One of those essential beauty tools for every woman is the nail file.  No matter how you like to keep your nails (long, short, manicured, or natural), you need good nail files to keep them looking their best.

I’m pretty picky about how I keep my toenails looking, so I’m constantly checking to be sure they’re smooth and not getting too long.  I’m not as picky about my fingernails because they take so much abuse that I could never keep up with them….but I still hate it when a little piece chips off and it drives me insane until I can file it smooth.

Personally, I despise regular emery boards that you can buy at the drugstore or grocery store.  They’re almost too rough and it hurts my nails to use them.  I also hate how quickly I go through them.

That’s why I was so happy when I received some glass nail files to review.  I was a little skeptical of how well they would work, because I could run my finger down the file and it wasn’t nearly as rough as an emery board.  But I was very pleasantly surprised, especially since the roughness is a feature of emery boards that I really dislike.  I feel like the glass files do the job even more quickly than emery boards without causing discomfort to the nail beds.

I also love that they last forever and don’t need to be replaced.  They’re beautiful and come in so many different styles and designs, so I would hate to have them wear out quickly and have to buy a new one.  I received both a plain colored nail file and one that was decorated with beautiful crystals.  Of course, they work the same, but I prefer the one decorated with crystals….it looks really classy!

Don’t just take my word for it, though….buy glass nail file to see the difference for yourself!  It’s a great investment to add to your beauty supplies!

Can you believe I’ll be 34 weeks pregnant tomorrow?!  I can’t!  That means I have THREE weeks until I’m full-term….though it’s much more likely that I’ll still be waiting 6 weeks or more.  My hope is just that he’ll be here for the 4th of July, because I have a 4th of July outfit for him already!

Thankfully, the horrible pain around my belly button has significantly decreased and almost gone away completely.  Sometimes if I bend or twist a certain way, I’ll still feel it but it is MUCH better.  I was terrified of having to deal with that pain during labor, so I’m so glad it’s almost gone now.

I’m up to my eyeballs in baby preparations.  I still have A LOT to do, but I’m trying to focus on the stuff that has to be done and leaving the sewing and craft projects for later.  If they don’t get done, they don’t get done, but I definitely need to have the clothes and diapers clean and put away, the the car seat cover clean, and the freezer full of food (among other things….the to-do list is LONG!).

And here are the most recent belly pictures!

I’ve probably said this before, but it’s crazy to look back and pictures from a few weeks ago and think, “Oh, I was so tiny then!” because I know at the time I thought I was humungous!  I’m scared of how huge I’ll be when I look back and think I was tiny at this point!

A few weeks ago, I was grocery shopping at Walmart and noticed a bunch of clearanced plastic Easter eggs.  I remembered reading a blog post with an idea of what to do with those little eggs, so I bought a package to try it out.  Besides, since the weather is getting warm here (sometimes I wish we had a misting fan), I’m always looking for fun activities for the kids to do inside during the heat of the day and this seemed perfect.

As soon as I got home, I wrote a capital letter on one side of each egg and the matching lowercase letter on the other side.

I put all the capital letters in one basket and all the lowercase letters in the other.

Then Kelvin got right to work on them.

He did really well and he thought they were a lot of fun!  They were a hit!

Last fall I bought a Groupon for a live butterfly kit.  We decided to save it for this spring so that we would be able to release the butterflies outside.  The kids were so excited as soon as I told them I’d ordered it.  It arrived in a well-padded envelope that must have been packaged with lots of strapping tools.

Here they are watching the caterpillars crawl around and get fat, which they did for about a week.

It took a couple of days for them all to get snuggled in their chrysalis’s.

We moved them into their butterfly habitat before they hatched out of their chrysalis’s.

It was a very exciting day when the butterflies started to hatch!  We spent several hours sitting their watching them, but we only got to see one of them actually hatch.  I always thought it took 15 minutes or so for them to work their way out, but it only took a couple seconds, which is why we missed most of them.

For their food, we made a solution of 1 cup of water with 3 tsp. of sugar dissolved in it.  Then we dipped several balled up pieces of paper towel in it and put it on a plate in the bottom of the habitat.

We observed them for about a week and then it was time to set them free.

This kit was so much fun and definitely worth the money.  In fact, we bought a kit for one of the kids’ friend’s birthday party last weekend.  We get to do another kit next year with Ava’s kindergarten curriculum and we can’t wait!

Am I the only one who has a hard time when it’s time to send your grandparents a gift?  All the grandparents I have to find gifts for already seem to have everything, so it’s a challenge.  I’ve found that the best gifts to get are ones with sentimental value.  That usually means something that has the kids’ pictures or footprints or handprints or something on them.  The grandparents may not need another coffee mug, but they love it if it has a picture of their grandkids on it!  They may not need another T-shirt, but they’d never turn down one that brags about their “grandma/grandpa status” on it!

Only 6 more weeks until this little guy is full-term (9 before his due date)!  For awhile, I was worried I wouldn’t have 6+ more weeks before he made his appearance.  I’ve been having a lot of contractions (sometimes I would have them about 10 minutes apart for several hours before they would taper off) accompanied by pressure.  I was almost 100% sure I was dilated at least a few centimeters, so I begged to be checked at my appointment this week.  The midwife I was seeing because my doctor was out of town didn’t seem to want to check me, but I insisted and I’m really glad I did.  I’m not dilated at all, so it takes a huge weight off my mind.  I feel like I don’t have to pay as much attention to the contractions and I don’t have to freak out and start watching the clock every time I have one.  I also had a test done to check for a hormone that is released before labor and the test was negative, which means I have at least 2 more weeks (hopefully lots more) before I go into labor.

I also have more reason to think this little boy is going to be big.  At my 28 week appointment, my fundal height was 29 cm (1 cm big).  At my 30-week appointment, it measured 32 cm.  Yikes!  My one consolation is that I was actually 30.5 weeks at that appointment….so really it was only 1.5 cm big.  Still.  Yikes!

Aside from that, I am just really uncomfortable!  This little guy is way up in ribs (I think it’s his head and feet…I think he might be breech right now) which makes sitting really uncomfortable!  Too bad laser treatment for back pain won’t help with this….my back hurts more often than not.  I’m also still getting muscle knots around my belly button some days, but luckily it isn’t as bad and it isn’t every day the way it was before.  It will all be worth it in the end, though!

P.S. I do have more recent belly pictures.  But I haven’t had time to edit and upload them yet.  Maybe around week 34 or so?  I’m always so behind, it’s pathetic.  At least I have them though….that’s what counts right?

Last winter, we finally got a piano!  It was something we had been on the lookout for, but we did not want to pay full-price for a brand new one.  Finally, we found one we liked on Craigslist and we were able to get it for a reasonable price.  And best of all, it even fit it in my van and we didn’t have to beg someone with a pickup truck to help us move it!

Having a piano or something like Williams Keyboards was very important to us because we want to be able to expose our kids to music education.  I’ve played the piano since I was about 7 years old and I’ve gotten rusty in the last few years with no piano, but at some point I hope to make practicing more of a priority.  But even in my rusty state, I’ve been able to help Chad learn piano basics (he’s taught himself a lot with the lessons books I bought, though) and I’ll be starting Ava on piano lessons in the next couple of years or so.  It’s such a blessing to be able to teach the kids myself rather than paying for piano lessons!

When we went to get Ava’s bike for her birthday, we decided to get one for Kelvin too.  We knew that if Ava is riding her bike a lot this summer, Kelvin would not want to be left out!  We waited until the day after her birthday and then we surprised him with it.  Please overlook the fact that he had been upstairs painting his nails and couldn’t get on his bike until they dried completely.  Oh boy.  That’s a subject for a different post.  Luckily stuff like that doesn’t show up on background checks…it’s just immortalized forever in my videos and on my blog! LOL

After they each had their own bikes, they had a blast riding around our downstairs for a couple days.

After a few days, though, we decided the bikes had to go outside so we took them to a parking lot to practice. They were not happy when we got home and they realized the bikes had to live in the garage and only be ridden outside from then on!

This year for Ava’s birthday, she chose a Hello Kitty theme.  I’ll admit, I don’t love Hello Kitty so I wasn’t very excited about it, but since we were going for a less extravagant party this year it worked out well.  She loved it as much as she loved her Tangled party, and I spent a fraction of the time and money on it!

My grandparents were here from Wisconsin, so she got her gift from them in the morning instead of waiting until her party.  It works best for us to spread the gifts out a bit so she can focus more on each gift.  This year, she got a Bitty Baby and she loves it.  I have a feeling she’ll be playing with it even more once our real baby comes in June!  Although, she did tell me that we don’t need to have our real baby anymore because she already has her little sister (her Bitty Baby).

Here is my FIVE-year-old posing before her party:

Getting a happy birthday hug from her little brother:

The decorations:

We had the party around dinner time and we served make-your-own mini pizzas.  I was a little nervous about how it would go cooking pizzas for lots of people at the same time, but not everyone showed up at the same time, so it went really well.  It was also nice that people staggered their arrivals, because everyone could eat at the dining room table instead of having to pull out our rustic bar stools and having people eat in the kitchen too.

For the cake, I ordered a Hello Kitty cake pan from Amazon, and I loved how it turned out.  It was so easy and didn’t take a ton of time to decorate.  I tend to get frustrated with cakes, so this was perfect for me…and best of all, Ava loved it!

I also made cupcakes:

After cake, we did a Pin The Bow on Hello Kitty game and a pinata.  Unfortunately, it was raining cats and dogs outside so we had to the pinata inside.

Then it was present time!!

This year, we decided to get Ava a bike.  She was thrilled!  (Side note: We also got one for Kelvin. I’ll be posting his reaction in a different post.  It was hilarious!)

And the birthday girl with all of her party guests:

I don’t have any new belly pictures to share right now…well, actually that’s a lie.  I do, but they aren’t uploaded yet and you know me and uploading pictures.  It happens maybe once or twice a month.  But I thought I’d do a quick update post.

At my last appointment (28 weeks), my fundal height was measuring 29 weeks.  Not a cause for concern, obviously, since it was only slightly big, but still…it makes me wonder if we’re in for a big baby.  I hope not!

I’ve been having tons of contractions and pressure too.  Some days, I’m a few contractions away from heading to Labor & Delivery, but then they slow down again so I don’t.  I am going to ask to be checked at my next appointment (a week from today) to make sure these contractions aren’t causing any dilation.  I wouldn’t be so concerned if I wasn’t having pressure with some of them, but I have been.  Hopefully Baby is planning on continuing to bake well into June, because I am nowhere near ready for him to make his appearance!  I guess in one way I am, because this pregnancy feels like it’s taken forever.  But in every other way, I’m not!  I haven’t gotten any of the baby gear from my mom yet, I haven’t washed and sorted the cloth diapers, I haven’t gotten out and washed the sleepers, I haven’t finished knitting the shorties/longies/hats I wanted to have done, I haven’t made all the meals I wanted to make for the freezer, and the list goes on and on.

One thing I’ve had this pregnancy that I’ve never experienced with the other two is muscle knots around my belly button.  At first, I thought I was getting a hernia because I had constant burning pain in a 6-inch radius around my belly button.  But then I realized I could feel muscle knots around my belly button that were causing the pain.  I’ve had them for about a week now and they’re soooooo painful!  No one can touch my belly, and if I happen to bump it accidentally, it hurts like crazy.

We’re going up to Wisconsin next week and I’m a little scared of how miserable I’ll be with my allergies.  According to allergy information , allergy season is in full swing up there and I won’t be able to take my trusty Claritin.  Luckily, I was able to get some Similasan for free with coupons and sales, so I’m hoping that will be effective.  It’s homeopathic and all natural and says you can use it on infants and toddlers, so I’m pretty much certain it should be fine for me to use while pregnant.  Fingers crossed that it helps!

Okay, that’s enough complaining.  I really am excited and grateful to be pregnant again…but sometimes I need to whine about how UNCOMFORTABLE I am all the time!