New Photos!

Tim repainted and hung these two shelves. Lots of little animals needed a place to go!

Curious George is slowly taking over. Apparently this was Tim's plan all along...
I do love the original watercolor print that we framed!

New glider we bought - very comfy! I know I'll be spending a lot of time in that chair!
The fabric on the back of the chair is for curtains that I'll make one of these days. It matches the wall color almost exactly with little white dots.
We've been collecting little animals from the craft store - put magnets on the back so we could put them on the closet door.


The color inspiration for the room :)


We love the safari animal prints from Tim's sisters, Sarah and Laura.



Week 27 day 6 (if you think I look miserable it's because I've been blowing my nose for 3 days straight)
Tim is currently in the process of repainting the dresser and the desk that will be used as a changing table. Curious George is making his way onto those two pieces also...I should have seen it coming!

Third Trimester!!!

Third Trimester is Here!!!

Well here's the quick updates:

- we've hung up shelves in the nursery, bought fabric for curtains (now just have to find time to make them) and framed a very cute picture of an original Curious George watercolor

- I'm not too thrilled about what my belly button looks like now. It's starting to be visible through clothing (so weird). I keep trying to push it back in but so far that's been unsuccessful...

- we said good-bye to our Christmas tree today...finally. It was still so nice and fresh looking it was hard to take it down but this far after Christmas it was really about time pack everything away till next year.

- Between my two schools I am one of six pregnant teachers/staff. One just had their baby on Tuesday! two more are due in the month then it's my turn!! Lots of new babies!!

I thought I'd take some pictures before posting this but we can't seem to find the camera, so pictures will have to wait for the time being.

Happy 2010 and Nursery Progress!

We had a nice quiet New Year's, just the two of us. Made a nice dinner, watched some of season 5 of The Office on DVD, watched the ball drop then headed to bed. 2010 sure is going to be a busy year for us!!

We've spent the last week working on the nursery! We finally picked colors we liked (inspired by a little framed keepsake from some of my friends - Trish and Jackie) and agreed to try taping out diamonds on the lower half of the wall. We think it turned out pretty nice!!

We spent one long evening taping the walls. It took quite a lot of tape and measuring!!



All taped and ready to paint!



Thought we'd do the week 24 picture in front of the soon-to-be-painted wall.



Top color is Butter and bottom color is Apple Blossom



We were so excited to take off the tape!!! We LOVE how it turned out!!



Tim found these Curious George wall stickers online so they of course had to go up right away! I think Tim wants this to be his room now :) Our baby will have no choice but to like Curious George! Tim's been reading Curious George stories to Baby already



Can't wait to finish putting shelves and other things up on the wall! More pictures to come as we continue adding to it! It's definitely become our favorite room in the house!

Yesterday we put up blinds and Tim changed the huge brown fan out for a small white one. It's very cute! He did a great job!



Getting the painting done seemed like that BIG step that needed to get done so we could really start preparing the nursery.

My second to last class of my Master's starts tomorrow and the next three and a half months are sure to be busy as I'm finishing up my National Board Certification work, taking childbirth classes, general getting ready for Baby, oh and teaching full time! I'm very fortunate to have a wonderful husband to help keep me sane and on track!

Happy 2010!!!!

Merry Christmas!!

Lots to update!

Christmas Eve - the short version.
I started having some abdominal cramping and after rest and drinking lots of water (advise from one of the midwives) and it wasn't getting better we went into the hospital to be checked. They did some tests and put a monitor on me to see what was going on. Apparently I was feeling contractions but luckily I wasn't having any other symptoms of pre-term labor. After drinking tons of water so they wouldn't have to put me on an IV and lots of prayers from family, they said we could go home! Prescription = drink TONS of water and rest a lot. 6 hours in the hospital wasn't exactly what we had planned on doing with our Christmas Eve but it was reassuring to know that everything was OK. Everyone was so wonderful there also!

We did hear that there were lots of Christmas babies born at the hospital when we were there!!

The next day we had Christmas at our house, went to Christmas Day mass (since we missed going to midnight mass) then drove to the McKay house to have Christmas again and an early dinner, then over to my parents house to have Christmas one more time and a late dinner. :) Despite all the driving around I had lots of time to rest. We stayed at my parents' that night so we could spend more time with both families the next day.

Since baby's been kicking even more than on Thanksgiving, everyone had a chance to feel it! After recently reading about what baby hiccups feel like, I've since realized that a lot of what I'm feeling is the result of hiccups and maybe not arms and legs flailing about as I've been invisionin!

We are very fortunate that our parents live so close together but it made us start thinking about how very different next Christmas will be with our Baby in tow!

Snow Day updates

Week 21 (now it's week 23) after one of my concerts.

Baby is kicking A LOT these days and I'm definitely noticing Baby's sleeping patterns. Up and kicking very strongly about 5:30am every morning (half an hour before my alarm goes off of course) and between 10-11pm when I'm ready to be falling asleep. Also

feeling a lot of kicking during the day. Not sure if Baby hears when my students are playing but he/she is usually kicking a lot during my 7/8 Grade rehearsals. My students are definitely aware that I'm not the only one who cares what they sound like because the other day one of my 6th graders said something about how my baby can hear how bad they're playing! HA!






Well, we got about 22 inches or so of snow on Saturday! So pretty and it looks like it might just be an early Winter Break! (Tim and I were both supposed to have school until Wednesday.)

Tim made a snow square...sort of like a crop circle...I guess...




Look at those icicles!!



Hart stayed with us for two nights and he and Tim shoveled our driveway for the second time and a good part of the cul-de-sac so we could get out and make it to mass on Sunday. So much snow!!! It wasn't till late afternoon on Sunday that a plow finally made it to our neighborhood.

Baking and Baby overload!

I had a ton of filo dough left over making Aunt Andrea's Baked Brie for Thanksgiving (one of my favorite parts of Thanksgiving) so I thought I'd try my hand at making Baklava! I was trying to channel my (Greek) Aunt Andrea as much as possible (I may have even done a little dance around the kitchen to get in the mood) since I was using the Rolled Baklava recipe from the Greek cookbook she gave me :) Some of them don't look as pretty as I hoped but but they sure do taste yummy! Not as good as Aunt Andrea's but not so bad for my first try I think. Mmmmmm

We thought we'd stop by Babies 'R Us today to start looking at baby things. Talk about overwhelming! We're definitely going to need suggestions for how to choose things like strollers, playpens, carriers, swings, diapers, etc..... And I guess we're going to have to figure out where to put all that baby stuff in our house too.

I love feeling the baby kick!! Sometimes it feels like Baby is trying out dance steps on my bladder but it's still a pretty amazing feeling!

Halfway to April 20!

Well, here we are at the halfway point - 20 weeks!

New developments: we've felt the baby kick! Thanksgiving morning, Tim felt the baby for the first time. I've felt fluttering, butterfly feelings for a few weeks but it's so exciting to be able to feel it really kick from the outside. Last night was the strongest kicking we've felt and it's so amazing! I'm not sure what I thought it would feel like but it's nothing like I imagined. (Baby's kicking now actually as I'm writing this!)

Equally as exciting was seeing the baby again today (for about an hour) for our detailed anatomy sonogram. The sonogram tech took lots of pictures of the baby from every angle taking measurements and checking organs. Everything is normal and Baby is growing as it should! We saw Baby opening and closing its mouth like it was eating (soooo cute!), moving its arms and legs around a lot and we counted all 10 fingers and toes! Saw it's heart beating (more clearly than the last time), saw the kidneys, all the little tiny bones - so many for such a tiny little baby! It's amazing how much Baby has grown since the first sonogram at 11 weeks. Definitely looks more like a baby than an alien now! We were tempted to find out whether it is a boy or girl since the tech said she could tell but we decided to stick to our original plan to wait to find out in April. (That's the bottom of the right foot!)

So up until a week or so ago I did not understand how (and still don't understand why) my belly button is supposed to eventually pop out. And then I realized that my belly button is becoming more shallow than it was before. Hmmmm.....

Oh, I'm now on my 76th cold (give or take a few) in the last couple months. No fun!! I don't think I've felt nauseous in the morning for a few days (which is so exciting, let me tell you!) but it's hard to tell with a stuffy head and runny nose. Ugh....all the rainy weather doesn't seem to be helping either. I keep hearing we're getting snow soon?!?!?!

Our house is now decorated for Christmas and Tim has hung up lights outside. Planning on getting our first REAL Christmas tree soon rather than taking the fake one out of the box again since we now have the room to put a real tree. Happy Advent!