Week 29

Our Nursery is about 80% complete! We got the final big piece of furniture in today and I absolutely love it! Look forward to many hours rocking with our little one.

I also finally put up all the letters on the wall. Took awhile, but I think it looks pretty good.

These letters are sitting above the changing table. And here is the changing table with the baskets that I made out of the cardboard box from the car seat.

And...not sure what to do with these guys yet. I tried putting the mirror up above the fish tank today, but it just did not look right.

I've pretty much gotten all that I wanted to do before I got too big completed. I'm pretty happy with the results. Now, just to keep it not cluttered.

Hello Third Trimester!

Hello 3rd Trimester!

 This is a picture taken for our 3rd anniversary.



It's the final home stretch. Nursery update: I've been working on the alphabet wall. I just have 1 more letter to do. Here's what it looks like so far:

I spent about $15 on a few of the letters and the rest, I used toilet paper rolls, styrofoam, and cardboard.  I am quite pleased with the final result and can't wait to see them all hung up in the room.

We went ahead and ordered a glider on-line. It should come in this week. Once the chair is in the room, I can then put the other decorations up. So excited! 

I don't think I've mentioned this in my previous posts, but Steve and I are going to try to go the all natural route when it comes to birth. My biggest fear is pain and tearing, but as I read about other women's experience with the euphoria that comes with natural birth, I'm starting to overcome that fear and I am mentally preparing myself for the "sensations" that will come with birth. For extra encouragement, I'm reading Ina May Gaskin's guide to childbirth and I am eager to see what our birth experience will be like.

Our last check up went well. The midwife mentioned that I have pretty strong abdominal muscles. This made me feel great because it made all of those planks and crunches that I did prior to pregnancy worth it. Also, I drank the orange soda like drink for the gestational diabetes test and felt a bit funny afterwards, but I don't think I have it. The phlebotomist told me that she would call me if anything came back negative by Monday, so I guess no news is good news. However,  I'm still trying to stay with a low (processed) sugar diet. I'm eating plenty of fruits, but am only limiting myself to a little bit of dessert once in awhile. It's sooo hard.

One of my favorite snacks is a peanut butter banana milkshake. It's made with 1 frozen banana, 1/2 large glass of milk and 2 tablespoons of PB2. I put all this stuff in a blender and blend it together. It's the best protein, dairy, sugar fix ever! Oh, PB2 is this product that my friend Christina recommended to me. It's basically powdered peanut butter. It's got 85% less fat than ordinary PB and barely any sugar. By itself , it's ok, but in the milkshake, I can barely tell the difference. Here's a picture of the product, if you want to try it out.

Belly undulations and sewing

Today marks week 27 of pregnancy. I only have one more week left of the second trimester, and I hear things only go down hill from here. Well, I haven't posted in about 3 weeks because I've been out of town. I spent about 2 weeks in Dallas for a training and to visit my family and then another week was spent in Chicago with Steve's side of the family. Steve's mom threw us a beautiful shower and Aunt Barb made the best cake.

 White chocolate and black raspberry cake! Best. Cake. Ever!

 On our last day in Chicago, we went on an architecture cruise. It was nice, but the sun was hot. Our honey bun gets pretty active in the heat. This week I feel him kick all the time. I can also see him moving through the belly too. Unfortunately, sometimes honey bun sticks a foot or an arm near my lungs, making it a bit uncomfortable to bend over or breathe.

After returning home from being away for 3 weeks, I was itching to continue with nursery decorations. Today, I tackled the crib skirt and made 3 throw pillow covers.

 This is the mirror that I got from goodwill. I sanded it down and painted it a bright yellow. I will post pictures of it when it's finished and hung in the nursery.

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