Minnesota Baby Shower

I got my pictures from last weekend!

I had such a great time in Minnesota. It was wonderful to see my friends and family. As soon as we left the airport, Emily knew my #1 goal was to eat my Sesame Chicken, Fried Rice, and Wontons at Leann Chin. Luckily there is one very close to Emily's house, so we stopped there before anything else! Oh. My. Gosh. I died and went to heaven. I wish I could get that down here. But I suppose it wouldn't be special anymore!

The next day we met up with my friends Mandy and Sarah at the Mall of America for some lunch and shopping. I was at the check-out line at Old Navy when I could swear I hear my mom's voice... But I went along with paying out. When I was done, I turned around, and sure enough - there was my mom! Hilarious! What are the odds! But I suppose, when two Texans head for Minnesota, there's a good chance they'll end up at Mall of America! I got all sorts of good tax-free maternity clothes, which was one of my goals for the weekend! :)

Saturday was my shower. It was so much fun! My mom and my aunt Ginny were the first ones there. My mom was talking to me, keeping me busy and distracted and all sorts of stuff... When the door opens. Yay! Another guest! It was my sister Andrea, her husband Steve, and baby Micah!!! I was SO shocked!!! Andrea had told me she wouldn't be able to make it. I was so happy and surprised, I started crying, but eventually regained my composure! The shower was great. I got lots of great baby stuff, yet lots of people were gracious enough to realize I had to take everything home with me, so I got lots of gift cards! I can't keep myself off the Target website trying to decide what I want to buy! Here are some pictures.

My mom, me, Andrea, and Micah


Micah and Me!


An adorable lion car seat dangle!


Isn't Micah too cute???


A classic toy! Never goes out of style. :)


A newborn sleeper complete with white (Blaze!) rocking horse, and a Wendy Bellissimo lamb mobile. (From my mom)


Me, Andrea, and Micah


Cousins! Sara, Me, Andrea, and Carolyn


My wonderful friends! Dara, Mandy, Sarah, Kelly, Emily, and me.


Micah and his cousin-to-be!


Overall the trip was wonderful. I was also able to grab a quick lunch with Andrea, Steve, and Micah on Sunday before we all left town. Another one of the best things about the weekend was getting to meet and spend time with Emily's little baby Gabriel. He is so precious and it was so fun to get to peek into my future for a few days!! Thanks to everyone up there, it was such a wonderful weekend.

23 Week Picture

Not much time to post much else today, but here is my 23 Week picture!



I even got brave and took a bare-belly picture last night! It's so round!! Tonight Jeff and I are going to have dinner at Outback. Afterwards, we are going to stop at the fabric store and pick up the fabric for the nursery! Maybe we can be REALLY productive and pick up the blinds for the nursery window too... But at the same time I'd like to hurry back home, today is a 20 cent listing day on Ebay... That means I can get more Breyers up for sale! Move em out!

Latest Nursery Ideas!

I'm back from Minnesota! I had such a great time. I'll give a review of my trip as soon as my mom gets her act together and sends me her pictures!

Soooo, today I had a great brainstorming session of new nursery ideas, and dare I say I believe this is my FINAL DRAFT, and I feel ready to start TONIGHT! :)

First of all, here's the furniture we're going with:




The walls will be painted sage green.

I'm going to sew some curtains. We'll have white wood blinds up in the window. Over that, I'm going to have a sheer white curtain hanging down over the window. Over that, I'm going to use this fabric that I found at Hancock, and fell in love!



Sorry it's not the greatest picture, it was taken with my cell phone camera!


And sew curtains to have pulled to the side (either with ribbon or with hooks) to reveal the sheer white curtain underneath.

For crib bedding, I'm going to go with just plain plain sage. Probably no bumper, unless I put it all together and it just looks naked. For the crib skirt, I'm going to use a sage skirt and then sew a ribbon of the same curtain fabric probably 2-3 inches along the bottom edge.



We'll get a mocha brown rocker, and I'll sew a throw pillow or something of the curtain fabric to tie things together. I may also just buy a plain lampshade and cover it with the curtain fabric? I'm not sure at what point it becomes overkill. hehe.

So, that's my plan! I'm SO excited to finally have it laid out, I feel like I really have motivation to get going now!!!

What Color Eyes Will Your Children Have?

I'm here to pass on a fun little genetics test to give you probabilities on what color eyes your children will have! Here's the link.

http://museum.thetech.org/ugenetics/eyeCalc/eyecalculator.html

According to our profile (I went on the assumption that green = hazel, but I'm not sure if that's how they'd look at it or not..) we have a 50% chance of brown eyes, 30% chance of green eyes, and 20% chance of blue eyes.

In the last week or two I've been becoming a little uncomfortable, specifically in the afternoons and evenings. Overall, my whole abdomen just hurts. It doesn't seem to be connected to my GI tract, this is definitely a more outward pain. Basically the whole abdomen, no one specific spot. Watching the girls on babycenter talk about Braxton Hicks contractions, I wondered if this might be that, but they all describe it as pain that comes and goes every 5-10 seconds or so, but this is more of a constant ache lasting several hours.

In addition, only the right side of my lower back hurts. It feels like there's some muscle or tendon connecting to my right belly (like a muscle belt or something) that is being stretched.

Lots of times I feel like this in connection with eating. I haven't been eating strict health food, but I haven't been eating absolute crap either. Sometimes I can just deal with it, sometimes I need Tylenol. One of my friends said she remembers experiencing something just like this... Most likely growing pains. Fun stuff!

I have an exciting weekend ahead of me... I'm flying up to Minnesota!! WOOHOO!! My friend Emily had her first baby this summer, and I figured if I ever want to go meet him, now is the time! So I planned a little weekend trip to go up there, see everyone, and meet little Gabriel. It's a little early, but while I'm up there, they wanted to throw me a small shower. So my first shower is on Saturday! I'm so excited, but I also know that it's sort of "too" early for a shower, but when you don't live close, you gotta do what you gotta do! I mainly can't wait to see snow again! I really do miss it in Texas. But I always try to go up north once a year during the winter to get my snow fix! :) The forecast looks like it's going to snow starting tonight, then continue through the day tomorrow, I wish it would hold off a little bit so I can see it coming down! I also can't wait to eat at Leann Chin, my favorite Chinese food in the world! It's a Minneapolis-only chain, and I always make sure to stop there several times whenever I make it back up there. Sesame Chicken, here I come!

Jeff Felt the Baby!

Today's big news - Jeff finally felt the baby! The last few days we've been trying long and hard to get the baby to give Jeff a big solid kick. We'd spend about a half hour with his hands on my belly, and the baby wouldn't do anything! It'd be kicking away, and as soon as Jeff's hands hit my tummy, it'd stop. Little brat!

Well this afternoon, we laid down to take a short nap, and the baby was being somewhat active, so I scooted up to him and pressed my stomach up against him. For the longest time I could feel it moving inside, but he said he wasn't feeling anything! Then the baby finally gave a solid kick, Jeff jumped a little, looked at me and said, "I felt it!!" It was so exciting! Over the next 15 minutes or so he got to feel 2 more kicks, so that was a lot of fun.

In the last week I've started feeling kicks above the belly button too. That is weird to feel it so high! So since the baby is upside down, I guess the above-belly button "kicks" are actually kicks, and whatever I'm feeling down low is actually punches or something? I don't know. It's interesting none the less!

On Friday we hit 22 weeks! Yay! Here's my picture.



We had fun Friday night, we stopped by Target to add some stuff to our registry, and then went and saw a movie. It was a fun date night and I need to remember to enjoy these "last" few months we get to spend alone! :)

On Saturday my parents gave us a call and wanted to come over to show us my mom's new car. We had fun with them for the afternoon and we love mom's car! It has a lot of voice activation features which is really cool, she can tell it to call people, or play specific tracks on CD's and stuff! Very cool. We stopped out and saw Blaze, it had been quite a while since they'd gotten to see her!

Saturday evening was the Watson Wyatt (Jeff's company) Holiday Party. It's a fairly formal event held at the Four Seasons. We got all dressed up and my parents snapped some pictures of us before we left. The ones of us together on my camera aren't any good (it was windy and my hair and dress were flying all over the place!) they took a picture of me inside.



It was a fun evening, the theme was a Casino night. Jeff had a lot of fun at the Craps table. I started out playing with him there (and even got to roll the dice!) One guy, just before I rolled, called out and bet on a "Hard Four" and sure enough, that's what I rolled! That was pretty exciting! But I 7'd out rather quickly. At this point in pregnancy, I'm starting to get a little bit achy and sore if I stand too long, particularly in my right lower back. So I left the Craps table and found Blackjack, which I played the rest of the night. It's been a long time since I played, but it was a lot of fun! And better that none of it was real money, so it didn't matter that I lost it all by the end of the night! :)

What am I Having?

I ran across this gender test online that compiles all the old wives tales about your baby's gender.

http://www.childbirth.org/articles/boyorgirl.html

According to the test, I have a 65% chance of having a girl. Here are some of the reasons why, or why not.

You are carrying the extra weight out front, so it's a boy.
The hair on your legs is not growing any faster during your pregnancy, so it's a girl.
Boys are carried low. You are going to have a boy.
Sleeping in a bed with your pillow to the south indicates that you will be having a girl.
Your feet are colder than they were before pregnancy. You are having a boy.
You refuse to eat the heel of a loaf of bread. You are having a girl.
The maternal grandmother doesn't have gray hair (dyed or natural), so a girl will be born.
You had morning sickness early in pregnancy, so you are expecting a girl.
You are not looking particularly good during pregnancy. Therefore, it must be a girl, because girls steal their mother's looks.
Since the sum of the mother's age at conception and the number of the month of conception is an odd number, it will be a girl.
You have a craving for salty or sour foods, which means that it is a boy.
Your nose hasn't changed during pregnancy, which indicates a girl.
You have been craving fruits, so it is a girl.
Your baby's heart rate is 140 or more beats per minute, so it's a girl.
You are having headaches, so it's a boy.
Your belly looks like a watermelon, so it's a girl.

So who knows! I had heard the one about baby girls "stealing their mothers looks" and I'm believing it right now! Ever since hitting the second trimester, my skin has started freaking out. My face looks horrible! I'm looking into finding a new skin care system. Anyone have any raves for managing face issues without medicated products? A couple friends have recommended Bare Minerals, so I'll probably look into that.

I'm enjoying this short week stuff. Tomorrow is Friday already! Jeff is leaving me tonight to go to a funeral in Oklahoma tomorrow, so depending on how bored I get tonight, I'm thinking about going to see the movie Juno. Yes, alone, I know I'm pathetic! The only thing that makes it more pathetic is that I was hoping there'd be like a 5-6 showing so I could go home and be in bed by 8:30 or 9, but the movie starts at 7. I suppose I could still be in bed by 9:30 or 10!

For good news, my acid reflux or whatever I was experiencing around Christmas is mostly gone! It must have been an after-effect of the flu/food poisoning. It is GREAT to not be experiencing that anymore, that was miserable!

Travel - Where and When to Go?

Happy New Year!

Jeff and I have been thinking about a vacation in these last few days. We want to take a "babymoon" aka one last vacation before your life is over and you have a baby. :) It's been a few years since I've been able to take my favorite type of vacation, a cruise. And it'll probably be a few more before I get to go again! So my ideal vacation in the back of my mind has been a cruise. This weekend we looked into them a bit more. I knew the cruise lines had regulations on how far along they allow pregnant women, and it turns out you're not allowed to go past 27 weeks! Yikes! In other words, that means we need to go before February. I'm not sure if we can get our act together that quickly! But I'd sure love to. So we're looking into how many nights we'd like to take, and I would need to call my doctor to make sure they're ok with me taking a cruise.

If the cruise scenario doesn't work out, we'll take a vacation land-bound sometime in February. I really want to go somewhere warm, so it'd likely be Florida, Caribbean, or Mexico. In any case, we need to get it nailed down quickly, we learned our lesson on that last year - we wanted to spend a week in December in New York City. When we first looked into it in June, prices were reasonable. We waited to book everything for some reason, but then by August & September when we were ready to book, prices had sky-rocketed. So we learned that last minute doesn't work! We need to get going. :)

As for pregnancy, I had a possible first today. I was laying on my side on the couch, watching a movie today. Bailey was curled up along my tummy, asleep. The baby was pretty active, and then let out a VERY strong kick that I could definitely feel just having my hand resting on my belly. Bailey woke up and looked at me like "What do you want?" Like I had tapped her or something! So I wonder if Bailey felt the baby?! That would be pretty sad if Bailey got to feel it before Daddy! hehe.