Preparing for Baby #2....Tater Tot!

Give Me A Checklist! 

Nothing makes me feel more accomplished than checking it off my list. Let's backtrack....a second here. It's hard to even get started without seeing it all written on a list first. Writing it all out is so daunting at first it deters me from doing it because then I actually have to get my thoughts together. As long as my thoughts aren't organized, the thing I need to prepare for will stay away until I'm actually prepared right? Unfortunately, that isn't necessarily the case with having a baby. As I hit the 26 weeks mark and I only have 14 weeks left...I can't help but think that since JB came 4 weeks early, this one could very well come early too and then I really only have 10 weeks left. And since I wasn't getting a period and couldn't track when I was ovulating and my due date came from a second trimester scan (which is less accurate than a first trimester scan).....my due date could be off and I could have even less time! So, I'm using this blog to FORCE myself to gather my thoughts and get a checklist together. 

Getting Jellybean Ready

Ok, not much I can really do to get a 13 month old ready for another baby in the house. He doesn't exactly understand what I say to him. Hell, he thinks "NO!" is a reason to start cracking up. Which makes me crack up and then the whole point of teaching him not to do what he was just doing goes out the window... 

1. I really need to get this kid to sleep in his own bed. It's so hard though! He'll start the night in the Pack N Play...most of the time, and then he'll transition into bed with us sometime in the early morning. I can't help it, I love that he cuddles with me and hugs me in his sleep. Even Matt likes it because he'll switch off between which parent he cuddles with. We're such suckers. 
2. Get Jellybean to learn to play independently in his play pen. He insists on having one of us in there with him. He doesn't even play with us! He just doesn't like being in there alone- despite the whole I can see you sitting on the couch and know I'm not alone thing. He's so independent at daycare, I wonder why he isn't' that way at home. 

Prepare For Labor 

1. I really hope having the Britax Advocate and the Britax B-Ready car seats can fit into the back of my little CRV. 
2. Pack the hospital bag. I should probably do a blog post on this later since I'm all seasoned and everything now. 
3. I didn't do a birth plan the first time and I don't really plan to this time. I'm not against the IV drip and I have no issues with the epidural. 
4. I need to figure out what to do with Jellybean while Matt and I are at the hospital. I was going to ask my Lts family to watch him but they'll be going to Michigan for the summer. My neighbors, who are awesome and love the little dude like crazy, are probably our best bet. They're close, they'll have access to our house, and they know him, and they've raised three kiddos of their own. Now I just need to ask them. 

Getting Everything Together 

1. Buy a double decker stroller. I'm set on getting the Baby Jogger City Select. I don't like the side-by-side strollers because they're too wide. Pushing a single stroller down a crowded street is hard enough, so I knew I wanted a double decker. While I'm a big proponent of Britax, the turn off I had to the Britax double decker was the kid on the bottom looks up at the kid on the top and doesn't really get a good view of anything. With the Baby Jogger, the stadium seating allows for both kiddos to look around at their environment. My Commander's wife has this brand and she let me try it out. I was hooked! It's definitely more pricey than the Britax, but hey, Matt and I don't work our butts off to not get the best out there for our kiddos. 

2. Stock up on size 1 diapers and more wipes. We thought we had to buy diapers all the time with just one.... haha. Luckily Amazon has great prices and delivers quickly. Gahhh size 1s are so small now that JB is in size 4! I can't even imagine handling a kiddo that little again. 

3. Buy a few (A FEW AMOR!) sets of new clothes for Tater Tot. Key words...just a few. Don't go overboard, this is so hard for me to do. I want Tater Tot to have a few things that are just his, especially his coming home outfit. But I do plan on re-using most of JB's old stuff. 

4. WASH AND SORT JB's old stuff! This is going to be a big task all in itself. I have boxes and bags of Jellybean's clothes in the garage and they are by no means sorted by size. How does my 13 month old already have boxes of clothes? I think I have a problem.... 

5. Pull out the Rock and Play, tummy time mat, and the baby bassinet from the garage, clean them, and find places in the house for them that won't bother my OCD. Things have to be in the perfect place but having two kids with two different types of things about the house just might drive me crazy if they aren't perfectly positioned. 

6. Buy a new bathtub for the little one. While I love the bathtub we have for JB, I only used it once when he was super tiny. Otherwise, I just put him in the sink, which got kind of slippery and made me nervous. I need to find one of those fit in the sink bathtubs that will keep my Tater Tot safe before he can fully support himself. 

7. Clean and organize all my bottles, determine if I need new ones. 

8. Buy new accessories for my pump....here we go again. I won't lie, I'm dreading being a slave to the pump again but it's only a year and I'm setting Tater Tot up for a healthy future. WORTH IT. 

9. Set up diaper changing stations around the house with JB and TT diaper needs. 

10. Get a Big Brother gift for JB. 

11. Buy a new diaper genie since the one we have is broken courtesy of my move from Texas to Virginia. Buy refills of course.

12. Make room in the nursery for JB's and TT's clothes. 

Non-Baby Things 

1. There's a pile of stuff from my de-cluttering weekend in the garage that needs to get to Goodwill. It will probably take a couple car loads to do and I need to do that before this little one comes. 

2. Book Brittany a flight to me in July for maternity photos/much needed girlfriend time! While I've toyed with the idea of it'll be "easier" to just hire a photographer here in the area, I look at their stuff, and I look at the stuff Brittany has made for me, and I think of just how comfortable both me and Matt are with her, and how much she loves Jellybean and all the support she gave me while I was pregnant the first time....and I just know I can't ever hire anybody BUT her to take my family's pictures. Yeah, she's THAT awesome. 

3. Clean my craft room, organize my craft room....at least be able to walk into my craft room without having to step on something. 

4. Finish my 2014 Shutterfly book before 2015 gets away from me and then I'm TWO years behind. 

I feel like there's so much more I need to add to this list so this blog might get updated a couple times in the next few weeks. Oh, and of course, one of the most important things, FIND A NAME! Granted Jellybean didn't have a name until I was about 33 weeks along, Matt and I really need to buckle down and think of something here. The problem is we can't agree! The names he likes the most (George and Henry) I don't and the names I like (William and Patrick) he doesn't like. This might take a while..... For blogging sake it really doesn't matter since I'll be calling my kiddos by their nicknames anyway. :) 

Big Brother status coming soon!