 |
| First sonogram of our little bugger (or is it an alien peanut??) at 8 weeks, 3 days |
I've decided to try ("try" may be the operative word here, folks!) to compile pictures and info about what's going on in my world (and Joe's too!) on the cusp of bringing a new person into the world. If you don't want to read about baby stuff, I suggest you stop reading now and move along! We're totally new to child-rearing and I consider myself to be fairly realistic so I'm sure we're going to make tons of mistakes despite doing our best to be prepared and well-educated on the topic. We have very good intentions I assure you! We welcome any and all helpful advice as long as you understand that we may or may not choose to use said advice ;)
Currently, I'm 24 weeks, 6 days along and feeling pretty good - for the most part. I'm over the queasiness I had for much of the first trimester and my biggest obstacle currently is a lack of energy and difficulty sleeping well. My little kicker is quite active at all times of the day. "He's gonna be a soccer player... he is!!" (quote from Billy Madison). I've accepted that my normal clothes aren't going to be needed for awhile but this puffy version of myself still is a bit overwhelming for me to encounter in the mirror. I do realize that it's going to be sooo worth it in the end but can't help a touch of vanity here and there! I've been eating well (maybe a little too well!!), taking my vitamins, going to all of my doctor's appointments, reading up on pregnancy, loving that I can do tons of online research and shopping via my Droid 2, and trying to keep stress to a minimum.
As you may have determined from the title of the blog, we are at least somewhat decided upon a name for our offspring, who is due on June 13th. What a task, giving someone a name that they'll (supposedly) use for their entire life! I name lots of things: my car is Betty, my palm tree is Penelope, a large bug that was hanging out on the hibiscus last year's name was Steve (actually Joe provided that one), etc. Let's just say that naming a baby was a more difficult task and we went through quite a list of "no, I knew someone with that name and they weren't nice" and "no, that's too weird" and "no, I just don't like that one" and "meh. not feeling it".
I appreciate technology and have great respect for those in the health profession but don't know how much of anything can be determined from that glorious mugshot at the beginning of this post! The following sono's were taken at 21 weeks, 4 days and while they're still somewhat cryptic, even I can pick out some human-like features from them! The 3-D ones are pretty neat too:
Joe came with me to both sonogram appointments and at the latest one, we got to see our little bugger moving around and he even made a fist for us! Hearing his heartbeat is quite a trip too. Plus, we finally got to find out that he is indeed a boy - which is what we were hoping for and for whatever reason feel better equipped to handle. Previously, we were all over the place in trying to figure out what to do with decorating the nursery and baby names, etc. I know that some people want the gender of their baby to be a surprise until birth but I feel like there's so much that we're just not going to know, it's nice to have any details we can get!
We are so very fortunate that Joe's sister had a baby boy a little over a year ago. Not only will Izaak have a cousin that's close in age, they also passed along a bunch of goodies for our use. I am extremely happy for hand-me-downs! Thanks again, Michelle and Tim, for your generosity, we are so grateful!!
The Nursery.
Well, I have many grand plans for the baby's room. We've decided on black furniture (perhaps more accurately, I decided and Joe said "ok") and my first purchase was this rocking chair from a little second-hand boutique down the road that my awesome neighbor, Jenn, discovered. Zeke, the laser-eyed cat, is shown modeling it below:
It's plain, it's black, it's in great shape, the price was right, what more could you ask for? Oh, I know! A chair pad!! Still working on that. We've also ordered the crib I picked out (thanks, Mom and Dad, for picking up the tab on this - we feel so spoiled!).
The nursery is not large by any stretch of the imagination, so I think we're going to just get a dresser and put a changing pad on top in order to save space and not have an extra piece of furniture to deal with when we're out of the diapers stage. I have looked at some changing table/dresser combos that look appealing; some have more of a cage around the changing part, which looks like it would be helpful if our little guy is a roly-poly little squirmer! The room is painted a nice dusky blue (we painted before we knew about baby on board) and I also plan to do a couple of paintings on canvas for the room too. I'm leaning towards an "owl" theme at this point. The theme has also been robots, space, pop-art elephants, or some combination of those so there's still a chance it could change but I'm fairly sure I'm sticking with owls now. How cute is the pattern of the stroller/carseat and Pack 'N Play that we're looking at purchasing?!:
Well, I feel this is plenty-long for a first post and today is clean-up-my-office day so I better get to it. Hopefully I'll be back to post again soon!
