IT'S A BOY!!

Ackerbaby #2 is a BOY!!

I thought I'd be a little disappointed if it was a boy, but honestly, I'm surprised to say that I'm super excited! I love the idea of two boys, two brothers, being close together in age. They're going to share a room and this little man can wear a lot of Brennan's hand me downs. Woo hoo!

Mainly though, we're just happy the baby is healthy. And the ultrasound showed my due date a week earlier than what we originally thought. We had Brennan almost 2 weeks early, so I just kind of assume the same will happen with this one. Which puts us at the end of January/beginning of February. Original due date: Feb 13th. Ultrasound due date: February 7th. My guess? February 1st. I'm short, these babies don't have anymore room to grow, so they decide to come out (that's my very-scientific hypothesis). :)

Now, to pull out Brennan's newborn clothes and start planning for a BOY!!

Stye in the Eye

So about a year ago, I started getting styes in my eyes on a regular basis. Like one a week. I've inherited this gene from my dad, who used to get styes all the time, too. About 5 weeks before we flew to Michigan for my brother David's wedding, I got a stye on my bottom lid (right eye) for the first time ever. I've always had them on my top eye lid, not the bottom. And it hurt like the dickens. And it wouldn't go away. I kept waiting and waiting and eventually, it was too late to get into the doctor's before the trip.

So I had a huge red bump on my lower eye lid for the wedding, and the photos, and the seeing all the family and friends we haven't seen in forever. It was fabulous. My sis kind of saved me by pulling me aside 10 minutes before the wedding ceremony and putting black eyeliner on my lower lid to help cover it up. (thank you sis!!).

So when I got back to Texas (week 7 of the stye-that-won't-go-away), I finally called a random ophthalmologist and scheduled an appt. So get this- The guy is Asian, I have no problem with Asians, in fact I like them a lot, but he smelled like fish. Especially his breath. So I breathed in fish breath air the entire appt. And he told me that because I was pregnant, he would not use any anesthetic or pain medicine to numb my eye. He told me, "this is going to hurt, just keep breathing", and then cut open my stye and poked/squeezed it for about 15 minutes. I yelled. I probably scared all the people in the waiting room. In between "owwww, THAT HURTS!!" I told him, "don't listen to my yelling, please get this thing out!!". When I checked out, I asked the receptionist if they could hear me yelling and they said "yes, we felt so bad for you!". I told me I needed a stiff drink.

So anyways, it's not many weeks later and get this- the stye remains. See image below:

(self portrait taken with my cell phone)

My lovely fish Doctor told me that it "should be completely healed" but if any stye remained, I'd have to wait until I have the baby to have the rest taken care of. So I get to live with this puppy in my eye for about ohhh, 4 months. My OB told me that when you're pregnant, often your body does weird things (duh) and my body was just not able to heal itself from this stye like it normally would be able to. I'm telling you, I am a baaaad pregnant woman. Does not suit me well.

Channeling the DIY'er

Our new house has a formal dining room and an eat-in kitchen. Which was kind of a bummer to me because I didn't really want a formal dining room. I mean, how often does one even use that room? Our counter-top height table that we've had for a few years seemed a bit big for the eat-in kitchen so we decided to put it in the formal dining room. I really wanted the Charlotte table and chairs from World Market (looked all over for a photo!) but World Market was sold out of them. We called all the Houston area World Markets and were bummed. And we love World Market furniture, it's really well made and I love the style. I told a couple friends we wanted a white pedestal table for our eat-in kitchen but I was having a hard time finding one.

When we were on vacation to Michigan for Dave and Catherine's wedding, a friend texted me that she had found an oak table and chairs at Goodwill for $70.00 and if we wanted it, she would have her hubby pick it up for us. I have been wanting to try my hand at painting furniture so we said "yes, pleease!"

So I was going to do this FANTASTIC blog post on how I made over the oak Goodwill table. It was going to be awesome, full of photos of the products I used, photos of us in action working on it, etc.

However, the camera I used was our dual purpose family camera/Jon's 3104Studios camera. And we had a little miscommunication while Jon was finishing up a side job and the photos got deleted. Yup. Booooooo.

So this is what you get. No whining (this is a phrase I use a lot).

I don't have a before photo now, but here's a picture of the table after it was I used an electric sander on it. I first sanded with a very coarse paper, and then went over it with a higher grit. And yes my arms felt like they were going to fall off.




The table had some spots where it bubbled up on the top, so I used wood filler in those spots, and then sanded over them a few times to create an even surface.


After the sanding it twice, I primed it.


I then used antique white paint (matched to the antique white spray paint I used on the chairs) and painted two coats. I finished it off with two coats of polycrylic to hopefully seal the table and make it a little durable. Here's the finished product:


For the chairs, we spray painted them with primer. Then spray painted 2 coats of antique white. Then spray painted a sealant on them. I am not too happy with the coverage of the spray paint, but I thought it'd be easier than painting them by hand. I'm also not super pumped about the look of these chairs so I'm calling them "temporary". We'll see. :) I also put two coats of polycrylic on these.

Overall, I'm pretty darn happy with the results. I know the table and chairs will get dinged up from use over time, and I'm totally okay with that. I actually thought about distressing them myself but figured it would happen over time eventually.

Whew, this post made me tired. Time to go eat chocolate chip cookies with the hubs. Adios!

ORB Love

Hi guys! ("hey guys" it's such a northern thing to say. Down here everyone says, "y'all" instead. Which I just can't bring myself to say just quite yet, unless I'm kidding.). Today feels weird!! Weird because we woke up to rain and we haven't had rain in like, ya know, forever. It also feels weird because I haven't really seen my hubby for like, a month. And no, I'm not prone to exaggeration if you were wondering. No, but really, he's been swamped at work (swamped as in, working til 1:30 am every day), just got home from a conference, and is now pressed super hard to finish a side job that's due tomorrow. He told me stayed up til 12:30 this morning working on his side project and finally decided to go to bed after he realized he'd fallen asleep at his computer.

Don't get me wrong, I'm so thankful for his job at The Met and I'm thankful for his side business (paying for a birth out of pocket isn't exactly, umm, cheap). But we're both ready for this season of craziness to be over. We get a good two weeks or so of "normal" hours until he leaves for Uganda. Whew.

I've been staying busy with house projects. Since staying home with B, I feel the need to complete projects BY MYSELF. To feel a sense of accomplishment. To say to myself, I did it, I can still get projects done even though I don't make a regular paycheck (besides my part-time nanny job). I took an ugly glass and gold light fixture from our entry way, taped it up (which took for-ever), spray painted it with 4 coats of oil rubbed bronze (ORB for you younghouselove followers) and I think it turned out great!! Here's the before and after:

BEFORE:

AFTER:

I loooove ORB. It's a dark brown with specks of metallic color and it looks awesome. We also bought a spray can of silver/metallic paint so we could spray paint our gold ceiling fans. We started with the one in our master bedroom. I'd rather have a sweet looking light fixture above our bed, but it's Texas, and it's hot, so a ceiling fan is a necessity. No before to show, but I'm sure you can imagine a gold ceiling fan.


We recently bought a $70.00 round pedestal table from Goodwill that I've painted white. Once I finish the project (I'm applying a few coats of polycrylic to it), I'll post some photos up here. I'm affectionately calling our baby in utero our spray paint baby. Ha!

Odds and Ends

-This morning was our second MOPS meeting of the year. You all know my love of MOPS from previous posts. Our first meeting was a crafts meeting (we rotate crafts and speakers). We made a cute chalkboard canvas- here's Brennan modeling the one I made for his new bedroom:



- I think I told y'all how Jon traded in his video camera for a Canon 7D, right? Well, the camera is amazing. You don't have to be a good photographer, it just takes good pictures! Friends of ours just had a baby girl and asked me to take some photos for them with the new camera. She is a doll, check her out:


-We moved into our new house in May and worked hard on it for a few weeks, I wrote our progress out here and here. Well, then I found out I was pregnant and about a week later became super sick. And all progress came to a halt. Thankfully, I've been feeling pretty darn good (yay 2nd trimester, I loooove you) so we've started working on the house again. I ORB'd some fixtures around the house, here's a before and after of our dining room light fixture:

BEFORE:

AFTER:

Please ignore the dead grass in the first picture. Texas is in DROUGHT and we decided to let the backyard grass go. Jon does water the front lawn, but it would have cost us and arm and a leg to keep the back yard watered. Not worth it. It'll pop up again as soon as it rains, if it ever rains. I find myself praying for a tropical storm or a hurricane or SOMETHING. Plus, there have been many wildfires in Texas and the state just needs some rain.

Ok, that's enough for now. How's that for an update?? Maybe a baby bump picture next time? Nahhh

Look Whose Back!

Okay guys.

You did it. You convinced me to keep the blog up and running. Those last two comments on my last blog did me in. Hilarious. And also Erin and Judy's jabs on Facebook helped too.

I think time just got away, I was non-functional this summer due to nausea and then we left for two weeks and then I got wrapped up in our lives here. . . being a CASA, heading up playgroup, Wednesday morning Bible Studies, being on steering for MOPS, watching Kennady 20 hours per week, ORB'ing half of our lighting fixtures, etc. But I'm ready to start again (I think)!

Jon's away at the Story Conference in Chicago (I am SO so so going with him next year, fyi) so I'm going to attempt to blog during Brennan's "nap" today. I say "nap" loosely because he's started fighting it. Oh two and a half. And Kennady's here, so who knows what'll happen. But be on the look-out!!