Baby's Room

This post is primarily for my mother who is going nuts because she hasn't seen the baby's room completed yet. But, we got everything hung on the walls this past weekend, and it's officially done, so that's as good a reason as any to show it off! By the way, the baby bedding was created by my wonderful mother-in-law who is playing with the idea of making bedding and other custom baby goodies for others, so let me know if you're interested.



As you walk into the room, you see the crib, glider recliner and then the twin bed and changing table (not in this picture) to the left.



Another view of the crib- you can see the wall clock from this angle. Brian's worried that the ticking will prevent the baby from sleeping, but as long as he's used to it, it won't, right???



Opposite wall from the crib, here's the changing table/ dresser and the twin bed with the (have to point it out!) headboard that Brian and I made a couple of months ago. Still quite impressed with our craftiness! The picture tiles above the table were given to us by one of the hostesses of our Midland shower, and I think one of her friends hand-painted them. Our bedding fabric was used as inspiration for the paintings, and we just love them!

Sidenote: The lamp we're using in his room has been sitting boxed up in our garage for over 5 years. I decided that we should pull it out when I discovered that there really was no good floor or table space for a lamp, but with my deep-seeded hatred of overhead harsh lighting, (did I get this from you, Mom?? Brian thinks I'm a freak!) I insisted that a lamp be present. It's pretty cool- it stretches out on an arm as needed, can be adjusted vertically, etc. Not baby-themed at all, but it works perfectly for this space!



As you walk into the room and look left, this is the view. You can see above the bed the stuffed animal hanging net that my friend Amanda and I (mostly Amanda) crafted. This kid's not even born yet and he has a ton of stuffed animals! We wanted to show them off but with limited space, didn't have anywhere to put them, so this was the ideal solution.

We're thrilled with the way everything turned out, and now we just need the kid! In case you haven't heard, we're planning on inducing on 2/28 for a 3/1 birthday if he doesn't come sooner! Just one week!

Blessed Beyond Measure...

Do you ever look around in a certain moment and your breath is simply taken away by all the love that surrounds you? I had one of those moments on Saturday, in the midst of screaming kids, chaos and family. I wouldn't have had it any other way!

My sweet aunts and cousins hosted a family shower for us this past weekend, and although we were missing a very important chunk of family who couldn't make it, we were beyond blessed to get to spend time with a good percentage of my dad's side of the family. Brian and I figured out that the last time this many of us were together was our wedding, over six years ago!

After opening gifts and eating (yummy!) cake, the kids were running around and my dad and his brothers were vying for the kids attention with farm animal noises, and we cousins were negotiating where to eat. And I just had a moment in which I couldn't have been more grateful for the family that God has given us. We are so loved, and so cared for, and we could never thank God enough for this amazing blessing. Thank you so much to all of our family who traveled to spend time with us this weekend in celebration.


Precious Table! The cake matched the invitation perfectly!


Bean's first stuffed animals!


My beautiful aunt and cousins (Aunt Martha, Lou & Lucy)


Merrick (cousin's daughter) and I by the table


Getting some help unwrapping gifts


It's a boppy!


SHUT THE FRONT DOOR!!! Early last week, I was looking for something on our registry, and discovered that our carseat was completely out of stock. I called BabiesRUs and they recommended we register for a different carseat. We did, but I was still in LOVE with this pattern. Imagine my surprise when we received the carseat we had originally registered for!!! (My incredibly resourceful Aunt Martha found it on Amazon! Holler!)


Mommy-and-Daddy-to-be!


Okay. We're THAT family! We went to Babe's for dinner, and when a great song came on, we got up and danced! That's my mom, me, Merrick and my grandmother who can still shake it awfully well!


Oh yeah. My cousin Mike, a more easily embarrassed member of our family, with my dad, who is NOT easily embarrassed, and who loves to cut a rug! ;-)

Thank you, thank you, thank you to our family who has made this special time even more incredible! We love you!! (And I promise, as soon as we determine a name, we will let you know!!)

31 Weeks

Happy New Year!!

I can't believe that it's 2011. I can't believe that we're having a baby this year. Wowza. We were SO blessed to get spend TEN days with my family before Christmas and then through New Years. AND, we got to spend New Year's Eve with my sweet friend old Morgan (my bestie in high school and Maid of Honor at our wedding!), her hubby, a couple of their friends, and my dear friend Kobi from high school. So much fun!

I've been relatively healthy throughout this pregnancy, until the week prior to Christmas, when I came down with some serious congestion. I should have known- they don't let you take any of the good drugs when you're preggers, so I lived with it and got over it in a couple of days. (Brian subsequently came down with the same stuff a few days later, and his developed into a sinus and double ear infection which he suffered with through the day AFTER Christmas. No fun.)

Then, I came down with a stomach bug on Tuesday between Christmas and New Years. Again, nothing really that you can do except let it pass. Luckily, no one seems to have caught this lovely little treasure. And, now, I'm dealing with some more congestion and yucky cough, but at least I don't feel that bad this time around...

So, I stole this little summary thingy from my friend Janet's blog... Thought I would give you the nitty gritty details of what's going on with the pregnancy... As if I ever talk about anything else... Thanks, Janet!!

Pregnancy Highlights:

How Far Along: 31 weeks

Size of baby: Roughly 3 1/2 lbs, about the size of four navel oranges, according to babycenter.com!

Total Weight Gain/Loss: I believe I've gained about 15 lbs. thus far since the very beginning

Maternity Clothes: Duh.

Gender: Boy!! No, we have not decided on a name yet. It's a daily conversation in our house, and we try out different names every day to see how we like the ones on our top 4 list. Brian still doesn't think we've found "THE" name yet. I do, but he's not convinced...

Movement: Is a little less active this week than he was in the last few weeks. I'm assuming this is because he's getting bigger and has less room to move around. But he's still the most active after my morning half caff and right before bed.

Sleep: Oh man. With congestion AND the belly getting bigger, this is becoming more of a challenge!! I'm pretty sore when I wake up in the morning, but I'm not having to get up to go to the bathroom more than once a night (yet...)

What I miss: Sleeping comfortably with no problem at all. And wine!! Oh, Lord, do I ever miss wine!!

Cravings: Brian was just pointing out that I haven't had any really interesting cravings... I HAD to have a peach cobbler one night, and I had to have Lindsay's corn bread one night, but other than that, I've just enjoyed food in general, especially the sweet stuff!! ;-)

Symptoms: Sore pubic bones, boobs changing, sore back

Pictures from this week:



31 weeks and 3 days along!



Close up, in case you didn't really get that I'm quite large...

Our Little World

I've apologized before for my posts completely surrounding baby topics. I'll apologize again- I'm sorry that all you're getting here are baby-centered updates. Bean is taking over our world right now! But, this blog is a reflection of our life, and right now, he's our life. (And he's not even here yet. This is frightening...)

So. First off! Bean went to his first concert a couple of weeks ago! My friend Christy got tickets to the Lady Antebellum concert and invited me along- they were amazing seats! I just LOVE this group. It was possibly the best concert I've ever been to- pitch perfect. Also, as I was screaming and singing along, Bean was beating on my tummy. Don't know what he thought but he was either having a great time or was miserable.



So much fun!!! Thank you again, Christy, for inviting me!



Okay, sidenote!! I totally had no clue until this minute that there was some freaky guy behind us making a face when we took this picture!!! Check that out!!!

Last weekend, we finally decided on baby furniture!! (For the second time. We had initially picked some out, and then at the last minute decided on something TOTALLY different.) We're really excited to get this set up and in Bean's room. And when I say "we're" really excited, I mean "I'm" really excited. Brian just wants me to stop bugging him about it... ;-)

Here's what we got:

These almost look black in the pictures, but they're a gorgeous dark brown stain. Yeah!! (Brooke, if you're reading this, these are Bonavita, and Baby Bargains gave the manufacturer an "A-" rating. Much better than the initial "F" rating that the Delta cribs had. Just so you know that I listen to you when you make suggestions....) ;-)

This past weekend, I went to a baby shower for my friend Liz, and it was so much fun!! (Not to mention the food was fantastic!) There's something different about attending a baby shower when you're going to have a baby soon too. Maybe the difference was that I was scoping out the goodies she got. Speaking of which, she got some FABULOUS burp clothes that I decided I couldn't live without. Check out the super cool burp clothes on this Etsy site!! I may or may not have immediately ordered five...

Congratulations, Liz, on making it this far with Willa! We can't wait to meet her!

Lastly, here's a belly pic for you. This is at 24 weeks and 1 day.





Happy Monday!

Belly pic

Don't have too much time to craft a post, but my mother told me I was falling down on the picture posting job. So, Mommy dearest, here you go!! (I promise I looked a lot cuter than this picture indicates, but at least you can see the belly here...)



22 weeks and 4 days

Pumpkins, Retreat, Freak Outs, OH MY!

Last week was insane. I get breathless just thinking about it. Let me just put this out there- Never, EVER, start a business if you can't afford to have someone else do all of your accounting and tax prep. It's not worth it. That is all I'll say about that.

In other news, I went with some of our Life Group gals and their kiddos to the pumpkin patch last Tuesday, and had so much fun. Can't wait to take Bean again... you know, when he's not inutero.



Here are the kiddos. I just love this picture!! No one's looking at the camera, exactly, which cracks me up. They're all staring at Madison, who's trying to obey as we all yelled at the kids "Look at the camera!!!", while she was yelling back "The sun's in my eyes, Mommy!!" Poor kids.

There were animals to feed, a hayride, a pumpkin patch where you got to select your own (tiny) pumpkin and plenty of photo opportunities. So much fun!

On Thursday, my mom arrived and we spent Thursday and Friday shopping for maternity clothes and doing some initial baby shopping research. I just wanted to get a taste of what was out there, and I'm so glad I did because I practically hyperventilated when we walked into BabiesRus. It was completely overwhelming, and I can't imagine just walking in and registering. Whoa. So.

Then, on Friday afternoon, we left for camp!! My church was hosting a Women's Retreat at Pine Cove down by Tyler, and Mom came along for the fun. When we got there on Friday evening, she decided she wanted to do a zip line, and when I asked the people if I could zipline too, they looked at me like I was high. Maybe next year.



Here's Mom on the zipline! She's so cute!!

By Monday, I was EXHAUSTED. I'd had a decently relaxing day until around 4pm when I realized I hadn't felt Bean move all day. I called the nurse and they had me lay on my left side after drinking some juice. Still not feeling anything, they had me come into the office for a sonogram.

There was Bean, happy as a clam, sleeping away. The sono tech had to poke at him a bit to get him to move around, and once he was moving quite a bit, asked me if I could feel him. I still couldn't, and the tech pointed out that how my placenta is positioned is acting as a pillow between me and the baby. I'm really not feeling any of his small movements yet. Rather, he pretty much has to be doing jumping jacks for me to feel him. (Which he must do regularly, because I normally feel him quite often throughout the day.) I did get to see him "drink" (or at least that's what she said he was going.) He was moving his little jaw- so cute.

Anywho, 2 sono pictures and $180 later, I felt like an idiot. It's amazing how overprotective I can be while I don't even have a kid to be overprotective of yet!!! (Well, I do, but not anything I can really do while he's in there baking...) The sonogram tech asked me if this was my first pregnancy. Um, yes. Was it that obvious??

Hoping for a quiet week this week!! Just found out that the crib I thought I'd found has been given an "F" safety rating, so back to the drawing board there!! So many things to figure out...

Predictions

So with the sonogram that will reveal the sex of our child approaching, I've been hanging on everyone's predictions. (Yes, I know that predictions and old wives' tales don't really mean anything and that God determined the sex of our baby before Brian and I even met... But, that doesn't mean I'm not dying to find out what it is!!!)

The first prediction came from one of my best friends, Morgan, who declared the minute I told her I was pregnant "It's a GIRL!!! I can't live with anymore boy babies! It MUST be a girl!!" She was basing her prediction solely on the fact that all of her future sister-in-laws and cousins have birthed boys and she needs a flower girl in the not-to-distant future, but still, it was a prediction nonetheless.

Second predictions came from my book club ladies, who first dangled a threaded needle over my belly:



And then dangled a threaded needle over my wrist:



This prediction was determined by seeing if the needle swung back and forth or in a circle. According to these ladies, in both instances, the needle swung in a circle, predicting (very scientifically) that our little bean was a BOY!

Third round of predictions were a Facebook quiz of my friends. 6 said boy, and 5 said girl. No overwhelmingly one-sided results there.

Lastly, a family friend told my mom that she could very accurately predict the sex of the baby by looking at a current front-facing head shot of me. I sent her this picture yesterday:



I have no idea what she's basing these predictions on, but she mentioned something about tear-ducts to my mom.....? Anyhow, here's what she sent back:

I was at 98% for 25 years

but I'm hitting 75% in the last 4 months????? so let me know what the sonogram says.

Healthy happy Mom and baby! Buy something pink!

So we shall see!! Our sonogram is tomorrow at 5pm, and if the little bean cooperates, we'll be announcing shortly thereafter what God has blessed us with! Both Brian and I would appreciate prayers for calm nerves- we're both really nervous for some reason!!

FLUTTERS!

So for this week's picture update, I was sporting my first official maternity top, on loan from my friend Isabel. Wowza. I wasn't expecting the maternity top to make me look MORE pregnant, but that's exactly what it did. I guess the empire waist and extra fabric does that... Anyways, here you go:



The first with a little bit of sass. Just because I felt like it.



And there you have it.

So last Thursday, for the first time, I felt the baby flutter around! SO COOL! At first I thought that it was, ahem, gas... But, with no actual...ahem... gas, and continued fluttering, I figured out that Bean was just saying hello! It's been fun to get little reminders of him/ her throughout this week. We find out next Thursday (Oct. 7) what we're having!! CANNOT WAIT!

Mountain from a Mole Hill

I was sitting in my friend Christy's living room last night after life group, staring at her sweet daughter, Sam. Jestine, Amanda, Christy and I ooed and ahhed at Sam's cuteness and her obsession with her tongue. She's so stinkin' adorable!

Jestine laughed as she looked around our little circle, and commented that it was amazing that something so incredible (Sam) can come from something so small (a tiny little fertilized egg.) Jestine pointed at her own belly (flat, fantastic and without child) and said "It goes from this, to this (pointing at my developing bump), to that (pointing to Amanda's ginormous bump, due in November), and back to Christy (who's getting her flat belly back, 3 months post baby.)

It was a fun little moment, all of us in different stages of woman hood. I did have to tell Jestine, however, that my belly was NEVER as flat as hers.... Alas! I now have a reason to be proud of my bump!

Here we are today, at 16 weeks and 3 days:



What was a mole hill is becoming a mountain! (But from the looks of Amanda, I have QUITE a ways to go!)

Bump Alert!

So Brian and I have noticed for the last few weeks that my waistline is obviously thickening, even if other people wouldn't know that it's b/c I'm pregnant. We were quite surprised when I visited the doctor two weeks ago and I'd lost 2 pounds, simply because my waist is obviously bigger.

Yesterday, I had on a cotton skirt and tank top, and for the first time, when I turned to glimpse my profile, there was an obvious baby bump. Thinking it was just me, I walked into a coworker's office and her eyes got really big and she was like "There's really not much hiding that thing for very much longer."

So, we took my first official 'belly' picture yesterday, at 12 weeks and 3 days.



Quite an unattractive picture if I do say so myself, but whatever. This is purely for documentation purposes. Ignore the shiny forehead and awkward smile!!



Grow big and strong, little bean!!

Busy doing... Not much

So in this glorious first trimester, I've kind of been a bum. Okay, I've really been a bum. I've taken to coming home from work and laying on the bed for about an hour before hopping (read: grouchily sliding) out of bed and making something for dinner. Then, after dinner's over, I immediately return to bed and lay some more. Then I go to sleep at about 10:30pm, getting a little over 8 hrs before starting all over again.

It's quite pathetic. I've been told that my energy will return once I'm into the 2nd trimester, and also to enjoy this very first 1st trimester, as the next time I experience it, I'll have a little one running around and I won't get to lay around. So I'm not feeling too guilty.

It's not as though I don't have plenty to do-- remember, we moved in to a new house RIGHT before we found out we were preggers, so the house is still not very put together AT ALL. I'm sure we'll get it there eventually... just not right now!

In other news, my nausea has subsided, but I still am very picky about what sounds good. As most of you know, I enjoy my food. I don't care what I'm eating- I just really enjoy food. I'm to the point now where I wish I didn't have to eat. NOTHING sounds good, and the only reason to eat is because I'm hungry. So, this makes for some very uninteresting meals (poor Brian!) We've had a lot of baked potatoes, and soup goes down quite nicely. Also, peaches. And hint of lime chips. But that's about it- NO meat for sure, and oddly enough, pasta (which I used to LIVE for) doesn't sound really appealing.

I have to give props to my sweet, wonderful husband, who is putting up with my pickiness and high-maintenance tendencies. He has been amazing, and my FAVORITE part is that he's reading all of the baby books with me. He'll give me little tidbits like "Babe, don't forget to pack maxipads when you go to the hospital." (Ugh...) But it lets me know that he is interested and really excited about the bean.

Oh, AND, he's finally started having serious conversations with me about names!! (To this point, his only suggestion was 'Newton'. As in "Fig"....) We're developing a list!!!

I apologize that the last 4 posts, and this one makes 5, have been about baby crap. It's unfortunately all I think about these days. I'm sure I'll get over it... In March, I'm sure... But, then you'll be barraged with pictures and stories of poop and breastfeeding... So there's THAT to look forward to. On 2nd thought, you may want to leave now...

This is SCARY!

So this past Monday I was baking surprise cookies for Amanda and Christy. I'd frosted them in pink and blue, and then written "BABY" and "Boy?" and "Girl?" and "3.4.11" on them. My plan was to take the cookies to them, and they'd take one look and be like "What are these?" and I'd smile, and they'd scream, and get really excited. (As it turns out, they didn't react quite like this, but more on that later.)

I ran to the bathroom to pee for the 47th time that day, as pregnant women do, and saw that I was bleeding. I ran and grabbed Brian, and immediately started calling the Dr. Brian, not knowing what to do, grabbed the book that the doctor's office had given us the week before and looked up bleeding. (Of course, the book told him that the #1 cause of bleeding when you're pregnant is miscarriage. He shut the book and did not mention this to me.) I finally got a hold of the answering service for the Dr.'s office, and told them what was going on. They said they would page the Dr. and have her call me back.

I crawled into bed because I couldn't think of anything else to do. I laid there while Brian rubbed my back and I thought the worse. Finally, I couldn't just keep thinking about what was happening, so I asked Brian to turn on the TV. He got me to eat about 40 minutes later. The on-call Dr. called me about 1 hr and 15 minutes after I'd called them (apparently they'd had some pager issues) and told me that I could either go to the ER or wait to come into their office the next day for a sonogram. She told me that about 50% of the women who have bleeding during pregnancy go on to have completely normal and healthy pregnancies. I truly didn't know this, so I was somewhat relieved. Brian kept saying that "We don't know what we don't know."

I finally fell asleep after talking to the Dr., once we'd decided to wait until the next morning to go to the doctor's office and get a sonogram there.

We scheduled a sonogram for 12:30pm that next day, and I was so nervous once we got there. I kept asking Brian to pray. I kept having to remind myself that whatever happened, God had a good and perfect plan. The tech started the sonogram and we saw immediately the little bean. She zoomed in and we saw the little heart, just flickering away. We heard the heartbeat, and saw that the growth was exactly on track.

Once we'd seen that everything was okay with the bean, the tech started to look for a reason for the bleeding. Turns out I have a bruise on my uterus, which basically presents like a clot of blood. Your body will either shed it or reabsorb it, and my body just shed it. Not a big deal at all!! We were able to talk with the Dr. about the difference between scary bleeding and non-scary bleeding (which I wish we'd talked about before, but whatever.)

So all is okay! Until then, I hadn't thought about loosing this little miracle. We continue to be in awe of what God's entrusted us with. Simply amazing!

1st Sonogram

We had so much fun this weekend- we finally were able to get to Midland and tell my mom, daddy, brother and grandparents that we are expecting a little bambino!! They were beyond thrilled, and their faces were priceless.

We told them my dad that we had a belated Father's Day gift for him, but it was a "we" gift for both of them, so mom would pay attention. I had framed this sonogram picture for them:



Still only the size of a blueberry, Bean (what we're calling him or her for now) is still really small, but we got to not only see the heart beat at our first doctor's appointment which was really wild, but we also got to hear the heart beat. 141 BPM, which the tech said was perfect.

We're due on March 4, 2011. This is NUTS!!! Before I turn 29, I will have a baby!! (Brian, on the other hand, is not so lucky. He turns 31 in September, and will be WAY over the hill before Bean gets here. Hehehee. Love you, babe!!)

The doctor said that everything looks good, and my next appointment will be on August 12. We're still pretty much in shock, especially since we haven't told everyone yet. We still have some of our best friends to tell, and we're really excited to spill the news...!!!

Dr. Appointment Tomorrow!!

Tomorrow, we go to the doctor for the first time, hopefully to hear our sweet bean's heart beat for the first time. It's so amazing to think that there's a life inside of me!! I've been hesitant to get really, REALLY excited about the pregnancy until we get confirmation of a healthy pregnancy from the doctor. I guess it just seems like we've been waiting to start a family for so long that it can't possibly actually be time. Also, I've had a couple of friends who have been pregnant, only to miscarry around the 8th week or so.

I've not been overly apprehensive, but still, we're waiting to tell people until we do have actual confirmation from the doc that we are indeed pregnant (and two preggo tests didn't lie!) and that it's a viable pregnancy. (Not that we would do anything if the doc said that it's not viable- we would leave that all up to God, but you know what I mean.)

So, pregnancy symptoms thus far:

-Slight tummy sickness- overwhelming feeling of NOT being able to stomach certain foods

-Strong cravings for specific foods at a certain time

-Chest tenderness

-Sleeping more than usual (last Friday I slept for 11 hours straight)

-BAD (for me) acne

Other than that, it's business as usual!! I have to say, we're DYING to tell people. We're making a special trip to Midland this weekend to tell my family, and I can't wait! Once we do that, we can tell other people as well. We spend a lot of time talking about how we're going to tell certain groups of people. Brian won't discuss names yet, so at this point, telling people is all we CAN talk about now.

Can't wait to post these "secret" posts so you can reminisce about this apprehensive time with me!!

We're PREGNANT!!!

On Tuesday, June 29, I took a pregnancy test in the bathroom at my office. Quite honestly, I really didn't think that it would be positive; I was just taking one because I thought my tummy looked pudgier than normal the night before!!

But, alas, there were two lines instead of one!!! I sat on the toilet in shock for at least 5 minutes, and when I could stand again, I immediately mumbled something about needing to go to my car, and called my best friend in California. It was 8:30am here in Texas, so it was 6:30am in CA. I prayed and prayed that she would pick up, but 3 phone calls and 2 text messages later, I was still alone with my big news.

I knew that I couldn't tell Brian until we could talk in person, so for two hours, I was completely alone with this news. Then, Brooke called me back, and she spent at least 30 minutes assuring me that Brian wouldn't kill me, and would in fact be excited with this surprise (no, we weren't trying...)

Certainly, we trust that God has a very specific plan for our future, and His timing is perfect. So while it took Brian several days to get used to this news, right now we're anxiously awaiting a Dr. appointment on July 15 to hear the heartbeat and get our first glimpse at the little 'bean'. After this, we will start telling friends and family, and after it's probably after that day that you will first glimpse this post.