Baby Buys

Now introducing a new label - Baby Buys

This will just be the random stuff I pick up along the way for the baby before she gets here. I'm determined not to buy too much stuff because 1) I know she'll grow out of them before I know it and 2) that's what baby showers are for.

Confession: I didn't buy the Zumba onesie. My Zumba mentor did. The front says, "Busy..." and this is the back. I think it's the cutest thing ever. I think it's a 6-9 month onesie but like all Zumba clothes, it's cut pretty small.







I picked up this little gem from Babies R' Us the other day when I went to return my Snoogle cover. We bought the cover thinking that it didn't come with one but it did, it was just white. So I returned it and got that $25 back and decided to spend $7 of it on this cute little thing.  It's a Koala Baby onesie in 0-3 months.  I love the idea of having my baby girl in cute, sleeveless onesies and nothing else for the first 3-4 months of her life since it will feel like hell in the south. I'm just grateful I get to pop her out at the start of all the harsh weather. I would hate to be pregnant during a summer here. I'm a hippie and I couldn't resist the crochet butterfly.

Along Came Snoogle

This is yet another pregnancy buy that I didn't buy for myself. Chef bought this one for me. He had been concerned about my sleep habits since he's been out of town and realized my body pillow wasn't cutting the mustard. Firstly, I'm six feet tall. Most people can lay their heads on body pillows and keep it between their knees at the same time. I can't. Secondly, my body pillow has deflated on me. I now fold it in half to get three quarters of the fluff it used to have, and it didn't take that long for it to get flat either. So along comes Snoogle. Snoogle comes with a hefty price tag for a pillow but I think it is well worth it. The first night I slept with my snoogle was the first night in over two months that I had continuous sleep (not counting potty breaks). I apparently tossed in my sleep with Snoogle too. I think I started with it along my front side but when I woke up, I was on my back with one Snoogle curl behind my head and the other wrapped around my left leg. The long part of it was along the left side of my body.  It was an amazing sleep. Yes it is expensive but holy crap is it worth it! It supports my back really well and it is CRAZY fluffy and supportive. I don't see this getting flat any time soon. 

A Blending of the Day's Events

Almost everything in this dream came about from a conversations or events that happened earlier in the day with different people.

Situation 1: I take the park and ride bus most mornings on my way to work now that I'm no longer nauseous. I usually take the 6:49am bus to work and our bus driver is usually the same. Every morning she greets me with, "Good Morning Ms. Zumba" because I'm the only one in fluorescent clothing and vibram five fingers that early in the morning.

Situation 2: I was discussing with my Zumba students how far along I was in my pregnancy when one of them told me that a Zumba instructor friend of mine was due to have her little girl that day. I knew her due date was approaching but didn't know it was that particular day.

Situation 3: I usually don't talk to my sister everyday. I was hanging out in the mall in one of her favorite type of stores and decided to give her a call so I could ask the sales people if they had what she liked in stock. She didn't answer the phone when I called so I left.

Situation 4: On the way from our delicious dinner, Chef and I were discussing in the car how different would it be to drive a stick shift in different car makes. I told him that they say every car is different, so I would assume not only is every make different, but every model might drive differently as well.

On to this wacked out dream.

My sister was pregnant. I know right... ridiculous right out the gate. Apparently she wasn't due before me but she wanted to have her baby before me so she broke her own water with a stick. (She told me over the phone, that would have been too graphic for a dream). I had to take the bus to get to her house. I was on the bus and my bus driver gave me her usual greeting, except it was night time. I got off the bus a few miles from where my sister was but I left my bags on the bus. I was all kinds of angry but I had to decide whether to wait for the next bus to come around or walk the couple of miles to meet my sister.  I figured it would take at least 30 min for the next bus to show up so I would try and walk. As I'm walking a zip line appeared out of the blue. I grabbed hold and was ready to take a ride through the trees of a suburban neighborhood. I couldn't get enough speed on my zip line and then I realized that it was a stick shift. I had to shift gears on my zip line to go faster. I remember yelling, I'll never make it there in time because I can't drive a stick shift. My zip line was moving sooooo slow. I got tired of the struggle and frustration and woke myself up.

Anatomy Scan and Gender Reveal - Week 21

This particular blog is accompanied with a pregnancy dream because I had a silly dream the night before Chef and I went in to check on our little nugget.

Doctor's Office Presents
So Chef and I went in for our anatomy scan and gender reveal at the Drs. office. This was the first time we've been to an actual doctor for the pregnancy and didn't know what to expect. We went in for our scan and they looked at the baby and did all of the appropriate measurements, told us baby looked okay and we got some pictures. I asked the ultrasound tech, "So is it a boy or a girl?" She said, "We don't tell our patients during the visit. You'll be handed a box for you to open once you get outside." I thought that was weird but I don't question things in my dreams, I just go with the flow. Chef and I were handed this huge wrapped box that had a blue and pink wrapping paper all over it. We opened the box and helium filled balloons came out with "It's A Girl!" written all over them....then I woke up and couldn't go back to sleep.


Before I reveal the sex of the baby I'll let you know how the anatomy scan went at the doctor's office. Since I'm not a normal patient of this doctor they  needed to get me in the system. They  needed my insurance card and all that crap. That took a little bit of time because I don't carry my insurance info on me at all times. The receptionist suggested that I just pay it all up front and I looked at her like she was crazy. Nice trap, but I'm not falling for it. I told her that the birth center had all of my insurance info on file and to get them to fax it over. It worked! Now that I was "in" they took my picture (I have to come back at 37 weeks) and we went in the back for our scan.  Warm goobledy-goop on my belly and we went searching for baby. We hadn't seen the baby since our first scan at 9 weeks so I was interested to see how much growth had occurred. The tech measured babies abdomen, head, leg length and looked for internal organs. The ultrasound tech made sure to tell me while she was measuring the baby's legs that they were long. She said, "Whoa, this baby is gonna be tall like momma." Based on the measurements she could even estimate how much the baby weighs. She also pulled out a little doll that is the size of my baby at this stage to show me how it was positioned in my uterus. Baby was head down on the left side and legs up towards my belly button on the right. It makes a lot of sense based on the movement I had been feeling. Baby had been head butting me in the bladder making me feel like I have to pee or am peeing on myself.  I like the tech, she was very engaging and asked us about the names we had chosen so far and what we predict the baby will be and everything. She finished up all the measurements and went looking for genitalia.  I saw little legs on the screen wiggling back and forth and the tech said, "It looks like you're having a little girl! Here are her labias." Stop the presses. These ultrasound machines are getting way too detailed. She labeled my daughter's girl parts and I refuse to show anyone that picture. She tried to get some good pictures of the baby for us but since the baby was facing the probe, I don't have any of those really nice profile pictures. Just a face forward picture where you can see her eye sockets. It's very alienesque. My weird dream the night before the scan was right, Chef and I are having a little girl.

Pregnancy Dreams

I wanted to start a label to talk about all of the crazy pregnancy dreams I have. I think looking back on them would be hilarious. This first pregnancy dream blog is a compilation of the dreams I've had so far and what I could remember from them. I'll try to blog about them the day after from now on.

The Talking Animals
I live in the south and we have reptiles.  The lizards and skinks like to come and sun themselves on our screened in porch. They must like the breeze. In this dream, my mom came to visit to help Chef and I replace our fence in our back yard. Everything was going well until I saw a skink sitting on a portion of the fence my mom was working on. I told my mom about it and she said it couldn't move because it's legs were tied together on top of its back. So my mom took the time and untied the leg knots and waited for the blood to start pumping back in. The skinks legs re-inflated, he stood up, thanked my mom and ran away.
Also on this day for some reason there was a puddle of mud in my backyard and the dogs were running around chasing each other. Gigi, our Bichon Frise ran up to the mud puddle looking like she wanted to jump in. I yelled "Gigi, you better not jump in that mud!" She looked back at me and jumped in the puddle and rolled around. I kept yelling at her, "You are not coming back in my house like that Gigi. I can't believe you didn't listen to me." Gigi stood up on her hind legs and said, "I'm sorry mom, I'll go rinse myself off." She walked over (still on her hind legs) to the water hose turned it on and rinsed herself off.   This is when I woke myself up.

Caterpillar Baby
All the hype has been getting guesses as to whether we're having a boy or a girl and that somehow translated into a dream. I could never wait to find out the sex of the baby until after it was born but that happened in this dream.  I was in a delivery room in a hospital and had just given birth to the baby. We asked the doctors what it was and they said they couldn't tell. Chef and I were like, "What do you mean? Penis or no penis?" The doctors made us look for ourselves. Our newborn was half baby, half caterpillar. You know, sort of like a mermaid but the bottom was caterpillar. Apparently it would hatch and then we would know if it was a boy or girl for sure. Well this angered Chef and he decided to take action. As we were packing up to bring our caterpillar baby home, he was enraged at how this wasn't noticed earlier and so he decided to get a little revenge on the hospital. As we were leaving he grabbed the $500 rental breast pump that belonged to the hospital and started running down the hallway. All of the doctors and nurses started to chase him while I'm in this wheelchair holding my caterpillar baby. I had enough of the craziness and decided to wake myself up.

Snake Bite
Ok, this dream had me depressed and in a state of uncontrollable sadness. I really hope I don't cry while I'm typing this. In this dream I lived in a hybrid house of my parent's backyard but my house. It was strange. My parents don't have a fence in their back yard because they live in the middle of nowhere and our dogs and their dog don't go far when we let them out to use the bathroom. Anyway I let my 2 doggies outside to run and play but in the distance I noticed a huge cobra looking snake. The snake was across the street, a good ways away from where we were so I called the dogs in the house to get out of danger. The snake saw my dogs running and decided it wanted them. The snake jumped across the street. Literally jumped. No slithering or anything, it jumped from one side of the street to the other and chased my dogs. Gigi ran on to my screened in porch and she was fine but the snake caught and bit Sincere and by the time Sincere got into the house he collapsed on the floor and started twitching. He died from the snake bite. I was crying hysterically but for some reason I could not wake myself up from this dream. I guess I had to live out that raw emotion.

Project Nursery - Day 0

We don't know the sex of the baby just yet but that's not stopping me (and Chef) from shoppiiiiiinnnnnngggg! Since I want everything neutral, I already ordered bedding so that I can take one of the pillows to Lowe's and get paint to match it. Chef wanted to buy the big things so that's what we did. The crib, crib mattress, changing table, bedding, glider, ottoman and breast pump can be crossed off our list. We dropped a pretty penny in a very short amount of time once we solidified everything we wanted. This little nugget is putting us in the poor house before it even gets here. We already know which room in the house is going to be the nursery (the smallest room) so here it is "before." I will be posting progress pics along the way so stay tuned.

 Here is the back wall where we're putting the crib. Um, not the wall in front of the window but the other one. The color I  chose to paint the walls is called "Applesauce Cake." I LOVE it.

 Please excuse the state of our back yard and deck. It's a hot mess with leaves right now. The glider is going in that corner on the right side of the window. The closet is also on that wall.













The wall with all the junk on it is where the chalkboard wall and changing table are going to go. Look at all my paint supplies. In that box is my not yet assembled glider and ottoman. And look at the baby sized chair. Hilarious. Pay no mind to my doggies butt. That's Sincere, the beagle-jack russell mix.

Baby Movement

I first felt the baby move really early. It was exciting, but very infrequent. Now that the baby moves ALL THE TIME, I find it distracting.

If I had to guess, I  would say that I began to feel the baby move at least once a day by the time I was 14 weeks along. I was waiting until what I felt could be seen or felt from the outside.  At about 17-18 weeks pregs the baby began to wake up with me and bounce around for a considerable amount of time and the movements were getting stronger. I was 17 weeks pregnant when I decided to put my hand on my belly to see if I could feel it and I could. I was at my parents' house at the time and no one wanted to feel the baby move because they felt my husband should be the first. I guess that's fair. With me feeling the baby move I wondered how long it would be before I could see the baby move. Apparently, these events go hand in hand unless I should have started feeling for the baby earlier. Whatever. It's pretty cool and alien like at the same time. See if you can spot the baby movements outside of my breathing in this video. Hint: Look at the right side of the video just above my PJs. Please ignore the trash tv I'm watching and pay no mind to the ridiculous amount of hair on my belly...it's the hormones.