Archives for June 2015

Week 37 Bump Recap

week37

PS… sorry for the blurry, wet haired picture… turns out it is harder to remember to take these than you would expect! So this is legitimately what I looked like this morning before work #wethairdontcare

Baby’s Size: I appreciated Pregnant Chicken’s Week 38 blog post where she explains that all the pregnancy ‘what to expect’ this week things try to compare baby girl to a vegetable/fruit/etc.  But the most accurate size comparison is to an actual baby, because she is pretty much fully the size of a baby now! I have a sonogram on Friday (my first in about 18 weeks!) so I’m hopeful to know more accurately how big my little girl is in particular and just some reassurance that she is doing a-ok in there.

Baby’s Progress: More temperature regulation, brain and lung development are the name of the game for the next few weeks. She also has shifted down, which means she is getting prepped to make her entrance into the world sometime soon!

Weight Gain: I gained another pound this week, so I think all in all I am on track to gain 25 lbs in this pregnancy, which for someone my height and weight is exactly what I should have done.  Although it is kind of entertaining to me how many people comment on a pregnant woman’s size.  I was prepared for these comments since all the pregnancy blogs/books/etc warn of them; but it is amazing to me how often it happens! I had one woman at church who commented about how much I was waddling.  She obviously doesn’t remember what it was like to have a child’s head sitting on your pubic bone.

Sleep: So the good news is I’ve gotten quite a bit more sleep this week, but since this was the place last week I told you about my dog’s sock eating escapades, I’ll do that update here… apparently she decided to up her game and over the weekend chose to eat the armrest cover to a blue suede couch that I have upstairs.  The whole armrest cover.  So even though she had 5 days of feeling much better after her sock eating fiasco, on Sunday afternoon she took a fairly dramatic turn for the worse and started vomiting and generally looking miserable.  So first thing yesterday I took her to the vet, they did X-Rays and decided she needed surgery.  Which ended up being a good decision because the elastic was joining two large pieces of fabric and she was pretty miserable.  So she is now recovering from surgery at the Vet’s office and I am researching ways to prevent dogs from eating things they shouldn’t.  So far it has led me to purchase another dog crate.

Milestones: Yesterday we went to the funeral service of one of my childhood heroes. He was an older member of the first church where my dad was the pastor.  He and his wife were pillars of the community, leaders in the church, and all around wonderful people.  He was a small town Texas banker, a WWII pilot and had more personality than most people could dream of. And he would have loved his funeral service.  It was perfect: a bit irreverent, entertaining, full of good old stories, and shared the gospel a little in between.  Ralph would have loved it.  And it was pretty powerful for me to be sitting on the same church pews that I sat on every Sunday of several years of my childhood listening to my dad preach while I am so close to welcoming my little girl into the world.  It made me think about what life would look like in another 25 years and who the childhood heroes would be for Baby Girl.  I hope hers are as good as mine were. It was sad to say goodbye to Ralph, but great to be able to be a part of the celebration of his life.

Okay, enough sentimentality.  On with the update:

Favorite clothing item of the week: Gap T-shirts.  I live in these things these days.  They are so comfy and easy to toss on in the morning.  I hope their announcement that they are closing a bunch of stores doesn’t interfere with their maternity line, because I’m not sure I could have survived dressing for this pregnancy without these gap T-shirts… I own them in about 5 or 6 colors, and duplicates of a few! Especially if you can time it right and use a 30 or 40% off coupon, making them somewhere around 12$.  That’s cheaper than Target t-shirts!!

Symptoms: I spoke too soon about not having swollen feet! I went to put on a pair of dress shoes this weekend and they definitely didn’t fit so well!! The bottoms of my feet hurt pretty much all the time, and my fingers are starting to swell a bit,  I waddle (see above story) and moving is getting much more difficult.  I can for sure see why women are so uncomfortable in the final weeks of pregnancy! I’m not ready to say that I am so ready for her to come and to not be pregnant anymore, but I can see how this will get old REALLY FAST.  I’m hoping baby girl stays in there at least through this weekend since the husband is out of town on a Mission Trip until Saturday.  But after Saturday, she can come whenever she wants!! (I am fully aware that I have 0 control over this… so I’m trying to fight against my planner instincts and just let her come when she wants, but before the 4th of July would be great!)

Workout: I have walked and swam quite a bit this week, and plan to continue that for the next two(!) weeks, although this week with Reese being out of town, I’m trying to take it easier and spend a lot of time with my feet up, since all the books tell me that long walks are a great way to induce labor.  My parents came down to spend the week with me, so I’m in good hands, but I’d still rather she wait until AFTER Reese gets home to make his appearance!

It is crazy to me that within the next 3 weeks Baby Girl will be here (my doc says she will only let her go a week past due date so I feel fairly confident in this guesstimate).  People keep asking if we are ready, and I think the answer is as ready as anyone can be.  Her things are all washed and put away, her room is ready, Reese and I have done a lot of reading and talking to friends about caring for a child, but I’m not sure you can actually BE mentally ready for your first child.  I think its more of a hold on for a wild ride kind of thing… but we are excited to be so close to getting on the ride!

PS. If you missed any of the updates, you can check them all out here.

Week 36 Bump Recap

Oops! We had a crazy busy weekend and early part of this week so I didn’t get my post written until now! But we are getting dangerously close to the end and I haven’t missed a post yet, so it may be late, but it’s here! Week 36 Recap! Which means I am officially at 37 weeks right now and depending on who you ask that’s pretty much ‘full-term’, which is definitely exciting.  I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’d like her to stay cooking in there for at least 2 more weeks, but it is nice to know that if she came out right now she likely wouldn’t have any issues from coming early and would be able to go right home with us.
Week 36 Bump Update | www.amusingmj.com Baby’s Size: The books kind of quit giving sizes out right now because this is the phase where babies start to get a lot bigger or just a little bigger depending on their genetics, so its hard to truly tell how big she is.  I’m guessing somewhere between 5.5 and 6 lbs.  And that is in my super educated, not medically inclined expert opinion… so take it with a grain of salt.  Oh and one book compared her to the size of Swiss Chard… since everyone has a picture of that in their heads to be able to compare. <end sarcasm font>

Baby’s Progress: More temperature regulation, brain and lung development are the name of the game for the next 3ish weeks.  We will get to have an ultrasound here sometime in the next couple of weeks, so when that happens, I’ll let you know more of how she is doing!

Weight Gain: I gained 2 pounds this week… but I gotta tell you… getting on the scale feels somewhat like an unnecessary evil these days, so I don’t do it very often! It’s easy to see how people would gain a lot of weight and not keep track of it during pregnancy!

Sleep: Well… Sleep was unbelievably awful this week, but I can’t really blame that on the baby.  Our dog, Lexie decided to eat two of my husband’s long black dress socks.  So after about 4 or 5 vet visits (where the diagnosis was either HGE, a stomach infection she has had before or anxiety about the baby) she finally passed them in the middle of the night.  I’ll spare you all the graphic details, but suffice it to say last week was rough.  She wouldn’t eat or drink for 7 days, she wasn’t sleeping well (and so neither was I) and I had more than one emotionally charged (ugh pregnancy hormones) evening where I thought I was going to have to say goodbye to her in my last few weeks of pregnancy. NOT a pretty sight.  But, it turns out she just ate my husband’s socks during the storms last week and needed to get that out of her system.  So she is now mostly recovered and back to eating and generally being a happy friendly dog. But she definitely took us through some sleep training exercises of cleaning up after her being sick and waking up every few hours.  But I’m still hoping to get a week or so of somewhat better sleep before baby girl gets here!

Milestones: As far as baby things go, it has been a fairly quiet week! We had a lot going on in our social lives, work and just life in general, but nothing too notable in terms of baby milestones!

Favorite clothing item of the week: Maternity shorts.  They may be the least attractive clothing item I’ve ever seen… I mean they have more fabric above the waistband than below, but since our temperatures pushed up into the upper 90s over the weekend, they were a much needed relief from my jeans!! I ordered these from Gap and then also have a hand me down pair of linen shorts that are UBER comfy from Old Navy.

Symptoms: I can definitely feel additional pressure on my body, and turning over in bed is a chore, but other than that I really can’t complain! I do have to put my feet up after a long day, but they haven’t swollen much, they just get tired!

Workout: I got to swim laps a few days last week after work and it was glorious! I love being in the water and swimming laps feels much the same as it did before being pregnant, which is a nice feeling!! I also got to walk with a friend on Saturday morning, and spent Monday and Tuesday volunteering at a conference at our church, so I’ve gotten a fair amount of exercise in this week! And although I am tired at night, I feel pretty good, so its encouragement to keep swimming laps and walking (even though I am not doing either strenuously!).

PS. If you missed any of the updates, you can check them all out here.

5 Tips for Decorating a Table

This week my small group of friends decided to have a murder mystery dinner party.  Cheesy… yes, but hysterical.  On more than one occasion during the evening I was laughing so hard I couldn’t breathe! Our group consists of 7 couples, all at a fairly similar stage of life and we are each other’s support network, friends, and confidants.  I’m not sure where my life would be right now without them!! Someone came up with this idea and our group sort of ran with the idea… The theme for the party was Spaghetti Western–the murder mystery piece was pre-packaged, which one of the girls bought online and we served spaghetti and meatballs for dinner (hence spaghetti western).  My contribution was the house to host the party, so I decided we needed a bit of decoration for the tables.

As I was throwing together the decorations for the party it occurred to me that my mom (and aunts and grandmother) all taught me important things about how to decorate a table well that might be useful to share on the blog! These tables were decorated for a specific theme, but many of the ‘tricks’ of how to do it are the same no matter what you are decorating with.

For this party I used two tables- my kitchen table which we moved into the dining room and our dining table.

1. Always decorate in odd numbers: I’m not sure why this works, but there is something visually appealing about odd numbered groupings rather than even numbered groupings.  So I almost always use 3 vases, 5 candles, and so on and so forth.  Like you can see in the picture below–the two mason jars plus the cake stand make 3 and visually balance out the table.  There are also 5 mini mason jars with tea lights in them spread around the table.

Western Party Theme | www.amusingmj.com

2. Add some varying heights: My mother is notorious for draping various items in fabric just to give one part of the decor a height boost.  For these tables I used the lace cake stand above and the white cake stand below.  In fact, I’m not sure the cake stand in the photo below has ever actually had a cake on it… I use it much more often to decorate a table or a vignette.

westerntable

3.  Add some texture: For this rustic vibe I love using various burlap items- We purchased the burlap below for our rehearsal dinner tables (I’m pretty sure we just bought it as fabric off the roll at Hobby Lobby and cut into squares), and I have used them countless times for many different parties because they add great texture.  For this table I snagged the rope from Michaels for $5.  It was an easy addition and definitely made the tables a lot more ‘western’.  If you are doing a fancier table texture can be brought in via silk cloth, different types of ribbon, or flowers.   Which brings me to my next point:  westerntable2

4. Flowers: almost nothing adds some va-va-voom to a table quite like fresh flowers. They definitely aren’t the cheapest option for sprucing up a table, but man do they bring the wow factor.  I love buying just a couple of bunches of whatever my grocery store is selling in the right color scheme and then splitting them up into little vases or jars like these to set around.  Funny enough, the same ‘design’ techniques that I use for tables holds fairly true for flower arrangements too: varying heights, odd numbers and texture (i.e. a little greenery or different types of flowers) make for an appealing arrangement!

 

5. Have fun with it! Especially if you are doing a theme, it never hurts to go all out.  I searched Pinterest to find some cheeky cowboy sayings to add some fun flair to the table.  The gold coins were a fun addition (not to mention delicious to enjoy during the party) that really sold the western theme.

All in all I spent about $30 dollars to buy things for this table (and more than half of that was in fresh flowers!), most of the things I had on hand and can be used for various other table/house decorations.  And our guests came over at 6:30 and I got home from work around 5:30, so not too shabby for an hour of time and not much money… plus it was fun to have such a festive setting for our mystery drama!