37 Weeks! Only 3 More To Go!

Baby's now the size of a watermelon!

Your full-term (yay!) baby is gaining about 1/2 ounce a day and getting her first sticky poop (called meconium) ready. She's also brushing up on skills for the outside world: blinking, sucking, inhaling, exhaling, and gripping (it's getting strong!).

Hi everyone,

Amazingly, I'm already at 37 weeks today and we only have 3 weeks to go (assuming Kyra arrives around my February 21st due date and not earlier). Time is definitely flying by now! The doctor says the latest they'd let me deliver is up to 1 week after my due date, so it'll be 4 more weeks at max. During our check-up last week, Kyra was still head-down and right where she needs to be. I'm feeling pretty good, although I've been feeling a lot of pelvic pressure and have been much more tired lately. Still no real contractions, as far as I can tell, although I have been feeling Braxton Hicks contractions for a while. The house is basically ready to go, with the exception of some cleaning and a few more little things that need to be taken care of. Now that Geoff is done grading finals, I hope he's up for the challenge of helping with these last few to-do's.

I've put together most of the items I'll need to pack for the hospital, and just need to put them in a bag or suitcase. I've picked out a few tiny outfits to bring for Kyra! It was impossible to choose just one! Now Geoff needs to get his own stuff packed, and then we'll have the last minute items to collect just before we leave for the hospital. I told Geoff that tomorrow he needs to start keeping the ringer on his cell phone turned on (normally he just has it on "vibrate"), since you never know when I might need to call him and tell him "it's time." Or, perhaps a line from one of our favorite movies (Juno) is a bit more fitting: "Thundercats are GO!!!!"

Today, Shaunna and I took some maternity photos with our friend Selen from high school. I'm looking forward to seeing those! I'm sure she and I will both post some of those when we get them. In the meantime, I'll try to get Geoff to take some more belly shots during these last few weeks (if we actually even have that long left!). It's still so hard to believe that Kyra will be here soon! I'm sure it won't take too long to feel like she's always been here!

Maternity Photos

Hi all,

I know I promised a blog post with updated pictures of Kyra's room and the progress around the house...That's still to come. But in the meantime, I thought I'd post some photos from our recent maternity photo shoot with our friend, Becca Hayes. She's an amazing photographer! I was around 34 weeks pregnant when these were taken a couple weeks ago. So, if you aren't on Facebook and haven't already seen some of these, here you go! Next weekend, Shaunna and I are going to do some maternity photos with Selen Ermanav, a photographer friend of ours from high school! I'm sure that'll be fun!

Enjoy!

Baby Shower!!

Hi everyone!

As you can see, we had a great time at my Baby Shower last weekend! My friends and Sister-In-Law (who is of course a friend too!) did an amazing job and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves! My Mom provided the location - her community poolhouse/clubhouse, where we also had my Bridal Shower nearly 6 years ago. Shaunna's company, Parties By Panache, did a fantastic job on the catering and decor! Creme Brulee French Toast = YUM-O! Amanda put together some cute games, and Joliene brought an adorable cake (as you can see from the photo above)! Jen made gorgeous centerpieces and decorated my chair to match, so I definitely felt special!

There were tons and tons of gifts! I'll be making another blog post to show how much room they all took up in our living room, and how much progress I've made with getting everything put away. I'm almost done! As many of you know, I love music. So what better way for Kyra to follow in Mommy's footsteps than to start her off early with her very own pink iPod! I've already loaded it with a bunch of lullabies, as well as some Bob Marley and Jack Johnson (his Curious George CD is perfect for kids)! I've gotten a bunch of albums of popular artist's music that's been turned into baby tunes (Madonna, U2, Coldplay, Pink Floyd, Guns N Roses, The Beatles, Bob Marley), so it'll be nice to have some familiar-sounding soothing music to play for her.

After we got all the gifts home and I went through everything, I had a gigantic gift bag full of tiny clothes (lots of pink!), plus an entire storage crate full of hand-me-down clothes from Jen's 3 girls (thank you so much!). I managed to get everything washed, sorted by size, and put away in Kyra's closet and dresser (although I'm still storing some of the older sizes of Jen's clothes for the future, since Kyra won't be wearing those right away). I've already put together a few outfits for each of the various sizes (newborn, 0-3 months, 3-6, 6-12, etc.) that are hanging in her closet to help Geoff if he needs to dress her quickly. And it's also so cute to just see all these adorable things hanging there!

We've put together the strollers, bouncy seat, and most of the swing. Geoff has been particularly fascinated by all of the various items we now have to physically put Kyra in or on - crib, changing table, bouncy seat, swing, bumbo chair, caddy chair, car seat, 2 strollers, pack n play, baby bjorn-type carrier, moby wrap (still on it's way to us from Geoff's cousin Debby!), floor playmat, sling...I feel like I'm still leaving something out! Oh yeah, the shoulder carrier and high chair (we still need to get the high chair from Babies R Us), and probably some others I'm still forgetting. When Geoff was little, his parents took a bunch of pictures of him on all his various bikes and scooters, etc., which they affectionately call "The Transportation Series." Maybe we'll need to do something similar with Kyra's baby stuff!

The kitties have been enjoying spending time in Kyra's room with me! We're trying to get them used to the room being different now (it used to be an office that they were welcome in anytime). The kitties are only allowed in Kyra's room when supervised, and are obviously not allowed in the crib or on the furniture, with the exception of the glider chair and ottoman. They've been getting some good naps on there! I'm not sure how much they'll be allowed in Kyra's room once she arrives, but we'll see how things go. In the meantime, it's their favorite room in the house!

Tomorrow officially marks 1 month until my due date! We have another check-up at the doctor tomorrow, during which I'm sure the doctor tell me again that it would be perfectly safe for Kyra to be born now! She keeps saying that, and it's starting to sound as though she's supposed to be born now, as opposed to 4.5 weeks from now! We'll see when Kyra decides to make her first appearance! She's definitely getting heavy to carry around now and I'm assuming that she officially "dropped" a while ago, considering all the pressure her head is putting on my pelvis and nerves (not exactly comfortable!). I feel like I have to hold her up when I walk now. I'm definitely getting tired out more easily these days, and have been trying to take more naps and sleep in if possible (not that I've ever really been able to sleep in, since I'm usually up by 8-8:30am at the latest).

Watch for another post, hopefully in the next day or so, with some updated pics of Kyra's room and all her new stuff! Once I get all of the baby stuff done, it'll be time to write a huge pile of thank you notes!

34 Weeks This Weekend!

Baby's now the size of a honeydew!
Baby can recognize and react to simple songs...time to start practicing your lullabies! In fact, baby will recognize frequently sung tunes after birth and probably find them soothing. Less cute news: She now urinates about one pint per day. Get the diapers ready!

(I guess it's time to start playing my favorite Madonna songs on repeat so that Kyra can commit them to memory and be ready to dance along to them!)

It's hard to believe I'll be 34 weeks on Sunday! Time is flying by! I had another good check up at the doctor yesterday - my cervix continues to improve and measured at 3.93cm yesterday (even better than last week) and I wasn't dilated at all. So that's a very good sign that Kyra won't be arriving ahead of schedule! I get 2 weeks off from the doctor, and then I start weekly visits just before 36 weeks. The doctor keeps reminding me that it'll be perfectly safe for Kyra to be born after that point, but I'm still planning to keep her on schedule and closer to 40 weeks (thank you very much!).

The photo at the top is a fairly accurate 34-week view of Kyra's placement inside my uterus, although she's technically reversed (her head is down, her back is facing my left side, and her legs and arms are curled up on my right side. For a number of weeks now, all the kicks and movement I've been feeling have been on my right side. Kyra is giving me fewer big kicks, and instead often presses against my tummy and holds her pressed position for a little while. So you can easily feel a push up against my tummy as she moves around in her cramped quarters. I'm assuming she's been doing a lot of growing in there recently, given that my appetite has significantly spiked over the last few weeks! I've still got 6 weeks ahead of me to get bigger and bigger!

Tomorrow we're taking maternity photos with our friend Becca, who does amazing work! She's also going to do newborn photos of Kyra, which I'm sure will be absolutely, ridiculously adorable!!

We're looking forward to little Jake Balice's baptism on Sunday! I'm sure he's going to be all dressed up and looking adorable, as always! And next weekend is my Baby Shower! I'm hoping to get the last few house chores completed soon so that I can then focus on cleaning and putting away all the baby gifts. We've already started receiving some gifts this week, so THANK YOU to those thoughtful people who care so much about us! Your thank you notes are already on their way! I've washed most of Kyra's clothes and put them away in her dresser, although I'm sure I'll be reorganizing that after the baby shower. A while back, I bought a set of teeny tiny little newborn shirts that barely look like they'd fit around a soda can, but somehow my baby girl is going to fit into those when she's born! I plan to keep those to put on her dolls and stuffed animals when she's older, since she's really only going to fit into them for such a short time. But I enjoy picturing her actually wearing those tiny shirts in the hospital and her first few days at home!

It's a little crazy to think that after the baby shower, all that's really left to do is have a baby (and I also get the fun of helping to plan Shaunna's Baby Shower too!) My list of things to pack for the hospital is basically done - just have to do the packing now, but I think I'll wait a little while longer on that. I'm hoping these last 6 weeks slow down a little so that I can enjoy the rest of my pregnancy. Kyra's going to be here before we know it!