Week 31

• How far along? 31 weeks.
• Total weight gain: Probably 17-18 by now. I’ve been eating lots of crap this week
• Maternity clothes? I just ordered some more from Old Navy. I’m hoping they come in sometime this week.
• Sleep: About the same. Can’t really complain too much.
• Cravings: I made a cake with chocolate icing and it was delicious.
• Best moment this week: Continued nursery progress
• Movement: Still quite a bit of moving and shaking going on. Some days are quieter than others, but I think that’s to be expected. Girl likes to chill out on some days and on others she likes to try to push an elbow/knee out of my side while I’m strolling the aisles at Lowes.
• Gender: Girl
• Belly Button in or out? In
• What I miss: Beer. But still not bad enough to try non-alcoholic beer
• Milestones:I am now dealing with swelling. It’s not too bad, yet, and really is only an issue after a work day. I’m hoping that if i increase my water intake, stop crossing my legs, and start taking mini walk breaks during the work day then I’ll be able to reduce the swelling

This week we finally decided on a curtain rod for the room and got the curtains up. Almost unsurprisingly, our two curtain panels are different lengths. They’re supposed to both be 83 inches long but one is 1.5-2 inches short. Since the window is behind the glider you can’t really tell, so it’s not worth it to go through the hassle of returning the defective panel and waiting for another to be delivered — especially since they’re not carried in the store.

I also got started on a DIY ottoman. The construction is pretty much done – we just have to pick out a fabric to upholster it in and stain or paint the feet. I’ll do a full post with step-by-step pictures, but here it is in the current state, covered with batting (in actuality I have a random yard of fabric draped over it to keep the cats from scratching and ripping the batting):

As you can see, Savannah is already a fan of getting under it:

Nursery Progress: Minor Updates

We’ve made a few purchases in the past few days that I thought I’d share.

I trolled the aisles of Target and found a lamp for the side table. First I bought it in the “small” size, which was just a bit too small. I picked up the “medium” version of the same lamp today and it’s a keeper. I was too lazy to use the real camera, so excuse the iPhone quality. Also, I have no idea why I didn’t take off the plastic from the lamp shade before taking these.

You might have spotted my little owl friend next to the lamp.

He’s a silicone rechargeable nightlight from Pottery Barn Kids. He changes colors and is pretty awesome. Unfortunately he’s not listed on the PBKids site anymore.

I also got sick of having the plastic still on the crib mattress so I grabbed a crib sheet from Target.

We finally decided on a tree decal and placed our order. We ordered this guy with a brown trunk and hot and soft pink accent colors.

Hopefully there will be more updates soon. We’ve got a curtain rod to get up for our hot pink gingham curtains and I have a plan to DIY an ottoman. And I’ll leave you with my view from the glider by lamp and orange Ikea light:

Baby K’s First Quilt

I purchased the fabric for this quilt awhile ago and had it washed and ready. I finally had time and motivation to work on it and I powered through and completed it in one weekend. I decided to just do strips of fabric instead of blocks to keep things on the simple side.

I added in two strips that were kind of patchworked together to add some variety, and because I needed a little bit more length. I like how they keep the quilt from just being two fabrics alternated the whole time. I kept the quilting super simple – just stitching “in the ditch” or where the rows met. The back is a white flannel with small pink dots. I used this Prudent Baby tutorial for a cheat on the binding. I find binding to be one of the most intimidating parts of quilts. This method worked good enough for me.

Enough chatting, here are some pictures:

Savannah was a big help through the whole quilting process:

In fact, she’s already tested it out on the back of the glider!

It’s far from perfect – I’m sure its not square, the binding is a bit off, my cuts were probably wrong, but it’s finished and it’s good enough for me!

Nursery Progress: All the Big Pieces

Lots of progress has been made in the nursery lately. We have a glider and a crib now, meaning all of the main furniture pieces are now in the room. Once we assembled the crib, we worked on the layout and ended up with a winner.

When you look in the room from the doorway, you’ve got the glider with side table. The dresser is on the back wall (where I originally thought we’d put the crib).

The crib is on the far right wall.

It’s kind of funny that the crib has this 3 routed vertical line detailing on the front two posts. We have similar detailing on our fireplace and also in our bedroom furniture.

The bookcase is the only thing that stayed in its original position. On the shortest wall to the right of the door.

Now that the furniture layout is decided, we can start working on what to put up on the walls. The room really needs more color injected – there’s so much white going on. The curtains should be delivered this week, so hopefully those will help add some color. They’re hot pink gingham curtains from Pottery Barn Kids. But overall I’m in love with the room so far.

Here’s a list of things we still need or projects we have to do:

• pick and purchase a tree decal for behind the crib
• find a mirror for above the bookcase
• decide on artwork and layout
• hang curtains
• make crib skirt
• lamp for the table next to the glider
• buy and install new ceiling fan
• install dimmer switches
• lumbar pillow for the glider
• ottoman of some sort

So there’s our current state of nursery affairs. Things are starting to come together!

Week 30

• How far along? 30 weeks. That means only 10 to go, people!
• Total weight gain: Just shy of 17 lbs.
• Maternity clothes? You know it. Though in this picture I’m wearing a t-shirt that still comfortably fits (though it’s a large where all my other pre-preg tshirts are mediums). I can wear some other non-maternity things, but the numbers are dwindling. I can’t button one of my coats anymore.
• Sleep: I wake up every few hours to flip sides. Thankfully the past few weeks I haven’t had issues getting back to sleep after turning. And still with the reflux.
• Cravings: Chocolate, kinda. For most of my pregnancy chocolate has left a bad taste in my mouth. But now, I can’t get enough. I bought two bags of Hershey kisses at the store this week. One of regular and one of the hugs variety. Let’s see how long they last. I also plan on making a cake (or cupcakes) with chocolate icing at some point this week.
• Best moment this week: Progress in the nursery. Post coming, but we’ve got the layout set and all the major pieces in the room.
• Movement: Baby K’s movement changed this past week. She actually totally freaked me out on Tuesday by not moving as much and as forcefully as I was used to. I’ve had some stressful work days this week that I’m sure have contributed, but thankfully no further scares. And Saturday night she pushed me by my ribs like craaazy while we were playing board games with friends.
• Gender: Girl
• Belly Button in or out? In
• What I miss: Not waking up in the middle of the night
• Milestones: Entering the final 1/4 of the pregnancy. Getting and assembling the crib. Making baby’s (and my) first quilt.

Week 29

• How far along? 29 weeks
• Total weight gain: 15lbs. Which means I gained 5 pounds from weeks 24 till 28, but with the holidays thrown in there, I feel like that isn’t too bad. I ate far too many cookies.
• Maternity clothes? Yep. Actually some of my tops are starting to get not quite long enough. Scary!
• Sleep: Sleep is still ok. Reflux is making a comeback so I’m trying to sleep a bit more propped up than usual to help with that, but I know it could be much, much worse. And that 2 week vacation really spoiled me so waking up for work is taking a bit of an adjustment.
• Cravings: Still nothing to really comment on here.
• Best moment this week: Passing the Gestational Diabetes screen! No diet restrictions for this gal
• Movement: Still super strong
• Gender: Girl
• Belly Button in or out? In
• What I miss: Sleeping on my stomach
• Milestones: Developing an iron deficiency. I believe this is pretty common and I’m not too surprised. My prenatal doesn’t have any iron in it, so now I’m on an iron supplement once a day. Thankfully the pill is small and coated so it’s not too difficult to swallow.

In other baby news, we attended the first half of our birth class. It was fairly informational but man was it slow paced! We have the 2nd half next Saturday and hopefully that will be better as it will be more about medications and interventions. We also hit up Pottery Barn Kids to look at gliders before their nursery seating sale ended. Well, they were also having a floor model sale so we ended up bringing a glider home with us! The slipcover is in a linen fabric which is more of an upgrade than we would have done if we had ordered it. We’ll get it dry cleaned this week and then I’m thinking about Scotch Guarding it for a little extra protection. Has anybody Scotch Guarded linen before?

Also our neighbors are taking the mattress off of our hands some time this week. And the crib should be in sometime in the next week as well. The room is really starting to come together and I’m looking forward to just having some decorating to do once all the major pieces are in place.