37 Weeks 3 Days!

Here's the belly bump. I'm 37 weeks 3 days today, but this picture was taken at 37 weeks. I had an OB appt on Tuesday and I'm 1 cm dilated and 30% effaced. I know that really doesn't mean much, but I got excited and it does mean that we are that much closer to meeting this little one. She is still really active which is reassuring because we do a lot of ultrasounds in the last trimester to check the amniotic fluid because the baby isn't moving very much. Brian has been reading to her for the last couple of weeks and she seems to really be recognizing his voice. It's been various times at night depending on his study schedule and as soon as he starts reading she just kicks and rolls around in there, it's amazing to see. They say that newborns will turn there head towards their parents because it's a voice they've been hearing all this time. Brian wanted to make sure his little girl knew who he was. Her favorite has been the Cat in the Hat, but he's also read 5 Little Monkey's Jumpin' on the bed (another one of her favorites) and the Pokey Little Puppy. I've been amazed at how fast this week has gone. I guess I had a lot left to do because everyday has been filled with something. I'm still really enjoying this time off and am so grateful that I am able to. Brody has liked me being home to. He's helped mom around the house and settles in right next to me when I'm folding clothes or doing things in her room.

Preparations

My last day of work was Friday! Yea!!! I'm actually really looking forward to this time off before the baby is born. I never realized how much we're on our feet at work until now. I've been exhausted after work the last week, I can't imagine doing all this last minute stuff before the baby comes and having to work full time on top of it. I never thought I would say that. I'm such a person to want to stay as busy as I can. I guess there is a reason for aching hips, my back screaming, and my feet swelling. My body is telling me to SLOW down! I've actually had to go out and buy myself some slip on shoes because I'm no longer able to bend over and tie my shoes. I'm taking that as a good sign though that the end is near. Let me tell you, I should have done that a long time ago. It's so convenient. In preparation for when our daughter comes I went to dream dinners on Saturday with a bunch of friends from work so we don't starve after her arrival. I know I'll be extremely busy, so this is a way to get ahead of the game. We haven't done Dream Dinners for a while, mostly because it was summer and we BBQ a lot. But for those of you who don't know what it is, you go to a place that's set up with stations for meals that you put together and then freeze for later. They're really easy to prepare and it usually takes me about 2 hours to make 12 meals at 6 servings. That way we have left overs for lunch the next day and sometimes another dinner. It's a really good deal and you don't have to clean up after yourself. It's great, cuts down on grocery shopping and trying to decide what to make for dinner. Two things that I'm not fond of. The rest of that day was spent relaxing and doing some laundry... baby laundry. I can't believe how small her clothes are and the tiny little socks. I got so emotional thinking of our little girl who is growing and changing inside of me will fit into these clothes in a few weeks. It's an amazing thing and I don't think I will ever get over it. We got our carpets cleaned today so she won't have to be crawling on dirty floors when she's 6 months old. It needed to be done and I think we just decided to wait until I was off work so someone could be home. One less thing I have to worry about in my nesting stage. I have an OB appt tomorrow and I'll post another belly picture. I'll be 37 weeks!

36 weeks!

I can't believe I'm already at 36 weeks and her arrival is only 1 month away... well approximately. Who knows when she will really get here, hopefully not too late! Brian came in on his lunch break yesterday and measured her and looked at the amniotic fluid. All looks really good and she's measuring exactly 36 weeks. She is really squished in there so we weren't able to get any pictures, but we did see her opening her mouth and sticking her little tongue out... hopefully not at us! Our machines at work say that she is 6lb 5 oz, but the update for this week on babycenter.com says that she is almost 6 lb. I wonder which one is right? I know it's just an estimate, but they do put on a lot of weight in the next few weeks. I was 7lb 14 oz and Brian was 9lb. I'm really hoping she gets my genes because 9lb is a big baby! So, I was feeling really good the past few days. She's moved position to gives my ribs a break from that constant pain she was causing me, how very sweet of her! But... today it was me that put myself in a lot of pain. I had to run to the bus this morning because I was late. It's the bus' fault though because it's never on time! Last week I had to wait 20 minutes. So, today I decided I had a few minutes to spare and as a consequence had to run 3 blocks to catch the bus. You're probably thinking that's not very far, but at 36 weeks pregnant, in the morning when I haven't really warmed up those muscles very much bad things can happen. And it did! I pulled almost every muscle from my pelvis down to my left leg. Yea... it hurts! I can barely walk and have been wobbling around all this morning. It's not going to be a fun day, luckily it's not too busy and Friday is my last day!

More Showers!

This past weekend was spend down in Portland for a fabulous shower that my mom and her friends put on for me. She invited all our neighbors, friends, and family that live in Portland. Brian's mom also came from Pendleton. It was great to see everyone and catch up with some of the neighbors that I haven't seen for a while. It was so cute to see how excited everyone was for us and boy did they spoil us with gifts! Thank you so much! We had another shower for work on Tuesday of last week. One of our friends hosted the shower at her house and everyone brought food to contribute. The ultrasound department and UW LOVES potlucks. We have one for every occassion... birthdays, passing tests, employees coming and going, doctors getting their green cards... any excuse we can come up with! So, in turn our potlucks are delicious. Everyone has perfected a dish to bring and Tuesday was no different. On top of that everyone pooled money in to get us practically everything on our registry! We received so many wonderful gifts and are so appreciative of everything, thanks guys! We are officially set to have this baby!

The Nursery

We got the nursery all painted and put together for our little one this past weekend. We taped the walls Friday night and I'm actually surprised they turned out so well because we were both exhausted that night. A little teamtimm teamwork gets the job done though. I couldn't have done it without Brian because one of the walls has 12-14 foot ceilings and I'm not exactly in a position to be getting up on ladders. We ended up painting on Sunday and it didn't take very long at all. I think the hardest most time consuming part of painting is the taping so once that was done painting was a breeze. The only thing left to do is hang the quilt that Brian's mom is making and that will go over the bed in the corner. The glider will have to squeeze in somewhere, but I think we'll have it in our room for a while so we can figure that out later. So, the little pink knitted hat you see is actually one that Brian made for our little girl to go home from the hospital in. I was so impressed when I saw him knitting this hat for her, it turned out adorable.
He's always said that he want to put a lot of hats on her because they look so darn cute on babies and since she'll be born in November we need something to keep her head warm. Some of the girls at work knit, so they picked out the yarn and needles and taught him how to knit at work. I know she'll love it and we have a special page in the scrapbook the girls made me at the shower that says "I love my Hat"

33 weeks and 3 years!

Yesterday we celebrated our 3 year anniversary! We had a very relaxed evening and it was perfect. Usually we like to go on a vacation for our anniversary, but this year was a little diferent with the baby coming and Brian back in school. For our first year anniversary we went around the world from Switzerland to Italy to Greece to Thailand and Japan. Our second year anniversary we took his parents camper to Glacier National Park and Yellowstone for a week, but this year we decided to just stay in. Classes started back up for PA school on Monday so we met on campus for lunch. The night before Brian had gotten seafood for dinner and decided to make a white sauce with pasta to go with it. I was in charge of the crab and squash, but he did all the cooking. His cooking is much better than mine and it's always a treat when he's in the kitchen. I just stay out of it and help where needed. The meal turned out delicious and of course we had dinner by candlelight and exchanged cards. Our gift to each other this year and the best gift of all is our little one. We can't wait to be parents. After dinner I wanted to watch our wedding DVD that our photographer put together. Much to our disappointment we forgot that Brody had chewed the remote when he was puppy so we weren't able to change the menus to play the DVD. Then Brian thought of an idea to play it in the computer. Well, they must have put some sort of protection on the DVD to prevent someone from copying it so we weren't able to watch it and we tried everything, even installing a new program. Bummer! Instead we just curled up on the couch and watched TV. Those nights are becoming few with the baby coming and Brian in school, so we enjoyed every bit of it we could.

Seattle Shower

Thank you Danielle and Joana for putting together an amazing shower for me this weekend, I couldn't believe how cute your ideas were. Everyone met at Danielle's house on Saturday and for the first hour we had fun just sitting and talking. Then Danielle and Joana organized a scrapbook making session for our little girl. They had a table set up with all sorts of scrapbook paper and embellishments so everyone could make a page to go into the scrapbook. They turned out so cute, I was very impressed and every one's was so unique. While that was going on they had another cute game where the girls brought baby pictures of themselves and you had to guess what baby picture went with what person at the shower. It was a great idea and fun to see what everyone looked like as a baby. Another cute idea was they had a story about our baby with blanks to fill in like what her name will be, what class she would least likely skip, what she will be when she grows up, what mommy and daddy will teach her, what he first word will be, etc... We read them at the end and it will be fun to see whose predictions are right. There were a lot of similar ones especially that her favorite class with be science or math, and her best personality trait will be humor (from her dad!). Everyone filled out cards with advice or favorite memories and a guess as to how much she'll weigh at birth, all great ideas to go into the scrapbook! I can't wait to see how it turns out! At the end of the shower we had some fun with pictures and the girls decided to join in the feeling of being pregnant by having balloon bellies, they made for some adorable pictures.
Beck Left Laura (friend from college), Danielle, Grandma Lewis, Ann (family friend), Joana. Middle Left Bonnie (Brian's aunt), Ann (coworker) and her daughter Maile. Front Left Becki (Brian's sister), Rachelle (neighbor) and her daughter Kylee, and Grandma Timm
Aunt Bonnie, Becki, Me, and Steph (grandma Timm)
Remake of Father of the Bride II staring grandma Lewis and I. She got a good giggle pretending she was pregnant with me.
Danielle, Joana, and I with our big bellies. Since I have a few years to wait before this comes true we can only pretend that we're pregnant at the same time with balloons in their bellies
This was the scrapbooking table where everyone made their pages. This is about what their house looks like when us girls get together to scrap just on a larger scale and only 3 of us!

Girl's Weekend

I wanted to have one last weekend to spend with my girlfriends before the baby is born so we decided to spend the weekend at our beach house in Pacific City, Oregon. Five of us went, my friend Danielle and Joana who live here in Seattle, Laura who lives in Tacoma, and Maria who lives in Portland. We left Friday after work and got into Pacific City around 12:30am! It was along drive after a full day of work, but we wanted to have all day Saturday to spend on the beach. We had switched property managers a month before so even at 12:30 am I had to check out the place. I have to say that I was really pleased. You always worry that they're not going to take care of it the way you would, but so far they've done a great job. We had a lot of problems with our other property manager but
this new manager was one of the first in Pacific City and she does a great job getting renters in. Plus they add a few extra touches. I thought it was really cute, we walked in Friday night and on the kitchen counter they made a towel elephant and in the bedrooms were tuxedo jackets made out of the towels, it was a nice touch. So, seeing all that I was able to rest easy. The weather on Saturday was gorgeous, 80 degrees on the beach. There were surfers out and a ton of people on the beach, it felt like summer. We made breakfast in the morning and headed out to the beach around 11. There's a dune you can climb and there's beautiful views of the ocean from up there. So we did that and later on went to lunch at this really cute restaurant called the Riverhouse. They make their own salad dressing that sells in grocery stores and it's delicious! We decided to make dinner at home that night so headed to the grocery store and got pasta, dessert, and wine for the girls. It was so fun just hanging out talking about girl stuff. We're all in the medical field too, so there was a lot of medical talk going on. Maria is going to school in Portland to be a Naturopath and Danielle, Joana, Laura and I all graduated from ultrasound school together. The next morning we went to my favorite breakfast spot called the Grateful Bread (they make all their own bread) and left around noon. Thanks for a great weekend girls, I had so much fun!

First Baby Class

Last night we went to our first baby class! It was actually really helpful and we met a lot of great people. The class goes for 7 weeks and we meet Wednesdays from 7-9pm. They teach a lot of breathing techniques and stretches helpful for relieving back and hip pain in pregnancy. Also relaxing techniques for the birth. Since I'm planning on going natural I've realized I'll need all the advice I can get. Our instructor is a registered doula, so she's extremely helpful. We were so motivated by our baby class we went home and put the crib together (we've had it in the hall for about a month). I love looking in there and imagining what's it's going to be like with our little pumpkin sleeping in there. Brody, on the other hand, wasn't so sure about the situation, he showed some major concern with what was going on. I think he thought we were building a cage for him or something. He wouldn't come in the room on his own and when we called him he walked slowly with his tail between his legs. Once we comforted him I think he realized it wasn't for him and started checking out what was going on. I often wonder how he's going to handle the transition. He gets a lot of attention right now. I'll post a picture of the room once it's done, I think it's going to turn out really cute.

Labor Day Weekend

This past weekend was very eventful and one of the pictures posted proves that! We headed down to Portland Friday night and had a nice dinner and visit with my parents. Saturday morning my dad and Brian went to Pacific City to install some motion lights on our beach house and Brian sat in on an annual meeting they had for the community. My mom and I spend the day together and got our hair done. As you can see I made a drastic change in hair color. I figured that I wouldn't have much time after the baby was born to keep my hair highlighted and figured darker would be a lot less maintenance. After our hair appointment we decided to get some fabric to cover a glider that I had found for the baby's room. On the way we ran out of gas! We got lucky though and were at an off-ramp with a gas station about 1/4 mile down the road. I wasn't going to sit in the car in the sweltering heat and wait for help so we got ourselves out of the car and hiked the 1/4 mile to find gas. They gave us this cute little gas tank that my mom thought should have been pink so at least we could have looked stylish walking back to our car, but we did get our gas and were on our way. I don't think we'll be doing that again any time soon! Saturday night was spent over at my aunt and uncle's for a BBQ. Sunday I met up with my best friend Maria at my favorite crepe place on 23rd street in Portland. For anyone who is visiting Portland or have not been there it's called Vivace Coffee House & Creperie and it makes delicious crepes, a food I fell in love with after visiting Paris. My favorite is nutella and banana. Perfect pregnancy food! It was great to see her and catch up. Sunday night we went over to a friends house for a party and Monday we left for home. Another great weekend .
There's the momster and her cute little gas tank
My best friend Maria and I sitting outside at the crepe place on 23rd
This was adorable. I couldn't help not taking this picture. We took Brody to the dog park when we got home on Monday and we saw this little boy walking his Springer Spaniel. I couldn't help but imagine our kids walking brody like that when they get older. It was precious.