, in fact I finished up September of 2013 in Raptor’s scrapbook this morning.  I’m having a very hard time narrowing down the number of layouts for October though.  So many cute pictures.  Since they’re all already in October Daily and Project Life, I’m trying to be brutal, but it’s so hard!

 

 

 

Y’all, my baby sister got married this weekend.  Not gonna lie, I cried.  🙂  I am so so happy for her and her new ::gasp:: husband!  It was a beautiful ceremony and an awesome reception, and Raptor had the privilege of being one of 5 flower girls.  You read that right, 5.  Go big or go home.  😉

Here’s a crappy phone photo of 4 of the 5 (the 5th was feeling a wee bit camera shy) in the bridal room getting ready.  Even if it is a crappy pic, I love it so much!  I made a conscious decision not to bring my DSLR and I don’t regret it for a second.  They had an amazing photographer who I knew was going to get awesome shots, and I wanted to be present in the moment, not stuck behind my camera.  I can’t wait to see the pro pics!

Here’s an iPhone pic RaptorDad snapped at the reception.  It was such a beautiful venue with a manicured lawn falling off into the Hill Country.  Raptor decided to do a bit of exploring.  The flower girls also led the charge on the dance floor which was freaking adorable.  🙂

 

 

Here’s week 4!

This week was almost exclusively phone photos.  The quality is fine, but when I print them at home, they’re not quite as wide as my DSLR pics.  Case in point, the pic in the top left.  lol.  For the worst offenders, I backed them with another card, but I’m too cheap to do that for most of them.  And you know what?  I’m fine with it.  Maybe in 10 years I’ll go back and redo them.   lol.

 

I need to figure out a way to take a picture of Baby Boy’s blanket.  It ended up a lot bigger than I was expecting (roughly 30 inches by 30 inches!) so it’s not like I can just stand on a chair like I do to photograph Project Life layouts.  lol.  I’ve started on Baby Girl’s blanket and I’m making progress slowly but surely.  A bit more slowly that with Baby Boy’s, but I have some time.  Although not a ton!

Speaking of which, I’m 28 weeks today!  That’s my second big milestone (I got a bronze medal yesterday at my MFM’s office!), the first being 24 weeks (viability.)  If the babies were born today, they would have a long stay in the NICU, but they are likely to survive.  Next big goal is 32 weeks for a silver medal.  Of course, I’m aiming for the gold 😉 which is 36 weeks.  Ultimately, we would like the babies to be born between 37 and 38 weeks.

They’re getting quite big!  Baby Boy is estimated to be 2 lbs 5 ozs and Baby Girl is estimated to be 2 lbs 8 oz.  Baby Boy is a bit lazy and has been transverse (sideways) on top for basically the whole pregnancy.  Baby Girl on the other hand is quite the little gymnast.  She flips from head up to head down pretty much every time I go to the dr, which is a lot!  (Like every 2 weeks at least.)  Currently, she is butt down, folded in half, with her feet behind her head.  lol.  That can’t be comfy!  I’m ready for her to get into a head down position so we can attempt a vaginal birth.  Apparently we have about 4 more weeks for that to happen before she is out of room.  Fingers crossed!

I’m feeling pretty good, especially considering that I have close to 5 pounds of baby.  🙂  My blood pressure is still excellent and I have no swelling.  I just need to get through that pesky glucose screening in a week and a half and it should (please please please) be smooth sailing.  Fingers crossed.  lol.

Slowly but surely I’m plugging away on 2014.  🙂  I will say that it is interesting to be doing 2015 and 2014 at the same time.  Oh how our lives have changed in a year!

I used mainly the Becky Higgins Girl cards for this one.  And I finally got my calendar cards!  They’re not still listed in the shop, but I emailed them and they got right back to me.  🙂  I added the hearts to have some continuity with 2013’s Project Life.

Keeping it simple because, duh, I’m a year behind.  lol.  I might try and knock out another of these today.  It’s kind of gross outside so we’re just doing family art projects.  We threw some french curves (drafting supplies) at Raptor and she’s having a blast.

And I just realized this will go live the first week of February!  Let’s see how I did with the January goals shall we?

1. Project Life 2014 (3/5) Still need to do 2 more, but hey, 3 is more than I had at the start of the month!
2. Create a dedicated space for Project Life
3. Project Life 2015 (3/3)
4. Raptor’s Scrapbook Catchup (4/4)
5. Buy new planner binder
6. Design new planner pages – I have a few in mind, but I just haven’t gotten around to doing them.
7. Assemble new planner
8. Finish scarf
9. Work on twin blankets I finished Baby Boy’s!  Now just need to get Baby Girls’s done.  🙂
10. Finish felt letters – I have got to carve out some time for these!
11. Cut flannel
12. Buy burp rags
13. Blog! (15/15)
ETA 14. Finish June 2013 (9/9)

And I’ve done 55 layouts!  Holy cow.  If I can keep up anything near this pace, I might actually stand a chance of getting caught up.  🙂

Now, how about some February goals?

1. Baby Girl’s blanket
2. Finish felt letters!
3. 2014 Project Life (0/5)
4. 2015 Project Life (0/4)
5. Add trim to burp rags
6. Fraycheck wipes
7. Scrap September 2013
8. Scrap October 2013
9. Scrap November 2013
10. Scrap December 2013
11. Blog! (0/12)

I’m not sure at all that I can even come close to getting all of that scrapping done, but I would sure love to finish up 2013 and be “only” a year behind.  🙂  I plan on cutting down on the number of layouts in October and December by a lot since I already have October Daily and December Daily done for that year.  We’ll see how successful I am with that.  lol.

Continuing with my theme of using up older collection, I pulled out my October Afternoon Midway stuff.  I have to say, having had both Two Peas and Archivers close has really cut down on my shopping.  I wish we had a store where I could go look at stuff!  Luckily, I have enough patterned paper stockpiled to scrap for the next 10 years without buying anything more than cardstock and tape runners.  lol.

 

I decided to make a frame out of some Prima flowers.  I think I like it?   I finally used up all of my tiny brads so I used stickles to dot the centers.

Initially I wasn’t going to do this layout, but then I realized the arcade stuff would look pretty awesome with the Midway papers.

I’m done with August 2013!  I’ve been using up some of my older supplies too.  🙂  Today I’m using one of my all-time favorite collections, Crate Paper’s The Pier. I threw in some bling too.  Incidentally, if you have a preschooler, give them a can of shaving cream.  It’s awesome.  Today’s decisions include deciding on the next month to tackle.  I’m torn between March 2014 and just keeping with the chronological theme I have going and tackling September 2013.  I’m pretty pumped at the thought of finishing 2013 all together, but March 2014 doesn’t have all that many layouts to do…  Decisions, decisions.  Either way, I hope my productive streak continues!

 

3 weeks in and I’m still loving this project!

We won’t be sharing the babies’ names before their arrival so I’ve blurred out the options on this card.  🙂  Most of the cards this week are still coming from the Kraft Edition, with one coming from the Baby Boy Edition.  I also added some wood veneers and label stickers this week.

 

And how did I do on my mini-goals?

1. Baby Boy’s Blanket- I made some progress, but didn’t finish.  Hopefully this week!
2. Storage system for the nursery (hello Ikea!) – Once again, made some progress, but need to roll this one over.
3. 2015 Week 3 PL – Done!
4. 2014 Week 3 PL – Um…  I started it?
5. Start Finish book club book by Thursday – Done!
6. Figure out carseats – nope.
7. Design layout tracker – nope
8. Pick another month to scrap and finish it – I have all of the pics printed for August and I’m about 1/2 done.
9. Work on wipes – I got them all serged!  Now I just need to find the fraycheck and finish them off.
10. Make spreadsheet for borrowed baby stuff – nope.

Raptor developed a nasty ear infection this weekend so some of the crafty projects got put on hold.  Hoping for a productive week this time.

This was one of the few pages I had already done for July 2013 before starting my binge scrapping.

Still actually quite simple, but I did dress up the frame with a bit of twine.  Loving these papers from Shimelle’s line.

I also thought these pictures were pretty awesome.  These pictures of the layout are a bit blurry, but I promise they’re clear in real life.  🙂  My mom and I took Raptor down to San Marcos to check out Aquarena Springs.  They don’t have a mermaid show like they did when I was little, but they do still have glass bottom boats.  Super cool.  🙂  I managed to get a pic of Kate and myself in the reflection which was pretty neat.

I’m starting to think that I may have been waaaay over zealous with those goals for the week.  lol.  We’ll see how much I can manage to get done this weekend.

 

 

Yay for holiday weekends! I got a whopping 17 layouts done this weekend, bringing my grand total for the month to 37!  I’ve now finished through the end of July 2013 and I am relishing this short period of being only 17 months behind. 🙂  Now I’m deciding if I should just scrapbook random layouts for a bit or if I should push on and tackle August 2013.  Decisions, decisions.  Now obviously these are super simple layouts, but I’m ok with that.  I have plenty of more artistic layouts sprinkled throughout.  Not to mention that Kate wanted to look at one of the finished scrapbooks this weekend and I had an epiphany.  As we looked through the book, I wasn’t critiquing my layouts.  I was marveling over how tiny she was!  So I’ll continue to push through and just try to get some stories down.  Here’s an example of one of the super simple layouts from this weekend.

I don’t even think that I cut most of these papers.  I just moved the scraps around until they looked like what I wanted.  🙂

Honestly the most time consuming aspect of this was adding these strips of Amy Tangerine tape and gluing down the wood veneer hearts.  Which took almost no time.  🙂  And to be honest, this layout is more complicated than most of the ones I made this weekend.  I go through phases of wanting to be artistic and creative and phases of just wanting to get it done and checked off.  Both are fine!

 

I’d say that I didn’t really spend more than 30 minutes on anyone layout.  That’s still quite a bit of time spent scrapping, but I’ve recently managed to get Raptor addicted to scrapping too, so I just give her some older papers (she doesn’t care that they’re not trendy), prints that I’ve ended up not using, and old journaling cards from my used up Project Life core kits.  I’m having her journal on her layouts now.  It’s super cute.  (And good for her writing skills.)  It was really satisfying (and motivating!) to get a whole month knocked out.  I batch printed the photos and then forced myself to just focus on them.

Other things I’m hoping to get done this week:

1. Baby Boy’s Blanket
2. Storage system for the nursery (hello Ikea!)
3. 2015 Week 3 PL
4. 2014 Week 3 PL
5. Start Finish book club book by Thursday
6. Figure out carseats
7. Design layout tracker
8. Pick another month to scrap and finish it
9. Work on wipes
10. Make spreadsheet for borrowed baby stuff