I like to KICK!

22.5 week belly + I need a new phone cover

For those of you that don’t know, today’s post title is meant to be read in the voice of SNL character Sally O’Malley (Molly Shannon). If you have no idea what I’m talking about, click this, even if you do know what I’m talking about still watch the video because you know you want to. My belly is slowly looking more pregnant and less like I just scarfed down a burrito and a few tall cans. This reminds me that Oktoberfest is out and let me tell you that I am really, really sad about missing out on fall beers! I made Michael promise to stockpile some of my favorites so I can have them come January, no shame. Back to the belly! I have been faithfully slathering it with a combination of Mama Mio tummy oil and Palmer’s Stretch Mark Cream. So far, so good! I am almost certain that I don’t have stretch marks yet because of keeping my belly constantly hydrated, I know this because areas that haven’t got the royal stretch mark treatment have started getting the dreaded purplish-red indentations (mainly the boobs), I really didn’t think they would grow so much!

During the past few weeks, kicks from the baby have been getting stronger and stronger. I started feeling light flutters around 16 weeks and now the feelings are undeniable. Earlier this week I was lying down and actually saw my belly button bounce up and down from the baby’s movement; I quickly told Michael to put his hand on my belly and he was finally able to feel his first kick! He was ecstatic.

On Tuesday I had an appointment with my OB and I was really excited because they measured my belly for the first time. I’ve been waiting for them to do that, I think it’s cool because I always see them do it on TV shows combined with the fact that I’m just a nerd. Today I had another ultrasound with the baby specialist as I call him.  At my last ultrasound we did an anatomy scan and baby was fairly uncooperative. I was told during my next echocardiogram appointment they would try again to get the profile view of the face that was still needed. Well, guess who hid their face again? Everything else went well and looked “normal”, so I thought this would be my last ultrasound. But, my doctor wants to schedule just one more to track growth and heart development given my out of the ordinary medical history. At the ultrasound 4 weeks ago our girl was in the 70th percentile and this time she is in the 80th. She is estimated to weigh about 1 pound 4 ounces as of today. After each ultrasound the tech puts up a graph showing the baby’s growth progress so far, and the estimated continuation of growth. The tech left that screen up while she went to get the doctor so I was able to google a grams to pounds conversion and estimate what the baby will be if she is delivered at 40 weeks; 7 pounds, 11 ounces. Not too bad! I was a little worried because she is a bit bigger than normal, but I still feel safe in the 7 pound zone, the thought of a baby 8 pounds or over starts to make me nervous. I myself was 8 pounds, 6 ounces but I was also nearly two weeks late. Let’s hope our little girl comes a bit early!

I start my fall semester next Thursday so this weekend equals getting all my school supplies organized, it’s seriously a lot. When I was a kid my favorite new supply to buy was crayons so imagine how excited I am to buy new sets of colored pencils, sketch books, and paints for my color theory class? I’ll give you a hint, SUPER EXCITED! I had better cut it off here since Maddie is laying on my lap, subtly (not really) groaning and sighing because it’s her dinner time!
xoxo
Baby Bump Stats – I added an extra question, confession of the week because it’s just totally necessary. 

How far along? 22.5 weeks
How big is baby? 1lb, 4oz. About 11.5 inches long–a PAPAYA!
Total weight gain/loss: +12 pounds
Maternity clothes? A few pieces, my favorite is my pair of leggings. I also bought a bunch of long tees (non-maternity) from Target that I looove.
Sleep: Tossing and turning all night to find a comfortable position. I dread laying down at night because it makes my back hurt so much.
Best moment this week: Michael feeling his first kick
Movement: So much movement! It’s the best feeling.
Food cravings: Pumpkin beers, FAIL.
Food Aversions: I was going to heat up some leftover spanish rice but one whiff of it made me feel sick.
Gender: GIRL
Labor Signs: None
Pregnancy Symptoms: Serious backaches at night, making it really difficult to sleep. There is no comfortable position for me.
Belly Button in or out: In, not even close to being out (thank you lord!)
What I miss: Fall beers: pumpkin beers, specifically Pumpking and oatmeal stouts 😦
What I am looking forward to: My friend’s baby shower next week! We’re both having girls about 8 weeks apart.
Upcoming appointments/events: 9/4 with my cardiologist
Confession of the week: I got out of bed last night at 4am to eat Raisin Bran, and then watched QVC christmas sales until 5:30am.

We’re Back! With a Polka Dot Closet

We arrived home from California on Tuesday, the 13th, and after a brief battle with a cold and flu for the both of us we’re finally feeling back on track. During our vacation we were able to see the majority of both sides of extended family which is so rare for us with limited trips home, tight schedules, and relatives dotted throughout the golden state. Thanks to my sister’s wedding I was able to see many aunts, uncles, cousins, and family friends; some of whom I hadn’t seen in years! We also were lucky enough to spend time with Michael’s immediate and extended family and see our nieces who are growing up so quickly. On the last day of our trip we were able to squeeze in a day with some old friends, too. It was probably the most successful trip home we’ve had in terms of faces seen. Thanks to Michael’s brother lending us his pickup truck we were able to travel between Sebastapol (wine country), Monterey (central coast), Gilroy and Walnut Creek (SF Bay Area) throughout the course of a week.

My Family (minus one): Me, Dad, sister Nicole, Mom, brother Mario

Friends who made the trip all the way to Monterey! LeeAnn, Me, Michael (husband), Ashley, Michael C.

As I mentioned earlier, after our California trip I wanted to get into full-fledge baby mode. We buttoned up our registry before the trip and now that we are back it’s nursery time! The purchase of our first house gave me the opportunity to discover my personal decorating style which involved a lot of returns to Home Goods and gawking on Pinterest. Now that I am better at making a cohesive looking space, coming up with a nursery design has been much less of a guessing game and way more exciting! In no way does this mean that I have abandoned Pinterest. I am still majorly addicted to pinning DIY projects and ingenious thrift store hacks.

Most recently I found a tutorial for DIY polka dot curtains via Remodelaholic that I absolutely loved. But after having nightmarish visions of a curious baby/toddler pulling down the curtains and thus being smacked in the head with a curtain rod I decided against adding long, beautiful curtains to the baby room design. Before we left for CA I cleaned out the nursery closet which was quite literally filled to the brim with Michael’s military uniforms, no seriously the french-style closet doors would bust open on their own because that thing was so packed. After hauling out SDB’s, khakis, mess dress and luggage, I was faced with the interior of a very tired looking closet covered in black scuff marks. I thought about getting taking a magic eraser to it, then thought to give it a fresh coat of white paint; but THEN I thought, if I’m going to take the time to make the closet look clean why not really make it pop? With POLKA DOTS! This brings us back to the tutorial at Remodelaholic. The genius behind that blog post, Cassity, used a cup as a stencil for her dots and created a “confetti” look by placing the bottom dots densely and gradually spacing them out as the eye moves up.

The main color of our baby girl’s room is purple and luckily we had two shades of purple leftover from painting our main bathroom and shower room. I used the lighter shade of purple for the background and the dark purple for each dot. Again referencing the polka dot curtain tutorial I used a cup as a stencil for each dot, but I chose to use the top rim of the cup (drinking part) versus the bottom of the cup as seen on Remodelaholic. You can see the stencil the cup rim creates below.

I felt the top part of the cup created a more clean looking stencil than using the bottom of the cup. After lightly dipping the cup in paint (I did it straight into the paint can but you can also pour a bit into a paper plate), gently and evenly press it onto the wall. Make sure you don’t get too much paint onto the cup to prevent globs or drips and an uneven stencil. I could get about three dots with one dip of paint before ending up with a partial circle due to lack of paint. After stenciling I simply filled in the circle with a small paintbrush.

Below you can see the small amount of paint covering the cup’s rim and a filled in stenciled circle.

I started out doing an evenly spaced out polka dot design, but Michael liked the idea of having the dots more dense on the bottom and spaced out towards the top, so that’s what we went with! You can see my progress below.

And the finished product!

Maddie was feeling really generous today and helped out by taking a nap in the closet while the first coat of light purple paint was drying. She left her personal signature on the room in the form of tiny black hairs stuck on the wall.

There is so much more going on with the baby room and I’ll follow up soon with detailed posts! As for my pregnancy things are still going smoothly. Here’s a quick rundown on my stats for the week.

How far along? 21 weeks
How big is baby? 10.5 inches long from head to toe, about the size of a big carrot.
Total weight gain/loss: +11 pounds, yikes!
Maternity clothes? I bought my first pair of maternity jeans and HATE them, I’ll continue with the rubberband + belly band trick. Did get a maternity shirt & leggings that are awesome though!
Sleep: Still waking up at 5:30am every morning, sleeping better unless my back starts aching.
Best moment this week: Feeling baby’s kicks get stronger and more frequent.
Movement: Sometimes it feels like there is a baby ninja in my belly.
Food cravings: Cherry Crisp or Strawberry Tart, so I guess craving tart & sweet things!
Food Aversions: None this week!
Gender: GIRL
Labor Signs: None
Pregnancy Symptoms: Been sleepy again this week, but I am attributing it to my body fighting a cold in addition to building a human.
Belly Button in or out: In
What I miss: Sad that I couldn’t go ride roller coasters with Michael at Six Flags.
What I am looking forward to: Completing the baby’s room!
Upcoming appointments/events: 8/27: 22 week checkup, 8/29: echocardiogram

It’s A Girl!

We had our ultrasound on Thursday and as we suspected, our baby is a girl! Sadly I don’t have the pretty much indecipherable sonogram with “ITS A GIRL” printed on it because Michael set them down on a chair while he helped me wipe blue, ultrasound goop off my belly and then we both forgot them, oops! The ultrasound tech actually suspected we had a baby girl at just 12.5 weeks. We had the same tech this time and she was right! The appointment ended up being a full anatomy scan instead of the echocardiogram I thought it was. Baby was completely uncooperative the entire time and both the doctor and ultrasound tech really had to work hard to get each picture they needed. They need pictures of finger bones, organs, skull, brain, leg bones, arm bones, spine, etc. it really is in depth! They were not able to get the profile view of her face because she refused to turn into the right position. We kept seeing her face straight on which actually looked really creepy since the ultrasound was showing the skeleton which resulted in looking her like a tarsier monkey (seen below). I’m sure she’s pretty in real life though….

The entire sonogram baby was laying with legs completely stretched out and switched between having one arm behind her head or both fists under her chin. She really was lounging in there. She is really active which the doctors were happy about, even though it made their job more difficult. Everything looks beautiful and “normal” so far even though they were unable to get the profile view of the head, my doctor (and we) were comfortable enough waiting a few weeks to get that picture during my echocardiogram. Baby is also a little bigger than average, in the 77th percentile so my due date went from 12/31 to 12/26. She already weighs half a pound!

I am so excited to shop! I actually dragged Michael to Target after work on Thursday and said “wouldn’t if be funny if we came for baby stuff and just left with food.” We may or may not have left with only bagel bites, mint chip ice cream and mascara. We were really on the ball that day. But really, our Target has a pitiful baby department. I really wanted to get a baby blanket to somehow solidify more that we are having a girl, but like I said, no cute baby stuff! Did see some cute lamps in the home section though.

Yesterday, I had a girl’s day with a few girlfriends, two of whom are also pregnant; it’s seriously like a hungry, hot (the sweaty kind), hormonal pack of women walking around and it can get really dangerous for bystanders. We ended up going to Babies ‘R Us after our pedicure date and man that store has EVERYTHING! I ended up buying a little hippo blankie/snuggle toy thing but I’m going to return it because guess who changed their mind on colors yet again? I might be the most indecisive person in the world. It’s more the shade of hippo purple that is wrong, because I am really particular about colors, seriously. Today Michael and I are going back to Babies ‘R Us today to nail down our registry items, especially our carseat and stroller combination. On Thursday, Michael decided to test drive some strollers at Target by literally driving them like the baby aisle had just turned into a life or death situation. He deemed them to be cheap and not sturdy enough, so we’ve got our work cut out for us today.

I have a ton of baby projects in mind for the upcoming weeks including: polka dot painted closet, DIY mobile, hand-painted cardboard letters and more wall art. The best part is all of these projects are going to be super cheap which I’m always a fan of.

As usual, I’ll leave you with my weekly update!

How far along? 19 weeks
How big is baby? A mango! Approximately 6 inches long.
Total weight gain/loss: Gained about 7 pounds.
Maternity clothes? Belly band and pant buttons held together with a hair band.
Sleep: Sleep is hit or miss. I wake up at 5:30am every day and usually force myself to go back to sleep. Not today though!
Best moment this week: Finding out baby is a girl!
Movement: A lot more movement these days! I’m pretty sure I felt her do a complete rollover yesterday.
Food cravings: Fruit! Oranges, nectarines, strawberries, and grapes.
Food Aversions: None this week!
Gender: GIRL 🙂
Labor Signs: None
Pregnancy Symptoms: Backaches that come out of nowhere and are horrendous.
Belly Button in or out: In
What I miss: Sushi, really, really miss sushi.
What I am looking forward to: Going home to CA!
Upcoming appointments/events: 8/27: 22 week checkup, 8/29: echocardiogram (for real this time)