Only One More Month Before Baby!

I can’t believe that we only have 1 more month until the 5th Little Nut joins The Nut House!

I guess it is getting to the point where I should already be packed and have a freezer full of ready made dinners…but I don’t. It would also be nice if we had somewhere to put the new little Wee-nut…but we don’t. Owain is still in our bedroom and the other 3 boys are all in one very tiny room, and they just keep getting bigger everyday. They are all packed in there pretty tight. It looks like we are getting a little bassinet that will be easy to move around the house. I should probably go out and get that before the baby comes.

Suddenly it is really hot too! Too hot to go outside and get any yard work done or get anything done in the garden. My poor little garden that I have been struggling with for so long is having such a hard time hanging on. We went on vacation for a few days and the heat without water fried a huge part of my garden. Some of it is doing really well…compared to the wilting little plants hanging on for deal life.

The only thing I have been able to harvest so far this year are the black raspberries, and I made an awesome Black Raspberry-Apple Spread!(you really have to follow that link and check out my recipe and see my delicious pictures…it is to die for!) It is so yummy! I reworked an Apple Jelly recipe to include the black raspberries and it turned out delicious! Way better than the apple jelly that I make, I never have been able to perfect it. The birds noticed that we were gone for a few days and have moved in on the berry bush – we got home yesterday afternoon and I have been throwing rocks at the birds all day long to get them to stay away. Now that they have found the bush they don’t want to give up their bounty of berries. All last week I was going out and harvesting berries 3 times a day to make sure the birds never found anything, hopefully within a few days they will move on. I ran out of canning jars that fit in the pasta pot I use for a water bath, so I think that I will just try to freeze the rest of this years harvest, unless I can find some more jars at the Goodwill or a yard sale. They are really tart, so I think if I add some sugar and toss them in a freezer bag that they will be good to go.

The past few months have been so hectic and we never seem to be home long enough to get anything done on the addition. I am at the point in my pregnancy where I wish the baby would just come early so I don’t have do drag my huge belly out into the heat any more…but at the same time, the wee one is so easy to take care of in the belly – every day that the baby is in the belly is one more day we have to get ready for the arrival. And of course, Pea-Nut needs to stay in the belly for as long as possible, a healthy baby is all I really want. There is no way that we are going to get the addition even close to being done by the time the baby is born, but at least I can get something done. Once the electrical gets inspected and we get everything insulated and get the drywall up, I can get to work finishing the drywall and even painting done.

I can’t believe that before Owain was born and before we knew about his Heart Defect that we thought that the addition was going to be mostly, if not completely done by last Christmas…

OK, for the short list of things that need to be done in the next 4 weeks – going with the tradition that my babies never show up earlier than a day or two before their due date, some of these things might actually get done:

• Pack my bags (this is an important one!)
• Fill the freezer with dinners (about 3 days in the kitchen and I should be able to cook for about a month)
• Get a bassinet (so the baby has somewhere to sleep when they come home…again, this is important)
• Get my garden back in order and bring it back to life (so I can put food on the table!!)
• Freeze some berries (yum yum yum)
• Put a big push on getting somewhere with the addition (so we have somewhere for all the nuts)
• Possibly finish potty training Little Nut Nut (although I am really putting him in charge of this one)

I think that might just cover the list for the next month. While I figure out how to line all of that up I am going to go take a nap and avoid all of the vacation laundry full of sand and sunscreen.