Out pour of love

The spa had a baby shower for me.  I was pretty nervous about it since I am a higher up boss and didn’t want anyone to feel weird about it.  It ended up being perfect.  People made my favorite foods and all were so excited to give me baby gifts!  Then, the whole week, I got more baby gifts from people who were not able to make it to the shower.  We were so touched by the out pour of love from all of my employees!  We got tons of cute outfits, gift cards, some of the practical stuff and just really nice cards and thoughts.  One of my employees took a huge box and made us a first aid kit so we have little baby medicines and stuff for Jude too.

I then spent a few hours fussing with Jude’s stuff.  We got a toy box, so now all his toys are in it.  I took the tags off of his clothing and cleared a cabinet in the bathroom and in the kitchen for his stuff.  It really feels like he is coming soon to me now.  I don’t know why the fact that he has a cabinet in the kitchen and bathroom makes it feel more immediate, but it does.

I don’t think there is much left on the registry at this point.  We still have our biggest shower, the Austin shower, and we have so much of what we need for Jude already.  People were even smart about it and got him larger sized clothes, not just newborn, so he has outfits thru 6 months at this point.  I am very excited to go on a baby shopping spree with all the gift cards we received at this point.  Liz and I have not bought much baby stuff, so it will be fun after our last shower to go baby buying crazy and get the last of what we need for our little man.  Speaking of, have you seen the new Gwen Stefani line of stuff at Target.  So very cute!!

I am starting to feel really pregnant.  I don’t think the next month or two will be very fun for me to run around the spa.  My feet swell, my hips hurt off and on and this belly is now something to be reckoned with.  It takes a bit to get up and down and I can no longer really bend down and pick stuff up.  Fortunately my spa family is very supportive not only in their gift giving and love, but also in helping me with stuff.  I have not had a single person complain when I ask them to move a box and have even had people get mad at me when I do things they believe I should not be doing at this point.

Jude is active as ever.  We went and saw Breaking Dawn last night and he was kicking thru a large part of the movie.  There was one scene when the wolves were running and howling and he went nuts.  I think that makes him Team Jacob like me! :)  I think between the milkshake and the loud noise and I was sitting still after being on my feet all day, he was ready to do somersaults thru the movie.  I thought the movie was okay.  I liked it the least out of all of them, but am still happy we went and saw it.  There are only so many movies left until Jude is here and it will be harder to go then.

I think they are going to start a pool at work on when Jude is going to get here.  I am happy for him to arrive any time after January 8th.  He is not due until January 23rd and my psychic at work said he would come on January 27th.  We will see.  I just hope he makes it in the oven thru the holidays as no one likes to have their birthday around a major holiday.  I just really don’t want him to go all the way thru February since that means he will be late and I imagine the bigger he gets, the more I will want to take off work before his arrival.  I am trying to work until he gets here so I have the full 12 weeks with him.  I don’t see the point in staying home and waiting on him to come, but I imagine that will sound really nice as I get bigger and bigger.

All in all, I am to the moon in love with this little boy.  I am so excited to make him and meet him when he finally gets here.  He recognizes Liz’s voice and goes crazy for her.  She has been laying on my stomach and talking to him and he kicks her face all over the place.  It is really cute.  This little man is going to turn our world upsidown and I am excited for it!  I have no doubt he is going to run this household once he gets here!
-S

31 Week Bump Picture!

OK so it has been a while since we posted a bump picture and honestly, it's because we haven't been very on the ball with taking belly shots recently.  So here it is, in all of it's roundness, S at 31 weeks.

Behind S you can see some of the letters for our alphabet wall.  All of the letters are in and hanging up.  They are so far just put up with push pins because we are still waiting to get them just right before we hang them up with nails.  But they look great.  Hopefully I will get them up and take some pictures to post next week.

And as of last night, I think it is official, S is finally nesting.  So far with a few exceptions I have been the one doing all of the nesting around the house but this week S put together the stroller and last night spent an hour or two putting things away and cleaning out cupboards in the kitchen and bathroom and filling them with baby stuff.  It's cute to see her nesting and wanting to get stuff done.  And now that the stroller is put together, we let our first "baby" take it out for a test drive.

This is our pug, Pedro.  Pedro thought that the whole thing was pretty weird.  He didn't really get what we were up to and was nervous the whole time he was in the stroller.  Oh, and what is the deal with strollers being so very hard to open and close and car seats being so confusing?  I swear our car seat has at least 10 different buttons on it and I have no idea what most of them do.  Better start practicing soon!

Also, a big congrats to our friends Kayan and Marc!  Their baby girl was born yesterday and boy oh boy is she a cutie!
-Liz

Peaceful Saturday Night

     It’s 9:30 on Saturday night and I’m drinking a glass of cold, sweet sangria in my living room.  The windows are open and there is a slight cool breeze coming in.  The house is so quite, the little lady went to bed five minutes ago, I have a new book downloaded to the kindle and Saturday Night Live is on in an hour.  I spent the afternoon making delicious carnitas and then after dinner curled up in bed with the little lady to watch a movie in bed.  It has been a wonderful, quiet, peaceful Saturday night and I couldn’t be happier.

      I’m really making an effort to treasure this time, as it fully hit me earlier today just how little of this time we have left.  And don’t get me wrong, I couldn’t be more excited to have this baby on the way, to be a mother in ten short weeks.  I can’t wait for everything to change and get flipped upside down by my little Jude.  And it’s happening so soon that I can’t help but feel like my days like this are numbered and not to be squandered.

     Ten more weeks till our little one is here, ten more Saturdays like this one.  It also freaks me out that I still have so much left to do around the house before he is here and I don’t actually have ten Saturdays to do it all, I actually only have six.  Between Thanksgiving, a baby shower, Christmas, and New Years, all being such busy times, I’m crossing them off the list of potential days to get anything done.  So tomorrow it’s time to crack the whip and get to work.  So that is the plan, to get started tomorrow.

    But tonight, tonight is for drinking sangria, enjoying the breeze, and crossing my fingers that Saturday Night Live is actually funny tonight.
Hope your evening is as pleasant as mine.
Liz

Baby shower-yeah! Contraction- Ouch!

We had our first baby shower this weekend.  It was great!  We caught up with old friends and got tons of great baby stuff!  People cannot resist buying outfits for Jude!  We got tons of REALLY cute outfits for him.  Along with a bunch of other things.  It was great to see everyone that was there and there were 4 babies and some kiddos in attendance (not including another preggie that was there too!).  The babies ranged from 5 days old to 2 years old.  So cute and so many different personalities and all of them were chill thru the shower.

We also went to the lawyer today and signed all of our documents from Wills to Rights of Attorney to who Jude goes to.  Crazy!  I think I was more nervous for the second part we did, which was Liz is officially on my account and closes her account this week.  After 9 years, we finally have joint accounts!  Money makes me nervous and I am very intense about it, so it is good to combine now and work out all the kinks before Jude is here on top of that.

On a negative note, it was a long drive home.  It was raining the whole way back and I had my first major contraction.  It was weird.  I had a belly ache all day (which I don’t really get) but figured it was from Jude’s feet being in my belly or a burger I ate earlier.  It hurt off and on the whole drive, so I made Liz drive and stretched out.  It felt better, so I volunteered to drive and blam-o, insane pain.  The strange part was it was my stomach, not low down, so I knew I was not in labor, but that was about all I knew.  I got off the highway as quickly as I could and paced, cussing and confused until it passed.  I called my Dr. and she said it was “false labor” and that it it fine unless it starts to happen at regular intervals and then I would need to go in for monitoring.  I was not happy with that since I was on my way back from Oklahoma in the middle of nowhere Texas.  I was crossing my fingers it would not continue.  It felt fine and then we stopped to get gas and I threw up for what felt like forever, right there at the pump.  Yuck!   After that, I felt fine.  The Dr said to hydrate and relax, so that is what I have been doing.  I feel fine today and we ran around and took care of all kinds of things, so I think it is just going to happen sometimes.  What sucked about it (well on top of it in general) is is hurt to breathe during it.  There was no way I could do stomach breathing thru it when it hurt to breathe during and after it.

Jude is non the wiser.  He is crazy kicking around in there today.  He gave Liz a good kick fest for the past few hours and is still going at it.  Crazy baby!  Or as I like to say: “cwazy baby!”.  He even got the hiccups earlier.  This week he practices breathing, so he is more likely to get them due to that.  How cute is that?!

Thank you everyone who came to Jude’s first party!  I just hope in the future he does not party so hard he has contractions the next day!
-S  

Getting Excited

As soon as this boring work day wraps up, the little lady and I are hopping in the car for the drive to Tulsa, and we couldn't be more excited.  It's going to be a long drive, a little over 8 hours of road trip fun, but the last few hours of the drive we pick up my brother who will graciously drive the rest of the way for us.  Hurray for baby showers and hurray for seeing everyone!  It's going to be so fun and we have a lot of good times to pack into this short weekend.  Saturday night I'm really excited to go see my little brother play in the Tulsa Symphony.  I haven't ever gotten to see him play before and he is really a talented musician.  We are also meeting up with my childhood BFF for pizza at the restaurant where S and I met (not the exact one, but one of them), the Hideaway.  If you are ever in Oklahoma, the Hideaway is some seriously great pizza.  And then on Sunday the main event, our first baby shower.  We've got friends, a sister in law, family, childhood BFFs, and even a friend flying in from Colorado who are all going to be at the event.  It's going to be epic.

We have also gotten a lot of great stuff for Jude this week. I wish I had pictures to show you all, maybe next week, but we got all of our letters for our alphabet wall.  They are all so amazing, it's going to be the coolest thing ever.  And also a guy that S works with got us these two little paintings made by a local artist that are really cool and match Jude's room.  Then yesterday we got home and there was the sweetest package from one of our friends who doesn't live in town.  She sent us the cutest hand made dinosaur onesie, along with lots of other cute clothes, these awesome baby books that have art by famous artist, along with some other fun baby toys.  It was like mini Christmas opening up all of the fun stuff she sent.  It is just amazing to see all of the love that our friends and family already have for little Jude, who they haven't even met yet.  It really touches my heart to see it.  He is going to be so happy and loved!

I'll post updates about the baby shower next week, so stay tuned and have a happy weekend yourself!
-Liz

Halloween Fun

  I think that our party last night was a success.  S even stayed up until 1:30 am!  Pretty darn good for a lady who is 7 months pregnant.  Not much to say about it other than it was a blast.  Here are a few of my favorite pictures from the night.

S was Gumby and her friend Cam was Pokey.  It was pretty much the funniest thing ever.

I was a plant/Mother Earth, which was really just a lame excuse to buy the pretty green flowery dress that I wore.

Our spooky bathroom.  The giant bug's name is Frank, he is creepy.

     There were lots of other great costumes, but I don’t feel like I can post pictures of them without asking everyone’s permission.  We also on Saturday got almost all of the letters for our ABC wall, we are only missing a few.  They are all so amazing, I can’t wait to show them all to you.  I’ll have to reveal it one letter at a time, because they each deserve their own blog post.
Happy Halloween everyone!
-Liz

Pushy Little Baby

            We learned this week a little trick that our sweet baby Jude will do.  If you push lightly on S’s stomach, if Jude is awake, he will kick/push you back!  It is so crazy that he is now aware enough to respond to something like that.  And his baby kicks keep getting stronger and stronger.  I can pretty much always feel him know if he is up and at it, and I just love it.  I can’t wait to meet this little baby!

            Our Tulsa baby shower is next week and I’m getting excited.  I’m hoping that the turn out will be alright, we haven’t gotten very many RSVPs back yet.  And we are a little less than 5 weeks away from our Austin baby shower, which is going to be even better than the Tulsa baby shower.  So much to look forward to, I’m feeling very blessed.

            We are having a Halloween costume party tomorrow night and I have LOTS that I need to get done tonight and tomorrow before it happens.  It’s weird to think that this will be the last big party we have for quite a while.  We normally every year throw at least a Halloween and New Year’s party but this year New Year’s Eve will be so very close to Jude’s due date that it would be just craziness to try to have a party.  It’s even possible that he will be born by then or close to then (He would only have to be about 2 ½-3 weeks early for that to happen).  I’m hoping he will be a little bit early, but not that early, more like a week early, just because I’m so excited to meet him.  I’ll post pictures from our Halloween party on Sunday or Monday.

            Have a happy weekend!

                        Liz