Busy day, winter projects

It's been raining and windy and raining and sunny then raining here the last week, which has made me want to never leave the house. Luckily that's okay, and I've been getting lots of projects done, and squeezing in lots of rest time in between. I'm only working 3 or 4 days a week at the bakery these days, which is awesome, but also really taking some adjustment. I know it's supposed to be the American Dream to own a business and have other people run it, but I LIKE working, and really enjoy my days at the bakery. I feel like it is smart, and important, for me to get used to not being there as much now, so when the baby is born I'm not stressed about being away from work. So I'm kind of just being a housewife most of the week, and it's not so bad!
Today I finally got up the nerve to drive Josh's truck. I wasn't really scared, I've driven plenty of big trucks before. I loved renting Penske trucks when I'd have to move bakery equipment around and they had those seats that sit up above the heads of cars and bounce all around as you drive, and I would just grin uncontrollably the whole time. For some reason it just seemed scarier when it was Josh's truck, and not some anonymous company. It really wasn't bad at all, and I took myself to Target and Fabric Depot. At the fabric store I discovered something called a Jelly Roll - a roll of 2 1/2 inch fabric strips that all match. Maybe this wasn't around when I was strip quilting all the time, but it was like angels were singing when I saw them today. I bought one with fabrics that are so awesome I want to eat them.

I found a pattern online for a quilted pillow and just adapted it for a lap size quilt. I made really good progress on it today, since I didn't have to take 10 hours to pick out fabrics and cut one million strips! SERIOUSLY! Best thing ever. It cuts out everything I didn't like about quilting. Here's what I got done so far.

After I did that much, I paused to make some curtains for the living room. I used some fabric I already had and two spring rods that I bought from Target today. They cover the windows in the living room that face our neighbor's house. Now I can walk to the bathroom in my underwear without running past the spot where that window is! I don't have a picture of them yet, I'll work on that tomorrow.

I was still feeling full of energy, so I ate dinner with Josh and he worked on a painting while I took on a different project - a hooded baby bath towel. I saw the pattern on Prudent Baby, and it is super easy, so I figured I could just crank it out. I used some towels I picked up at Target for $2.99 for 2, and I have to admit, I wish I had gotten a nicer towel. I figured since I hadn't done much sewing in awhile I might be rusty, and I didn't want to waste a good towel. That was a mistake because it came out cute, but the towel is so thin that it looks, well, cheap. I used a piece of a fat quarter I got today too for the accent fabric. Taking a picture of it was difficult.

Can you see the cheapness? I asked Stella to wear it, and oddly enough, she seemed to really like it.

I just decided that maybe it looks a little like a KKK hood, which is creepy. I think that's enough projects for today. And now that we're at 13 weeks, here's a picture! I think I always look bigger at the end of the day, after I've eaten or something. I swear that has to be mostly water and air.

making some decisions.

The first of which is nursery colors! We don't feel like we'll use the nursery much at first, because we'll have the baby sleep in the room with us, but it seems best to get it settled now instead of after the baby is here and there is no time. We do plan to be using it for diaper changing, for clothing storage and nursing/rocking time though. We (and by we I mean I) decided on a relatively neutral color palette, since we won't know the gender and I don't care much about using stereotypical blue or pink anyway.

chocolate brown

ivory

cranberry

Aside from these colors I want to add the option of other matching colors, but I can't decide if I should go bright, like with turquoise (I do love it with the cranberry color!):

ooh, and orange?

or stay in more earthy colors, like sage green, or a pale (buttercup?) yellow.

i have these plates, love them!

I also started looking at car seats, and a co-sleeper for our bedroom (instead of a crib at first) and holy crap there are so many choices. Pretty sure I picked out the co-sleeper, but the car seat is COMPLICATED! Josh and I will have to talk it over tonight I guess. He wants one that will convert into a carrier or lock into a stroller base, but safety wise, I think I like standard car seats better. It seems crazy to buy two, they are expensive! 

I'm trying to work on a registry at babies 'r' us for you guys, but it's HARD!! I thought I'd give you colors, so if you want to buy stuff you can. But honestly, we don't really care that much about things being "matchy" so get whatever you want!

A few things I really like are on this site: babybedding.com

Love the fabrics and you can even buy the fabrics themselves!

I was going to make rocking chair pads for my rocking chair I found on the street, but I am really in love with these: Love Birds chair pads

and they have crib sets and sheets in really great colors and some are organic. Too many options!

That's two blogs in one day again, I need a nap.

Sleep and Yoga

I've been feeling pretty lucky for having what seems to be an easy first trimester. I'm feeling like my normal self now, except that I tire out easily, which seems pretty normal, but I'm struggling a bit to not feel grumpy when I don't have my normal stamina. I worked yesterday, and then I got to come home and watch tv on the couch for a couple hours while Josh made dinner for us. He's pretty great about that stuff, and I eventually fell asleep on the couch. I tried to convince him to carry me to bed because I was too tired to walk, but he wouldn't do it, mostly because of one bad carrying to bed experience we had before.
I go to sleep, and then 6 hours later… AWAKE. Which usually means 4am or so. It's so frustrating! So I get up and watch tv (I've been streaming "Dead Like Me" episodes on Netflix) until 6 or so, when I fall asleep on the couch again. Then Josh gets up for work, and I get back in bed for an hour. I guess maybe this is just my new routine, but it's pretty annoying.

So today I'm up early, but i'm excited since I'm heading off to my pre-natal yoga class in a bit. I've only been once so far, but I loved it. Can't wait for all that great stretching again today. Holding out hope that someone with a due date closer to mine will be there this time.

Don't worry, the urine sample went fine.

Our appointment was great! We filled out a bunch of paperwork (some of which I had completed before hand at home) and Josh ran around searching for the bathroom, because he had apparently been drinking lots of water, unknowingly in solidarity with me. He couldn't find one, and then a lady came out and sent me straight off to the bathroom to pee in the cup. I did pretty well I think, filled it almost half way! Whew. Then I could point Josh in the direction of the bathroom, which was good for him, since we were there a little over an hour.
First we went back to a little office with the financial person for the clinic. She walked us through all of the general costs of our appointments, the birth, and the hospital stay. She also covered what our insurance would cover and how much they estimate that we will be paying out of pocket when all is said and done. If everything goes normally, with a vaginal birth, no epidural, and only a 2 day hospital stay we should end up with about $2200 out of pocket cost. Seemed like a lot to me at first (today's lesson: babies are expensive!) but I guess for 9 months of care, plus hospital time, it's not too bad.
Then another woman came in and took my medical history and blood pressure (normal) and then while we waited a few minutes for the midwife, Josh looked through a bunch of the office drawers, which is apparently what he does when he is fidgety in doctor's offices. Linda came in and she was great. She was very motherly, and funny too. She took more history and asked questions about what vitamins and medicines I've been taking. She finally asked Josh some questions (do either of our families have a history of downs syndrome? we didn't know of any.) and he finally felt useful. She did say that our risk for downs is 1 in 400 because of my age, which is still fairly slim I guess. We'll have a blood test for it in 3 weeks just to be sure.
Maybe I overdid it on the water, because I had to get up and pee again before we went into the room with the ultrasound. We had thought they would just do a doppler ultrasound, where we would hear the heartbeat, but she offered to show us a picture too, and we were secretly like "YESSSSSSS!', but tried to keep our cool. Their ultrasound machine looked like it was from 1975, and the picture was definitely low-tech, but she found the baby right away, and it was big, like the size of a tennis ball! It was curled on its side, so we could see the head and its little body curled under, and one of it's arms was bent at the elbow (!!!) and it's hand was up near it's face. We could also see the little heart beating. I wish it could have printed a picture, but seriously, that machine was as old as me. At one point Linda said "well, there's only one!" which has been a big secret fear of mine… twins! I really really didn't want to try to juggle two babies at once, so I feel really really relieved about that. Also, calling the baby "it" feels sort of weird, but doing the he/she thing just seems annoying since we don't know, so I'm going with it.
Then Linda grabbed the doppler wand, got the two wands all tangled up, and was really funny trying to untangle the cords. When she got it sorted out she searched around for the heartbeat, which took 20 seconds or so to find. Then all of a sudden it was really steady and fast! She said about 150 beats per minute.
After that I had a flu shot (non-mercury kind, which they had on hand, whew) and then we made another appointment for three weeks later, on Nov. 11th. We headed over to Blossoming Lotus for lunch, where Josh told me he couldn't even figure out what he was seeing on the ultrasound until almost the end. Ha! Poor guy.

FIRST APPOINTMENT EEEEEEEEE!

I'm just waiting for Josh to get home, and we get to see the midwife today! They said to expect blood work, urine sample, lots of questions, an exam, and a doppler ultrasound to hear the baby's heartbeat. I don't know why I'm so excited, except maybe that it will feel more "real" after we hear the heartbeat? And I guess just knowing everything seems to be normal will alleviate some underlying stress. We're using Providence Hospital's Maternal Care Clinic, which is really close to my work (3 blocks from my last apartment too) and is staffed by 6 midwives and a full time doctor. Today we have an appointment with Linda Nelson (a midwife), and at some point we will see each of the midwives. That way, whichever one is on duty when we are ready to give birth, we will have met and worked with. I've heard good and bad reviews of this system, we'll see how it goes. I'm nervous that I will be particularly happy with one or two of them, but end up with one of the others for the birth. Or what if one of them is weird about me being vegan? Or maybe it will be awesome and I'll love them all!
I've been pounding glasses of water all day today, so I can be sure I'll have to pee when the urine sample time comes. Am I the only one who has performance anxiety about this? Josh is home! Time to go!

maternity jeans, mom! you were right!

I did some searching mom, and found some other jeans with a different system! I mean, I knew they had they demi-panel ones, but yesterday I found some that have two elastic triangles cut in at the hips, (at Ross of all places, for $17) and they are so good! Plus they're black, and they are skinny jeans, so I can tuck them into my boots for winter. Now I'm going to go buy this sweater from Motherhood Maternity that I'm in love with, and I will look more fashionable than I ever did before I was pregnant.

Today is officially twelve weeks along... I feel like things are going well. I feel pretty good, except for the occasional gag fest when I least expect it, and also when I say the word gag, I gag. Typing it doesn't seem to have the same effect though. Swallowing my multi-vitamin and my omega-DHA capsules is pretty much the low point of my day. Why are they so big and bad tasting?

I also haven't been eating quite as well as I was at first. Everything sounded good for awhile, but I'm going through a phase of only wanting specific foods now - mostly yogurt, thai food, and peanut butter and banana on toast, and apples. Not much green in that list!

12 weeks!

Almost anyway, close enough! Next week is our first appointment with the midwives, finally. It seems like we've been waiting forever even though it's only been a month. Although from what I understand in baby terms, a month is forever! We'll get to hear the baby's heartbeat (with Doppler), which we're both very excited about. I have lots of pictures for you guys for this post. Sorry it's been awhile. For awhile there nothing was really going on, but I've started to actually show in the last week or two. A few weeks ago I was extremely bloated and looked like this:

I am now fairly certain this was all air, and I did really good job of not farting in front of Josh even once. Stella, on the other hand, has been farting up a storm lately, and since she follows me around constantly, I'm sure I can easily blame it on her if it happens.

Around the same time, this is what Josh looked like. He decided that since he bought brown pants for the wedding, he could turn dressing up for work into an excuse to look like he was auditioning for That 70's Show.

I spent a day off shopping. It started with me looking for maternity clothes, until I realized that if I was going to buy maternity clothes from resale stores (that was my plan) I would end up looking like I was auditioning for "Blossom". (Julie, I know you'll be the only one to laugh at that.) So I ended up at my favorite antique mall, which is what I always do when I feel sad. I bought this dresser, which Josh wants to turn into a changing table. Seemed like a great idea until I stared sanding it (while wearing a dust mask, of course!) and the paint just won't sand off. Now we have to try a paint stripper, which I can't do (chemicals!), so I have to wait until Josh does it, which means it's gonna take forever because he has like 12 projects going at once. I don't think he reads this, which is why I can post funny pictures of him and write whatever I want. He's actually standing right next to me, but I know his attention span isn't long enough to read this whole paragraph.

When I was looking for maternity clothes I also went to target, where I managed to buy one shirt, and tried not to gag at all of the large floral patterns, and the flare legged maternity pants (who wears those?!?) I wandered up and down all of the baby aisles and got really really stressed about all of the baby stuff, and how little I know about all of it. It scared me into spending the last week doing internet research on baby items, having baby item nightmares, and making a target baby gift registry! Target's selection is pretty limited, so I'm thinking to make a Babies'R'Us one too, even though I swore I would never go in there. Just like I swore I'd never have kids! HAHAHA jokes on me. I thought that having the registry might be a good way for us to have a list of what we feel like we'll need, so it won't feel so overwhelming. I am pretty stoked on Target's "The Little Seed" line, which is organic cotton and comes in bright gender neutral colors. It's all on clearance at my Target, but not online? Anyway, I did get my first item of baby clothes (that's not counting the bibs I found on the street in a "free" box a few months ago) because I couldn't resist the sweetpea. Then I realized that there are probably thousands of baby items that say sweetpea, and maybe I shouldn't be so excited about it, or our baby will be wearing a sweetpea logo every day of his/her life.

So. I got Josh to take a picture of what my belly is actually looking like now, and here it is! I'm also wearing my new maternity jeans, which I have such love and devotion to that I have to give them their own blog post later.