Our Nursery

Ok, now that the baby shower has happened (more to come on that) a lot of people got the chance to see the nursery in person, I'm ready to show you guys!

Our nursery has been a real labor of love.  Both Greg and I got really into making it a special place for our little girl and I'm so thrilled with how it's turned out.  The major starting points were that we liked dark wood furniture, peach walls (I was open to lilac/purple too, but Greg voted for peach), and the Pottery Barn Sweet Lambie bedding.  From there, we kind of just went with whatever we felt like went with those things.  Our color palette was kind of peach/white/taupe/dark brown (we also have some light green accents here and there).  We wanted it to be baby/kid friendly, but not too cutsie/cartoonish.  Modern, but classic.  Feminine, but not too girly (I didn't want everything to be pink!).  I think we achieved our goal!

My camera skills aren't the best, but hopefully you can kind of see everything from my pictures.  Enjoy!

Crib- Graco Stanton in Espresso (we got ours at Wal-Mart)
Bedding and lambie mobile- Pottery Barn Kids
Curtains- Carousel Designs (these might be my favorite thing in the whole room).  We upgraded to the black out option after hearing black out curtains are really helpful for baby's sleep.
Curtain rods- Target
Glider- Dutailier Beige Microfiber Sleigh Glider Ottoman Combo Buy Buy Baby
Mirror- Ikea Ekne
Dresser- Ikea Hemnes in black/brown
Night Stand- Ikea Hemnes in black/brown
Book Shelf- Ikea Hemnes in black/brown (just so you know, it's bolted to the wall so it can't fall over).
Diaper Caddy- JJ Cole in green.  I actually got ours on Zulily when it came up on sale, but you can get it on Amazon or other places.
Lambie prints for wall- Etsy, Sweet Pea Art Studio.
Frames for Lambie prints- Kohls
Paper lanterns- Paper Lantern Store  Yarn/ribbon used to hang lanterns- Wal-Mart.
Lamps- inherited from my parents (free!)
Lamp shades- Target
Brown round toy bin in corner and bin on the bottom of the book shelf- Target
Two wall shelves- Target
Wall paint- Lowe's Valspar Jekyll Clubhouse Peach

If there's anything I've forgotten that you want to know the origin of, let me know.

My Twenty-First Week

Alright, I'm 22 weeks now!

So, the nursery is painted, the crib is assembled, with the bedding in it (so we could see how it all looked), and we bought our dresser and bookshelf this week.  I also ordered us some prints from Etsy for the walls that match our bedding, which is a lambie theme.  We need to buy frames for the pictures.  I'm on the hunt for curtains now and think I've narrowed it down to a couple choices.  I ordered some swatches online so I could see what matches best.  We also got a mirror that will probably go on the wall next to the dresser so we can use it to distract the baby while changing her.  It's coming along!  Here's a sneak peek of the crib, bedding, and walls.  Not the best pictures ever (IPhone!), but you get the idea.  By the way, we obviously know to leave the bumper out for a while when the baby is little, we just wanted to see how it all looked in the crib.

This was the first week I felt like everywhere I went, it was actually obvious that I was pregnant.  A neighbor asked me if I was expecting this week, and I was proud that my tummy was out there enough that he noticed.  I'm also filling in maternity clothes that used to be big on me.  This week purchased a sweater, two pairs of maternity tights, and three more pairs of maternity pants.  I was hoping I could get away with minimal maternity clothing, but I work in a fairly formal office and using safety pins to hold my pants together isn't really working anymore at this point, so it's time to face the fact that I'm going to need more clothing to carry me through to late February.  This is probably isn't the most convenient season to be pregnant and I kind of envy my friends that got away with wearing sundresses all summer.  I have a lot that would have worked for summer.  Winter clothing is tougher!  Oh well, not a big deal.

Another cool thing that happened this week was that I won us a car seat!  I attended one of the Graco/Babies R Us events in my area and won a Graco SnugRide Connect Click 40!  Pretty cool!

The car seat is an infant seat, but designed to adjust so that your child can use it up to the recommended two years of age.  It has eight different settings to accomplish this, getting more upright with each adjustment.  It's sort of the opposite concept of a convertible car seat.  The car seat only works with two strollers since it has the Click Connect technology, so that means we'll end up buying one of those to go with it, and then go from there if we want more/other strollers when the baby is older.  It's probably good that we're forced to buy a specific stroller, because honestly I was thinking of getting like three different strollers and was tearing my hair out a little trying to decide on what to get to with a car seat.  Problem solved.  Also, the stroller seems really lightweight and folds up pretty compact, which were the big concerns for me.  The sport one reminds me a lot of the City Mini, which my brother has.

My appetite has been pretty normal, and I didn't have any morning sickness this week .  Haha, I actually did have a little on the LAST day of the week because of another toothpaste episode, which came after I'd written that update!  I did notice that I was more physically tired this week and had some back pain on days when I was on my feet for long periods of time.  I have a massage credit waiting and it might be time to cash it in soon.  I've also noticed it makes a huge difference if I'm not wearing really comfortable shoes.  I'm thinking it's the extra 9 lbs I have on me now.  Shoes that used to be comfortable to walk in for long periods of time no longer are, so I am having a hard time choosing shoes for daily activities.

We need to get going on our registry.  I think that's next on the agenda once we slow down on the nursery.  I went shopping for a baby present this week and although I recognize most baby necessities at this point, I still can't say that I've totally made all the decisions that need to be made on which things I want for each category.  Which bottles, pacifiers, diaper bag?  Not sure yet...  Must buckle down and make decisions!

Oh, and we are stuck on a name.  I think I mentioned in a previous post that we had a boy's name picked out that we both loved.  Greg has a girl's name that he loves and I really like it too, but I am still not 100% sure about it.  I spent hours this week looking through names, and I can't say that I found many that I'm that crazy about.  Greg doesn't want anything unusual.  I don't want something too popular, but also not too UNpopular either...  Even worse?  Greg hates pretty much everything else but the name he likes.  I'm constantly coming up with lists of possibilities after spending hours pouring through names and he'll glance at my list and shoot everything down.  It's really frustrating.  I'm not sure how we're going to decide on this.  Good thing we still have a while...

How far along? 22 Weeks
Maternity clothes? Mostly maternity, but still some normal tops.
Stretch marks? Nope.
Symptoms: Physical tiredness
Best moment this week: Seeing the crib totally put together with the bedding in it made me happy.
Miss Anything? I was missing running this week after reading a bunch of friends' race recaps.
Movement: Yes, but I'd love more and stronger kicks!
Food cravings: ice cream, grilled cheese, potatoes, and carbs in general.
Anything making you queasy or sick: Toothpaste got me again.  Grrr.
Have you started to show yet: Yes, I think it's finally becoming more obvious.
Gender: Girl
Labor Signs: No, thank god!
Belly Button in or out? In
Mood: Good!
Looking forward to: Working more on the nursery, registering, feeling more movement and kicks.

My Fourteenth Week

I'm 15 weeks pregnant!

Sorry, we weren't organized enough to get a great picture this week.
I got this before my daily walk with Clyde.

The fourteenth week started with Greg and I visiting some day care centers in our area.  Even though we don't need day care for about a year, we have heard the waiting lists are long and wanted to get a jump on things early.  We visited two places, both recommended by friends that have children at each, and were impressed with both.  I will say that the experience was somewhat overwhelming though.  We saw the infant areas at both places, but also were given a tour of the rest of the facilities, which included classrooms where the kids were about 4 years old and focused on educational activities.  This was kind of a big jump for me, when at this point, I'm really just thinking "Please take care of my baby and make sure he/she is still alive and in the same condition I left it in when I dropped it off".  Now we're having to think ahead to how we want our small child educated as well, so it's necessary to think present as well as future in terms of what kind of care and education we want our kid to have.  Head spinning...  We opted to look at one more place recommended to us this week, and then we'll probably make a decision based on these three.

Greg surprised me by actually doing some of his own crib research this week, and ended up finding a crib he liked that seems like it would match the dresser/book shelf we saw at IKEA a couple weeks ago, if we want to go that route.  We went to the store and looked at it and it's nice.  I'm not ready to commit to nursery furniture without a little bit more thought just yet, but it's an option.  While at the store we walked around looking at more baby stuff, and I explained the difference in car seats (infant vs. convertible), strollers, pack-n-play's, etc... to him, showing him how much stuff is out there and how much we have to decide.

In other news, we started cleaning out the room we're using as a nursery.  We had a futon in there that Greg moved out.  Also it has been known as our "ironing" room, since it used to house our iron board and iron, but we moved it.  The bulk of the stuff remaining in that room is mine, as it's sort of been my winter/summer clothes storage area (hence the bins you see below).  We actually have a huge basement, so it's not going to be a problem to store that stuff down there instead, I mainly used this room because it's right next to ours and was convenient and available (til now).  I want to go through some of my clothes and get rid of some things before moving it all downstairs though, so I'll try to work on that in the next couple weeks before we really get going on the nursery.

As for how I'm feeling- still pretty good.  Nausea is less and less.  I think if people are looking for it, they are actually starting to see the bump.  I actually got a couple comments about it this week, and I think the rumor is finally making its way around my office (I'm surprised it's taken this long, because my office is known to be a rumor mill!).  I pretty much always wear flowy tops to give myself room, so I think I've kind of hidden it well, but if I'm wearing anything more form fitting, you can kind of see it.  I've also noticed that some of my bottoms that were roomy enough to fit into til this point are tight now.  I've been using a big safety pin on my flat front pants to extend them further, which actually works pretty good (I never really felt like the bella band was appealing), and did the hair tie trick on some shorts the other day.  I think it still just kinda looks like a beer belly, and look forward to the time when it is really obvious what's happening there.

I'm still craving cheeseburgers, but also corn on the cob, ice cream, peaches, apples, potatoes, and still pancakes (I had some this morning).  I'd say my diet is fairly well rounded and I try to get in a fruit or vegetable with every meal.  It's not quite as healthy as it was pre-pregnancy, since veggies haven't sounded that good to me (I still don't want peppers, and can only eat spinach if it's hidden in something).  I love my carbs, as you can probably tell.  I had a really good grilled chicken sandwich with cheese and grilled pineapple on it the other day when I was out to lunch.  I think I need to pick up some pineapple next time I hit the store.  Yum!

Weight-wise, I appear to be up about 2 pounds now.  Still a slow gain at this point.  I really don't doubt that it's going to creep on steadily with all my indulgent cravings though.

Exercise is still mainly walks and I've been good about doing them almost every day.  I had a crazy week because of the DNC going on in Charlotte, but I think maybe next week I'm going to buckle down and try to get to a prenatal yoga class.  I really want to start doing something besides just walking.

Oh, also, I found myself kind of more tired a couple days this week.  I went to bed around 9-9:30 a few times, which is early for me.  I thought that was kind of funny, since most people talk about the second trimester energy.  I kind of had the opposite in my first official week and was falling asleep.

Anyway, that about sums up week 14!  Onward!