Baby Farts, Nursery and Shout Outs!

Sorry its been awhile! Its been a busy couple of weeks. We finally got the nursery all painted-
YAY! I love how it turned out. We're so grateful to Russ in our small group for painting for us! The bathroom project is still in progress. I keep forgetting to take pics! I'm hoping it'll be done in 2 weeks tops! But everything seems to be taking longer than we thought, guess that's how it goes. Well, here are a few pics of the room-we still have a long way to go but at least we have a good start.
This is a really cute dollhouse bookcase we found! I love this!
Oops-this coming pic is out of order. My friend Michelle (who is just 9 days behind me in her pregnancy!) made me this awesome quilt! How sweet is this? I love everything about it-I love the colors and fabric so much, I can't wait to use it! Michelle is my oldest friend, we've been friends since we were 2 years old! I feel like almost every memory of my childhood through highschool has her in it! Sadly-she lives far away in Virginia now so I don't get to see her much, but we still talk on the phone probably 2 times a week, especially now that we are both pregnant with girls!!

Ok, back to the room pics-here is one of the painted walls with our crib:

And, one of just the wall so you can see the paint job really well :)
Finally-here is a pic of me, Sarah and Rachel from the state fair! It was a good year-the weather was perfect and we had some great food. We ate fried green tomatoes, an elephant ear, corn on the cob, corn dogs, and fudge. YUM!
This past Saturday was my first baby shower! I want to give a big thank you to my friend Lissa who threw it for me! It was the most beautiful shower and I just felt so loved. The shower was in my hometown of Lafayette and there were so many people there that I hadn't seen in so long! But Lissa was the best hostess-her and I have been best friends since the 7th grade-we were in each other's weddings, and our weddings were only 1 week apart, and then we honeymooned about 2 hours from each other so one night we all met up for some bowling and Steak & Shake-I have so many great memories with Lissa :) I'll have to post pics from the shower on my next post, all the pics are on my sister's camera.

And lastly, you may be wondering why "Baby Farts" is in the title of this post. WELL, that would be because yesterday morning, I am almost positive I felt her FART! I don't think Rusty believes me, but I have definitely become very aware and familiar with all her different movements, and of course of just how my stomach moves, and this was totally different from anything I'd ever felt before. It was just this bubbly feeling like little gas bubbles, right where her butt was! I just had to laugh, it was so funny! I just can't wait to meet this little baby girl! I feel like she has such a fun personality.

Who knows how many more posts there will be before I post a picture of my baby girl!! I'll be 34 weeks this Saturday, wow. I'll try to be better about posting! I'll have a lot of pics to share shortly. I have another shower this coming weekend, plus we're going to a Third Day/Jars of Clay/Switchfoot concert tomorrow night-can't wait! And of course I'll post nursery and bathroom pics as soon as those projects are done!

Anniversary weekend!

This weekend Rusty and I celebrated our 6 year anniversary! I have such a wonderful husband and I'm so thankful for him and all that he does! To celebrate, we made quite the day of it. We started out by going to the IMA to see the Mummy exhibit plus we walked around the gardens and toured the Lilly house. I did remember to take one photo op of my belly-30 weeks, 1 day:
After the IMA, we went to the canal dowtown and rented a "surrey"...? not sure if that is the right spelling. Its basically a cart that you can pedal. Rusty was so sweet and pedaled (pedalled??-i'm having spelling issues!) the whole time while I sat back and enjoyed the breeze :)

We ended the night by a really good dinner at a restaurant downtown called 41 West-YUM!! I had the best salmon and mashed potatoes!!
As far as our various home projects...we are making progress! I still don't have any new bathroom pics, I'll try to get those up soon. The nursery is finally coming along! The primer and first coat of paint went up last weekend and I'm hoping it will be finished this coming weekend! We picked up our crib on Saturday but haven't assembled it yet. I can't wait!

BUT-the thing I'm the most excited about right now would be my newly reupholstered chairs!! Yeah! It only took us about 7 months to get them done, but they are done, and they look GREAT!! Here they are.....

Not sure if you remember them before, if not, you can see them HERE What an improvement! One more thing to cross off the list!

Hello Third Trimester!

I can't even believe it but I'm officially in the 3rd trimester! Its so crazy-the time has been flying by. I keep waiting for the moment I suddenly feel like I've been pregnant forever and am ready for her to come out! I'm sure that will be coming soon. But for now, we have so much to still get done that I'm in no rush for her to make her big arrival :) I'm still working hard on my scrapbooks-I cannot wait to cross that off my to-do list! I'm probably half way done with my Europe book. I've made a ton of progress but there are just SO many pictures! I took a few pics of some of my favorite pages so far:



As far as pregnancy stuff is going-I still don't have too many complaints! I'm having a hard time sleeping and general getting around is getting more difficult, but overall its not bad! But check back in a few weeks-that may change!

A few things that HAVE been annoying are
*the person who asked "are there twins in there??"
*the multiple times I get told "you're due when?? you're not gonna make it". what does that
even mean?
*every time I say I'm due October 4th, the response is "wow, you have to make it all the way
through the summer? you're gonna be miserable!". Thanks. That's helpful.
*everything I say being laughed off because I'm obviously unreasonable because of "the
hormones"

Here are some belly pics I took tonight (Nancy, I am smiling in these pics! And I do NOT have a head tilt!) :)

Last weekend I went with my friend Laura to a thing we have called Symphony on the Prairie-its an outdoor concert and is so fun! They were doing the songs of Frank Sinatra. It was just such a great atmosphere, people singing along, and quite a few people even went to the front to dance!
And-finally-the big bathroom remodel. Well-it's taking much longer than we thought it would-just lots of unexpected problems. We're in the middle of week 3 of the big remodel and so far, it still looks like its in the demo stage. But really, there's been lots of behind the scenes stuff going on, and we did pass our inspection last Friday-yay! I had a pic but somehow I just deleted it so I'll post again with that later. The shower is installed but that's about it.

This weekend is the big nursery painting day! I can't wait. Not sure if it'll get totally done this weekend, but it will at least get primer! I'll post some before/after pics soon!

Long Weekend

Happy Fourth!! This post is gonna be kinda out of order since I messed up how I uploaded my pics!! Sorry! Here are a few pics I was gonna show at the end...here is my belly, 27 weeks. Sorry, not the usual shot! It was a quick "oh yeah I was gonna do that!" shot. I think this pic is a little misleading, I feel like I'm way bigger than I look here!
Saturday night, Rusty and I went and bought our travel system!! I love love love it! We had actually already registered for a different one at Babies R Us but I was feelin kinda guilty about how pricey it was! I did like it a lot but I mainly registered for that one because I didn't like any of the other ones Babies R Us had! Then, I saw this one at Walmart of all places. I really liked how it looked so I looked it up online and it got really good reviews-every single one was 5 stars! The only negative things were that the stroller is kinda heavy/bulky and there are some out there that last longer in terms of weight limit. But overall this one got great reviews, the price was pretty good, and I liked how it looked! I do admit its probaby a little more for a girl than a boy, but I think it will be fine either way:





(ok, here is where my post was supposed to begin!!)
The 4th marked the beginning of our master bathroom remodel-a/k/a "what have we gotten ourselves into?" Not that I am contributing to this project-Rusty and his Dad are doing all the work, I'm trying to just stay out of their way! Its only been 2 days and already I am ready for it to be done! Even though its just one small portion of our house that will be remodeled, my entire house is a disaster! Not sure why that would be! I'm also getting some living room chairs reupholstered so my living room looks super empty! Rusty was hoping to get it done over 3 weekends but I'm not really sure if that will happen! We just ordered our new vanity last night, thinking it would take 1 to 2 weeks top to come in-wrong! It won't be in until July 28th! YIKES. I'm sure I'll be really happy once I see the finished product but right now I just want it to be done-and so does Rusty! Here are a few pics of the pre-remodel bathroom and view from our bedroom:

Hopefully SOON I will be posting the finished results :)

Saturday, Sarah and I went to visit my Mom. I hadn't seen her in a few months and she was very anxious to see my belly! Here is a pic of the two of us-haha, love her expression in this picture, I think Sarah caught her off guard!

Well, I'm hoping to post again SOON with our newly finished bathroom. I've also been scrapbooking like a mad woman! I'm still finishing my scrapbook from our Europe trip 2 SUMMERS ago, oops. So I need to get that done for sure before the baby comes!

I'm updating my blog!

I feel like I JUST updated my blog but I guess it has been a few weeks!! Its been a busy few weeks! 2 weeks ago was bible school week. Rusty and I had the 2 & 3 year old class which was so exhausting!! That was a LONG week, but rewarding also. Last week was busy just catching up on things we couldn't get done the week before! We finally started our registery at Babies R Us. Registering is much harder than I thought!! Its not like registering for your wedding, that is easy comparing to registering for a baby! We had a list to go off of but even the list didn't make it much easier. We were at the store for almost 2 hours and guess how many items we registered for? 18!! yup, 18. Don't judge us! It's hard! :) We seriously spent like 20 minutes trying to decide what baby monitor to get. There are just too many choices!! So, needless to say, we'll be making another trip to Babies R Us soon. We also will register at Target since some of our friends and family don't live near a Babies R Us.

So last weekend I got to go see my very best friend Lissa! We had so much fun-got pedi's, lunch, shoppping, facials, and lots of good talking time. I wish we lived closer. Lissa and I have been best friends since we sat next to each other in IT class in the 6th grade and Lissa asked if I would save her a seat at lunch :) Here is a pic of Lissa and I after our fun day:

So I looked at my pregnancy ticker this morning and saw I only have 97 days to go!! Crazy!! Next weekend Rusty is starting our master bath remodel and when that is done, I'm hoping to start on the nursery! I can't wait! I'm so ready for everything to come together. We did sign up for a 4 week childbirth prep class. Its once a week, 2 hr sessions, for 4 weeks.

Well, think of me this Thursday-its my fun dr's appt where I get to drink my sugary drink!! That should be fun :)

Happy 4th of July!

6 Months !?!?!

As of yesterday, I am 24 weeks, 6 MONTHS pregnant!! How can that be? I feel like so far, this pregnancy is just flying by. I'm sure that will change though since about every pregnant woman I've ever talked to has said she felt pregnant forever! But as of right now, I'm hoping time slows down a little. We haven't even started on the nursery yet and haven't bought any of the big items! Here's a picture of my 6 months belly. Sorry for my messy closet in the background, although I'm sure you all are used to that by now since I think every pic has had my messy closet behind it!
I'm definitely feeling pregnant....in a good way! I feel her kick and move all the time now. Right now my uterus is about 1-2 inches above my belly button so I'm starting to feel her much higher up. But most of the time, she likes to hide way down low and just wiggle around. Her movement used to be limited to mid morning and mid afternoon, but now I'm feeling her all times of day...and night! I've woken up at 3am more than once feeling her kicking and I usually wake up in the morning to kicking as well. Rusty can feel her all the time now, although it seems like as soon as he puts his hand on my belly to feel her, she'll just stop! But I'm just feeling such a bond with her already and can't wait to meet her! Here are a few pics from my last ultrasound taken about 2 weeks ago.
Profile :)

Flippin her booty in the air! (look at those long legs!)
I think she was in the middle of throwing her head back :)
Lately we've been having the most rain and the worst storms I can ever remember. We haven't had too many flooding problems around Indy, but a lot of IN, especially southern IN, has had major flooding. It seems the rain will never end! Its storming right now actually. The very worst storm we had was last Tuesday night. The storming started at around midnight and didn't end until about 6am Wednesday morning. That was also the week our AC went out so we had all the windows open so we woke up to the loudest claps of thunder I have ever heard! To top it all off, Rusty was out of town for work and I must admit, I was a little scared!! I tried to capture a good picture of the storm coming in, but this was the best I could get:

I feel like so far I've had a pretty "boring" pregnancy...not that I'm complaining, I know I'm very blessed! I never really had "morning sickness" other than a nauseous feeling when I would go too long without eating. I haven't experienced many of the pregnancy type things I read about, and really haven't had too many cravings! When I do have a craving, I actually get kinda excited because it makes me feel like a typical pregnant woman! Some of the cravings I have had:

*oatmeal cream pie (little debbie), buffalo flavored chicken tenders or pattie, chocolate milk, dr. pepper, watermelon, baked cheetos

Those are the ones I can think of for now, I'm sure there have been more though! I also have been having pretty vivid dreams. I have always been a big dreamer and I can usually remember my dreams. But the dreams have gotten a little more vivid and much weirder since being pregnant! A funny one I had recently was that I was in labor and delivered the baby, and it was a boy, not a girl ( I was so mad at my dr )! As soon as I had him, they took him away and a bunch of dr's came in to take care of me ( i guess there were some complications ). They all went into the hallway to discuss my case and then the next thing I know, all the dr's ( I think there were 4 or 5 of them ) just started running straight at me! They just kept doing that over and over! I remember thinking in my dream that they were trying to push the baby back in side of me for some reason!! It was very strange!! Its funny too...all the dreams I've ever had where I'm actually having the baby have ended up that the baby is a boy. Lets hope that isn't a sign of what will happen!! But my mom said she always dreamed that she was having a boy and she had 3 girls :)

Well this has been a long post and Iron Chef is on, so I'm going to sign off for tonight! We have so many things coming up so I will try to post soon to keep everyone updated with our life!

Day off!

Happy Memorial Day!! I am enjoying a much needed day off! Can you believe its the end of May already?? This month flew by! I'm starting to get a little nervous about how quickly the time is passing. I am now over the half way mark...I was 21 weeks on Saturday! Sorry I've been bad about posting..I think my last belly pic was at 16 weeks maybe?? I can't even remember! For baby news...I have been feeling our little girl moving a lot lately! I can't even say when the first time was that I felt her move for sure. I know I felt something "different" at a little over 16 weeks, but it was so light I couldn't know for sure. It just gradually turned into bigger movements and now I can feel her all the time! Rusty got to feel her this past week on Tuesday. I was laying in bed waiting for Rusty to come to bed and she started going nuts! I had him come over to see if he could feel her and sure enough, she gave him 1 good kick and then 2 smaller ones. It was so awesome. I just remember being so happy at that moment and thinking how I would never forgot the look on his face. Since then, he's felt her several more times and Sarah has felt her once also. Friday night we went to see the new Indiana Jones movie and she was going pretty nuts during that. Rusty is convinced she will be an Indiana Jones fan like her Dad. We'll see. :)
Well, here are the official 21 weeks pics! I feel much bigger than I think I look in these pictures...


I haven't been able to start on the nursery yet since Sarah is still in that bedroom. Hopefully she will be moved into Rachel's old bedroom by the end of next week so we can officially start decorating! This is a small quilt that I've had for probably a year or so. I bought it on a whim at Cracker Barrel of all places!! I saw it on the clearance rack and just thought it was cute, not having in mind to use it for a baby's room. But the more I started looking at bedding online and at the store, the more I just decided that I like this one about as much as anything else I've seen! Plus, I hate to pay $150-$200 for bedding! So, I think I will base the nursery design off this! There are lots of good colors that I can pick out for accents. I'm thinking light pink and light green for the wall colors (pink on top and green on bottom, seperated by a chair rail, with crown mouling on the top). Today we are going to look at some cribs and see if we can find any good memorial day sales! Here is a pic of the front and back of the quilt:

I've also been hitting some garage sales and have been getting some great deals!! I've gotten a LOT of clothes, a baby carrier and a jumperoo! I can't wait to hit some more sales up as the summer goes on. The only problem I've run into is that I'm not sure what sizes to buy! I have no way of knowing if she will be average sized or what! i've bought a lot of 9 months stuff that I was hoping she could wear in the summer but now I'm thinking I should start getting more 12 month sizes even though technically 12 months would be October. Any of you moms out there have some advise for sizes? You can't see the total cuteness of this dress in this picture, but trust me, its adorable! It isn't a garage sale find, I got it at Kohls, but this is my favorite thing so far!!
Hopefully by my next post, there will have been some more progress made on the nursery! Cross your fingers!

ITS A.....

......GIRL!!! Yup, the wait is finally over and we now know we are having a bouncing baby girl :) And wow was she bouncing during the ultrasound! I have felt her move a few times but after seeing how active she was on the ultrasound, I'm surprised I haven't felt her more! At first, she was on her head and then she started doing flips! Finally she moved to a horizontal position but that is when the kicking started. She kicked her little legs into my bladder the whole time! Luckily, I couldn't feel that :) But that does explain why I've been having to use the bathroom every 10 minutes lately! I was worried at first that the tech wouldn't be able to see the baby's sex but finally she calmed down enough for the tech to take a peek. I really wasn't very surprised, I felt like she was a girl. Rusty (like most guys) was hoping more for a boy but he was so excited and reassured me (several times) that he wasn't disappointed at all. We are just so happy to know now and to be able to start planning! I do have another ultrasound 4 weeks from now. Since I was only 18 weeks 5 days at this last ultrasound, the tech wasn't able to see the baby's heart valves at all. My dr. wanted to go ahead and do another ultrasound so she could take a look. I'm excited to be able to see her again! I'm just hopin my insurance decides to pay for it :) Here are some ultrasound pics!

This one cracks me up-the tech caught her mid-flip!

Nice profile pic

Here she is waving at us!

One more of her cute profile

I'll try to post some more belly pics soon, I've kinda been slacking in that department!

In other news, Sarah moved back in with us! We've enjoyed having her home. Her and I have gotten to spend lots of time together in the past few weeks. I'm excited to have her here to help with baby stuff and I'm sure she'll be lots of help once the baby comes!

Ok, Sarah and Rusty are trying to get me to watch Transformers so I better go :) More pics soon!

16 weeks!!

Sorry, not too much exciting news for this post, just wanted to put a few pics up. First off, Rusty got his big official certificate in the mail showing he is now a licensed, professional engineer! I'm so proud of him!! He actually just started a new job last week and so far its going really well! The best part (for me) is that now he's working downtown, so him and I get to ride to and from work together everyday!! Its nice to have that extra time together, plus its saving us a ton on gas and parking. yeah!

Now for the pics you probably really want to see....my 16 week belly pics! I was comparing them to my 12 week pics and I can't tell a HUGE difference, can you? But I can definitely tell the difference when I get dressed every morning! My jeans aren't fitting so well anymore. Some of the bigger ones are still fitting, but are pretty snug. Its hard at this point. I'm not really in maternity clothes yet so I'm just having to buy bigger sizes, and that just makes me look frumpy. Oh well!! My main concern at this point is comfort!! My goal is to try to work out at least 3 times this week. I took the last few weeks off because work was just too busy to try to go over lunch. this week will still be crazy, but I really need to get to the gym! I really can't complain about my pregnancy so far. I've had it pretty easy, no morning sick or anything so far! Just feeling generally tired and worn out (that didn't seem to subside once by 2nd tri hit). I still haven't felt the baby move, hopefully in the next 2 weeks or so! Today our baby is the size of an avacado!! Ok...here are the pics!!


Friday night we babysat little Zoey! (our friend's baby).I just think she's so cute! Here's a pic of her (we tried REALLY hard to get her to smile but she just wasn't having it ) :)

Hope everyone has a good week!! Next weekend is Sarah's graduation...I'll have some fun graduation pics in my next post!

Ollie and Gertrude

No-Ollie and Gertrude are NOT our number 1 boy and girl names :) They are the names of the ducks who have come to live in our backyard! They are so cute. They started coming around so often that Rusty and I decided to name them. We even discovered an egg they had buried in our mulch! The male duck is very protective of the female and just stands guard while she eats all the little bugs and worms in our yard. There was some action on Saturday when another male duck came to eat in our yard. Ollie ran him off and it was pretty funny! Here are some pics of our ducks...


And apparently, we are popular with the winged animals. Saturday morning I was cleaning up around our front porch and noticed a bunch of grass and brush all over the place! I couldn't figure out what was going on until I followed the path and found this!

So far no eggs, but we are waiting!!

Ok, on to human news. I had a dr.'s appointment this past Thursday. I felt SO much better after the appointment. I love my dr. (that was the first time I had met her). We had a little scare with my insurance (they tried to tell me my dr. was out of network-turned out she is). Before the appointment I was just feeling very unsure and very "un-pregnant". I was so nervous about hearing the heartbeat! I was so afraid she wouldn't be able to find it. We had a stressful minute or so as she tried to locate the heartbeat with no luck. But finally we heard a very faint "thump-thump-thump" and there it was! She let us listen for a long time. We even got to hear the baby's kicking movements! It was just a lot of swooshing sounds, which I assumed was just my stomach making noise, but then she told us it was the baby kicking! So cool! The baby was located way over in the left part of my tummy and very low down. It was funny because I kept thinking for about a week before my appointment that that is where the baby was-just a feeling I had-I couldn't feel any movement, but that is just where I sensed the baby was. And I was right!! So, ever since my appointment, I've been really wondering if the baby has moved and what he/she is doing...is she awake? is he asleep? ON MAY 8th I won't have to say he/she anymore! We get to find out what we are having!! That seems so soon! I'll be 18 1/2 weeks along. I'm so anxious to find out and start preparing! I have a feeling its a girl, but who knows!! I try not to tell that to Rusty too often, he is really hoping for a boy. But of course, we'll be happy with either :)

My Belly!!

First off-yes, you are at the right site!! I decided to change my blog. I felt like the other one was just kind of dark! I like this one much better-it reminds me of spring, which hopefully is just around the corner! As you can see by my pregnancy ticker, I am a little over 13 weeks pregnant-officially in my 2nd trimester!! It's gone by fast so far. I hope it starts to slow down a little bit or else we won't be ready! Work has just been really busy and that has made time go by quickly. Well here are the first of my belly pics. I can't promise to post these through out my entire pregnancy-we'll just see how it goes and how ugly it gets!! But for your viewing pleasure...

My belly at 5 weeks...a distant memory....

My belly at 12 weeks....can you see a difference?? I can!!
Here is a picture of the mug we got my Mom to tell her we were pregnant. "Grandma" in dutch is "Oma" (my mom is from Holland). At first she didn't quite get it, but she figured it out pretty fast :) Now she tells EVERYONE she meets that she is going to be an "Oma". She is so excited.

And....last but not least. The VERY FIRST picture of our baby that I'll post!! I'm sure there will be many more to come!! Sorry the picture is kinda blurry...it was the best I could get! I can see the baby pretty clearly, but then again, I've been looking at it a LOT :) Its pointed so you can see the baby straight on..with the head on top and you can see an arm sticking out on the right. So cute!!
I'm going to try really hard to post more regularly. Now that we have a laptop, that should be much easier! Rusty bought me an aweswome laptop last weekend since I'll be working from home when the baby comes :) I think he is getting just as much use out of it as I am though! He loves playing computer games, and he's discovered that he loves playing computer games lying in bed even more! :)

And just so this isn't a completely baby related post-WHO'S EXCITED FOR THE OFFICE TO START BACK UP NEXT WEEK!! April 10th, in case anyone hasn't heard. Can't wait!!