34 weeks (and 4 days)

My face kind of looks like Casper the friendly ghost in this pic, but oh well :) You'll notice that my shirt is just kind of hanging out at the bottom, not touching my pants - yeah, that is almost all my maternity shirts at this point. Because I am pretty tall with a long torso, I knew this would happen early, even though my belly isn't really that big. I am constantly tugging down my shirts and making sure they aren't riding up to expose the maternity panel on my pants. Annoying, but what can you do. I am getting pretty excited to return to non-maternity clothes. I know jeans probably won't fit for awhile, but I have plenty of lounge pants and long sleeved t-shirts (2 new ones thanks to Liz!) to tide me over until I'm REALLY fitting in my old clothes.

New symptoms this week are stiff hands - I looked it up, and apparently you are more likely to get carpal tunnel during pregnancy. Apparently this is due to swelling. Luckily my hands don't LOOK too huge, but I know they are slightly swollen because my rings don't fit. I don't have it too bad just yet so hopefully it stays that way.

I think we can officially say we have everything we NEED for this baby to come now! I took all the gifts we got out of bags and packages, and the nursery is feeling more like an actual room! The one thing I felt like we needed before she comes home is burp cloths, and conveniently we received those from my cousin (with some super cute fabric sewn on by my crafty aunt - the one who made my quilted bag and little quilt from Shower #2) yesterday! Apparently Ben was going to just rip up some old t-shirts, but I think these are probably a little nicer than his disgusting old stained undershirts ;)

In the next month we'll be washing all of her new blankets and clothes, finishing the decor, and making some meals to stock in the freezer. Oh, and installing the carseat, finishing the assembly of "stuff" (pack n play, swing, etc) and packing the hospital bag. We'll have to keep busy to keep the normally long and boring January from dragging by even more so than normal :)

Baby continues to move all around - lately the movement has been shifting to large movements - I'll feel a leg or foot sweep across my whole belly, or she'll kind of push her feet out of the side of my belly. It's pretty freaky to look at, but I am still loving it! I asked Ben the other day if he wished he could feel it from the inside just for a day, and he said something like "Um, not really. It seems pretty freaky actually." :)

Merry Christmas!

Ben and I are in the middle of 4 days of Christmas celebrations - I'm kind of glad we got home a little early tonight so we have a chance to relax a bit before heading to my cousin's house tomorrow, and my aunt and uncle's on Sunday.

Merry Christmas if you celebrate it - I hope everyone has had an awesome day! Here we are with our lopsided tree and lopsided angel that won't stay straight :)

Chocolate Caramel Cheesecake

As I have mentioned before, there were 3 baby girls born on my block (even on my side of the street!) in the past 4 months - last night we had a progressive dinner with 2 of them! (and parents too :) We started out at Aaron and Allison's house for appetizers/salad (DELICIOUS crab artichoke dip, no-knead bread, and pear salad), then headed to Nate and Molly's for the main course, which was a Julia Child recipe since they just watched Julie and Julia :) There was a SLIGHT mishap when brandy was poured into a glass casserole dish that was on top of lit burners...... it resulted in this, and Nate rushing out to pick up a few more rotisserie chickens at the grocery store :) Oh well, lucky we weren't hungry since we all gorged on bread and dip earlier!

Ours was the last stop for dessert - I knew I wanted to make a cheesecake since they store well in the fridge for a day. I browsed through my Google Reader, and found this chocolate caramel cheesecake recipe on Smitten Kitchen - looked perfect, and not too difficult!

The only hard part about this recipe (as Deb notes) is caramelizing the sugar. It took WAY longer than I thought it would, probably 30 minutes. We probably weren't supposed to let it go as long as we did before adding the cream, but it all turned out ok. There were some big chunks of caramel that took awhile to dissolve into the cream but in the end, it worked and caramel sauce was made - success! I tried to make caramel once before and failed so I'm glad to know it is possible :)

So, this cheesecake was amazing. I loved it, and it appeared that everyone else did too, by the speed they ate their pieces, even while tending to babies :) I'm glad I still have half left so we can continue to enjoy it in the coming days - because there just aren't enough treats to go around at this time of year ;)

Beautiful cracks :)

33 weeks (and 4 days)

This week's belly pic was taken yesterday by the ultra talented Kate NG Sommers, who generously offered to take maternity photos for me! We had a fun time, and were reminded of how awkward it is to have photos taken of yourself :) I think there will be some awesome ones, I'm very excited to see more! (all in due time I know ;)

First, I created a poll to guess the birth day, weight, etc - to vote, click on the "Expectnet" link on the right, or click here!

So, this week was kind of a busy one - I actually wrote notes to myself throughout the week so I wouldn't forget to write about anything in my post! First, I had a midwife appointment on Monday, and Ben came with me because instead of working from home that day, I had to go into the office and I didn't want to pay for parking :) Once again I was up 1.5 lbs, which surprised me. I eat like crap and really don't work out so I keep thinking I'll gain more than the recommended 1 lb per week, not slightly less. Hopefully it keeps up that way, but my next appointment is the day after 4 days of Christmas celebrations so I doubt it :) My blood pressure is still nice and low, and my belly measured a little small (31.5 instead of 32.5) but nothing that they were concerned about. Baby girl apparently was head down at the appointment, hopefully she stays that way! Her heartbeat was on the high side again (guess that is normal for her) and they heard an acceleration with movement, which the midwife said is very good. Overall, a nice and boring appointment :)

I asked one question, about how often they artificially rupture your bag of waters, and the midwife student I was seeing talked for like a half hour about it - the more questions I ask, the happier I am with the midwife group there - they really are very flexible about how they approach labor interventions and seem like they really take into account what the patient wants and also let you know the risks and benefits of each procedure. I had a few more questions, but needed to get to work so I'll save those for my next appointment. I'm getting weirdly excited for labor actually - I know parts will be horrifying, but it seems that a very high percentage of women say it was one of the best days of their lives when all was said and done and the baby is out, so hopefully I will be one of them :)

This Wednesday was my last prenatal yoga class! I did 2 full 8 week sessions, and now the center I went to is on a 2 week break and obviously I can't sign up again in January because I'll have my baby somewhere in that session - crazy! Even though I never wanted to go to class before it started, I was always so glad I did by the time it was over :) I went to the Wednesday night class at St. Paul Yoga Center and it was great - pretty easy when I started, but by now it is just the right amount of difficulty for me. I might go to a few drop in sessions in early January, but if you do go, definitely sign up for the whole session - nothing is as good of a motivator as paying in advance :) I think I'll be able to use a lot of the breathing techniques and poses during labor - hopefully they will help!

In the "what's going on with my body" department, my belly button is fully out and proud now - and I think it looks super weird. Others tell me it doesn't, but when I look down I think it looks pretty freaky. It also is super sensitive and kind of hurts when I brush it against something, for instance, my desk at work (it is right at the perfect height to run into the edge). One day I put a band-aid over it which seemed to help :) My fingers are definitely swelling a bit too, and I have pretty much completely given up on my rings. I was wearing just my tiny wedding band, but even that leaves an indent now so I think I'll just go without. I've never experienced anyone giving my hand a weird look like I'm an unwed mother, so I'm not going to invest in a fake set or anything. I actually quite frequently didn't wear my wedding rings before because I always took them off to sleep, so it's not like my hand feels "naked" or anything either. Oh well! They'll be back on in a few months :)

I am also officially getting up once per night to pee now. That is REAL fun, especially since the bathroom is not on the same floor as our bedroom. It actually feels SO GOOD to go back to sleep after going to the bathroom that I don't even care. On the days when somehow I don't wake up to go, I have to get up at 5:30 and it seems stupid to go back to sleep (on a work day at least) so I'd rather I wake up at 3 or 4 anyway. I know some women get up 3-4+ times per night so apparently I am lucky in this department, and extremely lucky that it didn't start happening regularly until now.

Baby girl continues to move all the time - it is great :) Apparently her knees/legs are on either side of my belly (or they were on Monday) and I frequently feel them sticking out in hard lumps. Sometimes it feels like she's moving a leg completely from one side of my belly to the other which is pretty freaky! I also seem to feel like her limbs are OVER my ribs, which doesn't make sense to me. I haven't felt any rib pain at all though, but I do feel like I constantly need to sit up really straight or else I am squishing her. I am a sloucher by nature, but I guess it probably helps me to avoid back pain and things like that when practicing good posture. I did have some major lower back pain last weekend, and Ben nicely made me a rice sock, which helped immensely. I think he has enjoyed it just as much as I did :)

OK, I was going to write more, but this post is already a novel, so I'll just stop now and save the rest for next week :)

Glazed Lemon Cookies

When my work had a potluck last week, I immediately signed up to bring lemon cookies. The event was my department's Christmas party, which again Janelle was a large part of coordinating - she turned it into Office Olympics which were really fun!

My team ended up winning the GOLD MEDAL! I was very proud, as team captain :) Now, I didn't come up with this team name (I'm not THAT self absorbed, after all) but it ended up being pretty funny. We made my 6'8'' director (seen here in the background) put a sweater in his shirt to appear "pregnant" and then the rest of the team members had onesies pinned on - ha. Yes, pretty lame, but hey - it was all in good fun.

Anyway, the cookies! I saw this post pop up in my reader a few weeks ago from The Way the Cookie Crumbles - lemon cookies that were described as super soft and tender sounded perfect to me!

I don't have a large food processor, so instead of using that, I cut the butter into the flour mixture using a pastry blender for awhile, and then put the whole thing in the KitchenAid with the dough hook - it took what felt like an eternity for it to actually turn into dough (and probably got way overmixed in the process) but hey - it worked!

I'm not ever so good at cutting things uniformly, so my cookies definitely were not all the same width and thus some got a little overdone, but overall these were quite good! I loved the glaze the best. The obvious comparisons were made to these cookies, and I definitely liked the Lemon Ricotta cookies better - I just love a thick cakey cookie, but I do think if I had cut mine a little thicker they would have probably been better.

Baby Shower #3!

To complete my trio of baby showers, I had my work shower yesterday - it was so fun! Janelle, Amy, Melody and Jen were on the PPC (Party Planning Committee) and they did an awesome job. Janelle has been inundated with work parties as of late, as she is the queen of planning events (she is famous for Scottoberfest (here is the post for 2008), and also was one of the masterminds behind the School Lunch Potluck).

Amy was in charge of the food - she asked for my favorite dessert flavors, so I told her chocolate, cheesecake, and banana and she delivered! There were chocolate chip cheesecake bars that were delicious, banana bread (that I have been enjoying all day today as well!) and some savory snacks. A perfect way to end the workday :)

Each table had a large sheet of paper with a baby/child related question and some markers or crayons, lest anyone get bored during the shower :) Some tables got really into it, others not so much, but it was fun to see people's drawings!

Before the shower games, we watched an awesome slideshow that Janelle put together using all of my pregnancy related photos - it was great! She's going to finish it with the last 5-9 belly pics too, which will be really fun to have :) (side note: wow, that's not many weeks left... yikes)

We played guess the baby, and as with Shower #1, I just randomly guessed - I didn't do so great, but oh well :) Many at my table at least got a LITTLE frustrated by the game, but I think they still had fun ;)

I made Ben make the trek across downtown to attend at least one shower!

There was also "baby trivia" which was pretty fun - especially to see Ben get frustrated that he didn't know all the answers :) He maintains that some of my answers were just "wrong". Everyone was also asked to submit their guesses for the baby stats... for the record, Ben guesses January 27th, and I guess February 7th for the Birth Day (superbowl Sunday - mostly because I think it would be hilarious if by some miracle the Vikings made the superbowl and I was in labor - ha!!!).

Then it was time to open some gifts!

I look like a moron here, but I am holding up one of the photos of the gift the group got us - our snap 'n go stroller frame, changing pad, and changing pad cover - Janelle wrote up funny little captions for each gift - like "Now you can think of all of us each time you are changing the baby!" and "Cupholders for Ben's homebrew" - ha

We got some other things too - a lot of bibs (including some plastic ones for when the baby is older, much needed!), a knit hat made by my coworker Nona which is adorable, a few cute pairs of baby boots, and more! Shannon got us this super cute ornament that I promptly went home and hung on the Christmas tree - baby's first ornament!

A parting shot with the PPC

Thus ends my spree of baby showers - they were all SO much fun - I definitely have some awesome friends, coworkers and family!

Baby Shower #2!

My second baby shower was this past Saturday, and was hosted by my lovely sister Elizabeth - aka, by far the most frequent commenter on this blog (since no one ever comments! Maybe the constant baby talk has driven some away, which is not surprising :) - with some help from my aunts on my mom's side as well as my SIL Becca!

The cute invites Liz picked out!

Liz is in school right now and has finals starting this week, so she's been pretty busy but still did an awesome job with the shower! Everything looked really cute and the food was awesome :)

Hostess with the mostess


Delicious cupcakes. I had....... 3 :) oops!


Favors that Liz labored over! In the exact colors of the nursery too - how beautiful!


Pink punch - sherbet, ice cream, ginger ale and... something else. Yum!

I was really surprised for some reason how many people ended up coming! Liz did "regrets only" RSVP so we really had no idea since not a ton of people contacted her. This shower was all my family and almost everyone was able to make it! Including my aunt and cousin that live pretty far away - it was so nice to see everyone, especially since I missed the family Christmas last year due to being in Anaheim. There were probably 20-25 adults there, and a few little ones as well - it was a good sized group!

Part of the group


All my in-laws! Mother, grandma, and sisters.

After everyone got settled, Liz had people guess how many diapers were in this bin. A win-win for me, since I got the diapers AND the basket :) Becca and my cousin Taylor won this game - I was way off of course!

While we were waiting for the food (my mom forgot to turn the oven on - ha!), we played game #2, a simple word scramble game that I again sucked at. Becca and my cousin Staci won this game... and I think Becca has rigged all shower games since she always wins ;)

Finally, time for some food! :) Veggie pizza, cheese, crackers and meat, meatballs, AND my very favorite - mini pigs in a blanket :) Delicious! Desserts were equally awesome - the aforementioned cupcakes, cheesecake bites, and butterscotch bars... yum.

After the food, Becca hosted a game of Baby Price is Right (finally a game she couldn't win!) where we all had to guess the exact price of each item in the basket, and then whoever had closest to the total won. My cousin Michelle won and was like 1 cent off or something. I was again, WAY off, guessing way higher on most things - a nice surprise I guess, since I'll have to buy all this stuff soon enough! Oh well, even if I didn't win, I still got all the stuff in the basket ;)

And then it was on to the gifts! We got SO many awesome things, I was blown away by everyone's generosity! I really feel like we have most of what we need/want for the baby now, which is awesome! The carseat, swing, stroller, tons of diapers and baby supplies, and also a few cute outfits so this baby won't have to wear ONLY hand-me-downs ;)

Carseat from the in-laws!! Now we are good to get her home from the hospital :)

Now I hate to play favorites with gifts, but REALLY - one of my favorite gifts I got at this shower was an AMAZING quilt from my Grandma! My dad's mom has made us blankets since we were babies - I figured she'd make something for the baby if she was able (she IS 85 after all EDIT: My mother just informed me that she is now 86, but just had her birthday 2 weeks ago, so was likely 85 when completing this quilt :) ) but I was just shocked by how perfect the quilt was, considering we had never even spoken about it at all!

So I took this out of the bag and thought - oh nice, a lovely blanket in this cute fabric. And was about to put it aside, when my grandma was like, no open it up...

and then I saw a little knit blanket/afghan in there too and I thought THAT was great and was the end of it - but she again said, no open it MORE...


and wow! When I opened it I saw that it was the alphabet, cross-stitched with a little picture of something that corresponded with that letter, and the colors even pretty much match our color scheme in the nursery!


Click here to see it really big so you can examine each letter ;)

I had picked out this print as something else I wanted for the nursery (my mom got that for us!) and the quilt is VERY similar to that.

We got another quilt and handmade quilted bag from my Aunt Mary too - so beautiful! I just love all the handmade things this baby (and..... me :) will get to enjoy!

Mary also made my mom a "Grandma" quilt :) Ahh, I love crafty family members!

This is kind of blurry, but this is the diaper bag that my Aunt Susan got for us! I'm SO excited about this for some reason - I love this bag!!! and it's just "gender neutral" enough that Ben is willing to carry it too (as long as he is also with the baby :)

Definitely an awesome shower! A great welcome to the family for my baby girl :)

32 weeks (and 4 days)

Belly pic taken at Baby Shower #2! :) Again, that will be it's own post. Sorry I haven't been posting anything non-baby related lately... I really have been so lazy. I haven't cooked a meal by myself in a long time, and I really just don't want to do much, especially on week nights. Just getting through the work day is enough for me, and then I just want to chill out all night. I now have a cold too, so that makes me even less likely to do anything! Our weekends are usually pretty full, so I am more than content to relax while I still can on weeknights :)

Other than being tired, I've felt pretty good - no real aches and pains especially since I'm working on changing positions more at work to avoid tailbone pain. My fingers clearly are swelling a bit, since my rings are getting very uncomfortable. I didn't even wear them to work at all this week, but I did shove them on for the baby shower yesterday and that got a little painful by the end, especially given the fact that it was pretty warm in there with all the people!

We had our LAST baby class on Monday - I'm glad to be done :) I am glad we went, it did make me feel more prepared and just helped to get into the mindset that YES, a baby IS coming soon! A lot of it was repeat information since I've done a lot of ready already. One couple in our class wasn't there because they ended up having their baby - a month early! Yikes... that's a bit of a wake up call. I've been mentally preparing myself to go late, since I know that is more common for first-time moms, but... they do come early a lot of the time too!

The baby continues to move constantly, which I love! Sometimes she takes brief half hour breaks, and then I start thinking, oh I haven't felt her move in a bit... and then she starts rolling around again! It'll be interesting to see how's she's positioned at my appointment tomorrow! She doesn't really keep me awake when I'm sleeping, which is great, but when I do wake up and roll over, she usually gives a few jabs to let me know she's there :) That about sums it up for the week!

Baby Shower #1!

As promised, here is a post dedicated to my very first baby shower :) This one was hosted by my good friends Rebekah and Mindy, and "catered" by Kate! Quite a few of my friends were able to make it, which was awesome, and my mom, mother-in-law, and all but one sister were there as well - it was a really fun group! Of course, I missed everyone that couldn't make it or lives out of town, but that's the way it goes :)

When I first got the invitation, I got a little teary eyed! Becky had used the fabric that will hang on the nursery walls for the wrap (it helps to have a web designer husband, apparently!).

I got to Becky's house a bit early, so I could admire all of the decor that Mindy so thoughtfully picked out - lots of ABC things, and also a lot of apple things were mixed into the food/drink to go with the fabric that was on the invitation :) I got to keep the vast majority of the decor which was awesome!!

Mindy and Becky holding my belly - not my idea ;)




Flowers, blocks and ABC board book

Everyone got a drink - either hot apple cider, sparkling cider, or a bellini and then the very first game was one we played at Becky's shower almost exactly one year ago - the floating plastic baby game :) Whoever's baby broke free from their ice cube first wins - pretty easy, fitting with my game requirements of not wanting to eat anything or partake in any physical activity ;) Becca won, and was pretty happy about it :) My baby took FOREVER to break free - hopefully not a sign that my REAL baby will want to stay in the womb forever!!

The next game was one I was really excited about, guessing who is who from their baby pictures! This was WAY harder than I thought - I pretty much only got my own family members right and then a few that I happened to guess correctly - but it was so fun to see everyone's baby pictures!

At some point in here we ate too.... I can't remember when. The food Kate prepared was awesome! She wrote a blog post about it, and her cake fiasco ;) Oh well, the cupcakes that were a "back up" were delicious!! Sadly, when the party is FOR you, you don't have enough time to chow down - I wish I could have eaten more because I don't even think I tried everything.

Kate and I by her delightful cupcakes :)


A few things missing here, but you get the idea - note the alphabet connecting toy in the background!


and again, note the ABC cake server - Mindy is all about the details! :)

The final game was another easy one - we just each had to write down as many "A" names as we could, first girls and then boys within 60 seconds, and whoever had the most unique names won. I don't remember who won - I think my mother-in-law and sister maybe? Or maybe Laura? Yeah it's blurry to me I guess :) Each person who won a game got an apple cinnamon candle to take home.

After the games came the presents! We got so many awesome things - I did forget how awkward it can be when everyone is staring at your opening gifts :) We got a ton of things off our registries, as well as some really awesome surprises! I'm a TOTAL registry stalker - we're talking multiple times a day, but I DIDN'T look the day off, so there were a few surprises. In my view, it doesn't ruin the surprise, it's more like having the joy of getting the gift twice - once when you see it's been bought, and once when you open it! Yay! Yes, I'm nuts ;)

One of my favorite gifts was a blanket for the baby made by my mother-in-law! All of the kids in Ben's family got a blanket made by their Grandma Ann (my FIL's mom) when they were born, so my mother-in-law is carrying on the tradition - they all were made in the same pattern, with a solid color on one side, and a patterned fabric on the other, with yarn tufts (?) throughout - I made Ben find his baby blanket so I could compare :) While the baby might not use it for a long while, I think it will look great in the nursery, and is the perfect size for a nice lap blanket for me (or Ben) when we're sitting in the glider :)

Opening the blanket




Ben's blankie


Everyone got a little box with a bag of sour patch kids (my favorite candy) as a favor :) There were a few left over - more for me!!

The shower was definitely a success! I had such a fun time, and I hope all the guests did too :) Now I just need to finish the thank you cards before shower #2 this Saturday, and #3 the following Wednesday!