New Furniture and Projects

As mentioned in the previous post, we bought a recliner over Thanksgiving weekend. With help from Mark's brother Ryan, we were able to squeeze it into his little car and bring it home. I absolutely love it! It reclines and rocks with minimal effort. Putting the recliner down is a bit noisy but hopefully that will change with age.

As you can see (maybe), it is the perfect height for a 5'2" individual such as myself. My nephew Brighton has already given it his stamp of approval. He thinks it's extremely comfortable to lay across with his legs and head draped across the arm rests. You may also notice that our "nursery" has yet to have any progress made. We're waiting until after Christmas to spend money on the rest of the furniture ie: the crib, changing table, etc. Then I'll go crazy with organizing.

In the mean time, I also tied some little fleece blankets for baby "Embro". I dragged Mark to the fabric store the week we found out gender and he actually was mildly enthusiastic and opinionated about fabric patters. I finally decided end of November was an acceptable amount of waiting to make fleece blankets for our little squirt.

I have one for wrapping in case we have a long winter this year and two little ones for eventually snuggle/security blankets. The double fleece I figure will be great for floor time, especially as our carpet isn't the softest. It'll also be handy to put him down on that in my office to play while I work.( Carpet here is really just fabricated concrete.)  Sure, fleece blankets aren't anything to brag about, but personally we think the design is too cute.

We are almost ready ready for Christmas. It is kind of surreal to think this is our last Christmas ever without a little one. Next year he will only be about 9 or 10 months, but still, any baby regardless of age makes it for a new adventure with the holidays. I like to believe that is what is making me feel so emotional about this holiday season and not just pregnancy hormones kicking into full gear. Not that I'm sad about having a baby next year, this will be our 4th Christmas together and it's been fun to slowly find our groove and create our own little Christmases. But it's also a bit overwhelming as well. (What isn't overwhelming about the prospect of having your own kids?!)

In other news, we get to have a 2nd ultrasound Dec. 30th. Just checking for baby's growth and how everything is looking in there as I will be 32 weeks at that point. It will be at a different location than previously so we are hoping they have better equipment to get clearer pictures this time. We will try to post pictures in a late Christmas montage.Maybe seeing him again bigger in size and more detailed will help us find a name that seems right.We can only hope....

28 Weeks

Don't feel bad if you look at this picture and think "yikes! She's huge"...because some days I feel that way. Although pregnancy has been mostly kind to my body, it has had no problem seeming to store weight from every ounce of food I eat. I mentioned it to the nurse I saw a few weeks ago and she didn't seem concerned. We'll see what my Dr. says in about 2 weeks. My sweet sisters say I'm just fine...I suppose as long as I try not to gorge on sweets too much and my body doesn't become too balloonish until the end, I'll be okay. I have not been as good as I used to be at getting to the gym...and I really miss being able to run for a good solid mile before feeling fatigued. One day I'll have it back. Until then, I'm just doing the best I can and trying not to be TOO lazy.

I am now in the 3rd trimester and 80 days until my due date. 2nd trimester was great but the last 6 or 7 weeks took FOREVER to go by. I really can't complain as I have minimal sleepless nights (once or twice a week sometimes) and minor sciatica pain that is pretty manageable. Other than that, pregnancy has been pretty good to me this far.

I feel like at 27+ weeks, pregnancy is overall kind of boring. You feel the baby move more, but after about 28 weeks, everything is basically there for the baby. It's not like in the early weeks were they go from having fins to fingers.

Here's life at 28 weeks:

• Currently baby is the size of an eggplant (roughly 14 inches and 2 1/2-3 pounds)
• Still enjoying sleep mostly. Baby hasn't really woken me up with movements, but when I am awake he sure likes to put on a show-especially after a McRib and coke! 
• A few times I have thought he may have had hiccups. As I write this, I'm almost certain that he does have them. 
• Maternity clothes finally "fit" and some are obviously not going to fit at the bitter end.
• Sweatpants, especially maternity sweatpants, are amazing. I wear them until the last minute I have to put on real pants and as soon as I am home for the night. 
• No crazy cravings, no heartburn etc. I feel very lucky. 
• I've had only 2 vividly insane/dramatic dreams in the last week. 
• At my last appointment, the nurse told me I was measuring big. But since I was measuring small at 20 weeks, we're not jumping to conclusions/assumptions until further down the road.
• We still are back and forth with a list of about 5-6 names. This will be a battle lasting until birth I'm sure. But even if we pick a name, we won't be sharing it until he's born--not even with family. We're old fashioned like that.  

In more exciting news, on black Friday we went out and bought a rocker/recliner for me, and a travel system. (Pictures to come later of the recliner due to weather delays in picking it up.) I was really anti the travel system and just wanted one of those click and go infant seat holders with wheels. But we managed to find a lightweight car seat (a plus for my back issues) and a lightweight stroller that isn't monstrous. I love the color of it as well! 

(For anyone wondering, we bought the Graco Snugride Classic Connect with the Graco Elite Lightweight stroller)

A few weeks prior we also went shopping for fun and found this cute lamp at Burlington for $12.99. It was too cute to pass up. We don't have a theme for baby's room so we're just enjoying buying some cute things here and there and hopefully it will all tie in....or he'll just be a very distracted baby with so many different animals and colors to look at! 

Oh and so I don't feel like I'm hogging the blog, Mark thought we ought to do a picture of him at 28 weeks as well. Don't worry, he's putting a lot of effort into obtaining that pooch! He has been so sweet and supportive this whole time. Mark is adorable as it is when he talks to the baby, I can't wait to see them together in just a few more months!

Thanksgiving

I had good intentions to take pictures of Thanksgiving this year...and I failed. Oh well. At least next year we'll have more motivation.

Wednesday night the 27th, my family got together for the 2nd year and held Pie Night. Thankfully we all learned from last year and no one overate TOO much sweets. I'm not sure where some of the younger kids put all of their treats. Some of my nieces and nephews are like a bottomless pit! I volunteered to make our family's unique traditional cornucopia. My oldest sister started it years ago and it's not a Thanksgiving without it now.

I didn't get a chance to take a picture of it before it was partially eaten Wednesday night. But it even had the curved tail and everything. The wax paper was so the cup I framed it around wouldn't get stuck in....I forgot to take that out before I took the picture- and take off the plastic wrap. 

With some subtle hints, Mark made me his annual turkey hand. He drew one for me one year on his mission and has always drawn at least 1 each year since we've been married. In case you're confused like I am, that's a wing on the side of the turkey....silly me. 

I also made an apple pie for dessert. It was sort of like an apple crisp with the oatmeal topping but the crust was the same oatmeal, flour and butter mixture. It turned out pretty well and most everyone who tried it liked it. (Thanks to ourbestbites.com . They have yet to ever let our family down on recipes)

This year we had 2 Thanksgivings. We had an early lunch with Mark's brother at his house just the 3 of us. I'm not going to lie...it was nice but a little odd for me to have it so quiet and simple. We then drove out to my parents' house for Thanksgiving with 16 other family members. As usual, we were the last to leave but benefited by getting to play a good game of chicken foot with my parents, young sister and her husband. As usual, I lost pretty badly. I always play ready to win, but really I mostly play to enjoy the family time. 

Happy Thanksgiving!