Gender Reveal Party

I know have the pictures from our Gender Reveal Party so I'm going to show everyone in the blogosphere!

Ben and I made a ton of food and it all turned out great (well... except the hanky panks, but oh well.) Here's a list of the food we had:
-Bruschetta
-Popcorn chicken
-Hanky Panks (burned and then put on different bread)
-Chips and Bacon dip
-Blue corn tortilla chips with cajun dip
-Peanuts
-Fruit and Veggie Tray
-Oreo balls
-Chocolate Cheese Ball
-Cupcakes

Some party goers enjoying the food:





We had everyone wear either pink or blue. We got pictures of both teams before the reveal.

Team Pink: Johnny decided to be Team Pink because that's the only shirt he had in either color. Becky and Heather joined Team Pink even though they weren't actually wearing pink. Both grandmas were Team Pink.
Team Blue: The overwhelming majority. I would have to admit that I would have picked Team Blue too if I had to guess.

The Reveal....Team Pink wins!

The parents with Tim creeping in the background (a little blurry.... Mom probably wasn't wearing her glasses :D)

Ella spent the entire afternoon chasing Alex around and trying to play with her. Alex spent the entire afternoon running away and trying to hide from Ella. It was pretty comical.



And just for your enjoyment. Some belly comparisions:

Me & Fatty.

And probably the best picture of the night.

Photo Dump

I just downloaded a bunch of pictures off my camera last night and realized that a lot of the ones I had taken were meant to be posted. So these are all old but I still want to post them.

Spaghetti and Salad

Sometime early on in my pregnancy (probably during one of those periods where I was constantly hungry) I decided that I really wanted spaghetti and meatballs. Ben never wants spaghetti and he was closing that night so I decided to make myself some. A warning: I am the WORST at deciding how much pasta is enough. When I was growing up, we would make at least a pound for dinner and somehow I believe that I should still make about a pound even though we were feeding 8 back then and now I'm only feeding 1. (This is the reason I need to have a big family. I don't know how to cook for 2 people!) So.... my plate of spaghetti.

Yummy, right?
Well on this same night, I decided that a salad would go wonderfully with my spaghetti. Again, not so great on portions. I hard boiled some egg because I love egg on my salad. This is what I came up with:

This was also during the time in my pregnancy where I would be really hungry but I would get full after two bites. This was probably the after picture. :D

Belly Pics: 16 Weeks, 2 Days
Ben and I went to dinner for his birthday like 2 months ago and I had him take a few belly pictures since I was actually in a cute dress. Here they are:

Alex
One night while Ben was closing I was sitting on the couch watching TV. I guess Alex decided that she wanted to watch TV with me, so she hopped up on the couch. She's done this occasionally with me and Ben home but never with Ben gone. I thought it was hilarious. She just sat next to me on the recliner, watching TV. When she got bored, she just hopped down again like it was nothing.

On the couch

Watching TV

Uh, Why are you taking my picture?

Me & Al

Nursery Preview
I took a bunch of pictures of us redoing the nursery. We still have to show our parents the finished product (or nearly finished) but after that, I'll post all the pictures. Here's a little sneak peek:

Alex is trying to peek in too!

Please show me. I'm being good!

More to come!

Weekly Update: 25 Weeks

How far along: 25 Weeks! That means just 15 more weeks until due date. Wow!

How Am I Feeling?: Okay. My back has been hurting for 2 weeks though. I think I've decided it must be my office chair because it actually felt okay over the weekend, but all it took was an hour on Monday morning and my back was hurting again.

Mood: Happy

Clothes: Yesterday I wore a pair of pants that are just about too small so I couldn't button them. I also ended up wearing a shirt that is now on the short side. I spent the whole day pulling up my pants and pulling down my shirt. That was not so good.

Sleep: This week I have started getting up every night right around 3:30 to pee. It's not so enjoyable.

Cravings: fudgie sticks and pretzels with peanut butter

Gender: Girl!

Movements: Earlier this week I felt her on both sides of my stomach at the same time. It was so weird! I guess she stretched and kicked and punched me at the same time. It made me laugh. She is so strong! You can see my tummy moving and she kicks like crazy. Her most active time is in the evening on the recliner while we're watching TV. She is also pretty active while I'm sitting at my desk at work. She's probably telling me to get a new chair because she's uncomfortable too! Ben puts his hand on my tummy every night and she kicks him quite a few times, but it's not constant. Then when he takes his hand away she kicks like crazy! I don't know if that means she hates his hand there or that she loves it! Maybe she's kicking trying to tell me to have Daddy put his hand back!

Belly Button: Still an innie but getting shallower.

Best Moment This Week: My parents were able to feel the baby this week. It was so cool! Now we just have to get the other set of grandparents to feel her too!

What I Miss: Not. A. Thing.

What I am Looking Forward To: I know it sounds weird, but I think I'm actually looking forward to my next appointment when I have to drink that nasty drink. I think it's because that means I'm getting even closer. Plus, my appointments will be every 2 weeks after that and I'm really excited for that!

NBR: I'm so looking forward to going to the Taste of Cincinnati on Monday. Ben and I really enjoy going every year. I love it because I love getting to taste a bunch of different foods! This year could be disastrous though. A pregnant woman at the Taste? Watch Out!

Milestones This Week: grandparents feeling baby.

How Big is Baby?: According to The Bump, the baby is the size of an eggplant.

Your Baby - 25 Weeks Pregnant
The structures of your baby's spine are beginning to form while the blood vessels of the lungs develop as well. Also, his nostrils are beginning to open. Your baby now has fully formed fingerprints and his bones are continuing to harden. If your baby were delivered now it would have a chance of surviving due to some great advances in medicine. The premature baby could survive in an incubator for few months. His taste buds are forming, and he may be developing a weakness for sweets. He is about 13 inches long and weighs a pound and a half.

13 inches??? a pound and a half? Baby is so big!

Doctor's Appointment 5.0

We had our fifth doctor's appointment yesterday. It was pretty typical. We got there and once again they wanted me to pee in a cup. The only problem was that I had just gone before we left. I know that was really stupid, but I forgot! They took my weight. I have gained 5 pounds since my last visit which means 10 pounds total. We had a different nurse. She was nice enough but a little bit crazy. She asked me if I was a single lady. I was really confused because I've been going to the same doctor for months now and they know I'm married. It took me a few seconds to answer so she repeated "Single, right? Never married" and I told her that I was married. Then Ben chimes in from the corner saying "Uh, that would be me." I guess the system still has me listed as single which is weird.

My blood pressure is normal which is good. The nurse gave me a bag of goodies including this really yummy drink I have to drink before my next appointment so they can test me for gestational diabetes. Uh yeah, maybe it's not so yummy. Apparently it tastes like flat Sunkist. The thing I'm most worried about it that I have to drink it in less than 10 minutes. I don't usually like to chug things, but I guess if I drink it all at once, it'll be over faster. The other part I'm dreading is that I can't eat or drink anything (even water) after I drink this drink and they don't test me for an hour. I'm afraid I'm going to have a really bad taste in my mouth for over an hour.

The NP came in and listened to the heartbeat. She also measured my stomach. She said I looked great and I am growing beautifully. Woo hoo! She also said that gaining ten pounds was perfect and she told me that I'm all baby! I think that's something every pregnant woman wants to hear.

The appointment went well and I heard only good things which makes me happy. I go back in 4 weeks and then I'll start going every 2 weeks! Wow. It's really flying by now.

Babymoon Trilogy: Around the House

For the rest of the week we decided to just work around the house. We got so much accomplished! Ben put up new locks on our doors including a super sweet new deadbolt with a coded combination! So now if you want to break into our house, you have to get passed the key, the deadbolt combination and the guard dog! (Seriously, she's vicious.)

He also put up some tint on our sidelights. We used to have window frames and curtains hanging there but the curtains were ugly and Alex chewed up the frames during one of those times when we were outside and she wanted to come out too. The curtains were also horribly dirty because of her constant slobbering on them. We took down the curtains and the frames, cleaned the windows and put up a new tint. We really like it because we can see out of it, but it's hard to see back in most of the time. I think it's a much cleaner look and it wasn't that hard! (Although Ben may have a difference in opinion on that one.)

Finally, we finished the nursery. Yep, that's right. It's done. We are so happy with the result. It definitely looks very neat. The monsters on the wall are super cute and we're very pleased with its originality. I promise I'll post photos soon. We also got our crib last week. Of course we had to set up a delivery time and it needed a signature so Ben set up the time for the day he closed. It was supposed to be delivered between 9 and 12. He waited until 11:30 when he had to go to work. Of course both of our moms were unavailable to sit at the house that day so he left a note on the door telling them they could leave it and hoping they would accept it as a signature. Luckily, when I got home it was on the porch! It was huge! I had to have my brother come over and take it inside for me. When we looked at the paper they had left, it said that the crib had been delivered at 1:05. So much for between 9 & 12, huh? Oh well. We got our crib and we were able to put it together last Wednesday. We're so excited!

Babymoon Trilogy: Registering

In our second installment of the Babymoon Trilogy, I will share our registering experiences!

We decided we wanted to register at Babies R Us (Why doesn't my keyboard have a backwards R????) while we were on vacation. A few weeks ago we went in on a Saturday and it was total chaos. We decided to do it in the early morning/afternoon during the week when there would be less people in the store. We got there around 10:45 on Thursday morning. After getting our scanner, we walked to the bedding section and just stared. There were 10 different crib mattresses that looked pretty much the same with different prices. I think we quickly realized we really didn't know what we were doing.

We went through the whole store and spent WAY too much time decided on strollers, crib sheets, blankets, pack n plays, car seats, high chairs, etc. It was so overwhelming! We think we finally got it down, but by the time we got to the bottles, we were pretty much just pointing at things and saying "Ummmm......that one."

We were promised a little bag if we registered for 100 items which we figured would be no big deal. By the time we figured we were about done. we probably only had about 65 things on the list. We doubled checked our list and realized we had missed a few things. By the time we went back through the store, we still hadn't reached 100. We headed over to toys and clothes to see if we could reach our goal. I didn't want to register for a bunch of cute outfits, so we stuck to the necessary items such as onezies, caps, and booties.

We think we were able to get just about everything we will need, but what do we know? We're also setting up a registry on Amazon.com because there were a few items that we couldn't really find at Babies R Us.

Go check out our registry!
http://www.toysrus.com/registry

And did you know that Toys R Us has quite a selection of baby products too? Ben and I went there the other night just to see and the have our stroller set, high chair and other items. We were really surprised, and it's definitely good to know we won't have to drive all the way out to Babies R Us when there is a Toys R Us right down the street!

Weekly Update: 24 Weeks

How far along: 24 weeks. That means viability week! If something should happen and she is born now, she has a much greater chance of survival. Happy Viability Day, baby! (Stay in there as long as possible though. We're not quite ready for you to meet us yet!)

How Am I Feeling?: Pretty good. I have constant back pain though. It's a traveling pain too. It's hard to get comfortable on the couch or in bed. I'm not sure what's going to happen in the next 15 or so weeks.

I seem to have gotten a lot of my energy back though. I don't feel that same absolute exhaustion that I had experienced during the first tri and beginning of second tri.

Mood: Happy

Clothes: Maternity. All the time.

Sleep: I've been sleeping pretty well.

Cravings: none that I can think of right now...

Gender Predictions: It's a girl! :D

Movements: Oh yeah, she's moving around like crazy!

Belly Button: It looks so funny to me!

Best Moment This Week: We got our crib! We put it together last night and we're so excited. That means that the nursery is done!!!! (Except for the lighting. My dad has to help us with that)

What I Miss: Being on vacation.

What I am Looking Forward To: I don't know. Everything seems so far away!

Milestones This Week: viability week!

How Big is Baby?: According to The Bump, the baby is STILL the size of a papaya. What???

Your Baby - 24 Weeks Pregnant
Your baby is almost completely formed. He is now between 1.25 and 1.5 pounds and is about a foot long.
He will continue to gain weight in muscles, developing organs and the deposit of brown fat. The purpose of the brown fat is to retain body heat. Newborns are notoriously bad at regulating body temperature at first. This is particularly a problem for a baby born early. Changes are occurring in lung development so some babies are able to survive (with intensive care services) if born today. Surviving babies may have disabilities and require long-term intensive care. A good estimate is that a baby born now would usually stay in the NICU until their official due date.
Your baby is totally unaffected by the Braxton Hicks contractions (a usually painless tightening of the uterus not affiliated with labor) you may be having as well.

My baby girl is over 1 pound!!!

Babymoon Trilogy: Columbus

DH and I took last week off and decided to take a mini babymoon vacation. We headed up to Columbus for a few days to do some shopping and just get away for a little bit. We didn't take a single picture. (Sorry!)

We left early on Monday morning. We drove my sister back up to OSU since she had been home for our party. Since she had to work at 9:00, we left at 6:45. This is earlier than I leave for work but somehow the idea of getting up early to start a vacation isn't nearly as bad as the idea of getting up to go to work. We got to Columbus right around 9:00 and I called the hotel to see what time we could check-in. The check-in time is officially 3:00 but they said if the room was ready, they would let us check in any time. We decided to grab some breakfast first. We drove around until we saw a First Watch and we just decided to eat there. It was very yummy. We were contemplating what we should do next and decided it would be best if we could get into our room and then go from there. I called the hotel again to see if the room would be ready. (We "fought" for probably 20 minutes about who would call the hotel and I guess I lost. I just wanted to specify that this was all me... :P). We would told it would be no problem to get our room. We drive up to our hotel....twice. The first time Garmin was really confused and she kept recalculated which confused us even though we could see the hotel. We were also confused because we couldn't figure out where to park. It looked like they had Valet parking (which we definitely didn't want) or a garage but we thought you had to pay for the garage. We thought maybe you would get your parking validated at the hotel or something. After driving around the block a few hundred times, we pulled into the Valet area to ask where we should park. The valet kindly informs us that valet parking is the only parking available. Oh, and you have to pay an additional $21 a night for it. Thanks for that mention, Hotwire. We grumbled about this a little bit but ultimately surrendered our keys and went up to our room.

The room was very nice. It was really big! We had a king size bed (finally some sleeping space!), a couch, a chair, and a desk. I was surprised at the size of the room. At the front desk, they gave us a couple of coupons for movies. Obviously, we don't refuse movies and we had already planned on seeing at least one during our vacation. We decided to catch a quick matinee since it would be even cheaper. Obviously we went to see Iron Man. I really enjoyed it! Nothing like a good superhero movie to kick start your vacation. When we got back to the room, we took a little nap and then decided to catch an early dinner at Schmidt's Sausage Haus. Yum. We feasted on delicious dishes such as pretzel bites, Reuben sandwiches and Bahama Mamas. Of course we couldn't leave without an infamous cream puff. Swoon.

We next decided to hit up buybuy Baby. They are owned by Bed Bath & Beyond which means we still get a discount! We went there in the hopes of finding a reasonably priced crib but that was a fail. Instead, we walked around the store looking at everything I would LOVE to have. I forced Ben into the clothes section and just started pulling things off racks telling him to look at this! and this! ooh, and this one! He humored me by nodding and smiling. I fell in love with the sun hats and the adorable clothing. We have decided not to buy very much clothing for our little girl just yet because we don't want to end up with too much and have her not even wear some things. I just wanted to buy one outfit to celebrate that we're having a girl. We bought just one, and then we bought another one because... Uh, hello. It was monsters. For a girl.

From there, we decided to just call it a night. We wanted to check out our hotel pool because I got a new suit (!) and we were hoping that a little swim would help both of our backs. We got into our suits and headed down to the pool. We had high hopes because we had to enter a secret elevator and use our secret key code to even get to the floor with the pool. (Okay, so it was just our room key, but secret key code on secret elevator sounds much cooler.) We get to the pool and the first thing I notice is that the pool is strictly 5 ft. That's it. No shallow end, no gradual working your way up to something deeper. Just 5 ft all around. I was a little concerned because I'm only a few inches over 5 ft and I really didn't want to tread water the entire time I was in the pool. They did have some stairs that let you gradually get into the pool, so I just figured I'd stay on those. We both stuck one foot in the water. It was FREEZING. Not just a little cooler than we would have liked. It was cold. Very cold. We tried to make the best of it, but after stepping onto the next step, we both decided it just wouldn't be worth it. We were incredibly disappointed in the pool. One of the things I looked for when booking a hotel was an indoor pool. Fail.

We defeatedly headed back up to our room. We watched some baseball on TV. I don't remember who was playing, I just know we were really paying attention to the scrolling scores at the bottom to see how the Reds were doing.

On Tuesday, we decided to head to Easton Mall. We just decided to walk around a bit. The first store we went to was a dog store. We don't usually buy things from these specialty stores because they are always so expensive. The lady there was very helpful (and also trying to make a sale) and she explained all of their different dog toys. She pointed us to one that is virtually indestructible (necessary for Alex) and that has a minty smell/flavor. We both just laughed because Ales LOVES mint. She likes to go through my purse and chew up my gum. She's also been known to chew on nearly empty toothpaste tubes. We decided we had to get her this ball and another tug toy. Then we found some adorable monster toys and bought those for the nursery. What? Doesn't everyone decorate their nurseries with dog toys? Or just the cool people? :D

We ended up just walking around the whole mall area, stopping in shops that sounded interesting to us. We stopped in a lot of kitchen stores where I drooled over all the colored appliances and Le Creuset cookware. I dragged Ben into ALL of the baby clothes stores and almost died of cute overload. Seriously. This was the conversation in every store.

Me: Aww, look at all the cute things!
Ben: Yep
Me: Oh! Look at this one. Isn't it just adorable?
Ben: Uh huh.
Me: Ohmigosh! I LOVE this one. Seriously, how cute is that?
Ben: It's great.
Me: Oooh. This one is my FAVORITE!
Ben: That's nice.
Me: Nope, I lied. This one is my favorite.
Ben: Maybe we should go.
Me: Can I buy them all?
Ben: No.
Me: You better get me out of here. I think we're going to go broke.

Okay, so his reaction might be a little exaggeration. But he wasn't running around the store professing his love for all the cuteness either.

We had dinner at a place called Adobe Gila's. We got a coupon off of restaurant.com for $25 off our meal. The only catch was that you have to spend $40. Most of the restaurants on that site only require you to spend $35 or less so we figured it must be a pretty upscale place with $20 plates. We walk into a bar that serves Mexican food. Their most expensive thing on the menu is $12. They were having a half price appetizer special. We were struggling to reach $40 worth of food. We ordered an appetizer and the two most expensive things on the menu simply because they cost more. We also both had to order a dessert. Luckily I'm eating for two right now and for the first time EVER Ben was full before I was. I just kept eating. The food was good, but nothing outstanding.

On Wednesday, we woke up and began our drive home. First, we stopped at The Book Loft, which is probably my favorite place ever. Luckily, we planned for this and I was able to go to the bathroom before we left our hotel (Right, Family????). Even though I have a Kindle, I still love to look at books. We thought it might be nice to get some books for the baby and maybe some books to learn what we're supposed to do after we take the baby home. (I keep forgetting that the end of my pregnancy means I actually get to take a baby home with me and while I'm an excellent baby sitter, I figured I might want to get at least one book on the dos and donts of caring for an infant). We looked around for awhile, but ultimately decided not to buy anything. I just couldn't decide. I think sometimes I'm worried that I'm going to buy something and then someone would buy the exact same thing for the baby.

About 10 minutes into our drive home, it started pouring. I really wanted to stop at the Motherhood Maternity Outlet in Jeffersonville because I knew I needed a few dresses for different events I have coming up this summer. We stopped there in the pouring rain, I picked up some dresses to try on and basically hated them all. For some reason, they all looked really funny to me. (It may have something to do with this big belly that I still don't always know how to dress). I did end up finding one that my mom may have to alter depending on how it looks as I get bigger.

It was so nice going to Columbus because since we knew we were only going somewhere for a few days, we didn't spend a lot of the time driving. We got home around 2:00 on Wednesday afternoon so I didn't really feel like we wasted a day just driving. Don't get me wrong, I'm all about the 2 week road trip out west but it was actually nice to just be home 2 hours after we left. Overall, I would say our trip was a success. We had a lot of fun and it was nice to just get away for a little bit.

Wow. If you read this whole post (and without pictures!), MAJOR props to you. I didn't realize it would be this lengthy. If you just skipped to the bottom....well, I probably would have too.

Oops!

Oops!!!! Where have I been? I haven't updated in over a week. I missed my weekly update last week and haven't posted anything about our gender reveal party! Some of you probably don't even know the gender of my baby!

The hubs and I took a little babymoon vacation last week. It was very relaxing to sleep in every day but we were so busy too! We got A LOT of projects done at home and made trips to Home Depot at least twice a day.

I'll be sure to post all week to get everyone up to date. Thanks for being patient!

Weekly Update: 22 Weeks

How far along: 22 weeks. Woo hoo!

How Am I Feeling?: Happy. So super excited!!!

Mood: Happy

Clothes: My bestie, Megan had a baby last September and she lent me all of her maternity clothes. Score! I just got them all out of the box this week and I'm in the process of figuring out which things look best on me.

Sleep: Besides the thunder waking me up last night, I've been sleeping pretty well. Baby likes to kick when I'm lying in bed though.

Cravings: none that I can think of right now... but some of that chocolate peanut butter pie from Friday's that I had on Tuesday sounds pretty good.

Gender Predictions: I still know! ...and sshhh... Auntie Em knows too. I sent her a letter while she's away. She's not telling either, though!

Movements: All the time. I love it!

Belly Button: I asked the hubs about my belly button the other day and he said that I have plenty of room. Then I went and looked in the mirror and came back and told him that he was either lying or he never actually paid attention to my belly button before I was pregnant. It's still getting shallower.

Best Moment This Week: I dunno. It's been pretty uneventful so far.

What I Miss: Not a thing.

What I am Looking Forward To: Saturday is the start of what promises to be a very nice 10 or so days. We have our gender reveal party on Saturday (woo hoo!) and Sunday we are going to the Reds game and then next week is vacation week. I can't wait!

Milestones This Week: none

How Big is Baby?: According to The Bump, the baby is the size of a papaya.

Your Baby - 22 Weeks Pregnant
Your baby is getting bigger and continues to practice for life outside the uterus. This week your baby has fully developed eyelashes and eyebrows and the hair on your baby's head is continuing to grow as his brain begins a rapid growth process. The fetus has fully formed fingerprints and loud noise can wake up the baby. He may begin kicking and turning around, too. Your baby's heartbeat can be heard with a stethoscope. His nose is taking on a more defined shape as cartilage (the soft bone) appears. If you baby is a boy, the testes have begun to descend from the pelvis into the scrotum. Your baby is approximately 30-32 cm (12.2 inches) and weighs about one pound.