Wall Decal Done...Kind of.

After a day of scale drawing, cutting, and pasting, I have finished this project. The project cost about $5.97 and if I ordered one on-line it would've been $100+. Caaa-ching! For the most part, I like how it turned out, but the overlapping layers of the contact paper looks kind of bad under bright light. I'm thinking of painting over the contact paper with white paint.

Or, I could go crazy and paint it a completely different color. I'm really liking the white, though. That's really all the progress that I've made so far. I do, however, have a few projects that I plan on working on in July:

• repainting a mirror that I picked up from Goodwill for $3.99.
• making a crib skirt, pillows, and other accessories with the yellow elephant fabric as shown above.
• Make an elephant mobile with these cool Indian elephant ornaments that I found at World Market.
• Make storage baskets/organizer for underneath the changing table.

Reflections from Our Walk

For the past 2 nights, I've taken a few long walks as the sun is setting. Seeing families and kids playing outside led me to think about the fun that we will have with our little boy. Last night was the first time I felt really excited about having a baby. In fact last week, when I was signing up for a registry, the lady at the counter asked me, "So, how excited are you about having a baby?!" "I hesitantly mustered up a forced, "I'm super excited." I guess inside, I knew I was supposed to be happy, but the fact that we were having a baby just hadn't hit me yet... until last night.

As far as updates go, the honey bun is still expanding. Apparently he is now the size of a grapefruit and is developing nipples. He's still kicking away and oddly kicks more during church. I think he likes music because when we stop singing, he starts kicking. So, I guess we currently have a musical soccer player.

By this point our honey bun should be able to hear outside noises. Since Steve and I would like our baby to be bilingual, I've been looking into what we can do starting in the womb to help make that happen. Some websites suggest reading to the baby and even playing some music in the foreign language...which seems kind of weird at this point, but who knows. We have about 4 months to go!

Our Nursery Plan

If you know me, you probably have no doubt about the theme of the nursery. However, I decided to not do a sheep themed room and after countless hours of internet research, I've decided to do an elephant room. Here are a few of the photos that were the source of my inspiration:

I love the clean gray, white and yellow. That elephant hamper is definitely going on the baby's registry.

I love the turquoise and yellow accents here. The fusha is a bit girly, but I'm going to substitute it with a lime green. So, the color scheme of the room will be gray, yellow, white, neutral wood, turquoise and lime green.

I love the floating shelves. Picked up some floating shelves on clearance at the pottery barn for 10 bucks a piece.

I love the random alphabet letters. Instead of having a wall full of letters, I think I will have the alphabet go around the room at the top where the wall meets the ceiling. I think fun adventures lie ahead as I search out random letters.

In the first picture shown, there's a wall decal. I'm going to attempt to make my own African safari tree wall decal (without the elephants) using white contact paper. 

 

I'm so excited to get started on these projects and can't wait to see how it will end up looking. This is what we have so far:

The changing table, rug and lamp are all from Ikea. Originally I was going to get the rug shown in the first inspiration picture, but when we saw this, we felt that this was way more kid friendly. We were a bit apprehensive about getting it because we weren't sure if the baby would be a boy or a girl. We ended up getting it. Girls can play with cars too, right? But it worked out ok. We're having a boy. 

 

This is also an Ikea crib. You will not see this in the stores, however. We took on a weekend project and pimped out our crib. We added the side boards to give it a slightly more modern look.

Here's the fabric that I will use to make accent pieces throughout the nursery. I'm going to make the crib skirt, and add some elephants to the plain white curtains that are hanging in front of the window. A few pillows will also be created.

The fish tank from my classroom is going in the nursery. I think the trickle of water is soothing and plus it will be interesting for the Honey Bun to look at once he is older. I'm not sure if I should paint the dresser yellow, turquoise, or just leave it. Any thoughts?

Kicks

We are approaching 22 weeks and the Honey Bun is kicking like crazy!

22 Weeks

The Story Up Unitl Now

If things had gone according to plan, this would all be finished and we would already have a new addition to our family. We had read that it takes most couples about 3 months to conceive and after 5 months, we were starting to get discouraged. Questions of infertility and PCOS started to worry us: which I'm sure didn't help the situation at all.

A work friend suggested that I try acupuncture because a few of her friends who were in the same situation as us had success after trying it, so I decided to do my research and found a community acupuncture place nearby and tried it out. To make a long story short, let's just say that I started weekly treatments of needles and herbs in mid November and we conceived at the beginning of January. I am now a believer in the effectiveness of acupuncture. My hormones were all out of whack (possibly to to stress) and caused my body to function differently. Not only did the treatment help regulate my reproductive system, I think it helped out with many other parts of my body as well.

After we found out that we were pregnant, the next decision we had to make was where to have the baby. We could go the "traditional" hospital route, or the even more traditional midwife. A friend suggested that we go check out a birthing center, so I stopped by the one I drive by on my way home from work and set up a tour. After the tour, the birthing center suggested that we watch a Ricky Lake documentary titled "The business of being born." This opened our eyes to the business focus of hospital births and so we decided to see if we were fit for having a birth at the birthing center. It turns out that we are a low risk birth and are perfect candidates for a natural birth.

During the first trimesters, I felt really tired. No, exhausted. By the time I got home from work and ate dinner, I was ready to go to bed. Morning sickness came and went, but I never really threw up (except on a turbulent plane ride back from Hawaii). Then came the second trimester. All nausea went away and I started to get my energy back. At 21 weeks, I'm loving pregnancy and can start to feel more intense kicks from the little soccer player within.

At 20 weeks, we went in to get the mid-pregnancy ultrasound. Everything about our Honey Bun was normal and healthy, but the baby moved around a lot and had the legs crossed, making it difficult to determine the sex. But our sonographer worked some magic and suddenly she exclaimed, "Oh, it's definitely a boy! Congratuations." Up until then, pregnancy was surreal. But now, I'm starting to feel a bit more ... pregnant.

School's Out For the Summer

School is finally out, this means I can devote more time towards our little Honey Bun. I'm going to start by creating a blog to document our adventure through the next 20 weeks (and perhaps beyond).