33 Weeks and 2 Days

This day in the pregnancy is an important memory for me because this was the point I was at in the last pregnancy when the girls were born.  They were 7 weeks early but healthy.  They spent 4 weeks in the NICU learning to nurse, putting on weight (although they were a good size for their gestational age, my little chunks) and spending time under the bili light (only the first week luckily, pesky jaundice).  Although my husband and I half-lived in the hospital during those weeks, I was always thankful I could go home when I needed to without worrying there would be an emergency and something would happen with one of the girl's health while I was gone.  I know some parents are not that lucky.

First time holding T

This pregnancy, I am so thankful I am not carrying twins.  I am so much more healthy, comfortable and able to do things that I could not handle at this point last time.  Although we have someone coming to clean twice a month now to help me keep the house livable, I have enough energy to take care of the girls throughout the daily routine and still manage to get out with them to story times and playgrounds.  I am still sleeping reasonably well at night and have gained less than half of the weight I had last time by this point.  The difference in how I feel is amazing.  I seriously look back on the twin pregnancy, wondering how I did it. 

First time holding D

 

 I love my beautiful twin girls but am so thankful it is just one this time round!

It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown!

 

I came up with this year's family costume theme solely because I wanted to dress up my belly bump.  Since the girls are conveniently still at an age where they don't care what their costume is as long as they get to dress up, we were all good to go.  Anna was a last minute addition to the group photo since I could not find a little stuffed Snoopy for T to carry around with her.  Her costume consists of herself with a name change, but she does look a lot like Snoopy so it worked!

 

The costumes themselves were much easier than last year because I used store bought clothes and just added to them.  We already had black tights for them to wear.  I sewed a felt zigzag to T's yellow top and used fabric paint to put black stripes onto D's red top.  The tutus, as shown in a previous post, I made early on and didn't have to stress about them.  I had a hard time finding solid yellow and red socks, so I ended up with some yellow Sponge Bob Square Pants socks and had to use hot pink ones that we already had.  The color difference of the pink wasn't that noticeable though. 

What I put off to last minute and literally finished seconds before leaving for the Family Fun Fest were the felt shoe covers.  I never got around to making them for the girls' costumes last year and I was determined to do them this year.  They were really quick and easy to do luckily.  But, because hand, foot and mouth virus closed down the girls' Mother's Day Out program, I unexpectedly had the girls with me all week leading up to Halloween and had very little time to work on them. 

I used these basic directions on how to sew your own shoe covers to create a pattern.  After testing it out on the first one and making a couple minor adjustments, they were very quick to make.  The directions called for using elastic ties in the back which seemed a little messy to me.  So instead I put both Velcro and snaps in the back because I wasn't sure which one would hold better.  Occasionally one came loose while we were out, but they held together pretty well.  I added the faux laces while eating dinner, right before we left the house.  So I am happy they turned out as well as they did. 
 

 

They were all set to get some treats.  D has been hanging onto her duck blanket a lot at home, which is why I decided she would be Linus.  So we gave her a blue blanket to carry around and she thought that was great!  





 

For my costume, I made a pumpkin out of felt and stitched lines on for the curves of the pumpkin and the veins of the leaves.  Then I embroidered Welcome Great Pumpkin onto a rectangle of felt for the sign.  I pinned it on my green maternity shirt with safety pins and was good to go as the pumpkin patch for the Great Pumpkin.

 

 

The costumes turned out great and were not too much trouble to make.  Even though we did not go out trick or treating on Halloween this year, the girls still got a lot of use out of them with all the activities we did.  It was a busy week but we had a lot of fun.