29 weeks and Christmas right around the corner

I am 29 weeks pregnant this week and I think my belly grows a size each day now. Sleeping is a whole new adventure as well, I am still getting used to having to wake up to roll over - as it takes that much effort. This is the last full week of work for Jeremy and I for 2008 and we will be heading to Michigan on Saturday morning for the week of Christmas, I can't wait to have some good R&R time.

Also included in the pictures below, our Christmas tree and Emma also got into the action as I was trying out the new camera.

Holy Baby Stuff...

On Sunday we closed out the weekend with a rain soaked trip back down I-80 to PA. It got a little bit interesting when it got dark and we were in the mountains and the temp dropped to 32 degrees. Overall with the weather and traffic it took us about an hour and a half longer to get home than normal. It also doesn't help that I have to stop and pee a bit more often than usual at this point. (The trip home for Christmas at 30 weeks should be even more interesting) Happily when we did make it back to PA the rain had let up enough for us to un-load all the baby gear we received at the shower. For now - it is laid out nicely on the bed in our guest bedroom. Jeremy is set to patch walls and prime this weekend in the Nursery followed by paint next weekend and then we will start to put the room together with all of the new goodies.

We got a lot of the "big stuff" off of our registry which is awesome! Car seats, pack and play, high chair etc. So much less to worry about between now and then. Over the next few weeks I am going to put together a list of any items that are "must haves" before Rece arrives and do a little shopping. Today Jeremy and I both had the day off and we went to Target and bought our crib mattress with some gift cards we got. I really want to put the whole crib ensemble together, it already looks a lot more "real" with the mattress. :-)

Here is a picture of all of the goodies from the shower, this doesn't even include all of the books! My mom had a great idea to have each shower guest write a message in a children's book and now Rece already has a shelf full of books at his disposal!

Baby Shower

On Saturday my mom and Jeremy's mom put on a baby shower for us in Jackson. It was so nice and a lot of fun. There were lots of ladies there from my family and Jeremy's family as well as some girlfriends who also drove in. The theme was snowflakes, so the colors were blues and silvers. My mom made up the cutest centerpieces with snowflakes, puppies and other baby animals. I just can't say Thanks enough to everyone that came, it was so nice of people to drive in from out of town especially on such a busy weekend, and of course also too many Thanks to mention for all of the wonderful baby gear we received. Baby Rece is going to be very spoiled. Also a huge thank you to my aunts who helped make all of the food, it was so good! Finally the biggest thanks of all to my mom and mother in law, Lynn, for putting it all together for us, I don't know where we would be without our families. It was a fitting end to a Thanksgiving weekend, so much to be thankful for. Here are just a few picks from the shower, I need to get a few more from some of my aunts that were snapping away with cameras...

Oh....the name.....

So - as I had mentioned before we were keeping our baby boy's name to ourselves... Well that was more Jeremy's desire than mine although I didn't mind keeping something a secret until the big day. Anyway, he confessed to telling some teachers at school, and also said he didn't care if we told people going forward. And since everyone always asks...and in case we didn't see you over the Holiday weekend...our baby boy will be named Rece Alan Rellinger.

26 weeks going on 27

This was a picture Jeremy snapped on Saturday before my baby shower in Jackson. I will be 27 weeks on Wed. Time is a flying.....

Catching Up

It has been a while since I have done any blogging.... so since then we have had our new washer and dryer delivered, love them! At least for a while laundry will be so much more fun.

We traveled home to MI for thanksgiving on Wed night, my cousin Carly drove to our house in State College from NJ on Tuesday night and rode with us to Michigan on Wed. Luckily we had only a little snow to deal with in PA on Wed and once we got to Ohio it was dry and smooth sailing on 80. On Thursday I went to my Grandma and Grandpa Dawson's for dinner and Jeremy went to the Lions game with Clint (they left at halftime). It was a great Thanksgiving and it was a lot of fun to see everyone.

Friday my mom and I went into Jackson, but didn't do a lot of shopping, although I did finally find a stroller that I truly love at the Toy House in Jackson. Here it is... http://www.dreamerdesignonline.com/index.html?srcad=dreamer-design$

And I ordered a new Camera for Jeremy and I from Sears. It's this one -http://www.sears.com/shc/s/p_10153_12605_00353139000P?vName=Computers+%26+Electronics&cName=Cameras+%26+Camcorders&sName=Digital+Cameras+%26+Bundles

Ours is starting to fritz out - might be from some of the times I dropped it at the bar in college - and we wanted something that could fit in a pocket for easy handling after baby arrives. Sears was offering $50 off the day after Thanksgiving and I did in store pick up so no shipping.

On Friday afternoon, Jeremy's mom and dad arrived in Jackson and his mom Lynn, my mom and I went to the Church to decorate for my baby shower on Saturday. My Grandma Dawson, Aunt Val and Aunt Luann also helped out so we got everything done pretty quickly. Friday night it was off to the Olive Garden for dinner with Jeremy's mom and dad, my parents and Clint and Taylor. It was great to have a nice long weekend to spend with everyone.

Washer & Dryer - Merry Christmas to Us!

Tonight I went to Sears for their VIP late night event and got a great deal on a new high efficiency Washer and Dryer, using 70% less energy and 69% less water than our current set, and since we pay the city for water and the electric company for our energy this should be helpful! Plus these washers are known for being nicer to your clothes which I like. Anyway, other than the fact I got line jumped by someone who obviously had an "in" with the lady I was waiting in line for (And here I thought a line was a line...silly me) the sale was worth the extra trip out. The set is a Kenmore and was on sale for 20% off and then an additional 10% off, which for the size washer and dryer I got was by far the best price I had seen, and I have been looking for a while. This is our Christmas gift to each other, exciting huh :-) We are donating our old set to a charity center who sells used home goods and/or puts them in low income homes, besides that someone else gets to use them without us having to try and sell them, and the fact that we can get a tax write off, the best part is that they come and pick them up!

Confession

I have to confess, I am a registry snooper....I check my baby registries to see what has been fulfilled, and then I get all excited about the adorable baby things that we will get to put our baby boy in and that he can play with etc. The funny thing is I was intimidated by the whole registry process, all I could think was this is too much stuff, and where am I going to put it all?!? But I got a lot of really great advice from other new moms on what I needed, and that helped a lot. Thanks Teri, Jane, Christie & Bethany! The "Grandma's to Be" are hosting a shower for us the Saturday after Thanksgiving, although all of the baby mania could be a little overwhelming I am getting really excited for it.

The Diaper Debate

So even though I still have give or take 16 weeks left before I will actually have to change a diaper, I am stressing over what kind of diaper I want to change. Cloth, Disposable, Hybrid?!?! I want to be "green" but I also know that with both of us working full time I also need to be realistic about what will work for our lives. And then there is all the data on whats better/worse for the baby, for the environment, for cost, for day care, it goes on and on. I have read everything from disposables and cloth being equally impactful on the environment (manufacturing of disposables vs. water usage of washing a cloth) to factoring in that disposables have to be manufactured, using all sorts of chemicals, and then after use and discard they fill our landfills for up to 500 years before they go away. And of course I am also interested in penny pinching if I can, so what truly saves in the long run?? My struggle is that the Gdiapers and the AIO cloth diapers are more of an investment than just going out and trying out varieties of disposables. I will feel bad if I get cloth diapers and then don't end up liking them!

Anyway, this week I was excited to see that Target now carries AIO diapers by BumGenius that adjust to baby's changing size and that I can register for! Yea! So I did register for a few, I figure I can start slowly and see what happens. I can buy the G-diapers that I like at the local grocery store so that is good (although same level of up front investment as a AIO cloth diaper) and of course I can go anywhere to pick up a pack of Pampers... Overall, I know that I will end up using both to some extent, maybe cloth on weekends and at night and then either the hybrid's or disposables during day care hours. Who knows....I wish I wasn't so obsessed with planning.....I am sure I sound like a crazy person :-)

Other than my diaper "worries" things are going great. Baby boy is doing all kinds of acrobatics in there and keeping me on my toes. We registered for a bunch of classes offered by our hospital for January:
Childbirth Preparation
Infant CPR
Baby Care Class
an Intro to your Pediatrician thing
and a Hospital/Labor & Delivery Tour

I figure after January is over I will feel either really prepared or completely freaked out....we will see....

21 weeks

Over half way through, I can't believe it. We took this on Sunday, on Wednesday I will be 22 weeks. Definitely growing everyday...but feeling great so far. Really starting to look forward to meeting the little guy in a few months.

Mom & Dad Visit

This weekend my mom and dad came to visit. It was a great weekend, we had some bad weather on Saturday but we did some shopping and a lot of football watching. We also had a few yummy meals around State College. The weather on Sunday was awesome and we went to the pumpkin patch/apple farm. My dad and Jeremy also put in a new window in the nursery, it looks great and will keep the room so much warmer in the winter and cooler in the summer as it is an Energy Star product. Our plan is to replace the windows throughout the house as we can, it will be great someday when can replace them all. We also assembled our crib!! I can't wait to put a mattress in with a cute sheet and bedskirt etc. We still have to paint the room, put up trim etc. but we will get there. It was great to spend the weekend with my parents. Can't wait to see Jeremy's mom and dad and the rest of the fam at Thanksgiving.

Our weekend...

This weekend we went to the PSU vs. Michigan game at Penn State with some friends from Michigan who drove in and stayed with us. We had a great time even if only half the game was a good time from the Michigan fan's perspective. PSU fans are all breathing a sigh of relief since they hadn't beat Michigan in 9 years! Like I said to every person who so nicely brought it up at work today...Once a decade is acceptable I guess :-) Now I would just like to see PSU beat OSU, win out and compete for the National Title so the Big Ten gets some sort of credit!

Sunday I started to refinish the dresser we are putting in the nursery. It is painted brown now, but I need to darken it to better match the black/brown finish of the crib. So instead of completely repainting I bought a mini can of black semi gloss and took old t-shirts and basically wiped two coats of black over the brown. More or less rag rolling I guess. Anyway, I am loving the way it is turning out, it darkens the color a couple of shades but lets the brown come through underneath. And I don't have to go through a big process to get the look that I want. Oh, and our crib came in, we are going to put it together this weekend.

Other than that we are still letting the news of our having a little boy sink in, it seems all the more real now that we can associate a gender and a name to my growing belly.

It's a .....

We had our 20 week apt and ultrasound today...

And we will be having a little boy! Jeremy and I are both so excited and even happier that everything looked great on the ultra sound. The baby is measuring at 20 weeks, 1 day and I am 20 weeks today and he weighs a whopping 12 Oz's right now :-) We are going to keep the name we picked to ourselves until the big day so we save some sort of surprise. The ultra sound was great, the baby was on the move almost the whole time, as you can see in the pictures he kept scratching his head and his legs alternated between stretching out and crossing and kicking up so they were almost above his head. The ultrasound tech said it was the most "challenging feet" she had tried to catch all day. Explains why I started feeling him move at 16 weeks, he can't keep his feet still!

2 days and counting

This week feels like Christmas, I can't wait until Thursday at 3:30 when we get to see our baby!! Since I have been able to feel he/she move for a few weeks now and more and more every day I have been getting even more eager to see the acrobatics on TV! I will post pics and the gender news (if we are able to get it) on Thursday night.

Other than that, I have been busy getting some fall cleaning done and packing some things up for goodwill. Jeremy has been swamped with his regular work (lesson planning, grading etc) as well as work for his Masters class at PSU. So while he is busy working away I have been keeping myself busy doing some things around here as well , like creating my registries online through BRUS and Target. We haven't started much work in the nursery other than cleaning it out, but we keep telling ourselves that we will once we find out the gender, I think we are procrastinating.

This weekend Michigan is playing PSU at home, we have friends coming in from Michigan that have tickets, with two to spare for us so we will be going to the game. I fully expect PSU to handle M - on the upside, after the game we are going out to eat at one of our favorite restaurants in downtown State College - Zola. The game doesn't start until 4:30 and we have dinner at 9 - since I have fallen asleep at 9 on many a weekend night these days, it will be interesting to see how alive I am after that day.

Also I would like to say Congrats to my friend Molly who had a baby boy yesterday - Steven Peter Miller. :-)

Great Book

For any of you book worms out there, I just read (actually listened to on audio book during my trip to OH)Loving Frank by Nancy Horan. This was one of the best books I have read in a long time. My friend (and former boss) Teri recommended it and I loved it. It is based on the true story of Frank Lloyd Wright the famous architect and his love affair, plus a whole lot more. This is truly a great read! You won't believe how it ends....

Shout Out

I forgot to mention yesterday, my parents and Jeremy's parents very graciously offered to buy the baby crib for us! It is such an important piece for getting ready for the baby and something we will have for years and years so we are very thankful to have it as a gift from both sets of grandparents to be! I hope some day it will be an heirloom piece we can pass down to our children to use.

So Thanks Mom & Dad Barton & Rellinger!

28

This weekend I celebrated my 28th Birthday! It ended up being pretty good, we went to Williamsport in the morning to order the baby crib (we ordered it in the dark stain) at a furniture store that carries the baby's dream line. It's solid wood and converts from a crib to toddler bed and then to a full bed if we want/need it to down the line. What we liked about it is that you didn't need to order conversion kits to turn it into the toddler bed or full bed. After that we came home to watch college football of course and it started out as a bit of a boring afternoon. On a normal birthday I would have preferred to head to a great bar & grill and sip on a favorite variety of wine...not in the cards this year, so we stayed home. Then the Michigan game came on...the first half was so awful it just made me more antsy to get out of the house I have never seen poorer football. Then there was the second half....which was AWESOME (well the play still wasn't great but the comeback was incredible!)...the greatest comeback ever at the Big House! Lets be honest Michigan will take any win they can get this year so I consider it my birthday miracle... :-)

Today it rained and rained and rained, so I finally took a crack at starting to clean out the nursery a bit, which really began by moving crap out of that room into our bedroom and the guest room, with the ultimate goal of getting it all put away and/or donating somethings to goodwill. Once it the weather let up a little I ran to Home Depot and Lowes to get some paint swatches so we can start to paint over the next few weeks. We decided to go with some shade of spice/raspberry/red and cream and brown in the nursery. It will work for either gender and goes with the earthy tones already in our house. Of course I came home with 30+ swatches of varieties of these colors but I am sure we will wean them down to a couple we like.

The weekend

This weekend was pretty low key, we went to a high school football game on Friday night at the school where Jeremy teaches, they lost pretty bad and so we left at halftime. Saturday we went to Altoona, a little bit bigger town than we live in about 45 mins away and did some shopping. I needed some new clothes and they have a Motherhood store and a Kohl's with a maternity section. I found some cute things I can grow into and I should be good for a while. Sat. afternoon and evening we did some yard work and watched football, or at least Jeremy did, I fell asleep on the couch at 9 during the LSU game. All that shopping for preggers clothes and trimming our tree's and shrubs wore me out.

Sunday we went to Lowes and ordered a replacement window for the baby's future room. We are going to slowly start replacing our old windows one room at a time and since I want the baby's room to be warm and comfy we started there. Lowes is having a sale where special order windows and doors are 20% off, plus I had a $10 off coupon so we saved a good bit on the window which should be here in 2 weeks. When my parents come to PA in October my dad and Jeremy will install it, and that will be the kick off to working on the nursery.

Good news! I got my results of my glucose test in the mail, it was not over the limit so I should be in the clear and not have to take it again. Actually my result is probably a bit on the low side so I am going to call my dr. on Monday and see if I need to do anything to remedy that or if it is anything to be concered with, from what I read on line it is something more concerning for myself than for my baby and I probably just need to eat small meals throughout the day with complex carbs to keep my sugar levels more constant.

This week I am traveling to OH on business on Thrusday and while I am there I am going to start the registry process for baby, as we don't have a babies r us in State College. My mom is having a shower for us the Saturday of Thanksgiving weekend and we won't find out the gender until Oct 16th so that doesn't give me a lot of time to register before she wants to send out invites. So my plan is to register now and then adjust it on line after we find out the gender in a couple of weeks. I am excited to shop for baby stuff, although I am very minimalist in what is in my house and I hate clutter so I am going to try and keep it to esentials only - I have had a lot of mom's tell me good luck with that!

If anyone has any suggestions etc. on what they loved and hated as far as baby products go I would love to hear them, so shoot me an e-mail.

16 weeks

Today I had my 16 week visit to the OB. The visit went great, the baby's heart rate was 150 and it actually kicked at the Dr. when she was listening for the heartbeat, which made quite the funny noise. The Dr. said that the baby was flipping around a lot and making her work to find the heartbeat again, but she did and I got to listen to it at least for a few seconds, more than last time when as soon as one of the other Dr's found it he moved on and rushed onto the next thing.

Then I had to have the glucose test....that was another story. The drink was awful and they told me not to eat carbs/sugar for breakfast so I had some scrambled eggs about 7 am and had the test done at 9:15 by the time I drank the giant cup of orange crush from hell and waited my hour for the blood draw, I thought I was going to toss my cookies. It was like reliving my morning sickness all over again only worse I think. Glad that is done, hope it comes back normal so I don't have to do it again!! Thank god my job is flexible so I just plugged in from home and didn't have to get back into the car to drive to the office.

Next appt Oct 16th for 20 weeks and our ultra sound, can't wait!

Summer projects

So since we finally got some rain and our yard doesn't look like a straw field anymore I thought I would take some pictures of all of the outdoor work Jeremy did this summer. He did such a great job and made the front of the house look incredible. When we bought it you couldn't see any of the brick because it was covered in over grown bushes. The sidewalk leading up to the house was red brick pavers and was just old and uneven, so after we painted the shutters blue we went with that theme when we picked out our new landscape stones. I won't have a chance to plant anything in the newest bed next spring and I also want to exchange out the grasses I planted in front of the house for some taller less spreading kind. I don't like the ones I put in, so I want to move them to the back yard. Next summer we want to work on our deck which is a mess right now because it was painted by the previous owners and all the paint is peeling. I think we are going to have to replace the wood and just start over.

Rugrats Resale

In the Sunday paper last week I saw an advertisement for a consignment sale at a local elementary school called Rugrats Resale. They hold the sale twice a year and sell baby/kids clothes, furniture, toys and they also have some maternity clothes. So I went with a friend from work who is due with her first any day and we got some great bargains. I am looking forward to going again in the spring. I snapped a few pictures of the stuff I bought. I got a bouncy seat for my parents to take home and keep in Jackson or up at the Lake where Jeremy and I will be traveling most after the baby is born. I also got some small and med. sized AIO (all in one) cloth diapers which we will be using in combination with "true disposables" aka GDiapers. I have learned that cloth diapers have come a long way, they have elastic sides, are made from super soft fleece and have Velcro adjusts, no pins! Gdiapers are have the reusable features of cloth diapers with the convenience of disposables because you can flush or toss the inserts and they are 100% biodegradable, plus they are accepted at day care. A plastic disposable takes 500 years to fully decompose in a landfill so my goal is to use as few as possible but we'll see. I am going to at least give this combo system a try. Anyway, the AIO diapers are about $13-14 each if you buy them online, I got 9 diapers for $15 at the resale and they have never been used, so I am off to a good start on putting together my diapering system on the cheap. I also picked up a pack of 32 G-Diaper inserts normally about 12 bucks at the store for $2. All in all, I decided it is probably best we don't know the gender yet or I would have wrote a much bigger check to rugrats resale...there was a ton of great stuff there!

Other than that, not much else going on over the weekend. We watched football, my nausea returned watching Michigan vs. ND - what a mess that was. It is going to be a long year, not a good year to not be able to have a cocktail or three while watching the games... I think they will play better on and off and there is a lot of potential there to grow on(really just Sam McGuffie).

Today I cleaned the house in preparation for hosting book club on Wed. I joined a book club here in State College, where once a month we get together for some food, wine etc and discuss that month's book. The girls are all really nice and many of them are new moms or are going to be new moms as well so that is nice.

Telling the parents....

First Bump Pic

This week I will be in my 15th week of pregnancy. So I decided since my pants also barley button, I would have Jeremy take the first picture of my mini baby bump as we were getting ready to watch the Michigan game. Thank god for BellaBands so I can continue to wear my pre-preggers pants for a bit longer without looking and feeling like a sausage. You can see the white t-shirt layered look in the picture, that is the BellaBand. Strangely enough I would have expected with my wardrobe issues to see a huge change on the scale but I have only gained about 2-4 pounds so far, which I guess is good but what a weird feeling to see this bump start to form :-)
Overall, I feel great now - after getting past the "Morning" ie "All Day" Nausea in weeks 6-10 followed directly by a horrible summer cold to close out my first trimester, for which I couldn't take anything....those were some fun times. I am hoping for the next few weeks at least it will be smooth sailing....until I get as big as a house by the winter...

Some other pictures here from our trip to Michigan at the begining of August when we spilled the beans to our parents on the pregnancy. We all had a BBQ together and then we decorated an ice cream cake with "Happy Birthday" and "3/5/09" which is my due date. Just in case the cake made no sense we also put together a little gift bag with two bibs in it that said "I love my Grandma and I love my Grandpa" and then a photo book for the Grandma's with a picture from my dating ultrasound. You can see the reactions in the pics, we already knew they were "impatiently waiting" for their first grandbaby, but you can really see the excitment.

Staying in Touch

Jeremy & I established this blog to keep in touch with friends and family in Michigan and across the country. We hope to update it often and keep everyone updated on our life here in PA as well as our expected delivery in March :-) So hopefully you will check in and see posts and pictures often!