nursery progress: making space

Note: If you don't appreciate all of the effort I put into these pictures, you ought to. I appreciate all of you visual people!

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So apparently, babies come with a lot of stuff. I made my list of things to register for/buy and my eye started to twitch. Then I made a plan and all was right in the world :)

Step 1: Determine where Boy will go.

Our upstairs currently looks like this:

And we decided that it should look like this:

Step 2: Get Organized.

There was a lot that needed to happen in order to make the guest bedroom a nursery. Most of it included unpacking boxes that we didn't unpack when we moved, making a Goodwill pile and organizing my Christmas decorations. True story. This is the progression:

Ohhhhh yikes. But over Memorial Day weekend, we made it happen. We got organized.

Step 3: Make room for Boy.

There was a lot of room-switching fun which involved cleaning out a closet, cleaning out attic space so we had a place to put the stuff that was in the closet, cleaning out the office/craft room so we'd have room for the stuff that was in the guest bedroom, moving guest bedroom furniture into the office/craft room, moving a bookshelf from the office/craft room to use in the nursery, etc. And the green grass grew all around, all around and the green grass grew all around.

Because of my "condition" Andrew did most of the moving. Rudy and I just sat back and directed.

As you can see, Rudy is mid-yawn. He also thinks he weighs about 30lbs less than he really does and insists on being right in my lap whenever possible.

Step 4: Daydream.

After the planning and the organizing and the room-switching, we were left with this:

We can breathe!

That's the cradle that the babe will sleep in while he's still in our room. All the other furniture is coming...THIS WEEKEND! That was the main reason for pushing ourselves over the last two weeks to get everything cleaned out. We're headed to Charlotte to do a little shopping with Andrew's parents and when we come back, we hope to have a truck full of furniture. I can't wait.

For now, here's what I'm thinking for the bambino's room:

We're still in a rental (and probably will be for a while, thanks to the Navy) so painting isn't likely. I love the gray and I love the yellow/blue/green combo and I like that the options I have for bringing in color without being drastic. It all makes me very, very happy.

So there you have it, folks. The first few steps of the nursery makeover. I'll keep you posted along the way, but in the meantime what's the one thing that you or your baby couldn't live without?

21 weeks

I feel round. All of me, everywhere, just feels round. At the end of the day, all I want to wear is a giant t-shirt so my body can finally breathe. And guess what? In case you were wondering, humans gestate for 40 weeks. What's that saying...? Something along the lines of it's all downhill from here. I know I shouldn't complain, but I feel like this happened overnight. Everything is just a liiiittle snug.

Silver lining? I work from home and my husband thinks t-shirts are sexy (sorry, Dad) so I can wear stretchy pants and 100% cotton all.day.long. And I will.

Moving on...

At 21 weeks, this little bambino is the size of a carrot. That confuses me a little because last week he was supposed to be a banana and I feel like carrots are smaller than bananas? But, whatev. He can also hear things from outside the womb, so Andrew likes to get really close and say, "Heeeeeeeey, behbeh" in a really deep and kind of creepy voice. I'm afraid this child won't recognize his father when he actually sees him.

Also, this boy moves around. He's been kicking all the time lately and I love it. We can even see little jumps and twitches on my stomach if I lie flat, which is bizarre, but so cool.

Aside from being a teensy bit uncomfortable, I feel great. I feel happy and motivated and just good. Honestly, all complaints aside, I really love being pregnant.

And I love this boy.

the name game

In case you missed it when I announced it before, we're not sharing this guy's name until he gets here. Mainly because we like the idea of keeping that little secret between the two of us and also because we don't care for unsolicited opinions. Or negative facial expressions.

But it's also because he's currently nameless.

Before we found out what we were having, we could easily come up with ten or more names for a girl. But we've never, ever settled on a boy name. The first thing Andrew said when we walked out of the ultrasound room was, "Well, I guess we have to come up with a boy name now." We had kind of been ignoring the fact that we may have a boy, since the name part was so difficult.

But alas, here we are. Baring a son who shall be called BOY.

It's too hard!!

There are a few that we like, but Andrew really wants to pick a name because it has significant meaning, not just because we like it. Blah blah blah. Sorry family, but you haven't given us much to work with. We even started thinking of people who have influenced us in some way - people in history, authors, etc. Andrew thought of C.S. Lewis.

In case you were wondering, C.S. stands for Clive Staples.

So we call him other names for now:

Little One

Little Guy

Our Boy

Baby

Little Buddy

Andrew sometimes likes to refer to him as The Parasite, but in a completely loving way.

We have approximately 132 days to make this decision, but I don't do well under pressure and I would like to have this figured out soon.

Otherwise, we might accidently name him Staples.