40 Weeks!

Well I've officially hit the 40 week mark! Sophie hasn't decided to make her debut just yet, although her due date is officially tomorrow so we'll see! I've been off of work now for about a week and a half. I'm starting to get a little stir crazy. Mostly because i don't really feel like going out much. It's been in the 80's for the past week or so and very humid so sitting outside isn't too fun. I've been staying busy keeping up on little house chores like dishes, laundry and just general picking up and decluttering. I have a doctors appointment tomorrow morning, hopefully there has been some sort of progression since there wasn't at my last visit. Currently, i'm almost 2cm dilated, 80% effaced and the baby is super low at -1 station.

All in all, i feel pretty good most of the time. It's uncomfortable to sit for long periods of time after i eat, and i can't really eat too much at one sitting. That's one thing about being petite, right now the baby is both sitting very low, and high still at the same time. So i have the constant bladder pressure and the pressure on my lungs making it hard to breathe sometimes :-(

I'm definitely super ready to be done being pregnant and meet this little girl inside me. I can't wait to see what she looks like and what her personality is like.

Stay tuned for the big announcement :-)

Sorry it's been so long...

Well i got a little busy the past couple weeks...i meant to put up a post, but never got around to it. It's been a pretty busy couple past weeks. I've had 2 baby showers, 1 wedding shower, and we've been attending our baby classes. It might not sound like a ton, but that pretty much means our weekends have been crammed and at least one night every week, we're not home after work.

We have managed to get a few things on our "before baby" list done around the house tho. We planted our vegetable garden...not sure if i mentioned that in my last post or not. We  have tomatoes, peppers (red, green & hot), cucumbers (although they just died R.I.P. cukes!), lettuce, chives & strawberries. It might be a little much for our garden bed, but hopefully they'll do ok. We're very excited to have fresh veggies just outside of our backdoor in a couple months!

Since all of our baby showers are done now, we can start organizing all of the baby stuff. We started putting stuff away in babys room, it's a total mess right now. We do still need to hit up Target and BabiesRUs to get a few last items we didn't get yet. It's nice to have everything now!

We started organizing the basement (again!) We did it once last summer and again after we moved our office down there, but it doesn't take long to get all junked up again, especially with all of the random baby stuff that's been coming in the door. So once again we're at it. We're purging as much as we can too, if we aren't using it, it's going. Hopefully this coming weekend we can get that project wrapped up and we'll have a clean basement again to watch tv or excersise in. I think nesting is kicking in not only for me, but for Paul too. I guess we figure that starting with a clean organized house will make the hecticness of bringing the baby home a little less hectic (we'll see if that is really the case soon enough!)

Hmm...what else..well like i said earlier, we had two baby shower in the past two weekends. It was a lot, especially for me, since i get tired pretty easy now and anything involving bending over pretty much isn't happening to much anymore. We are very blessed to have great family and friends who got us so much great stuff to prepare for baby, it was so nice to see everyone!

One big thing that happened last friday too was an ultrasound. At my last doctors appointment, she said i didn't seem to grow, so she sent me for an ultrasound to check things out. We were hoping for an ultrasound just to do another gender check! The technician said that everything looked great and the baby was about 5lbs and average size. We also got to see a partial 3d scan of the baby's face and got our gender double-check...we're now relieved that there's still a little girl in there!

I'm hoping the next few weekends will be a little more slow-paced. We do have a few events to go to, but we should have some time to get stuff done around the house too!

ttys everyone!

My soon to be new job!

Some of you already know this, but i have officially made the decision to stay home full-time after the baby comes. Neither Paul or I was really very comfortable with the idea of putting a 6 week old in daycare. If we had a family member who could watch the baby, we'd probably be all for it, but there really isn't anyone available without having to drive up to the flint area every day. There was also the money issue. Daycare is quite expensive. After adding everything up, we figured we wouldn't have enough left over to really make it worthwhile for us to both keep working. In order to make the Stay at Home Mom thing actually happen, we've been working very hard the past few months to pay off enough things (we even sold the Jeep!) to free up money in our monthly budget. We will still be on a pretty tight budget after all of this, but i'd rather live that life than hardly see my baby. I think we can safely say now that we're reached our goal and I'll officially be a Stay at Home Mom after June 15(my last day of work if everything goes smoothly and i'm ok to work that long).

I'm getting excited now that it's only a month away. Not only will it be better for the baby, but Maggie will be happy too i think. We've always felt bad leaving her alone all day at home. She's adjusted well to it, but i think she'll like having company at home. I'm looking forward to being home full time...the house will be clean, dishes will be done, laundry will get done(hopefully!), I can keep an eye on our veggie garden, I can get out and exercise (in efforts to lose the baby weight of course!), and more importantly bond with our baby! And hopefully when paul gets home everyday we'll be able to just hang out as a family!

Baby Update:

Well I'm officially starting my 35th week! We've had a pretty busy week. We started our Childbirth classes and got a new car! This weekend we have another shower! I"m excited to see all of my friends and pauls family and of course get more baby stuff! There's still a lot of stuff we need!

I think i'm officially starting to get uncomfortable now. Of course there are still moments where i feel great and i almost forget that i'm pregnant, but most of the time I definitely feel the effects of carrying around this big belly. It's very easy for me to over-do it. I get pretty tired at the end of the work day and just taking a little walk around the neighborhood (at a snails pace!) makes me tired! Bending over is pretty tough and i've been having sciatica pain on and off for while now. I don't look forward to going to bed at night, except for the fact of actually sleeping. It's hard to get comfortable which makes it hard to fall asleep sometimes and the many bathroom trips keep me from getting a undisturbed good nights sleep. There!...there's my rant on everything that I don't like about pregnancy haha. I have to say tho, i think i've been pretty lucky..the usual aches and pains are the only main problems i've had so far.

Way overdue post!

i meant to write last week, but i just kept pushing it to the end of my to-do list. Better late than never right?
Well, i'm heading into week 34 now! We thankfully had a pretty low-key weekend last weekend which was nice. We were able to get some stuff around the house done! We're slowly widdling away at our "Before Baby" To-Do list. We're making some good progress. We have our veggie planter box all ready to put plants in and i've been organizing all of our little junk areas around the house.

Last week we also celebrated Maggies 4th birthday! We made her our traditional b-day cake (just her food all mashed up) She's grown up a lot in the past 3 years that we've had her. I know that sounds silly to say about  a dog, but it's true. The first year we had her, she tore up so much stuff around the house. Now, she doesn't touch a think except her own toys and she even is a stickler about a 10oclock bedtime hehe! In general she's just calmed down a ton. We were worried that with her being a border collie, she's be a spaz all the time, but she's really an awesome dog! I think she will be a great big sister!

Oh, and here's a belly shot from last week! Enjoy!

Earth Day!

I thought i'd do an Earth Day related post since it is Earth Day tomorrow and all! I have to say, we've been trying a lot harder around our house to be earth friendly. Here are some things on our plan so far:

#1: Start Recycling - We already recycle cans (most people do), but we want to make a better effort to recycle other things too. Our condo has it set up to pick up recycling, we just need to get a bin. Our plan is to set up bins for the different items that can be recycled and either put it out every week or take it somewhere. This month we plan on starting this.

#2: Growing a Veggie Garden - I'm not sure if this really counts as an earth-friendly plan or not, but it's a way we can get some healthy and organic food in our diet regularly. We've done this for the past couple summers, but this year we took it a step further and built a garden box on our back deck. We haven't always had the best luck growing veggies in buckets. I think we screwed up a little on our watering schedule. Our back deck gets tons of sun during the day so the plans dry out quickly. I think having a garden box will allow the plant roots to grow as needed, and since the box is pretty much just sitting on the deck with no bottom, the water can drain out easier. I'm excited for the weather to warm up so we can go get our plans and get it going.

#3: Using Cloth diapers - We don't plan on starting to do this until the baby is a couple months old or so, but we already bought our diapers so we're all ready. I have to say, the main reason we chose to do this isn't just to help the planet, but to save some cash! We will be using more water going this route since we'll have to wash diapers every couple days, but I think that's a lot better than filling up a landfill full of disposables.

#4: Using less water bottles - Last night i went and bought us each one of those Brita Water Bottles. We usually buy cases of bottled water, and half of them end up half drank and we dump out the water. We both have our water bottles with us at work, so this plan is already in action!

#5: Enjoying the earth more - I know one thing we've talked about is making a better effort to not spend so much of our life in front of either the TV or Computer. It seems like almost every night we come home and spend most of the evening parked on the couch. It's hard sometimes at the moment because i do need to rest a little more, but after the baby comes we plan to do a lot less time zapping our brains in front of the TV. We've already downsized our cable a ton. We got rid of the DVR and the 200+ channels and downgraded to just basic cable channels. Most of the shows we watch are on these channels, but it still keeps us from getting caught up in a dumb movie on a movie channel just because it's on. We can't tape anymore shows, so we won't spend a saturday getting caught up on what we've taped. The point of this whole plan is to make us get up off the couch a lot more and either get chores done around the house, spend more time on hobbies, or get outside for a bit. We'll see how that goes after the baby comes. I"m sure at first it will be hard, but i think we'll get a schedule goin after a month or so. I plan to take the baby (and dog) on lots of walks!

So those are the things we've been working on in our house to try and be more earth-friendly and enjoy nature a bit more. i think within the next month, we should be starting to work on them all if not doing them already.

30 Week Update!

Today, i've officially finished 30 weeks, another milestone! Even tho we still have 10 weeks to go, it feels like it's right around the corner. The month of May should seem to fly by, we are pretty busy. We have baby classes, baby showers, a wedding shower & birthdays! I hope my energy level is still ok by then so i can get through it all!

How far along? 30 weeks today!

Weight gain/loss: about 20lbs...trying to to gain too much weight other than the baby.

Maternity clothes? I definitely need maternity clothes now! Yoga pants are my saviour too cuz they're comfy and stretchy!

Stretch marks? still none yet (yay!)


Sleep? I've been sleeping pretty good lately. I could use a little more of it at night!

Best moment this week? Hopefully our breastfeeding class tonight...it's our first baby class!

Food cravings: I was craving pizza a few times last week, but it's still pretty random. I've been working on eating less sugar and eating healthier so i don't inflate in my last few weeks.

Gender: As far as we know, it's still a girl!

Belly button in or out? Still a bit of an innie...waiting to officially pop out!

Movement? Tons of movement!! This kid is a wiggle worm..ALL DAY!

What I miss? Tons of things right now...i miss having my normal body and fitting into normal clothes. I miss being able to go shopping for summer stuff! I miss not having constant back pain. I miss going a full day without a baby kicking me like crazy! I am very grateful and feel blessed that I am pregnant, but am really looking forward to having our baby here with us and to get myself somewhat back to normal....i think i'm just getting to the "get this thing out of me" stage hehe!

What I'm looking forward to: My first baby shower this weekend!!

29 Weeks...

So tomorrow will be 29 weeks...so i'll be starting week 30! It feels good to be two thirds done. Lately we've just been slowly plugging away at getting things ready for baby. We've come a long way on her room (pic below) We pretty much just need to accesorize now..oh and add lots of baby goodies! We've been very lucky so far to have been given/loaned many things so we already have some stuff. My first baby shower is a week from this weekend. I'm really looking forward to seeing my moms side of the family and showing off my baby bump. My next shower isn't until May, so we have about a month break in between.

I think i'm decided on going with cloth diapers. We won't start them until a couple/few months in, but i think it's going to save us a ton of money in the future. It takes a little extra work to wash them a few times a week, but with a box of diapers costing 40+ bucks...that's a big savings. I think when most people think of cloth diapers they think of the ones with the white prefold and the plastic pants that you wear over it. Now, cloth diapers are designed very similarly to disposables. If i'm going to staying home, i'm willing to put in the extra effort in order to save some cash!

I'm off to get lunch...I promise to post again soon!