Little things

I have totally dropped the ball on blog post these last couple weeks.  SO sorry.  Surprisingly not a lot has happened, but the little things are fun to talk about too.

After the baby shower, I did Aria’s first load of laundry! I am a little bit odd in the fact that I actually like doing laundry.  I love pulling warm, fluffy and yummy smelling clothes out of the dryer.  My promise to Christian when we got married was he would never have to worry about laundry because it’s the only chore I enjoy.  When I decided to do Aria’s laundry, I was so excited!  And then I realized just how many pieces of clothing can fit in a load… my goodness!! I was folding onesie after onesie forever.  I still loved every minute of it though.  Once I was done with her laundry, I sorted everything into sizes so I can see the big picture and also know where we needed to stock up.  I came to find that she has plenty of 0-3 month items, some 3-6 months and lots of 6-9 months.  After that age, we only have a few.  That is GREAT though!! Means for the next while we are all set.  Of course, I am sure I will find cute things every now and again that I will just HAVE TO get her, but I am so grateful we have one less thing to worry about for right now.

Since we have her dresser and crib set up in her room (no decorations or anything yet), I decided to go ahead and start getting the clothes and blankets into place.  I probably re-did this a few times and I will most likely re-do it again.  When I was getting ready to do this, I laid out a blanket on the floor and set up my stacks and got to folding/rolling up/hanging her clothes.  Christian was there and immediately asked what I was doing.  When I told him, he got all giddy with excitement and jumped right in to help.  A few minutes later, Axel came by and asked what was happening.  He also got excited and jumped in to help!  Does Aria understand how much these 2 love her already?  I mean… it’s just so sweet!  Here are some of the pics.

Once we were done, I got them into her room and got to see things start coming to life!  Here are a couple shots of her drawers and her closet.  Still some organizing to do in the closet but slowly I will figure out how I want this to work.  Unfortunately we picked the room with the smallest closet for her.  Oops.

As far as decorating her room… Well… I am a bit stuck.  I don’t really know what the plan is or what I want to do, but I do know I want to keep it simple and clean.  Nothing flashy or magazine like.  Just a functional, cute little girl room that isn’t ALL pink.  I am definitely adding pink in there but I don’t want it to be over the top.

Alright so after the clothes were situated, it was time to take a good look at what we have and figure out what we need… not want… need.  There was actually quite a few things and when I realized that we needed to budget for what seemed like the cost of another mortgage payment over the next few months, I almost passed out. LOL!  Baby stuff isn’t cheap.  On the positive side, the items that we have chosen are quality items that will last a while. Almost all of it can convert into something that will grow with her and all of it is gender neutral so if/when we have another baby, we will be able to re-use it.  All of those factors helped me breathe a little easier.  First big ticket item we went for… the stroller/car seat combo!  We found the only store that had it in stock and available was about an hour away from us.  We made it an event!  We drove to Webster, TX and got the Chicco Bravo Travel System (with a 20% off coupon I might add!).  All of us got super excited when we got it… until we got to the car.  It wouldn’t fit in the trunk! We had a 20 second freak out moment where we didn’t know how to solve this problem and then decided to try the back seat… Success!  It fit!  Axel was a little cramped but he said “Anything for my little sister.  That’s what big brothers do.”

We ended up being close to NASA space center so we made a day of it and took an unplanned detour to have some family fun.  It was great and I definitely won’t wait so long to go back there.  We even got to go into space… take a look.

I love that we soon will have a new addition to the family to build more memories with!  With that said, Aria update time! 

 

I am 32 weeks along (really close to 33) and my Dr appointments are every 2 weeks.  Soon they will be switching to weekly.  Getting so close!! She is kicking and moving a lot and gets hiccups at least a couple times a day.  My belly is growing and when she kicks it now looks like a little alien is trying to pop out of me.  Her range should be up to 16.75 inches long and up to 3.8 pounds.  We know she was at the 3.8 pounds a couple weeks ago so I am sure she is passed that point now.  Christian and I sing certain songs to her every day.  She will be very quiet in there and as soon as one of us starts singing to her, she starts to wiggle.  It’s way cute!

This weekend we are going to be taking Child Birth classes and getting ready for school to start back up.  Both things I am looking forward to.  The class is a little scary though.  I took it before so I sort of know what to expect, but I feel like taking it is going to make me freak out a little about the labor/delivery.  Lucky for me I have a fantastic Dr and am going to be at a hospital that makes me feel safe and surrounded by people who I know will take good care of all of us.  Can’t wait to tell you guys about the class.  Hopefully we get at least one good story out of it. J

Baby Shower and her beautiful face!

I know I promised the next post would come sooner and it would be a Q&A with Axel, but I accidentally deleted the notes I took from that and I will have to bug Axel all over again.  Until then, I have a post that is going to be AWESOME!  This weekend was probably one of the best weekends so far!  Let’s start with Thursday.

Thursday, my family flew in from MA.  I haven’t seen my mom and my brother since December of last year so I was beyond giddy with excitement they were here.  My family and I have always been close so the past 5 years have been hard for all of us now that we live so far away from one another.  It’s great having them around and I am trying to plead my case as to why they should move back, but it’s hard when good old TX summer heat is fighting against me.  This entire ‘105 but feels like 122’ it just not ok. 

Friday was a busy day.  Lots of prep work for the baby shower happening and I think my feet were the size of a Christmas ham by the end of it.  I have a wonderful husband that was sweet enough to rub my legs and feet for a good hour right before bed.  Seriously the luckiest person to have him!  The highlight of that day was… my 4D ultrasound!!  We got to see our little girl and I can’t wait to tell you all about it!  Her heart rate was at 162.  She is currently measuring about a week and a half bigger than she ‘should’ be.  She weighs about 3lbs 14oz.  Calculating the fact that she could be gaining about half a pound a week from here on out, I am looking at a BIG baby. Oh man.  Can we get a baby treadmill installed in me asap please? Haha!  During the ultrasound she was the usual stubborn baby that she always is.  She had her foot and hand covering her face the majority of the time.  She showed us that she likes to suck on both her thumb and her toe.  (Not at the same time)  Oh! And she has a lot of hair!  Yes! We were able to see it on the ultrasound… that’s how much there is!  If you read my last post, you know that isn’t surprising. J  She has such fat little cheeks and long fingers.  She just melted our hearts.  Take a look at this cute little face that we were briefly able to capture.

 

Seeing her makes me more anxious to meet her and hold her and just snuggle her up!  But she still has 10 more weeks of baking to do so I need to be patient.  Plus, there is still lots of prep work before her arrival happens so she needs to stay put.

Saturday was baby shower day! I feel like I’ve been talking about it and planning it for so long and it finally happened!  It was great to mingle with friends and feel the love and support of those who came out to celebrate in one of the happiest times of our lives.  If you know me well, you know that I LOVE bees.  Because of that, it only made sense that the shower them was “Mommy to Bee”.  We rented a clubhouse in our neighborhood and decorated it with yellow, white and black.  Here are some of the cute decorations we had up.

We had a spread of food for a light lunch and lots of delicious sweets.  The best part about the sweets table was the cake!  Oh my goodness!  Cutest. Cake. EVER!  We used the same place that made our wedding cake and they once again did such an amazing job!  I pretty much gave them my theme and showed them different cakes/toppers I liked and told them to work their magic.  They most certainly did.  Here are some pictures of the cake and food items.

After eating, we all played a few games.  Two of the three games were the classic baby shower games.  The first one was to guess the size of my belly and the second was the one where you can’t say the word “baby” or cross your legs.  We should have added the words ‘cute’ and ‘awww’ to the list cause there was a lot of that.  The third game was tons of fun and made lots of people laugh.  Not sure if there is an official name for it but essentially you get two teams of two to go against each other.  Each team has to change a baby doll’s diaper.  The clothing must be removed, baby wiped, powdered and then re-dressed with the new diaper on.  The catch?  Each person may only use ONE hand!  Turns into quite the entertaining game with babies get flopped around everywhere.  The winning team actually mastered this in 35 seconds!  Crazy!  Guess I need to add them to the top of my babysitting list. Haha!  Here are some pics of me and the winners of the 3 games.

 

We ended the shower by opening gifts.  Though I was most interested in spending time with friends and family to celebrate, I felt so loved and grateful for all the thoughtful and useful gifts we got.  I am so lucky to know such wonderful people.

Now that the baby shower is over, we actually can get a list of the items little Aria still needs.   Let the shopping begin! 

The nursery is a work in progress.  The dresser situation is resolved… finally!!  Now we can get that moved to her room and start figuring out what goes where.  I am sure I will organize and re-organize that a few times.  Then the decorating can begin.  Woo hoo!  I am not the best at decorating, but with the help of the internet I may be able to pull off some ideas.  Or maybe a room of pinterest fails. Lol.  As I start getting things done in there I will be sure to post pics so you all feel a part of the nursery set up with us.

Upcoming things to look forward to read about in addition to the nursery set up are our adventures with a child birthing class and getting all the last items in order.