34 Weeks

With all of the errands we ran yesterday we totally forgot to take a belly picture until we were already in pjs for the night! Oops!  So this is a picture from 34 weeks 1 day.  I feel like I look like I'm about to pop, yet I still have about 6 weeks left!

According to What to Expect, Adalyn is the size of a large cantaloupe, up to 22 inches and 5.5 lbs.  We will see her actual size tomorrow!  I can't wait!  I really hope they do another 4D picture so we can see her little face again!  It's so fun to get a peek inside my belly! She is constantly moving all around so I hope she's that active to get her picture taken!  Of course there is also a medical reason for the ultrasound (as I've stated before).  We are praying that my placenta has moved (in the info online that I have read it has a good chance of moving) so that I can have a natural birth.

This past week we've gotten the nursery almost finished!  There are just a few more finishing touches that I need to make before I do a photo shoot of the room!  But I am soo loving it!  I love seeing my vision come to life!  I am soo blessed to have talented friends that are so willing to help make this nursery perfect!  It's just amazing thinking that in less than 6 weeks I will be rocking my baby in that room!

Louisville Shower

Saturday was my shower in Louisville that my sister-in-law, Heather threw for me.  This was a shower from Jonathan's family and it was at a little cafe in downtown La Grange.  It was so sweet!

The cafe had the room all decorated and it was so cute!  These were on the tables.

Heather got this adorable cake!  Seriously. How cute?  And it tasted amazing!!

Unfortunately I didn't get a picture with everyone at the shower.  I totally forgot (what's new right?)  Jonathan's mom, aunts and cousins were soo generous.  We got some great things off of our registry that we really needed!  And we got a few cutsie gifts too:) My mother-in-law gave me a few of these adorable monogrammed burp cloths.

This one says "I spit blue" for our little UK cheerleader of course!

Here is a picture of my mom, me, Heather and my mother-in-law.

Thanks for a wonderful shower!  It was a very special day!

Craft Fun

Last night Jes and Justin came over and we put them to work!  Seriously, at this point, if you come to our house we will put a paint brush or fabric in your hand and tell you to go to town!  We have a deadline people!  Just kidding.  Jes has been helping me on some painting projects so they came over to work on those.  Let's first just say that Jes is an amazing artist and back in our college days I would have never imagined that she would be painting things for my baby's nursery!  She is also an extremely gifted photographer and I cannot wait for our maternity shoot that we're going to do in two weekends!  I wish I had just an ounce of that creativity! 

Jes helped me decorate our old house and I was more than thrilled that they decided to move back to town a couple weeks ago because I need her interior decorator eye for the new house...especially the nursery.  She painted a Bible verse on a canvas and it looks soo great!  She brought it over to see it in the nursery and I LOVE it!  It's almost finished and then you can bet that it will be hung asap and I will post pics!

I told her that I was going to order some vinyl letters for Adalyn's name over her crib and she asked why I would do that... um...how else am I going to put her name over her crib?  Leave it to Jes, yes, she will paint whatever font I choose!  Seriously.  So we worked on that last night!

Here is Jes painting this plywood with the left over pink from the bottom half of the nursery walls.

While Jes was painting and I was keeping her company and searching fonts online, our husbands were out in the garage being manly and building things... like this frame!  We couldn't help but pose with it!  I just bought some trim from Lowe's for $6 each (we used 2) and they cut the edges and made it into a frame!  $12 for a cute frame is pretty good!  Thanks guys!!

You'll have to excuse my appearance... it was 11 pm!  Which, if you know me is past my bedtime:)  But when you're working on projects time just flies!  That happens all the time when I'm sewing:)

Unfortunately I don't have an after picture yet to post...but rest assured that as soon as this little project is hung on the wall, I will have my camera in hand!!

Thanks Jes and Justin!!!  We're so glad to have you back in town...not just so you can help us on projects:)  We're just happy to have you back in our lives! :)

33 Weeks

Otherwise known as 50 days left (give or take...)!  I realize I've been a bad blogger and lately haven't had many other posts than just my weekly belly posts.  Hopefully I'll get some time in the coming weeks to actually sit down and blog!  But until then, back to the belly post.  Here is my 33 week picture from Tuesday!

According to What to Expect, Adalyn is about the size of a pineapple and is 19-22 in long and 4.9 lbs.  Next Thursday we will know a little more accurately since I will be going in for my ultrasound then!  We're praying that my placenta has moved by then!!  My main pregnancy issue (other than the normal aches and pains, heartburn - which I had never had before in my life!, and my belly getting in the way) is that my feet, ankles and legs are soo swollen!  I know it's going to be a bad day when I wake up in the morning and the swelling didn't go down!  But since my blood pressure has been low, my doctor is not worried about it.  It's just really nasty looking and uncomfortable.  At least it's not a real medical issue! 

Saturday we went to our all day birthing class.  It was actually not as gory or boring as I had expected.  We learned everything about labor, delivery, breast feeding, caring for baby, and took a tour of the labor, delivery and post-partum wing of the hospital.  I'm glad we took the class! 

The next day Jonathan and I did the trade-in deal at Babies R Us.  Back 2+ years ago when we first started trying to get pregnant and thought we would be normal and be pregnant right away, our neighbor was selling a running stroller in a garage sale and we bought it.  We've held onto it this entire time.  What we have found, when taking it on walks or runs with our friends' kids is that it didn't tighten enough to keep the kid safely and comfortably in the stroller.  So, since we received the amazing running stroller (that also holds our infant car seat) for my last shower, we took this garage sale stroller and traded it in for 25% off of the infant car seat!  Yay!  That was about $50 off the car seat!  Whoohoo!!  We also used a 20% off coupon to get the pack n play.  We figured that most people aren't going to buy the large items off our registry so we're just trying to space out buying them throughout the pregnancy and use our 20% off coupons on them!  I feel like we have a whole house of baby gear now!  It's getting so real!!

This Saturday is my shower with Jonathan's family.  We are having it at a Tea House.  I think that will be so much fun.  My parents are coming in town on Thursday so that my mom can go to the shower with me (it's about 1.5 hrs away).  Hopefully with my parents extra hands, we can get even more stuff completed in the nursery.  It's soo close to being finished!  I can't wait to post pictures!!!

32 Weeks

I'm a few days late posting my belly picture, but really what's new:)  Tuesday marked the end of my 32nd week!  I can't believe I have less than 8 weeks left (hopefully) until I see my baby girl!!  It's getting so exciting to see things start to come together!  I finished making the curtains for the nursery and with those and the chandelier hanging; it's starting to look so cute! (Pictures to come later.)  The last piece of nursery furniture came in on Saturday!  The store we ordered the nursery furniture from had the crib and changing table/dresser combo in stock so we only had to order the chest.  It's finally in, so we are supposed to go pick it up today! Unfortunately they don't deliver so I had to find a friend with a truck willing to help us and yes, it is raining today.  I'm praying it's not raining this afternoon!!

Here is my 32 week picture.  I can definitely tell that my belly is getting bigger!  It seems to be in the way all the time now! :)

Coda wanted in a picture too:)  He wants me to remember that he's still my baby!

According to What to Expect, Adalyn is about 19 in and 4.5 lbs (the size of a Honeydew).  She should now be opening her eyes when she is awake and closing them when she is asleep.  And her immune system should be developed!  The level of amniotic fluid has reached its max so I it feels like I can constantly feel her moving and shifting around!  Now there is more baby than fluid!  No wonder why I feel more intense jabs:)

We go in today for my 32 week appointment to hear her heartbeat!  After this appointment we will start to go every two weeks!  My 34 week appointment will also include another ultrasound which I can't wait for!

This Saturday is our all day birthing class!  How exciting!  Our hospital offers the regular weekly classes or an all day Saturday class that covers all of that same info in one setting, so we opted for the all day class with the recommendation from our Doctor.  I'm sure it will be a long day, but I think it will be exciting to think that not long from now we will actually be doing all of this!

Toledo Baby Shower

Saturday was my first shower!!!  It was so surreal that my first shower was already here!  Time has just flown by the past few weeks!  My aunts had this shower for me and it was beautiful!  We had an open house style of shower, which means there was no agenda, no games and people could mingle, eat at their leisure and watch gift opening when they wanted.  It turned out well being laid back that way.  Here are some pictures of the food table!  My mom and my aunts did a great job!

Here is my mom and me

Here is my Aunt Barb and Aunt Ginny. (My Aunt Cheryl was there with us in spirit since she couldn't get in town to celebrate with us.)

On the invitation it was requested that everyone bring a book for Adalyn instead of a card.  I now have an absolutely wonderful basket full of amazing books with beautiful things written in them to Adalyn.  It was a great way to start her book collection!  We got card books and classic books.  I can't wait to read them to her!  And of course my mom's books made my cry.  (I'm not much of a crier without these crazy pregnancy hormones!)  My mom gave me her favorite childhood book and then two of my childhood books that were meaningful to me that she read countless times to me.  She wrote special notes to Adalyn in each of them.  Such a wonderful keepsake!  Here's a picture of my blubbering self!

I got a lot of cute girly outfits!!  Girls are just so fun:)

I got a lot of beautiful blankets, lovies, useful baby stuff, and this:

Yes, I think I squealed!  All of my aunts and cousins went together to get this for me!  The first thing Jonathan did when we got home was put it together!

I asked J if I was weird that every time I think about this jogging stroller I get all excited over again thinking about using it!  (I wish I could use it right now but my neighbors might wonder about the overly prego running with an empty jogging stroller.)

Thanks to my cousin Danielle for taking tons of pictures for me!  I wish I would have gotten a picture with her and my other cousin Danae!  Oops! 

I appreciate every person who came to celebrate our wonderful miracle!  It was a very special day!!

31 Weeks and I'm sorry for being gone so long...

I know I have been absent from the blogging world for way too many days!  Life has been hectic crazy and I've literally not had a moment to sit down to relax in the evenings let alone gather thoughts and pictures for a post!  I haven't even logged in to blogger to read other blogs.  I feel so behind not knowing what is going on in everyone's lives each day!

We had a busy holiday weekend.  Friday night Jonathan put our new glider together (we love it! Thanks mom and dad!) and then installed new shelving in the nursery closet.  I went to a baby shower for one of my friends and then a wedding for another friend on Saturday.  On Sunday we spent the entire day shopping at every single furniture store in town looking for Labor Day sales on a new couch.  Let's just say that shopping for furniture ranks up there with shopping for a new car.  It's a big purchase, lots of things to consider (color, size, style) and then you have commission sales people literally breathing down your neck at every store!  We have never bought a couch before because the one we are using was given to us second hand when we got married and it needs desperately to be replaced!  It was my number one item to replace when we moved, and we are just now getting around to replacing it!  Thankfully we finally found a wonderful family owned store that was having a 50% off sale on everything!  So in two weeks we will have a new couch. Yay!  I guess walking until my legs fell off on Sunday was worth it!

Monday we worked on the house all day!  Jonathan steamed the carpets and old couch (to get it ready to move to the basement!) and hung the chandelier in the nursery.  I worked on sewing curtains all.day.long.  At 9:30pm Jonathan finally dragged me away from pinning fabric.  It was probably good he did that when he did because I had reached my max!

Every night this week we have been working hard on different projects.  Curtains are still not done.  (Lining curtains takes a lot of patience!) But I did get the fabric cut for a pillow and got the fabric monogrammed.  And I also got 3 yards worth of 2 inch squares of fabric cut for another project.

So, since I've given an excuse, will you all forgive me for being so quiet this week??  I really do have tons of stuff to blog about...just no time to do it!

On with the 31 week belly picture...  I hit 31 weeks on Tuesday!  That means that I am now in single digit weeks!  CRAZY!!

According to What to Expect, Adalyn is now about 19 inches long and 3.9 lbs.  Her digestive system should be all formed now.  And her skin is finally turning opaque from accumulating more fat!  She's looking more and more like a newborn!  She moves around so much now!  I love feeling her tumble around...although it is getting a little painful at times:)  Next week we have an appointment to hear her heartbeat and from then on our appointments will be every two weeks! 

This weekend is my first shower.  Jonathan and I (and Dakota too) will be going to my parents tomorrow for my shower that my aunts are throwing for me!  Should be fun!!  I hope to see lots of family and some old friends!  Hopefully I'll have a chance to blog about it:)

30 Weeks!!!

Yesterday was 30 weeks!!  I just can't believe how fast these milestones are coming!  I only have 10 weeks left.  70 days. Wow!  That means I have got to get on top of these projects for the nursery:)  Actually I spent the entire evening last night at my sewing machine and I'm so excited about how my first project is coming along!  I'm hoping to have it completed by the end of this weekend!!  If you follow me on twitter, I posted a picture last night of Dakota laying smack dab in the middle of my project:)

Because I feel like this is a milestone, I decided to go back and post some belly pictures to see how I've grown!

10 Weeks

20 Weeks

30 Weeks

After looking at those pictures, I can only say WOW.  I can't remember looking like that first picture.  I wish I was one of those girls that the only thing that grew was my belly, but I'm not.  Oh well.  I'm happy to have a healthy baby girl growing inside of me.  Looking at the progression of size every 10 weeks, I can't even fathom what my 40 week picture will look like!  I feel like I don't have any more room to grow! :)  I know that those stretch marks will give me more room though:)

According to What to Expect, Adalyn is the size of a head of lettuce, 18 in and 3.2 lbs.  (Not really sure how a head of lettuce is 18 in OR 3.2 lbs but that's what it says.)  She now has developed all 5 senses even though she can't use her sense of smell yet.  She is so active!  My belly is constantly moving, especially in the evenings.  Jonathan and I just sit at watch it move all around.  Now instead of just feeling random jabs, I feel pressure from her moving around.  It feels like she's doing twirls sometimes!

I'm feeling pretty good.  My swelling has been much better lately which I am thrilled about.  I just have the normal aches and pains of being 30 weeks pregnant:)  I can't wait for fall weather so I can (hopefully) not feel hot all the time!