Baby Shower!

Today was my baby shower!  My amazing friend Chanel threw my baby shower for me and I was SO impressed!!  She put so much work into all the details and I LOVED everything about it!  We decided to do it early because we were in the planning stages of the shower when my doctor was being very intense about possible pre-term labor and January seemed like the time the baby would come.  We didn't want to interfere with the holidays, so we planned it for just before Thanksgiving to be safe.

It was such a great shower!  I was particularly hurting this morning and Chanel has a fabulous new recliner that I got to sit in the whole time so I was very comfortable and made it through just fine.  I think I might just go live in her recliner for a few days...it was sooo comfortable... and such a life saver!  :)  I felt a little bad that sitting in one place prevented me from circulating and talking with everyone there an equal amount, but I think everyone understood and we all had a great time :)

We played a super clever game of Concentration where the prizes perfectly coordinated with the words (if you matched "breast-feeding" you got a Milky Way, if you matched "epidural" you got LifeSavers, if you matched "conception" you got a Skor, etc. - haha! so cute!).  Then we had a super yummy spaghetti lunch and there were delicious desserts as well!  The blackberry lime squares were AMAZING (and purple!!!) and the cupcakes were SO good!!  (with purple sprinkles!)  :)  The water bottles even had cute labels that said "Robinson 2013" or "Baby Girl" - how awesome can you get??  Then we played the Name Game where everyone listed girl names for the whole alphabet and hoped no one else guessed their name.  I actually took notes because there were some really cute names that people came up with and we haven't named the baby yet!  :)

There was a table near the door where people could write down advice for me on one paper, and then address an envelope to themselves as well (for mailing thank you cards!).  We drew from the basket of envelopes so someone got a prize.  Then Chanel took all the advice cards and put them in a photo book to give me.  I read them all out loud and then picked my favorite and that person also got a prize!  It was so fun!  There was some great advice too :)

Then we opened gifts!  People got me such nice things - I loved it!  A few of the cards had long notes in them and I didn't want to make everyone wait for me to read them so I waited until I got home to read them all.  And it is a GOOD THING I did because I was totally crying while reading those sweet messages from my friends!!

The best part was the great people that showed up!  So many people commented to me about what a great group of people we had there.  A lot of people from the ward came, a couple of my coworkers were there (current and former), and my aunts, cousin and Grammy came!!  We had a great turn out - probably 18 people or so.  I was just so incredibly impressed by Chanel and all the amazing things she did to make my baby shower so special.  And I know a few other awesome people helped her out and I'm so grateful!  Everyone who was there was so sweet to come and make it such a great day!

My one sad thing is I didn't think to get a photo with me and Chanel!!  :(

Here's a ton of photos that my cousin took!  :)

 

 

 

 

Can you tell we had a great time??  :)

Love this awesome lady!!!

THANK YOU CHANEL!!!  :D

Selling and Buying our Cars!

Well we had quite the week when it comes to cars!  Aaron and I both said good-bye to our cars that we love and had as our own before we got married.  It was bittersweet.  We were relieved to finally get them sold so we can get a family car, but it was hard to say good-bye!

We've had three cars for awhile now (long story).  We have Aaron's Solara, my Nissan, and my Prius.  Aaron bought his Solara when he got his first job after college, I bought my Nissan while we were engaged, and we bought the Prius together within the last year to replace my dying Nissan.  The plan has been to eventually sell my Nissan, and then once the baby comes Aaron was going to commute with his Solara while I used the Prius that we bought for me.  Aaron and I were commuting together so we drove my Prius together pretty much every day (hello, at 49mpg how could we drive anything else?!).  But since I've been having to stay home and not drive, Aaron hasn't wanted to transition back to his car because he LOVES my Prius.  So he's been driving that every day.  It's all high-tech so he can talk to it and tell it to set the temperature or navigate to the house or whatever else.  Recently he decided he wants to keep it long term, so he suggested we sell his car so he could keep the Prius instead, and we could get a small SUV for me so that I have more room for groceries and a stroller and all of that "stay-at-home mom" stuff.  I love my Prius too, but I'm pretty sure Aaron has fallen more in love with it than me and it makes sense for him to have the better gas mileage for commuting, so I agreed.  And let's face it - when Aaron is happy, I'm happy.  So if my Prius makes him happy, he can have it :)

Thus began all the car selling and buying!

So Aaron sold his "bachelor car" Toyota Solara.  Aaron was sad to see it go because he's had a great experience with that car, but he's barely driven it in the last few months and he wants to be able to put our baby in his car too (not happening with a 2-door coupe!) so he was ready to say good-bye.  We sold it to a really great couple that live nearby and it was a great selling experience where everyone walked away feeling good :)  I am bummed that we didn't get a photo of Aaron in front of the car though!  I planned to get one but I was out of the house when he sold it.  When I got back and mentioned it to him he was disappointed he hadn't thought of that.  But the couple lives close by so maybe we can sneak over and get a picture sometime!  ;)  Just kidding.

I sold my Nissan Sentra (my "Angie" car).   I love that car!  It was falling apart though so it just wasn't safe anymore.  I sold it to a mechanic so he can fix it up and use it as a commuter car.  It worked out well in the end.  But I was surprised how hard it was to hand over the keys!  :(

So we actually sold both of our cars on the same day (same hour too - how funny is that!?) and that was Wednesday.  (and a huge THANK YOU to Jeanette for giving me multiple rides to sell my car!)

Then today we drove up to this awesome little dealership a few minutes north and took a second look at a Toyota Rav4 that we had liked a couple weeks ago.  It's in really great shape and very well-maintained.  They had dropped the price as a Thanksgiving sale so it was a really good deal and we both felt good about it - 

so now we own a Toyota Rav4!!!  

We love it!  We're really excited about our first "family car" and even more excited about paying cash for a car for the first time!  That felt very good.  So we're really excited!  It's fun to have two cars that we both jointly own, instead of our individual cars we had the first few years we were married.  And we can put a car seat in either one!  We had a really great experience at the dealership so if you are local and looking for a great deal from some honest guys, we highly recommend Happy Trail Motors off of I-25 and Hwy 66.  So now we own a Toyota Prius and a Toyota Rav4 - can you tell we're Toyota fans?  :)

Here are a few photos from the dealership of our Rav4...

It's crazy to me to think this is the car where I'll have a car seat in the backseat and a stroller in the back, .... so weird!  Sometimes I still can't believe this is all happening!  This will be an adventure for sure  :)

Sew Many Dresses!

Last week I was nesting REALLY bad to the point that I was not resting well at all.  It was such a weird feeling, I could NOT sit on the couch - I just had to get up and clean.  I can't explain it.  But nesting is real and crazy and it's a problem when you're supposed to be resting!  So in the midst of all that non-resting, I was spotting for a few days in a row and once I finally was able to start resting again it stopped.  Whew!  (Is spotting TMI?  Maybe?  Sorry.)  

Well anyway I decided to start sewing instead because at least I'd be sitting, right??    So on Monday my awesome friend Brenda took me to the fabric store and I got some fun things to get started with!  I had pre-selected these two projects... 

(thank you to Brielle for suggesting the super cute t-shirt skirts!)

Tshirt Skirt

http://deliacreates.blogspot.com/2012/02/nesting-easy-baby-skirts.html

Dress

http://www.sew-much-ado.com/2012/01/infant-peasant-dress-free-pattern-and.html

The first one is supposed to be skirts made from shirts, but I don't have any shirts I want to cut up...so I decided to just get knit fabrics instead.  I got these three fabrics for skirts:

 The skirt project went... not well.  The instructions are super funky and I need to spend more time deciphering it before diving in since I'm not using shirts like it's suggesting.  So I moved on to the dresses.  (but I will be back to skirts eventually!)
These are the two fabrics I got for dresses:

 Here is another shot of the purple ruffle fabric without the flash so you can see the ruffles better.  How cute is that?!  I hope the dress turns out because it will be so dang cute if it does!

I also got fabric to make a blessing dress!  I got a shiny white fabric for structure and some organza for an overlay.  The first picture shows the fabrics separately and the second shows the organza laid over the shiny fabric. I can't tell you how long I debated about whether or not I should just do the pretty shiny white on it's own, but in the end I decided the organza overlay gave it a softer look.

So I do not like to stop things when I'm halfway through.  I like things to be done thoroughly and immediately.  Seriously - I read nearly all books within a day or two, in school I wrote papers in one sitting nearly ever time, I don't even leave food on my plate, ... I like things to be completed right away and very thoroughly.  Which is why I shouldn't have projects like this in my life... :)   Totally did two dresses in two days and my body is PAYING for it!  But it was worth it.  

True to form, as soon as I got home from the fabric store on Monday I started measuring my pattern pieces, and next thing I know I'm fully involved in my first dress.  And since now you know how I am with things like that, you know that once the fabric was cut out, there was no turning back.  :)

I was plugging along, following the pattern carefully and taking my time to make sure I did it right, ...and then I started to feel like a rock star right about when I folded part of the dress right side out and I saw I'd created THIS:

My first sleeve!  It was so cool!  

And within a few hours I finished the whole dress!

 I used rick rack for the hem according to the tutorial and it turned out really cute I think!  I was nervous about it looking tacky, but I like it!

 

 I was so happy with how it all turned out!  It has been a long time since I sewed so I was nervous that maybe my skills would be super rusty.  Luckily working a sewing machine is like riding a bike and I picked it right back up again!  :)
A little story... I got my sewing machine as a gift from my mother-in-law for Christmas in 2010.  I'd asked for one because we had started fertility treatments right around that time and I was thinking a baby would be on the way soon and I'd want to make lots of baby things!  Plus I was working with cub scouts and was always finding a need for a sewing machine for different projects, or patches or whatever else.  So I got the sewing machine!  Yay!  Aaaaand then we moved and we weren't in scouts anymore and we didn't get pregnant and ... yah so although I've had my machine for nearly two years... this is the first project I've completed on it!!  Aside from small things like hems or whatever.  So it's finally being put to very good use and I'm LOVING it!  It works great and comes with everything I need :)  And I think this is a pretty great "maiden voyage" for the sewing machine.  Not a bad first project!

And I have to add this... I don't get to impress Aaron very often because he's such a smarty pants, but he was really impressed by this dress!!!  He kept commenting on how straight all the stitches were and how everything looked so well done... it felt really good!  I think it was weird for him to watch me do something that he knows he definitely can't do.  Now he knows how I feel when he's coding, haha  :)  I have a pretty excellent husband, if I do say so myself.  ;)

So that was all Monday.  

Then on Tuesday I made the baby a blessing dress!!  I used the same pattern but I changed a lot of things on it.  Some slight adjustments on the top, made it a lot longer and invented my own hem.  And since I was doing the organza over the shiny white fabric there was an additional element to it.  I actually just sewed the organza pattern pieces to the white fabric before I did anything else and then I was able to use it as one piece the rest of the time (except I didn't sew the hemline until the end) which made it a lot easier.  I took a few photos while I was creating my hem so if anyone is interested I could post how I did it, but there's nothing professional about it, I was totally making it up - but it WORKED! :)

 Luckily I worked at David's Bridal a few years ago and I spent a few months in the alterations department.  So my experiences there really helped me in dealing with the organza which can be a tricky material.  I sewed slowly to avoid any snags, but still got a few.  I was able to adjust it and them steam them out, which is a trick I learned at David's Bridal.  Always nice when past experiences help you out!

I made this little rosette with some extra white fabric because I was toying with the idea of adding embellishments to the dress, but I don't think I'm going to now that I see the final product.  I love the beautiful simplicity of what I ended up with.  I don't prefer roses anyway, I like more open flowers like lilies.  I told Aaron I wanted to keep it simple so that it would be easier for him to hold her in front of everyone.  I've watched a lot of dads get their hands stuck in various ribbons and whatnot so I don't want that to happen to Aaron.  He's pretty relieved about that and is glad it's a simple dress!  We both love how it turned out!   I think if the dress is paired with a pretty headband she'll look plenty dressed up.  Maybe I can figure out how to make a cute headband with the leftover fabric??  Hmm... I'm open to ideas!  Headbands are not my thing, so if anyone has suggestions I'd love to hear them!

 

Here's the whole dress...

I can't believe I made this!!!  :)

I have so much extra white fabric that I think I'm going to make a tiny little "ragtie" blanket or whatever they're called.  Like a 10x10 square with the corners tied.  It's just such a soft material that I could see a baby LOVING to hold that.  So we'll see how that goes.  I still need to master those skirts and make the purple ruffle dress.  

But I really need to take a sewing break for the next two days because I was nearly in tears by the end of today with how much pain I was in from sitting at the machine so long (you can kind of see me wincing in the photo unfortunately, oh well!).  I took tons of breaks but it was still stupid of me to do for so long.  I should probably learn how to not do projects all at once!  Pretty sure I'm going to lay down for the next WEEK just to start recovering.  

But even though I can barely move - it feels so worth it!  :)  I love my little dresses!  And I still can't believe that hem worked out!  :)

----

(see? another example of project binging!  I am EXHAUSTED but I can't leave my blog entry unfinished or unpolished...thank goodness it's done - I'm going to bed!)  :)

Week 24

Ultrasound Photo

Okay so I LOVE my ultrasound photos and .... I don't really like to share them because I don't want anyone to look at them and be like "what is that??" or "that one is weird" or something.  I just feel protective because I seriously love my photos of my baby even though they are just blurry black and white blob/alien photos to the average person.  I totally don't mind showing them to people in person because I can point out where everything is and it's fun, but I didn't want to just put them out there for anyone to have an opinion of my special photos.

I couldn't help posting on Facebook about how much I loved the photos we got, and that inspired some comments about how other people want to see them... crap.  I still wasn't going to post them, but then my sister-in-law, Celeste, commented that she wanted to see the baby, and she's family and I decided that I shouldn't hide "family photos" ;)  And my friend Brielle suggested I post on my blog, which I thought was a better idea than Facebook.

So I will give in and post one picture.

This is from the ultrasound we got on Oct 8 when we found out we were having a girl - we got a shot of her sucking her thumb!!  :)

(they were at the end of the roll of photo paper so there is some tape on the photo that I couldn't get off)

If you live nearby or will be visiting soon I will be happy to show you the rest anytime, just ask!  :)

Sorry for not sharing more.  Hopefully I'm not this weird about sharing photos of her after she's born!  :)

Bubble Baths and Baby Clothes

Here it is - the most trivial post you will ever read.  The entire thing is about baths and laundry.  Enjoy.  :)

So it's been frequently suggested to me that I try taking a warm bath to cope with the pain I'm in.  To be honest, I've been completely ignoring that advice simply because I was too freaked out about getting the water temperature right.  All I'd been told is to take a "warm" bath, not a "hot" bath or I could hurt the baby. Okay, sorry, that's too vague for me.  So I wasn't going anywhere near the bath thing.

But at my last appointment my doctor suggested it again so I asked her for a temperature.  She said "Keep it under 120 degrees" with absolute certainty so I felt good about that answer.

Then on Saturday Aaron took me to WalMart to help me get out of the house and pick up some things we needed.  I rode around on the embarrassing little cart, but we had a good time (Except whenever I backed up, turns out the reverse beeping was very embarrassing to Aaron, haha.  And I tried not to notice that the only other people using the ride-on carts were old ladies...)  While we were there I grabbed a bunch of bubble bath stuff just in case I got up the nerve to test the waters (quite literally!).  :)

That night I was pretty stressed and hurting.  I had some additional spotting (very light but always scary - I kinda sorta spent last week testing my limits, sooo apparently I need to stop and accept that I really do have to be resting all the time) so between that and my WalMart excursion, I was not feeling well.  (The trip to the store wasn't as bad as putting things away when I got home - some habits are hard to break! But Aaron intervened about halfway through and sent me back to the couch, so it wasn't as bad as it could have been).  Anyway, I had decided to just go to bed, but then I remembered Daylight Savings!  I had an extra hour all of a sudden!

So there I was with clear instructions from my doctor, plenty of bubble bath supplies, needing to de-stress and relieve pain, and I had a free hour.  Clearly the planets had aligned and finally created the perfect opportunity for me to try out this bath business as a pregnant pain remedy - and who was I to fight fate??

So I ran the water and put all kinds of awesomeness in the bath - bubble bath from the store, bath salts from a friend (thanks Rachael!), and some body oil stuff I also grabbed at the store.  Everything was lavender scented for relaxing (the bubble bath bottles with lavender were purple so... of course those are the ones I picked! lol).  I brought my digital food thermometer up from the kitchen and obsessively checked the water every few seconds until the tub was full.  And I checked it again probably three times before I got in.  Never went above 105 degrees so I felt very safe.

I set my laptop up and watched an episode of Heroes during my tub time (I'm in Season 2 on Netflix).  Pre-pregnancy I was an avid bubble bath taker and normally Celine Dion is my regular companion during bath time, but I'd been listening to her all evening, so she wasn't invited this time.  And it was fun to watch tv in the tub!

And I have to say that the bath felt AMAZING!!!  All the pressure was gone and the pain was eased and ... it was awesome.  So amazing - seriously, there are no words.  Baths are my new pain-reliever (let's be honest, my ONLY pain-reliever so far!).

(All of you who suggested a bath - here is your moment - go ahead, you can say it together:  "I TOLD YOU SO!")  :)

The only downside to the bath is that about ten minutes after I got out, all my pain returned.  It wasn't worse than it had been, but I've gotten so used to being in constant pain that having that heavenly break reminded me what it was like to not feel it, and it made it so much harder to feel it again.  I think it was worth it though.  But DANG it was hard to have it come back!  Maybe next bath I'll watch TWO episodes of Heroes... ;)

Ooh and I'm very excited about the fact that on Saturday I did my first load of baby clothes laundry!!!

Don't know why that was so fun for me... but it was!  Those little clothes are so dang adorable I just can't get over it!   This weekend I finally had all my appropriate detergents and things to wash them with. I had asked Aaron to pick them up for me last week, but he only got the detergent (because I forget to ask for more than detergent, whoops!).  When I said I forgot to ask him to get softener too and we need some, he said, "Okay no, we are NOT softening the baby's toys!!"  ???  Apparently he thought the special detergent was for washing the baby toys to sanitize them or something.  haha, oh it was funny.  We got softener and all that good stuff at the store on Saturday.

So I finally got to wash my first load of baby clothes!!  Loved it!  They're still in the dryer, but folding and sorting them will be really fun this week.  Especially since we also got bins at the store for me to sort all the baby clothes into!  :)  I figured I should start now with the few things I have already so it's not super overwhelming with all her clothes in a few months.  ...okay fine, actually I just want an excuse to play with her clothes now instead of waiting!  :)

And here's where this post all comes together... I was running the washing machine during my bath and made an amazing discovery.  Apparently when the washer is on, the tub vibrates!!  So I got an awesome, warm, relaxing, vibrating bubble bath.  How cool is that?!  Best discovery ever.

And yes, you did just spend ten minutes of your life reading about my bath and my laundry.  Sorry!  Thanks for stopping by, hopefully life gets more interesting in time for the next post.  :)

Week 23

Health Update

So, I was a complete wreck on Wednesday after a phone call from my doctor's office.  There are two doctors at the office I go to and I normally see one doctor but the last two times I've been in they scheduled me with the other doctor.  Anyway, the doctors had a mis-communication of some kind and long story short, my regular doctor had not been being properly informed about what I had been telling the other doctor (somehow the things I was reporting in my appointments and the advice I was getting from the doctor to rest was not in my file???).  So that led to a my doctor's assistant saying something to me over the phone about having no record of my pain in my file (whaaaaat?!?!?!?!?) and ... ugh... I was beyond frustrated yesterday.  I just felt like I wasn't being taken care of or followed up with which was super concerning since I'm a first time mom having a not-normal pregnancy and I need help!  I was already having a bad day because it was like my first trimester showed up all over again and I was dry heaving and nauseous all day long in addition  to all my pain and I had no appetite at all - I was miserable!  So adding all those things with feeling totally not taken care of really pushed me over the edge and I was an emotional wreck.  My parents were great about talking me through things on the phone, and when Aaron got home he went with me to get pie (because pie makes everything better - true story)  :)
Anyway, my doctor called me this morning as soon as she talked to her assistant and was very concerned when she heard I was still in so much pain.  She asked me to come in so we could figure things out.

So I went to my doctor (accompanied by my awesome friend, Brenda!) and she said that I should not still be in this much pain because contrary to what the other doctor said, it was not normal at this point.  So she thinks there has to be something going on beyond ligament pain and ovary issues.  As we were talking she leaned forward and poked me on the right side of my belly and asked if it hurt.  She had hit right where I've been having the most pain and I was surprised she zeroed in right where I've been hurting most!  She said that was right about where my gallbladder is.  Awesome.  (By the way, I had told the other doctor that's where it hurt and she said that was just normal ligament pain.)  My doctor said she knew where to check because she noticed I was sitting completely on my left side and not putting any weight on the right side, which she said told her a lot about what was going on.  So we talked more and she's ordered another ultrasound to check things out, but at this point she thinks I have either gallstones or hydronephorsis (fluid/inflammation around my kidneys).

Good news:  neither one hurts baby!  Yay!  So basically at this point we're just waiting for the ultrasound to see what exactly it is.  But either way she said we can't really do anything about either one because it's not worth the risk to the baby.  She said she'd suggest narcotics for pain but she already knows I'll refuse so she wasn't going to bother.  It's nice seeing a doctor who knows me :)  Oh and the best part is that she said she thinks our risk of pre-term labor has seriously decreased and she said she thinks the baby will go to full term as long as we keep me healthy, because baby is plugging along just fine.  YAY!!!!

*insert celebration dance here*  :)

At this point my limitations are to basically do what I need to do rest-wise to manage the pain and not push myself.  She wants me to get connected with a pre-natal chiropractor or pre-natal massage therapist to help with the pain, and if that doesn't work she wants to try physical therapy.  Her concern is that since I'm not putting any pressure on the painful areas, I'm compensating with my back and that's causing increased back pain and additional problems (ding ding!  I hadn't even told her yet about my increasing back pain).  Oh and she suggested I get a belly band to help relieve some pressure, so I just ordered one on Amazon, hope it helps!  I asked her if I could just take my "suck it up and push through it" approach like I would totally do if I wasn't pregnant, but she said absolutely not because the pain management is also for the baby.  Apparently when my body is stressed I'm releasing stress hormones that hurt the baby, so that needs to be avoided if at all possible.  Boo.  I was kind of hoping I could start cleaning my house more or even go in to work sometimes, or do something to get my life back.  But it looks like lying on the couch and working part time from home will continue to be my new reality for the next few months.  And that's okay.  Whatever it takes to get my healthy baby in my arms, I'll do it.

My doctor did reiterate that travel was not an option right now, so I guess I need to finally get around to cancelling those plane tickets... I was secretly hoping that I'd magically get better in time to go on our trips.  Wishful thinking I guess - can you blame me??  Luckily I used my Southwest points so it's refundable anytime :)  Also my doctor had been planning to follow up on my low-lying placenta at 28 weeks but she moved that follow up date to 24 weeks because she's anxious to peek at baby again and check on the progression of things sooner than later, all things considered.  So hopefully the placenta is moving up and we can hope for a natural birth, otherwise we'll have to plan on a c-section if it hasn't moved.  I'm fine either way, there are pros and cons to both delivery methods and in the end I just want my baby to get here.  But I think it will move and my doctor is optimistic that it will move as well - it's a fairly common issue that generally resolves itself.

Oh and needless to say, I asked the front desk not to schedule me with the other doctor anymore.

So stay tuned for the official diagnosis, but that's the news so far.  It feels so good to be getting answers finally, regardless of what they are!  I just hate not knowing!  It makes a huge difference to be with a doctor who is familiar with me and my situation and actually takes the time to help me and find answers and solutions.  And it was also very helpful to bring a friend to help make sure all my questions were answered and help me remember everything the doctor said - thank goodness for fireball friends who are willing to drive you to the doctor at the spur of the moment and have your back at the appointment!!

And I'm love LoVe LOVING that we might go full term!!!