Week 35 Check In!

How far along? 35

Baby's size?  Coconut

Total weight gain:  30 pounds

• I officially have Hobbit feet at night.  Cankles from here on out , I guess :/  I've been drinking tons of water, but I guess that doesn't matter in terms of water retention quite as much as before.

Maternity clothes? I keep looking at new shirts and then just remind myself that I won't need them in little over a month!  I am definitely getting tired of my wardrobe though.  I have so many winter clothes that just don't fit over the belly!

Sleep: There is a lot more waking up during the night now, but I am never exhausted during the day from lack of sleep.  Usually just from all of the heft.

Best baby moment this past week: This gal sure has been getting the hiccups a bunch!  It's a funny feeling!
 

Miss Anything? I really wanted to make some Bailey's cupcakes for the New Year, but that will have to wait a bit longer!

Movement: Lots and lots!  She's definitely getting pretty big in there.  At my appointment yesterday, she was bouncing all around while the nurse was trying to listen to her heartbeat.

Food cravings: Hawaiian Punch is holding on as a craving, but the guacamole thing has passed.  Man, I could go for a steak for dinner though.  Yum!

Anything making you queasy or sick: Nope, but I did almost faint in the kitchen while putting away groceries.  Thank goodness Damien was helping or I would have ended up on my bottom.  Light headedness = not fun.

Labor Signs:  I experienced what I guess were my first batch of Braxton Hicks a few nights ago.  

Symptoms: I alternate between tired and just wanting to get things finished.  I need to be careful not to over exert myself!  My mind sometimes doesn't catch up to how fast I'm doing things until I'm pooped and can't get off the couch.

Belly Button in or out? Out and flattening.  (And Miss Sandy, the belly button thing really is nothing but another way to tell how far your belly is extending)

Wedding rings on or off? Just wearing the ring Damien got me for Christmas last year right now.

Happy or Moody most of the time: Pretty happy!

Looking forward to: Only having 8 more work days before my leave begins!

35 Week Pic!

I can honestly say that I don't "feel" like my belly sticks out this far, but apparently it does.  She's a growin' in there!

Cats and Cribs

Can you spot the Evie?  She loves to sleep on the panda's lap in the crib.  ~SIGH~
Korben sleeps under the crib and is now his favorite hiding place.

An update on yarn and knitting

So I admit, I haven't been the best with my knitting probably ever.  I have serious startistis, project ADD, whatever you want to call it.  I just can't stay focused on any project long enough to finish it.  I love to learn techniques though so I know how to do lots of fun and neat knitting techniques, but want to see a finished project using that technique?  Sorry, you'll likely need to go elsewhere.  Sad but true.  My other knitting vice is my love of the fiber.  I have more yarn than I know what to do with (well besides start new projects that is!).  All of that said, with Emme on the way, I'm pretty sure that my excessive yarn collection will keep me entertained as it is highly unlikely that I will ever be able to go on serious yarn purchasing binges again.  

Because I'm completely unfocused, I decided to go back to my knitting roots and pull out the garter stitch and good ol' log cabin knitting.  Because I had to add some level of complication, I'm working on a rectangular log cabin block with some of my favorite Madelinetosh merino light colors.  I'm currently in love with the yellow-orange-pink-red-purple combination so I'm limiting my palette to that.  I thought a touch of green would be nice in there too.
Colors are, starting from the top left corner
Row 1 - Candlewick, Terra, Tart, Posy, Dahlia
Row 2 - Grasshopper, Gilded, Citrus, Scarlet, Vermillion, Briar
Row 3 - Chamomile, Tomato, Frgrant, Lolita, La Vie En Rose (which may get switched out for sugar plum)

I won't be making all rectangular blocks and will throw in some squares, both log cabins style and mitered.  I have a vision...let's see if I can stay focused enough to see at least a portion of it realized!

Here is the start of the first rectangle:

Nursery Decorating Project - Take One!

Alright, so a couple weekends ago, I was struck with a creative, DIY vibe and decided to try my hand at one of the many gorgeous nursery projects I'd seen on the web.  Lots of people have done some pretty impressive things with scrapbook baby so I decided to jump there.

Luckily, I had the foresight to purchase some craft supplies during the pre Black Friday sales at Joanns so I managed to pick up supplies for 3 paintings at half the cost of the original ONE painting I wanted to buy online.  I am pretty happy with the result.  The modge podge ended up discoloring the original canvas a bit, but I think I'll just repaint over that part and call it a day.

I received the best compliment I possibly could though with this project.  When Damien left in the morning to head to the range, I hadn't started the project at all.  By the time he got home, I had the finished project sitting on the dining room table.  Being him, his first thought was "what in the world did she order now?"  He did admit that he liked it, but it was just another decoration to add to the ledger.  Well, imagine how surprised he was when I told him that I had created that item he thought came from a store!  Talk about a weird, round about way to end up with a pretty nice compliment!

I drew inspiration from a few places, namely the Under the Sycamore blog - http://ashleyannphotography.com/blog/2010/01/13/diy-paper-bird-painting/
I still love her use of the white canvas with the birds, but I thought the white might end up too stark.  In any case, I'm happy with the finished project!

Here are my process pictures:

 Gathering supplies: 16x20 canvas, acrylic paints, a strong glue, brushes, Mod Podge, pencil, and plenty of scrapbook pages!

 Bird templates waiting to be traced onto the scrapbook paper.

Outlining the leaves and filling in the background  

 Background all filled in!

Nursery Preparations Continue!

We (i.e. Damien) rearranged the furniture in the room
I found what I think will be a great solution instead of buying bookcase/bulkier furniture at Target on Friday when I was out picking up the huge 20 gallon plastic containers to get my yarn room more organized.  (That ended up not happening as planned as I was exhausted by the time I got home from shopping and taking lunch to Damien.  Doesn't sound like a lot of work, but apparently it was).  I decided to spend the afternoon instead watching Bride and Prejudice.  

 Here is the one that we ended up buying.  Damien was a peach and put it together so the nursery is coming right along!  Let's see, we have the crib, dresser, some decorations up (her name is above the crib - more on this tomorrow!).  We still need to put up curtains, purchase the glider, and purchase a small table to put next to the glider for the lamp. 

Yesterday I also decided that it was high time that I wash all of the baby clothes and bedding.  I can't believe how much has accumulated for Emme already and she's not even here yet!  So many cute outfits!  I decided just to put all of the little socks into one drawer without matching them because them seem to be too little to match, hahaha.

We are going to need double sided tape and lots of balloons ASAP.  Damien sent me this picture yesterday when I was at work.  Yep, that is Evie taking a nap on the changing pad.  ~sigh~  AND, Korben seems infatuated with the crib skirt and keeps darting underneath it.  I guess we created a fun new hiding place for them.  And on top of all of that, Damien found Taiko sleeping in the crib tonight.  Apparently all of our cats think that we are getting this room ready for them!  Those gooseheads!

Here are some more pictures of the nursery preparation:

Damien concentrating as he puts the letters up on the wall - he's so serious when he's focused!

Korben wanted to help sooooooo badly, but Damien wasn't have it so he closed him out of the room.  (can you tell that we need to put a more level door on the nursery, hahaha?)

Eventually, I couldn't deal with Korben being so sad so I let him into the room and he decided to supervise Damien.  It worked out well for everybody

Week 34 Bump Pic!

So I've misplaced the batter for my nice camera and have been relying solely on my iphone for pictures.  I'm pretty underwhelmed with them, but it's better than nothing!  So I apologize in advance for the fuzzy quality of the following picture.  Because that battery could be anywhere in this house, I ordered two replacement batteries this morning!

Anyways, here is a week 34 bump picture taken by Damien early this morning before he went to work.  (Note I said early this morning).  I'm not looking too fab in this picture and my hair is crazy, but the focus here is the bump!  I get all sorts of comments on my growing bump from library patrons.  Some people think I look like I'm about to pop and others say that I look "small" for 34 weeks.  I think I'm just right! (And the penguin slippers were one of the best splurges I've had in a while - cute and comfortable!)

Nursery Progress

Damien and I are slowly getting the nursery put together.  We have the dresser and crib put together, but still need to pick up the mattress for the crib.  I'm going to do that tomorrow and also start washing all of the baby clothes we received as gifts.  We are still playing musical furniture in the room to figure out the best flow and I think we have a decent plan - now it's just a matter of moving everything around!  Since there are still bags scattered around as I'm trying to stay organized (ha!), I'll provide a picture of the crib so you can see the wall color!  We decided on Valspar, color Sea Air.

 Yep, that's a huge stuffed animal panda bear in the crib!  My great MIL sent Emme an early gift from NYC - a huge cute cuddly bear!  The good news is that the cats are extremely alarmed by it and give it wide berth.  No sooner than Damien had the crib put together was Korben jumping into the crib.  As soon as we brought out Mr. Panda, Korben darted out of the room and hasn't tried to jump in there yet!  They do like to lie underneath the crib though which is okay with me!

Here is a close-up of Mr. Panda so you can get an idea of his actual size - he's HUGE!  (And he is wearing Damien's cowboy hat.)

And I know what you're thinking!  "Whoa whoa whoa, I thought that you were going with pink and purple in the nursery!"  About that...Soon before the baby shower, I was in "must the nursery before family gets here" mode so I set out to the paint stores to find the most perfect shade of pink or purple for the room.  Well, a funny thing happened on the way home from the numerous paint stores....
All of the pink and purple paints in the world just weren't looking good in the room and Damien started to have some serious doubts about a pink in general.  So I tried to figure out other colors that would work with the Jacana bedding set that we had selected.  I agonized over a blue, a green, or yellow, but ultimately was unsatisfied once I put the samples on the wall.  

In the middle of the angst, I started to see commercials for the Heidi Klum collections at Babies 'r Us so I decided to stop in and see them in person.  It was love at first site with the "Boho Harmony" collection.  Just about every color under the sun was included and the vibrancy was just perfect.  I told myself that the only way I would return the Jacana collection was if I could find the receipt.  If I couldn't find the receipt, then we were destined to have the Jacana set.  I must have anticipated our future reactions to a pink room because I found the receipt pretty much attached to the Jacana bag.

So it was a done deal and here is a picture of the Boho collection with all of the extras.  We have received many of the additional nursery decorations as gifts, but I still have a few more left to pick up before everything is said and done.

Week 34!

Haven't posted one of these weekly updates for a while - this one is going to be quite different from the previous entries, let me tell you!


How far along? 34

Baby's size?  Butternut Squash

Total weight gain:  28 pounds (

• See?!  I told you that this entry was going to be plenty different from the others!  All of my clothes from the first trimester are still fitting so I'm guessing this weight is all baby and everything that comes along with that!

Maternity clothes?I pretty much leveled out with these many weeks ago.  My wardrobe definitely isn't as diverse as it was pre-pregnancy, but it's functional!

Sleep: LMAO - what sleep?  Okay okay, it's not that bad, but it is so difficult to get comfortable.  And then once I get comfortable, I have to get up to pee and the whole cycle starts all over again!  The body pillow has been a Godsend though and the nightly back massages courtesy of Damien certainly help alot too!

Best baby moment this past week: Finally seeing the nursery come together!

Miss Anything? I just missed Vanilla Eggnog with a splash of rum - next Christmas!

Movement: Since she is running out of room in there, I feel a lot of sliding movements, almost as if she is just moving her arm along my inside.  At the last ultrasound last week, she was already head down so that explains all of the kicking underneath my ribs!

Food cravings: 

• Guacamole.  I don't even like avocados usually!
• Tuna fish sandwiches!
• Hawaiian Punch - diluted with seltzer or just water! 

Anything making you queasy or sick: Nope!

Labor Signs:  Thankfully none yet.

Symptoms: Tiredness is returning, but nothing like the exhaustion in the first trimester

Belly Button in or out? Waaaaaaay out.

Wedding rings on or off? Not on in the morning, but I can usually have them on for the majority of the day.

Happy or Moody most of the time: Happy

Looking forward to: Christmas, seeing family, and getting the nursery finished!

Only 39 days Late! The Baby Shower!

Well, I'm back FINALLY!  I cannot believe how ridiculously quickly time has gotten away from me.  Seems like just yesterday I was attending my baby shower when in actuality it was over a month ago!  39 days to be exact...it's almost like I've been wandering in the pregnancy desert, hahaha.  

Now about that baby shower - It was a fabulous day and my friends are still raving about how much fun they had and how delicious the food was.  My fabulous Aunt Deborah and dearest pal Sandya really pulled out all of the stops for this occasion and it was just PERFECT.  We had DELICIOUS food (it was so good that the family is heading back there when they come to visit for Christmas!  We'll be heading to the Tailored Tea for a delicious brunch.)  The games were fun too!

Here are some pictures of the day!

 My dearest Sandya and I - she is the best friend a gal could ask for.

 My amazing Aunt Deborah who I refer to as my Mommy-Auntie!

 The room at the Tailored Tea - we had a cozy room on the second floor.  The building itself is a renovated farm house so there was plenty of old style charm to go around!

 Fabulous friends who arrived for the shower early!  From the left - Cristen, Erin and Chinasa.

 Opening gifts was a lot of fun!  This was an adorable little lamb for Miss Emme!

 Here I am with the CAKE!  It was a cute cake and tasted really good too!  My one regret is having fondant on it because the butter cream was divine!  Definitely going back to this bakery for future occasions!

Friends enjoying the shower!

Week 25

How far along? 25

Baby's size?  Cauliflower

Total weight gain:  11-12 pounds

Maternity clothes? I've been stocking up on lots of tops and have work and jean maternity pants.  Target has some great finds!  I'm trying not to overbuy though.

Sleep: It is starting to get a bit rough sleepwise.  I wake up so easily at night and am contemplating sleeping in the spare bedroom to keep from waking Damien so many times during the night...or maybe this is good practice for him!

Best baby moment this past week: Lots and lots of movement! 

Miss Anything? Nope, I'm pretty well into the swing of things now.

Movement: Lots and lots

Food cravings: Nothing really as funny as that is.  I'm sure that another craving will strike sooner rather than later.  I HAD to have a bacon cheeseburger tonight, does that count?

Anything making you queasy or sick: Indian food unfortunately. 

Labor Signs:  Nope.

Symptoms: Just the usual which is a good thing!

Belly Button in or out? Half poking out!

Wedding rings on or off? on

Happy or Moody most of the time: Happy

Looking forward to: Seeing everybody in a few weeks for the shower!

Week 24 Bump Pictures

A couple of updated bump pictures and yes, there is actually a bump in this picture!
Don't mind my totally whacked out hair...it really does have a mind of its own right now.

Long time no post!

Alright, I officially disappeared for the past month, but I'm back!  Lots of things going on and I just haven't had a chance to update.  ~sigh~  I had every intention of updating this blog regularly, but no matter, I'm back!

Let's see, in the past few weeks, our baby has gone through several fruits size wise including a banana, pomegranate, papaya, and grapefruit:

Other fun things are we finally decided on her name - Emmaline Winifred.  After rolling around the idea of the name Evelyn, we decided to make the switch to Emmaline not because we didn't like Evelyn, but because we just fell in love with Emmaline.  Another issue was that our cat's name is Evangeline (call her Evie) and we didn't want our future daughter to think we named her after the cat!
Winifred was a name that Damien came up with because we wanted to have the middle name be a namesake for my brother Frederick.  Our boy name was Nathaniel Frederick so that is more straightforward, but we weren't in love with Fredericka or any other female version of Frederick so Winifred was decided upon.  

We decided on the paint color for the nursery as well!  We'll be using Valspar - Sweet Lily
Here is a swatch.  It is a nice lilac - not too pink either.
I'm hoping to get the room painted sooner rather than later, but we'll see!  We have several other projects in the works...and by we, I mostly mean Damien, hahaha.  He's been great!






Alright, I'm off to work on the week 24 update and get an updated bump picture posted!

Week 19 and Gender Reveal!

We found out that we are having a GIRL!!! Woo Hoo!
 
Damien and I are really excited and would have been happy with whoever was cooking in there.  

As far as names go, we had a hard time with girl names because our naming styles were so different (I like older names like Adelaide and Esme, while Damien liked more modern names like Caroline).  Our top four were Miranda, Lydia, Evelyn, and Vivienne.

Evelyn narrowly beat out Vivienne so that's what we're going with!

*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~ 

How far along? 19 weeks 

Baby's size?  Mango

Total weight gain:  6-7 pounds

Maternity clothes? These bella bands are helping me stretch my pre-pregnancy wardrobe

Sleep: Nightly waking up, but the new mattress is divine.

Best baby moment this past week: Finding out that we are having a girl and that the anatomy scan went well!

Miss Anything? Not this week!

Movement: Yes -first kicks on Sunday night!
Food cravings: Hot corned beef sandwiches, olives, and chips and salsa

Anything making you queasy or sick: Not really this week (fingers crossed that this continues.

Labor Signs:  Nope.

Gender Prediction: Looks like I was right!

Symptoms: Just the more frequent bathroom visits, lol

Belly Button in or out? in, but definitely heading out

Wedding rings on or off? on

Happy or Moody most of the time: Great mood this week!

Looking forward to: Getting the nursery put together!

Sunday Fun and New Stuff!

Damien and I had another busy day yesterday!  We usually like to spend one day of the weekend relaxing, but that certainly didn't happen this week.  Guess we are becoming more like real people, hahaha.  

We started off the day heading to Lilianna's second birthday party!  It was our second such very young person's birthday party this summer.  Our friends are preparing us for all of the fun to come!  There were certainly a lot of cute babies and toddlers there.  So adorable - can't wait!

Afterwards there were lots of errands to run, but one thing that I didn't have to do was go grocery shopping.  Or rather I should say, I didn't have to wander around the grocery store with a cart, but instead spent 30 minutes on my computer in the morning adding items to my digital list and submitting it to the grocery store.  One of the newer grocery stores to move into the neighborhood (Shoprite) offers services for customers to shop online and either pick-up the gathered groceries later in the day or even have the groceries delivered to you home!  I figured that it was time to give it a go and let me tell you, I may never go large scale grocery shopping myself ever again, especially since the order was spot on.  I instead got to spend the afternoon shopping for items for the bedroom in anticipation of the mattress arriving this morning!

Once we were finished picking up the groceries, I decided that it was time to tackle a new cupcake recipe.  I found a great recipe for Earl Grey with Lemon Butter cream and decided to give it a go.  (My typical cupcake baking process is first trying a recipe to the letter and changing things around during subsequent uses of the recipe).  These cupcakes smelled AMAZING as they baked and I must say that I finally created the best lemon butter cream that I have ever whipped up!  Damien was a huge fan of them and they are en route to Damien's job where I'm sure they ended up being a tasty breakfast treat! 

Since I was on such a kick with the success of the cupcakes, I decided to change up my meatloaf recipe too and decided to try out Alton Brown's meatloaf recipe.  Ummm, wow.  It was quite tasty and extremely flavorful and it is likely that I'll never go back to my old recipe.  I improvised another potato recipe and threw some green beans on the plate, and ta-da delicious Sunday night dinner!

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

New king size mattress!  The bedroom is finally coming together.  Pictures still need to be hung and we need to get a few more piece of furniture, but I'm really happy with the progress!










New futon mattress for the futon that currently resides in the living room.  It really matches the space!

Playing with Yarn on a Sunday morning

I started out the day in the yarn room getting yarns together for upcoming projects.  It's nice to have my knitting/crochet mojo back!  The first project I was planning for is one with one of the Ravelry groups (Vanna's Choice yarn group) that I joined a couple years ago.  Every few seasons, one of the amazing designers in the group offers a "mysteryghan" in which we are given weekly clues (pattern instructions) and have no idea how the finished afghan will look until it is finished!  These are always a bunch of fun!  I'm quite determined to finish this one by the end of the year!  I'm going with a neutral palette for this blanket and I'll be using Vanna's Choice yarn - black, charcoal grey, sterling grey, espresso, taupe, linen, rust, honey, and beige. 

I looked for inspiration on the Design Seeds website.  (This is a fabulous website that I love to browse through to get ideas for colors!)  I was drawn to the color palette above on the right and evolved it to the 9 colors needed for the pattern.  It looks like the first pattern clue is going to be released this coming Saturday on September 1.  Looking forward to it!

The second project that I was planning for is for another Ravelry group that is devoted to Madelinetosh yarns.  I have developed quite a stash of Madelinetosh merino light over the past year to use for my first and second beekeeper's quilts and am going to dig deep into the stash for this project.  I'm going to knit a shawl/wrap that I'll hopefully use during nursing.  The pattern is pretty straightforward and lots of knitting, but I think it is doable.  

The pattern is called "All Shades of the Truth" and was another fabulous Ravelry find.  I'm planning to make my wrap in shades of black, greys, and greens.

A photo of the original pattern completed by Laura Aylor (ravname: LATaylor13) is above.  

In addition to these two projects, I'm also working slowly on yet another beekeeper's quilt.  I'm trying not to make myself crazy with too many projects (I have a tendency to over-commit, lol) so this project will just get completed as I am able to work on it.

Hooray for yarn!

Mattress Shopping!

After weeks of being pushed further and further out of the bed by all of my pillows, Damien finally agreed to go mattress shopping today!  This was something that we had planned to do earlier this year soon after Christmas in an effort to get the guest room set-up so folks could have a bedroom to sleep in when they visited us.  Then Taiko had all of his issues...and there went the funds that we had saved for the new mattress.  Money well spent though and it was all worth it.

We headed out and I must have been getting "in a mood" as Damien likes to put it because all I remember is talking to him and him giving me the oddest look.  He pulled the car into Taco Bell and said, "let's get you something to eat."  I guess I was hungrier than I realized because my mood improved dramatically after that.  My darling Damien knows me so well.

Anyways, we visited three stores, the first two were stores we had never gone to before, but figured that we would give them a shot.  The shopping trip probably would have gone more quickly if it didn't take me forever to get in and out of all of the beds that we were trying out!  

We liked a mattress in the first store, but it was a bit above our price range and absolutely hated everything about our experience at the second store.  We had to go get ice cream after wards to get us back in the swing of things, lol.  We found what we were looking for in the third store, which is a locally owned shop that has been doing business around here for 30 years.  We were able to purchase the mattress that we wanted back in February so we couldn't be more pleased!  (We also picked up a new futon mattress - Taiko kind of ruined the current one - and a headboard.)  All in all, it was a rather production day.  

Old Wives Gender Prediction and Chinese Gender Predictor

Damien and I have been having a fun time with the gender prediction.  Damien is still solidly team blue and I'm being contrary on leaning towards team pink.  We'll be happy with whoever is in there.  Here are some old wives' tales for fun!

Girl came to 5 out of 7

Boy came to 2 out of 7

List from Parenting Here is the link to the list on the original website

Highs and Lows

This one you can do just by looking south: if you're carrying high, break out the pink. If your bump is low, you're carrying a boy. 

• Maybe too early to tell on this one, but everybody says I'm carrying high so GIRL

Be Still My Beating Heart

Next time your OB pulls out the Doppler to listen to baby's heartbeat, ask her to tell you what the heart rate is. According to legend, 140+ beats per minute indicates a girl, and below 140 a boy.

• We've been consistently at 140 or higher (last appointment was 146) so GIRL

Sweet and Sour

Craving ice cream every single day? Some people believe this means it's a girl. If you have to have salty or sour stuff, then it's a boy.

• This one is a bit of toss up as my cravings vary, but those olives I ate at 10:00pm last night have me thinking that I'm team blue with this one!  BOY

Chinese Birth Chart

This ancient method uses your age at conception and the month you did the deed to determine gender.

• Chinese birth predictor came back with GIRL

Potty Time

This one's a little out there. Pee in a cup (you've been doing it at all your prenatal appointments anyway, haven't you?), mix a tablespoon of Drano in, and watch to see if it changes color. Green = girl, and blue = boy.

• Totally not doing this one...

Even and Odd

Legend has it that the Mayans determined a baby's sex by looking at the mother's age at conception and the year of conception. If both are even or odd, it's a girl. If one's even and one's odd, it's a boy.

• According to the Mayans, we're having a BOY - 27 at conception and it's 2012

Spot On

If you're breaking out like crazy, blame it on your girl babe. The belief goes that girls steal their mother's beauty, hence, those annoying zits.

• Yea, I'm going to go ahead and give this one a GIRL

Nice Ring to It

Pop off your wedding ring -- if you still can! -- and tie it to a string. Hang it over your belly. If it swings in a circle, a little guy's in your future. If it goes back and forth, you've got a girl.

• Haven't done this one yet!

Queasy Does It

Sick as a dog during the first trimester -- or still? Signs indicate you're having a girl. Little or no morning sickness points to a boy.

• If the first trimester is any indication, there is a GIRL in our future!