Nursery Progress!

I will post progress pics soon, but I'm so excited things are moving along... Despite not being able to take down the cabinets b/c of the electrical issue, C has really taken this on as "his" project and I came home from a walk last night to him upstairs, sweating, with half the carpet ripped out and the drawers out and downstairs. He is awesome!

And...Here's our bedding... So cute :)

Next up is finding an electrician..then getting everything out of the room and refinishing the floors, patching/sanding/painting the walls, putting in new baseboard, and putting shelves in the closet. No, not much to do at all :)

Baby hearts

We had our fetal echo cardiogram yesterday and everything looked perfect, according to the doc! Based on the PR intervals over the past 5 weeks and the echo yesterday, he doesn't think we'll have any problems due to the Sjogren's & SSA-B antibodies. He did remind us that damage can happen very quickly, like in less than a week, so I'm still going for the next 3-4 weeks for PR interval appointments, but he was very happy with how her heart looked. Yay! Go baby! You could even see her mouth moving - like a little fish - it was awesome!

As for names.. we have a list of 20+, some we like, some have been vetoed. Both Moms keep offering oh-so-helpful "suggestions" such as Esmerelda, Horatia, Jethra... Some are real names, but we are basically ignoring all suggestions, cute or absurd - and Elaine called us out on it this weekend. We literally just didn't even acknowledge an email she sent - conscious decision on our part - and she was offended. We're happy to listen to suggestions, but we aren't giving feedback and we aren't telling anyone before hand. End of story. If you want to send me 10,000 names just to insure that we pick one of 'yours,' go right ahead. I will not stop you... But I won't respond either!

Nursery snags came up this weekend... C and I tried to start taking down the cabinets above the desk. The under cabinet lights have wires that are drilled through the cabinet, into the wall, and basically strung together behind the wall. We realized this after taking all the screws out of two cabinets and wondering why they wouldn't come down.... We thought we could just leave the lights hanging out of the wall, but once we realized the wires were through the cabinets too, no dice. So we'll have to get an electrician in there pronto to tell us what to do. Great, more $. I was so excited to start the nursery, and this kinda sucks...oh well. But we pulled up some of the ugly-ass carpet and from what we see the hardwood floors underneath actually look pretty good! Once we rip it all up, we'll decide if it's worth it to sand and stain or just get W2W carpet put back over it.

Some progress: we bought our crib and I *think* picked out our bedding. Put it on a registry, and C loves it. I love it too, but there are others I think are really cute too and don't want to regret getting one over the other. I may have to have a crib bedding intervention with Chris who is now obsessed with lady bugs. Cute, eh?

The most important thing is that our nugget is doing well. She kicks all the time, and you can now feel her kicks from the outside. It is just so cool to see her on an u/s and feel her move at the same time! I'm 23 weeks on Friday - technically 24 weeks is viability. Lets hope I make it a little further than this, though! I am anxious to meet her, but not this soon! If she only knew how much her daddy and I love her already...

Weekend!

What a great but exhausting long weekend. I hit 20 weeks on Friday - half way! - and I can't believe it. That's it for baby news, I promise :)

Amanda came up Thursday night, and Friday was errand day - and cherry picking :). I'd never been before so that was really cool. Just a lot of running around the rest of the day, and a little cleaning. Ben came up Fri afternoon, and the four of us went to dinner, then home and crashed. We were supposed to go to fireworks in West Haven at Tracy's house, but with the weather being so unpredictable - they were calling for thunder/lightning from 8-11 - we decided to bail......and of course it didn't rain.

Saturday we had wedding bbq 2.0 with some family and some bridal party members. Great to see people, hang out, eat lots of food. I made Wyst's famous stout cake and it came out really yummy. Sat night after the parents left, we played poker -- high stakes with cheez its and pretzels. Hard core.

Then on Sunday 7/5...Happy anniversary to us! One year married/ 7 years together. I seriously can't believe it's been a year - SO much has happened this year! In our ever romantic, blissful marriedness, we went to Babies R Us and got overwhelmed with all the stuff we have to decide on... Later. Much later. I can't even think about that stuff now.

Then C took me out to a wonderful, delicious, ate way too much dinner at J. Gilberts in Glastonbury - YUM! And he got me gorgeous flowers with the sweetest note ever...even if I wasn't hormonal I would have cried. ;)

Very low key day all around, but it was still nice. The weekend went way too fast, and I feel like with people over, all the running around, etc I didn't really get to spend that much time with C... Hopefully now that there aren't any big events coming up we'll get to hang out more. And his birthday is coming up in less than 2 weeks!

So that was our weekend... 3 days but went by in a flash.

Update on stuff...baby and not so baby.

Baby:
- We've started our weekly appointments at UCONN to have her heart monitored - they check the PR interval and so far everything is fine. We have a full fetal echo cardiogram in a couple weeks to actually look at her heart and make sure everything is forming ok, flowing ok, etc.
- We haven't done any work on the nursery. We haven't bought a single baby item (save for the I heart daddy onesie I got C for Father's day).
- Lisa got us our first girlie outfit - ADORABLE! C is still adjusting to her being a girl and he was a little taken back at just HOW girlie it was... get used to it, bud!
- I am 20 weeks tomorrow --- half way!
- I feel her kick every day. It's the coolest, weirdest, coolest feeling ever. Little pops, thumps, flicks... Love it.
- No names yet.
- I've gained a total of 13 lbs... 2 in first tri, 7 from week 12-16, and 4 from 16-20. Eh. I guess that middle time should be less, but it is what it is.
- I need new everything - bras especially. My bras are digging in under my boobs... by the end of the day I just want to rip the damn thing off. FREE THE BOOBS! I have like 2 pair of non maternity pants that still fit... but either don't or barely button. I need new pants, new shirts to go over the pants' waist line, and new bras. The money tree is just not doing as well as expected...


Non-baby (as in, real life):

- This weekend is 4th of July - Our First anniversary is Sunday the 5th! Insane...I seriously can't believe it's been a year. One year ago today I was getting my hair highlighted, running around like a mad woman to get final details done with seating, signs, baskets, gift bags, bbq, honeymoon packing.... What a wonderful, crazy weekend that was and what an amazing, eventful year it's been since! Job, wedding, honeymoon, house, dog, baby --- we need to slow down :)
- Amanda is coming up tonight, Ben tomorrow... and much of the wedding party is coming on Saturday (inc family) for a wedding 2.0 cookout! There will be noticeable absences, but I'm glad we are getting people together at the house.
- C has worked hard this week (when it hasn't been raining...) on putting bricks down in the back yard to extend the tiny "patio" that was outside the garage door. Eventually we'll make this into a real patio so we can have a nice table out there, but for now we just need a stable place for the grill (the new one...since the old one blew up and melted. That was awesome). We've lost one too many hot dogs because the grill was on unstable mulch, so we decided to get rid of the mulch next to the house and put (free from the ILs) bricks down to extend the pattern. It looks awesome!
- Mom and Dad celebrated 40 years last weekend... The three kids hosted a party at Tradition Golf Club in Wallingford and it went really well. We did photoboards, had music from 1969 playing, replicated their wedding cake, had similar flowers on the tables, and many of their friends throughout the years were there to celebrate with them. It was a beautiful afternoon! Go Mom & Dad!


That's a long update! Sorry Lisa :) You are the only one that reads this besides me...so basically I'm journaling so I don't forget stuff that happens!

And on a very important note... Happy birthday to Lisa Stadz!!