Nursery Updates!

I have had the nesting bug really bad ever since my little brother Mike moved out.  The last time you saw my nursery, I had only painted the walls.  Arthur and I have been working like crazy to get Baby Finn's room ready for him to arrive.

Once the carpets were cleaned, we slowly started to move everything into his room.  We started with his crib and his dresser.  We didn't have a mattress yet, so I ordered that online and had it shipped 2-day air.  I couldn't wait to make his bed and put his mobile in it!

As soon as his mattress was here, Arthur helped make the bed and I put some of his stuffed animals in it.  I also filled his drawers with onesies and put some books on top of his dresser.  It was great to have my rocker set up in the corner of the room.  As we started to gather things, I would instantly want them set up!

Here are some pictures of the nursery as it is today.  There are just a few things left to get, and then we are ready!

Here is the room, standing at the doorway.  The fish decals we ordered online and Arthur cut them out and positioned them on the wall all by himself.  The 3 orange fish in the middle represent Arthur, Finn and Me.  I loved the way they turned out!  His window seat holds his toys and there is an empty spot for Arthur to sit next to me when we read to Baby Finn.  The curtains are blackout so Finn will be able to nap in the dark.  :)  The curtain panel in the middle came with his bed set and it matches his blanket and crib sides.

Here is the first thing you see when you walk in.  My good friend Jenn made this for his wall.

 

Here is a close up of the picture.  Jenn stitched it by hand out of felt!  I sent her a picture of Finn's mobile on his crib and this is what she created from just a picture!  She is so creative.  :)

 

This is his bassinette.  The blanket on top was knitted by my cousin Andrea.  She matched the colors perfectly with the rest of the room.  Obviously, KitKat loves the bed.  She had a nap in here for several hours one day.  You can see sleepytime Finn behind her from Adventure Time.  I'm excited to roll this into our room when Finn gets here so he can sleep next to me!

Here is a view of the letters I made Finn this week.  I wanted to do letters above his bed originally, but because we decided to do the fish instead, I put them on top of his closet.  I got the letters and the fish shapes from Joann's crafts.  They were originally a natural wood color, so I painted them white and then super glued the fish on.  Arthur helped me hang them up yesterday.  I was so excited to see them finished finally!

Here is a close-up of the letters.  The ribbon holding each letter up is twine, with white stripes painted on.  I got the ribbon at Hobby Lobby.  It ended up really cute, I think!

Here is the inside of his crib.  Right now I'm storing his Boppy in there.  I have a few more stuffed animals in the crib as well.  The bedding is from KidsLine and I bought it on eBay.  Arthur and I looked for a long time for a bedding set that we loved.  We liked this one because the colors were really bright and they were the type of fish design we were looking for.  The mobile is from Arthur's aunt JeNeal.  Can you spot the other Finn we have? 

 

Next to the crib, we have his play mat with a bunch of ocean toys on it.  I'm excited to let him lie on it and play with the toys.  I also got a MamaRoo bouncer for him from my mom and dad.  They loved going with Arthur and me to the baby store and picking it out with us.  They were so excited to buy something for Baby Finn!  It is a really cool bouncer, it moves like a person bouncing a baby.  There are sounds and an iPhone jack so I can play music for him while he relaxes in it.  If you haven't seen the cool MamaRoo video, you'll have to check it out. 

 

Here is the video for the MamaRoo:

 

Here is a picture of Teddy Ruxpin trying out our MamaRoo:

 

Next to his window seat is my rocker.  I got this from Arthur's mom for Christmas this past year.  I usually put on his fleece blanket that goes with his bed set and a knitted baby blanket from his Grandma on his dad's side.  Arthur and I got the wall shelf from Home Depot, we liked it because it looks like an ocean wave.  I have a few frames up there right now, one is from his mom showing the birth day and time and measurements for Finn, and the other one is from my sister-in-law Whitney.  It has a great quote about motherhood.  I spend hours in this corner, rocking and listening to music from his mobile.  I like using the Twilight Turtle to put blue stars on the ceiling.  It's really relaxing.  My favorite thing is when Arthur sits next to me on the window seat and he reads books to Baby Finn.  He does all the voices from the books and doesn't skip parts.  :)

Here is his dresser.  The lamp on the left is a cute whale that matches the bedding set we got, also by KidsLine.  In front of that is my Mother's Day snow globe and Baby Finn's journal.  I'll be writing in it before he is born and after he is born so he has something he can read about his birth that I wrote.  My mom did that for me, and it's one of my most prized possessions.  I love reading about my first few days and weeks after I was born.  Next to his lamp, you can see his big pile of books he has already.  I hope Finn loves to read!  Next to that is our baby monitor and his baby album with all of his ultrasound pictures.  In front of those things you can see my essential oils and hot pad that Arthur's mom and brother gave me for my birthday.  Next to that is the fish I made for Finn at Color Me Mine.  Then, you'll see his framed 3D ultrasound picture that shows the best view of his face.  I love to spend time looking at it when I'm sitting in my rocker.

Here is the amazing light fixture Arthur found online.  We debated between this one and a ceiling fan with palm leaves, but I'm glad we ended on this one because it really matched his crib and dresser. 

 Overall, the experience of putting his room together has been so fun.  I have loved coming home from every one of our baby showers and putting things away.  We are so lucky to have such generous friends and family to help us get ready for Baby Finn.  I'm excited for Finn to get here so he can enjoy his room!  :)

The last thing I will say about this whole experience is that Arthur has been incredible through this whole process.  He has been SO patient with me and allowed me to be obsessive about even the tiniest detail when putting things together.  He has spent hours moving things around and building things so I can feel like there is a special place for Finn to come home to after he is born.  I am so lucky to have such a hard working and patient husband.  Not to mention talented with great taste! 

Nursery Progress

On both my side and Arthur's side, our families are both really excited for Baby Finn to get here.  We have been gathering gifts since we found out we were pregnant.  We've had Christmas, Easter, and both of our birthdays happen since we found out.  So, there have been ample opportunities for our family and friends to get us stuff.

My little brother Mike has been living with Arthur and me since before I found out I was pregnant.  He's been in the guest room, which would be the nursery.  He just moved out this past week and so Arthur and I were excited to get started on Finn's room.  I've been saving every piece of clothing and toy in my office next to Mike's room, and so I was ready to start having somewhere to store Finn's stuff.  Is that what Nesting feels like?!  ;)

Mike moved out on Thursday, and Thursday after work Arthur and I went to Home Depot to pick out some paint colors.  We ended up choosing a really light blue and a light tan color. 

Finn's nursery theme is going to be Under the Sea, with ocean creatures like fish, whales, etc.

Arthur also got some white paint for the ceiling, baseboards and closet.  Arthur spent a good part of the night cleaning up the room by washing the walls and blinds.  We will still need to get the carpet clean, since we've never done that in there. 

Thursday night Arthur stayed up late and painted the ceiling first.  I went in there on Friday morning and got this picture of the ceiling painted and the current paint color on the walls:

Once he had the ceiling painted, he got started on the blue walls.  He was able to get 2 coats on Friday while I was at work.

Once that was dry, he painted the accent wall the light tan color and finished up the closet and painted that white.  I was so anxious to move some of Baby Finn's stuff in!  Thank goodness I have such a hard working talented husband to take care of the entire nursery in just 24 hours!

Here is the corner  where the blue wall and the accent wall meet.  You can see the start of Finn's toy collection.  I love the colors!

Here is the back side of the room by the closet.  You can see the start of our clothes collection.  Arthur did such an excellent job with the paint!

Here's the other side showing the other blue wall.

We have a lot of stuff to still move in.  Our next steps are to first get the carpets cleaned, next to move his crib in and buy a mattress, then to move his dresser and my rocker in.  I'm glad I still have 2 months left to get this stuff done!  :)  If you want to see pictures of my crib and dresser, click here to go to the blog entry about it. 

So far, here are the toys that are sitting on his window seat:

Here are his clothes in the closet!  The left side is entirely full, and the right side has some of the bigger sizes.  We are doing pretty good for only having had 1 baby shower so far!  I'm still excited to get some more great stuff though.  :)

Arthur has also collected a few things on his own for Baby Finn.  He did a bit of shopping on Disney.com and was able to get a few really cute Finding Nemo things.  He even got a cute towel with Finn's name stitched into it!

If you can't tell, we are extremely excited to get Finn here so he can enjoy his new room.  :)  I'm still really excited for my other 3 baby showers.  We're having 1 with my Bountiful friends and family in Mid May.  We're having another one in Boise with my cousins who live up there.  My grandma also lives up there and so I'd love to have her involved as well.  That will be over Memorial Day weekend.  My last shower will be with Arthur's family, which will probably happen in June.  A few people have asked about our registry.

We are registered at Target and Babies R Us. 

Click here to go to the Babies R Us Registry
Click here to go to the Target Registry
 

23 Weeks and Feeling Great!

Long time no blog!  I have not been able to update anyone for awhile because I've been caught up in work stuff and other things that have prevented me from spending a few minutes blogging.  I promise to be better about it as I get farther along.  :)

Arthur made a cool video with Finn's 20 week ultrasound.  I love watching it and seeing his little movements and memorizing his face.  Arthur did a great job picking some good Owl City music to go with it.  :)

Here's the video Arthur made.  My favorite parts are at 4:52 and 8:30.



Our next ultrasound is going to be this coming Friday, March 22nd.  This time I've invited my mom to come and record the ultrasound since Arthur's mom came to the last ultrasound.  I do like to involve them so they can start to bond as early as possible with baby Finn.

Arthur and I have also been shopping quite a bit here and there when we see cute baby stuff.  When we were in Vegas, we found some clothes we couldn't pass up at Baby Gap.  Here are some pictures of some of the clothes we got.

We also found some furniture for Finn's nursery!  We looked everywhere for a crib that we both liked.  I was trying to avoid really dark brown wood, and I also didn't like super light wood.  We ended up finding a crib on Babies R Us that had really good reviews and it was the perfect color called Driftwood.

Here is a picture of the crib and dresser set we got:

It took about 2 weeks to have them shipped to the Babies R Us in Midvale.  We picked them up yesterday, and Arthur's dad let us borrow his truck.  It was a relief to finally have them loaded up to get home.  Mike is still our roommate until May, so it will be that long until we can get his nursery set up.  That's ok, though, because we love Mike living here.  :)

Here is Arthur loading up the crib and the dresser on the truck at Babies R Us:

Everything is coming together pretty well!  I'm super excited to start showing a bit more.  I'm wearing maternity pants all of the time now, and I can feel Finn moving multiple times a day.  It's awesome.  :)

How far along:  23 Weeks, 2 Days
How much time left:  16 Weeks, 5 Days

Top two symptoms:  Hunger and exhaustion at night.  I've been eating everything in sight.  My cravings have gotten a lot worse since the nausea went away.  I've had some good energy these days, which is really nice.  Exhaustion at night is pretty bad.  I pass out usually before 10:00 and don't wake up again until 5-5:30 AM.  I know I need to take advantage of the time before Finn gets here, because I hear I won't get much sleep then.  :)

I also had a random symptom the other day, my feet swelled up super big.  It hasn't happened since, and I think it was directly related to eating too much salt at one meal.  I put my feet up and they've been ok and haven't swelled again, thank goodness. 

Favorite thing I ate today:  Lately, I've been eating A LOT of french fries.  For some reason, that's my craving of choice.  :)

Mood:  My mood has been good lately!  Much more positive and focused on the good stuff.  I think it's because I'm feeling better and I have some good things to focus on.

Worried about:  I'm really not worried about too many things, aside from keeping up with work and staying focused on the right things before Finn gets here. 

Excited for:  I'm excited for a couple of things.  I'm excited for the HypnoBirthing class that Arthur and I are going to take starting next week.  It was supposed to start tonight, but it didn't end up happening because the lady that was teaching it had sick kids.  It goes for 6 weeks in a row, every Saturday night.  It's supposed to teach me how to focus through the pain and be as solitary as I can so I can avoid an epidural.  It has some pretty good reported numbers from 2009 - 2013:

• NO pain medications or epidural: 82%
• NO episiotomy: 96%
• NO elective medical labor induction: 94%
• NO labor augmentation with pitocin: 94%
• NO c-section: 92%

Pretty good stats!  :)  I'm also excited for my next ultrasound which is this coming Friday.  I get to see Finn again!  Woohoo!

Good Sunday Morning!

I love that it is a 3 day weekend.  I always feel like the weekends are too short.  I think it's because I don't usually do too much, and am pretty lazy.  I like it that way, though... so don't judge me.  :)

Yesterday, Arthur and I slept in until around 11:30 or so.  We played Wii with Mike and hung out for a little bit.  Around 3, we left and went to Buy Buy Baby.  It was pretty cool, but I didn't really see a whole lot I liked.  I think it's because we have a very specific theme in mind for our baby boy.

We are probably going to do his nursery in an "Under the Sea" theme.  I previously joined Pinterest but didn't really use it.  I went back on Thursday night (after we found out that he's a boy) and looked up some fun ideas.

Arthur's favorite theme is a dark brown crib and some cute ocean accessories:

He also likes the wall decoration of these schooling fish:

I'm not too picky, but I'm leaning towards liking the lighter colored wood because to me, it looks less cagey.  :)

I've been pinning some other things, not just room stuff.  I found some cute knit things that would be fun for pictures when he is born.  I just need to learn to knit.  :)

After Buy Buy Baby, we met up with my parents at the mall for a minute so they could pick up Arthur's grill saw.  My dad is redoing his bathroom with one of those walk-in tubs.  I think it's great that he's making an effort to make their house nicer.  He's doing it all himself, but he has asked Arthur to help one weekend when he's free.

At the Mall, Arthur and I went to Gap Kids and I found a really cute hat that was on sale.  I think it's  Christmas hat, but it looks like the 4th of July to me.  Because my due date is July 11th, it will be a perfect little hat for him to wear:

Then, we went to Cheesecake Factory with some friends and my brother.  There was a mixup on the reservation for how many, so Mike and his girlfriend waited for nearly 2 hours for a seat for 2 after we had left.  They still got seated just before 9, so it worked out.   

I ordered the Chicken Bellagio and the Godiva Cheesecake.  Sooooo good!

Arthur and I went to a friends house after dinner and played games.  I was feeling pretty good, so that was appreciated.  Overall, it was a good day.

How far along:  15 Weeks, 3 days
How much time left:  24 Weeks, 4 Days
 
Top two symptoms:  Yesterday my symptoms were slight nausea and a headache later on in the day.  Nothing too bad.  I think they're slowly getting better, which tells me that the 16 week timeframe for my headache going away may be true.  I sure hope so.

Favorite thing I ate today:  I didn't eat much of my dinner because I had Gastric Bypass 10 years ago... so I don't have a lot of room.  So I took it with me and ate some at our friend's house and it was just delicious.  I love that it includes Prosciutto on top, and pesto... two of my favorite things. 

Mood:  My mood yesterday was really good.  Since I found out that I'm having a boy, everything has become happier for me.  I love that.  :)  I did have a few minutes yesterday where I was worried about Mike and his girlfriend getting to eat, and I did have a bit of trouble processing those emotions.  That's one thing about being pregnant that I struggle with, which is not being able to let some things not get to me.  Pregnancy hormones win!

Worried about:  I chatted with a girl last night who was in the group I was with, and she's also pregnant.  She's much farther along that me, 30 weeks or so.  We were talking about different birth methods and whether or not we were going to go natural.  I worry about my pain tolerance, and I struggle to make a solid decision about how I'm going to handle it when the time comes.  I know that I'm going to have intentions of going natural, but I have absolutely no idea how bad it's going to be.  I do plan on pushing myself to stay strong and breathe through the pain... but every time I say that to someone who's been through it, they laugh at me because the know I have no idea how bad it can get.  It doesn't scare me, it feels more like a challenge, which I like.  I am probably over thinking it because I'm not even close to that time yet.  I will have to figure things out soon, I'm sure.  I'm open to advice here!

Excited for:  This might sound weird, but I'm very excited for dinner tonight.  Arthur is making squash and Salmon for dinner from Costco.  There is nothing I love more than salmon!  *drool*

The End of the Beginning

I titled this entry "The End of the Beginning" because this is the end of the first week of knowing that I'm pregnant.  The fact that I got through the first week is amazing to me.

Today was a very long Friday.  I woke up early and had to be to work early.  That is tough on a Friday.  I had back-to-back meetings all day and I was just really looking forward to coming home and decorating the family Christmas tree with Arthur.

After work, I drove home and met up with Arthur.  He had to deliver a birthday cake that he made for his niece, so we had to go back out.  We delivered it and then went to Babies R Us.

It was really fun looking at the cribs and the clothes and different accessories.  We didn't buy anything, we were just browsing.  We both commented that we can't wait to find out the sex of the baby so we can start to buy stuff.  There is some unisex stuff, but most of it is either blue, green, pink or purple.  I need to have brown stuff, but haven't decided on a decor theme yet.

Pregnancy-wise today, I felt good.  Not too tired.  I find that if I lay down at any point during the day, I almost instantly fall asleep.  I have to try to remember to stay up and awake until it's actually bedtime.  :)

Tomorrow is going to be fun, Arthur and I are going to finish putting up and decorating the tree.  I love the cool breeze and the sunshine through the windows while we listen to Christmas music and hang ornaments.  It's one of my favorite moments of every year.  I usually do a lot of watching, but that's OK. 

How far along:  4 weeks, 1 day
How much time left:  35 weeks, 6 days
Top two symptoms:  Full/sensitive breasts and tired

Favorite thing I ate today:  Pizza Hut Bread Sticks.  OMG!!!!!

Mood:  Today I felt like I was not on the ball like I normally am.  I felt foggy and a bit disconnected.  I think it's because it was a Friday and I just didn't feel like working.  Overall, I was in a mediocre mood.  Not too happy and not too upset.  I'm finding more and more that it is easy pick out where the stress comes from in my life.  I need to avoid those areas and focus on the things that make me the most happy.  :)

Worried about: I stressed less about my period coming today than I normally do.  I think I worried about how I'm going to figure out telling my family on Thanksgiving.  We are going to be at our house this year so telling both families would make it pretty chaotic.  I wanted to keep it intimate, because I didn't know everyone was coming here.  We'll work it out, it will just have to take some bending from someone, somewhere.

Excited for:  Shopping online for baby stuff that I know I want, and not just stuff that is on display at Babies R Us.  I know that when I see the theme I want, I will grab it up.  I think I just need to know if I'm having a girl or a boy.  Sigh...