We have a baby room!

Do you see that widget on the side of the blog? I have 46 days until my due date and cannot believe how fast the time is going! Over the past couple of weeks I have been working like crazy to get our baby girl's room all set up and looking cute. I have also worked on learning how to install our car seat.

The car seat went in great, Bob stood in it and I pulled and we locked it in.



Afterwards, I took it over to the fire department to have it checked out. Without hesitation the police officer politely informed me that we had installed it completely wrong. We made it way too complicated. So he reinstalled it and we have our car seat. It looks so cute in our car.


Finishing Lily's room has been a lot of fun because I have been working on saving money by making my own stuff and using my creativity. I started the decoration with the letters for her name. I could not believe how expensive cute painted wooden letters were! So I went to Michaels and spent a good hour trying to find the cheapest way to do her letters. I painted the letters in the purple paint and then added all of the flowers (which are scrapbooking materials), tied some bows on them and here they are. Thank goodness her name is short!



After my foray into redoing lampshades I decided to tackle a lamp design for Lily. I thought it would be nice to have a lamp by the rocker so that I can read while feeding and one day read books to our baby girl.


My next project was the bedskirt. I found it kind of tricky because of how the base of the crib attaches. It took me a couple of days to finish the project, but it turned out so cute. I really love it because I have got so many awesome quilts that have either purple, pink or green in them. This should tie everything together really well.


Bob and I bought one of those IKEA paper lamps hoping that it would be a nice mellow light during the middle of the night feedings. Holy Moley, those lights are bright. So I decided to take some of the left over material and ribbon from the bedskirt and cover the outside. Even after all of this cuteness, it is still pretty bright, so we will see how it works.


My next project was finding cute shelves to hang above the changing table and dresser. Target provided these awesome black shelves. Okay so the instructions were so simple and the first shelf went up perfectly.



The bottom shelf, however, would not go on the wall. I got so frustrated I think I almost broke it. Thankfully, I stopped and took a break before that happened. After a 10 minute hiatus I came back and got the silly thing on the wall. I want to put pictures of her and our new little family in all of those frames.

I would have had this blog done a couple of weeks ago but I had to find a nightstand to put beside the rocker for the lamp to sit on. I finally found this nightstand through Walmart.com and had to have it shipped. Trying to save some money I shipped it site to store. It arrived this past week while Bob had to be in Las Vegas for work. I didn't think anything of it until I got it in the shopping cart and was attempting to put it in the car. The box with all of the parts was so heavy. Here I am standing at the car going "I did not think this one through." I did manage to use the leverage of the cart to push it into the back of the car, but there was no way I was going to get it into the apartment. On the way home I had this brilliant idea to get the nightstand upstairs. Even though I can't lift the whole box, I can take it up part by part. So I opened the box and managed to get all of the parts and pieces up the stairs within a day. The next day I built it and here it is!


Surprisingly, we still have room for the spare bedroom and this new bookshelf.



All in all I love how her room turned out. It may not be what I had originally planned but I am happy and blessed at the outcome. Bob and I can't wait to see her in her room.

This is Hard!

The third trimester has definitely come to stay! Here I am at 32 weeks and all belly. Thought I would share a swimsuit picture. We took this at 6AM before we headed to swim at the aquatics center so don't mind the slightly drugged look :)



Bob and I have just recently begun our childbirth and parenting classes. Our first class was CPR for adults, children and infants. It was great to be able to go together and get all of the information, however, I found myself terrified about the possibility of actually having to perform these breaths and compressions on my child. They say that knowledge is power, but I found it an eye opening experience and somewhat terrifying. Bob was great though and he kept a level head through it all, helping me deal with my own uncertainties. I have noticed that my hormones have gone on some sort of warpath wrecking my sanity and making me a little less than level headed. It isn't that I have totally lost my mind and cry all of the time it is just that I feel like I have or am going to! At the doctor the other day they told me I needed a flu shot. I nearly broke down in the office in tears because "what if it hurt my baby?" "will it hurt my baby?" "what if it is the wrong vaccine?" "what if I got sick from it.....I cannot do any more nausea and vomiting!" "what if, what if, what if......" Seriously, over a flu shot!!! (Don't worry, I was a big girl and got my shot:)



We also had our first childbirth/parenting class where they discussed the entire labor and delivery process as well as pain management and relaxation techniques. Call me crazy, but I have decided to do all I can to prepare and handle the pain so that I can do this delivery thing drug free. I want the whole experience of laboring. Now I say this today and who knows what I will actually say when the "time comes," but thats my goal!

Bob and I have yet to find a church out here to call home and I find myself lost in the expectations about discovering our spiritual home. Let me just say, I really struggle with church shopping! It brings to life this fact that we all believe in the same God and yet there are so many different ways to express it. I think that I have become more picky in my "older age" and realize that just like the older generation wanted to hold onto their hymns and traditional standards, I want to hold onto my "perfect contemporary church" model. I discovered that I have very little tolerance this morning when I almost wanted to walk out of a church because "it wasn't me." Now there was absolutely nothing "wrong" with this church, point in fact it was a beautiful building with outgoing people and sound teaching, but the vibe and style just wasn't me. When did I get so critical about my church experience? I hope that the heightened awareness is a side effect of the exploding hormones and not some inner critical soul that sees the negative before the positive. So frustrating!



Loneliness has also begun to creep into my life and I find myself missing friends and the familiarity of the West Coast. I know that part of the loneliness is directly linked to the fact that I am slowly getting less and less mobile. I find myself absolutely content to sit at home and sew, cook, clean or just "nest." Lily is getting so much bigger now and my expanding belly pulls on my back and has recently begun to keep my hips in a state of "burning pain." The worst part is that the hip pain is exacerbated when I go for a long walk. Awesome.......Now don't worry, I haven't stopped exercising, I just have to stay on short jaunts and swim. I really think that my melancholy is related to my lifestyle that is at present becoming more and more sedentary. I have started to have morning coffee once a week with a dear friend out here whose husband works with Bob. She is new in the area too so there is a lot of understanding. I guess I just miss the familiarity of Arizona, the friends, the family, the shopping, the job, the church and everything else that we spent 5 years establishing. It is truly hard to move across the country!


The pictures that I posted this week are of the beautiful Lake Johnson that has become Bob, Rocky and my exercise spot. I knew that my blogging was going to be a bit on the depressing side this week so I wanted to put some natural beauty in it. The Lord is faithful to remind me that I am blessed even amidst feelings of loneliness and uncertainty.

Labor Day Weekend!

I love holiday weekends! There is just something about holidays that makes everyone happy and excited. I really was looking forward to the weekend because all of our baby furniture arrived! I knew that setting up the crib, dresser and rocker was going to be a bit of a challenge. When you open the box nothing is put together and the sheer amount of boards, tools and parts is wickedly overwhelming. Just like IKEA, you know where you see it in the store and it looks awesome and then you open the box and are like....how does all of this look like that. We tackled the Rocker first on Friday night because it was almost preassembled. It only took us 20 minutes to see the fruits of our labor.



On Saturday, Bob and I started at 8 in the morning with the crib.



I headed out for a cup of coffee and a smoothie and then helped put in the screws. It was a little stressful because the top curved part of the crib required wood glue and it kept on leaking out.



So for about an hour we went through two rolls of paper towels trying to keep the glue from wrecking our gorgeous new crib. Whew, we made it and here is the finished product! We love it!


Later that afternoon we started in on the dresser which was a super challenge. All of the thousands of parts came in one giant bag so the first thing I did was organize as Bob started on the assembly.



Doesn't Bob look so adorable tucked inside the dresser? He is all arms and legs and definitely does not tuck away neatly! That being said, neither do I right now! At 31 weeks, I am starting to hit the whale stage. Love it!! I spent most of my time assembling the drawers for the dresser and about two and a half hours later we finished!



Over the next couple of days we spent some of our time swimming at the aquatics center and walking around Lake Johnson. My water belt no longer fits around my expanding hips so it has now become an above the belly look!


Bob thinks it is pretty cute. After the exercise I always come home and sleep!


I am so tired lately. I guess that is normal, but holy cow. I sort of sleep for 9 hours at night, take a two hour nap in the day and then go back to bed at 9 at night. Yikes! What am I going to do when this little girl comes?

All in all we had an excellent holiday weekend!