Baby Boy's Nursery

When Eden was born, we were living in a one bedroom apartment, trying to get into a bigger place. Basically her things just took over the living room and she slept in a bassinet in our room. We finally managed to get into a place when she was 3 weeks old and I had to slowly put together her room. This time around, I was so glad to be able to start early on putting together little boy's nursery. His room was Reed's office/a storage room, so it took a while to clear it out, as we had to utilize the garage first, by putting in lots of shelving. It felt so good to get things organized in labeled containers and to get rid of lots of unnecessary things. Then it was go time for the nursery.

I really wanted to have his nursery be neutral colors- grays, whites, creams, tans, and different natural wood colors. There ended up being a little more color with the decorative pillows (they went well in the room and were just sitting around from our couch that we purchased and used different pillows for). Also, we have a love seat hideabed that we really wanted to keep, if we ever need it for visitors, but we didn't have another place to put it other than the baby's room. It is a blue color, but almost seems gray and has cream stripes, so it works! Even though things are a little different than what I envisioned,  I am happy how the room turned out in the end and I had so much fun getting it ready!

The first big project for the nursery was painting his crib...woof. That was pretty time consuming, since cribs have so many slats, but finally I finished painting the crib with Paris Grey Annie Sloan chalk paint and I painted the headboard with a creamy old white chalk paint. Then I finished the entire thing with two coats of clear wax.

The next nursery project was to create house shaped wall hangings for decoration. I found a set of 2 of them at Target for like $30 bucks...which was more than I wanted to spend on them. So I headed to Home Depot and and purchased a couple long pieces of wood and some little hinge nail type things to put the wood together at the corners. Fortunately my in-laws had a saw that they let me borrow to cut my wood pieces and then I put them together with the hinges and some wood glue. Finally, I painted half of the large frame with some left over paint from the crib. In the end I spent like $3.52 total! I also love little woodland animals and think they fit in well with the neutral colors I was going for, so I was thrilled to find some cute little hedgehog critters made out of sticks and straw at Hobby Lobby to put on the frames.

I wanted to make some sort of picture frame with diverse natural wood colors, but couldn't pass up this awesome frame at Hobby Lobby when I saw it, cause it was basically what I was envisioning. So I may not have saved much money there, but I did save some time.

I also, never realized how hard it was to find a lamp...especially at a reasonable price. After hunting and hunting, I found both the lamp base and shade at Target and I love it!

For a changing table, I wanted to use a bookcase, because I plan on collecting lots of books and some other things and filling it up, just like I did in big sister's room. I just felt that a bookcase with a changing pad on top would be more useful and versatile than an actual changing table. Although, I did feel tempted to get one of those sweet floating wall changing tables! It just wouldn't have been practical. I ended up grabbing a natural wood color bookcase from Ikea. I do plan to spiff the thing up one day by adding some vintage legs to it or some other touches, but for now...I am a tired and very pregnant lady and it works great!

The last project I took on was a canvas wall hanging with a wooden frame. I had seen some that you could customize for over a hundred bucks and I found some that I liked at Hobby Lobby for around $20 or so, but they didn't have exactly the quote that spoke to me or that I felt represented just exactly my feelings for this little guy. So I made my own. I don't have a fancy screen printer to be printing on canvas, so I took the long road and printed the quote I wanted on paper, glued the paper to card stock, exact-o knifed each letter out to use it as a stencil, then placed it on the canvas and filled in the stencil. Then I had some oak wood pieces cut at Home Depot and used some wood glue to frame them around the canvas. Lastly, I finished the project off with a touch of neutral colored felt balls. It's probably my favorite thing in the nursery (until my baby is in there of course, haha). I was tempted to go with a Star Wars quote (I love you to a galaxy far, far away, and back) or a few different scriptures, but I kept having this line run through my head from Elton John's song Your Song and it was just perfect. I did change one word from his lyrics that says "while" to "now"...much better...and there ya go!

A Ballet Recital

Eden Bug had her third ballet recital this week. She is in the 3-4 class and as I watched the little 2-3 year old class dance before her number, I was reminded of just how teeny tiny my girl was when she started dancing over a year ago. It was the very first structured activity that she took part in it was so fun watching her take in the instructions and work her little heart out to mimic the steps of the teacher.

Now, she was on to her third recital already and seemed so much bigger than the little 2-3 year olds :(. She always seems a little older at the recitals anyway, because it's the only time we ever see her with make-up on (which makes me want to make her wait till she is 25 to put it on each day!), but still, she needs to slow down!

Everything went well, except for a minor mascara incident...she had an itch in her eye and gave both eyes a pretty good rubbing with her hands. Without thinking, I let out a gasp at the sight, and just told her about how you can't do that with mascara...which sent her into "minor" melt down of tears (another good reason why waiting to wear makeup is good I guess ;) ). She was seeming tired and I definitely had some stressful pregnant mom hormones going on, but whew, we got over that, wiped the tears and smeared mascara off with a wet wipe and enjoyed the show while she waited for her turn.

I very much enjoyed watching her dancing to Be Our Guest this time around with her little feather duster. She seemed so focused and did great at following the steps. I definitely had to giggle as she, deep in concentration, overcompensated many of them....it was too cute. I had little tears in my eyes from giggling as I watched her.

She also did a tap number this time around (it was second to last in the program), but during that dance she seemed so tired...all those little girls seemed so sleepy and some of them were just improvising their own little dances, which definitely kept the audience entertained and the teacher. I was glad we ended up getting there early to take photos, because with the sleepy little girl we had by the end of the show, it would have been a nightmare to try and get some decent photos of her at that point. Although we did manage to get one cute of of her with grandma and grandpa Doxey and the sweet roses they brought for her :).

Here is a dump of my favorite photos of "Belle" from the night:

My Very First Pregnancy Update....At 35 Weeks

Since I haven’t written one pregnancy update, I figure I better get one up, before the little guy arrives and I have no time to do so! I am 35 weeks today – which is just crazy! This pregnancy has gone SO fast, which I attribute to having a busy little girl who keeps me very occupied and the fact that our 2 ½ year battle with secondary infertility makes this pregnancy seems more surreal than the first. At times I forget that I am even pregnant because it is still such a miracle that it still hasn’t fully sunken in.  I plan to tell that whole story on another post though, hopefully sooner than later, because I always want to remember this miracle and the trials leading up to it.

I thought I had at least 4 weeks until the little guy made his debut…and I still might, but I recently learned at my last appointment, that we might be holding our little guy in just 2 short weeks! I started nesting super early and getting things ready way long ago. The only things left were washing all the blankets, sheets, and clothing up through 3 months and then getting packed for the hospital (which includes buying items I was glad I had in my first delivery and items I learned that I wished I had had…and packing for Eden to stay at grandma and grandpa’s). I haven’t been the most energetic lately and had definitely not been feeling the nesting motivation to do these last few things, until I heard,

 “If that’s the case we will be having a baby at 37 weeks.”

“What?!?” I thought. Fortunately the adrenaline rush from that gave me a little extra motivation, and I can now say that all of the laundry is done, the packing lists have been made, the items have all been purchased, and I have now started actually packing for our hospital stay.

At my last appointment I had a routine ultrasound done, in which, we discovered that our little boy’s tummy is just tenths of a percentage above the 10^th percentile. If the tummy is below the 10^th percentile in size, they send you to a specialist. The fear is mostly that the baby is not getting everything they need through the umbilical cord. The ultrasound tech did measure the flow through the cord and it looked good though. The doctor believes that our baby is healthy, but just small. He decided to have me come in for weekly non-stress tests to have the umbilical flow monitored as a precaution. Then we will have a follow up ultrasounds at 37 weeks and if the tummy drops in percentile at all, we will be having a baby then! The thought of holding the little guy in just 2 short weeks definitely gets me all giddy and I am relieved that he will at least be full term, but at the same time, I wouldn’t mind letting him chill in my tummy a little longer – till the 39 week mark, unless he comes on his own, but I guess we will just see how it all plays out and what happens. I just want him to me safe and healthy. The doctor said if his tummy drops in percentile, it would just be good to get him out so that we can start working on nourishing him from the outside and getting him growing.

Other than that surprise, everything looked great on the ultrasound, which is a relief since we had a couple of hiccups on earlier ultrasounds . All pretty minor, but still you don’t want to hear anything about your baby other than, “everything looks perfect!” At our 20 week ultrasound we learned that our little guy had an echogenic focus on his heart, fluid on his kidneys, and what they believed was his gall bladder filled with fluid.  We learned that the echogenic foci is probably THE most common abnormality seen on ultrasounds though and that it would have no effect on the function of his heart. It is just an itty bitty build up of tissues. We also learned that it is more common for some reason, for boys to have fluid on their kidneys and eventually this problem resolved itself.  Lastly, though not super common, having fluid in the gall bladder isn’t unheard of and really isn’t a problem, but they sent us to a specialist to make sure that it was indeed his gall bladder they were seeing and not his intestines with fluid on them. Fortunately, it was just his gall bladder and that has since resolved itself as well. So now just his tiny tummy thing…

I also want to remember some of the things I’ve personally experienced during this pregnancy. It may be kind of late in the game to fill one of these surveys out, but better late than never!

How Far Along: 35 weeks

Total weight gain: Oh you know, just 29 pounds!!!

Maternity clothes: Yes, I’ve carried very low, just like my first pregnancy and have been in maternity clothes since like week 14. I would feel even more nauseated with a waist band pushing on my tummy.

Stretch Marks: No

Sleep: Besides a few restroom trips in the night, I sleep pretty soundly.  I always fall asleep on my left side and wake up on my back.

Best moment this week: Getting to see the cute little guy on an ultrasound…And for the first time ever, he let us actually get a little 3D peek at his face…at least the half that wasn’t hiding behind the placenta, but hey, it’s something!

Movement: Yes! For the little guy that he is, there are times he kicks so hard that I seriously wonder if it is possible for him to break my water!

Food cravings:  give me all the WATERMELON! I haven’t been slacking on putting down peanut M&Ms either lately (the Costco bags are on rebate till the end of the month!) Throughout the pregnancy I have craved lots of citrus, protein (cheese, chicken, ham/egg/cheese sandwiches), potatoes, peanut butter and strawberries.

Food aversions: S’more flavored ice cream (my first pregnancy ruined me of that one) and toothpaste…gag! Which puts me in a quite the predicament since I am a little OCD about my teeth being clean and usually brush for about 5 minutes – the worst 5 minutes of my day. During my morning sickness stage (that was in the afternoon/night till week 16) I didn’t want sweets at all – always a weird thing for me, and unfortunately I didn’t want vegetables, unless they were cooked.

Gender: BOY

Belly button in or out:  Uh, flat.

What I miss: not waddling, being able to bend over, and having more of a selection of clothing to wear. Oh and definitely not wear a compression stocking on my right leg everyday!

What I am looking forward to: holding and snuggling my baby and soaking up every single moment of the newborn phase that passes all too quickly! With Reed by my side, finally meeting our baby and also the moment that Eden meets her little brother for the first time.