36 Weeks

Nine months pregnant! That's a big milestone. Truth is as of the writing of this post, I'm just about 37 weeks, or full term. Yippee. Check out this week's update below and compare it to where we've come from on our bumpdates page.

Room Reveal: The Nursery

Our baby girl's nursery is finally done and I'm super excited about it. The nursery is located in what was originally our office on the main level of the house (the new office is now located on the lower level). Because the master bedroom is on the main level of the house while the other bedrooms are on the lower level, it made sense to make this room the nursery so that we would be close to the babe in the early year(s) of her life. I didn't want the room too be too girly and I think we accomplished that. There are lots of handmade goodies in the babe's room, I'll try to point them out as we go.

All of the crib bedding was made by my mom (thanks mom!). It didn't take me long to fall in love with the organic material from Birch Fabrics and the "woodland" animal theme set the tone throughout the room. I made the flag bunting and the two cloud mobiles.

The dresser matches the crib. The drawers are already stocked with washed and folded baby clothes including our stash of gdiapers - cloth diapers we plan on using as soon as the babe outgrows newborn diapers. I'm sure I'll blog about that adventure in the future. The changing pad cover was also made by grandma. I love, love, love the polar bear family print hung above the changing table. Polar bears are my favorite.

Since the room isn't technically a bedroom, it didn't have a closet so we picked up a wardrobe at Ikea. As you can see it hasn't taken me long to fill it with adorable little human clothes.

One of my favorite things in the room is our glider. It's so cozy and comfortable and I think it will serve us well during those midnight feedings. The crazy looking contraption next to the glider is the MomaRoo. It is supposed to be guaranteed to dance and sing any fussy baby to sleep. We'll see, I'll report back on that one. The quilt on the back of the glider was handmade by my amazing friend, Suzanne. She's really something, isn't she? Remember she made us this quilt for our housewarming? Once the babe is born she will embroider her name and birthday on the quilt as well. I'll be sure to share it with you. Anyway, I LOVE it. Sues, you are the best!

The print on the wall was given to us by my sister-in-law, Mandy and her family. She picked out the perfect print to go with the nursery. My mom gave me the book on the lower shelf several years ago. I'm looking forward to reading it to our babe someday soon! The owl on the shelf is filled with lavender, which is supposed to promote calmness and sleep. Wishful thinking?

The bookshelf was made by stacking two Ikea shelves on top of each other. James screwed them together and then attached them to the wall to be sure there are no accidents. To add additional seating to the room, we made a bench out of the lower shelf. My mom made the cushion that Mr. and Mrs. Fox are hanging out on. I made the framed print in Photoshop. Love that quote. I also love the lamp. I picked up that beauty at Target for like $14.

So there you have it, the 360 degree tour of the new nursery! Turns out I'm not the only one who already loves this room. Summit is a big fan. We often find her stray toys in there or find her sleeping or relaxing in the room. Not sure if she's just curious or she's just excited about becoming a big sister!

For anyone interested, here's a run down of our nursery goodies:

Crib and Dresser: Babyletto Hudson Collection

Rug: Overstock

Wardrobe, Bookshelf, Side Table, Ottoman, Wall Shelves, Frames - Ikea

Glider: Room and Board

Baby Chair: 4Moms MomaRoo

Pillows: Ikea and Target

Curtains: Target

Bunting and Mobiles: Handmade

Crib Bedding and Quilts: Handmade (fabric by Birch Fabrics)

Changing cover, ottoman cover and bench cushion: Handmade

Lamp: Target

Polar Bear Print: Art.com

Mr. & Mrs. Fox: Handmade

Stuffed animals: Ikea, Pier One, Sleep Sheep

Yellow Dog: One of a kind

Now all we need is the baby! Coming soon...

35 Weeks

Wowzas, I can count the number of weeks we have left on ONE hand! We've come a long way. I'm pretty sure I wake up every morning a little bigger than the previous day. Check out our bumpdates page to see for yourself!

Mr. & Mrs. Fox...and a Side of Blood, Sweat and Tears

Back in September I blogged about playing in a golf tournament at 27 weeks pregnant and with nine fingers. I'm finally ready to share the story about the "nine finger" comment. Turns out pregnancy brain, a side of extreme tiredness and sewing machines don't mix. Before I get to that, I'd like to show you the final product - Mr. and Mrs. Fox! I made them myself after seeing other plush woodland creatures online (lots on Etsy) that I really wanted to buy but couldn't bring myself to spend the money when I thought I could probably make them myself. So here they are...a little wonky in some places, but cute (I think) and one of a kind. I hope our baby girl likes them! It took me forever to figure out how to make them (I was just going off a picture) and as you'll see when you scroll down, I shed more than a few drops of sweat, tears and yes, blood for these dolls!

So now that I smothered you with cute pictures, here come the gory ones. So...true story. I sewed myself into my sewing machine while working on this project. Yup, needle right through my finger. Directly into the nail and out the other side. This happened at 9:30 pm on a night when James was out of town on a business trip. THANK GOODNESS I had my cell phone close enough to me (I was literally attached to the machine, there was no getting out of it on my own!) to call my sister-in-law, Mandy who lives next door to come rescue me. And mind you, at this time, Mandy was 38 weeks pregnant and my brother Curt, a pilot, was working and wasn't home either. Once the initial shock of the situation wore off and panic set in, I literally began to sweat. Really bad. And cry a little too, because well, it hurt pretty bad. Mandy helped me extract myself from the machine, which in retrospect was really the worst part of the whole event. Once we saw what we were dealing with we decided it was going to take a trip to the ER to get the needle out. So there we were, two pregnant ladies with two sleepy kiddos in tow, waddling into the ER at 10:30 at night. The good thing about being pregnant and having a sharp object stuck in you is that they get you in to be seen right away so we didn't have to wait long. They numbed my finger and then yanked the needle out. Blood. Yeesh. I'm fine now. After a round of antibiotics to rule out infection and a month or so of having a numb fingertip, my finger is no worse for the wear. Still, it's a pretty good story, don't you think? When she gets old enough, I'll have to tell our daughter exactly what went into making those dolls for her!

I managed to take these photos before the shock really wore off and the pain set in.

The Summit Cam

One of James' jobs recently was to reasearch and buy a baby monitor. Like most new parents we wanted a video monitor, preferably one that could link to our iPhones or iPads. Turns out video baby monitors are a hot product and most of them go for upwards of about $300 (here and here)! Yikes. No thank you. Of course, James being James figured out how we could do exactly the same thing with this wifi camera. It does all the same things that the "baby" cams do (high res video, two way audio, night vision), it's just not marketed as a baby product and it cost us a quarter of the price! Sold. Anyway, of course we had to try it out on Summit. Check out a few of the funnier moments of how she spends her super stressful days while we are at work. It's fun checking in on her from afar. James even likes to play games on her by turning the lights or music on/off using the smarthome settings he created for the house. Poor dog.

She's on to us...

Stretching out with "ducky"

Nightvision

Mom's home!

November Snow, Say it Ain't So...

Last week we were carving pumpkins in darkness brought on by hurricane Sandy. Last year we experienced hurricane Irene in September and a huge snowstorm in October that brought a foot of snow and an even longer stretch of power outage. Two winters ago we experienced storm after storm and record snowfall totals. And last night mother nature gifted us with the first snowfall of fall 2012. These major weather events seem to be getting stronger, more frequent and more off season every year. We've had two hurricanes in two years here in New England. That's pretty much unheard of. No matter what you think the cause of these changes are (global warming), it's concerning. Also, now that parenthood is knocking on our front door, it makes James and I wonder what strange weather events our children will experience throughout their lives and how humans will learn to adjust to an altered environment. It's fascinating and yet still sadly unfortunate.

Waking up to white

34 Weeks

It's Wednesday and that means it's time for our weekly bumpdate. Want to see how far we've come (grown!)? Check out our bumpdates page for all of our weekly updates. Only 6 weeks to go!