Show us where you live- Nursery

Kellys Korner is doing Nursery's/Childrens Rooms this week. Our nursery is still a work in progress so have patience! Lol.

Standing in the doorway looking in. I am only showing you this corner of the room cause the rest of the room is storage/dog cage. . .etc.

LB's Crib with the stuffed animals in it. Excuse my baby carriers hanging on the crib. I need to find some cute hangers to hang them on the wall with.

The animals in the crib- The dog in the front was mine, I got it when I was 9 months old! I slept with it every night until I got married. The 2 crocheted things- Clown, monkey & bunny was Chadds, The little bunny's tail is coming off cause he used to hold it by the tail.

Here is where I need help people!!! The space above the changing table is so blank and I have lost all inspiration. I would like to do either a Large letter of the Monogram or the whole first name. What would you suggest? If so what color/s? Should I do it in yellow or if I do the whole name should I mix and match the colors from the room (blue,pink,red,yellow)?
Or I thought about hanging a shelf above the changing table to hold powder, lotions and stuff and then hanging photos on the wall behind it (maternity photos of me, ultrasound photos then eventually photos of the baby). Or should I do the shelf and the letters to spell out the name above the shelf? Help me people!!
This is the curtains mom made for the window. I dont have them hung up yet because I dont have a curtain rod but wanted to show you all what they look like. They look really light compared to the wall in the photo but they really arent.

19 weeks & KICKS!!

Your baby's sensory development is exploding! The brain is designating specialized areas for smell, taste, hearing, vision, and touch. Some research suggests that it may be able to hear your voice now, so don't be shy about reading aloud, talking to it, or singing a happy tune if the mood strikes you.

Your baby weighs about 8 1/2 ounces and measures 6 inches, head to bottom. Its arms and legs are in the right proportions to each other and the rest of its body now. Its kidneys continue to make urine and the hair on its scalp is sprouting. A waxy protective coating called the vernix caseosa is forming on its skin to prevent it from pickling in the amniotic fluid.

We made it to 19 weeks!! I cant believe how fast time has flown by. I am feeling pretty good, starting to get a few back aches and yesterday I think I had a little swelling on my ankles. But that might be partly my fault sine saturday all day we were on our feet and walking and sunday I was all around at church then sunday night we went for a walk.
I had a midwife appointment yesterday and everything looks normal. Heartrate is staying about the same & my belly is measuring right about 18 weeks. My blood pressure is normal, sugar levels are normal, not alot of access weight gain so its all good!!
I felt the baby kick for the first time last night!!! I was laying on the couch and chadd was sitting on the floor beside me and it kicked me really low like right above my hip bone and scared me. Chadd says I jumped! Lol. I was like I think the baby just kicked! Sure enough, i felt a couple more kicks last night. They were all pretty low in my belly too so the baby must be laying low.
I found some great deals on baby clothes and got about 75 pieces of clothing in sizes newborn to 9 months. for around $100. I cant wait til it all ships out and I get to open the box!! Lol. Its better than christmas!

Award

The rules are pretty simple-- write 7 things you like and tag 7 people to do the same!

1. Days when I can sleep in and not have to work

2. Finding good deals on stuff (ask my husband I am obsessed with finding the best deals)

3. Old Navy Flip flops

4. Fresh Paint Toenails

5. Fresh Strawberries & Blueberries

6. Having All my laundry done and put away & especially having clean sheets! Love Sheet washing day..lol

7. The little one growing inside me that I am reminded everyday how blessed I am.

Ok Now I tag:

1-Shelly W

2-Megan Suheski

3-Denise B

4-April B

5-Lacey H

Ultrasound

Here is our little baby!!! The Ultrasound tech said everything looks normal and the baby is growing on schedule. :-) We were able to see the baby move around on the screen. So cool!!

Front view- It looks kinda like a monster! Lol

Head to rump, your baby is about 5 1/2 inches long (about the length of a bell pepper) and he weighs almost 7 ounces. He's busy flexing his arms and legs — movements that you'll start noticing more and more in the weeks ahead. His blood vessels are visible through his thin skin, and his ears are now in their final position, although they're still standing out from his head a bit. A protective covering of myelin is beginning to form around his nerves, a process that will continue for a year after he's born. If you're having a girl, her uterus and fallopian tubes are formed and in place. If you're having a boy, his genitals are noticeable now, but he may hide them from you during an ultrasound.

18 weeks

I realized looking at this picture that my belly is lopsided, its lower on the right side. Maybe the baby is laying weird??

Why I am having a Home birth

This past weekend we started Child birth classes with a wonderful teacher from Louisville. The classes are called "Bradley Birth Method" and I highly recommend them. We still have 11 weeks to go in class but after just our first week we are both so excited to see what the rest of classes have in store for us. Our teacher is amazing, so informative and just such a amazing spirit.
Anyways, One of the things that influenced me to do a homebirth is that almost 12 years ago (almost to the day since my baby brother was born oct 7th and I am due the 20th) my mother had my baby brother at home with a midwife. I dont remember much from the birth since I was only 9 and wasnt actually in the room, the only thing I remember is that she was in labor in the night and we all slept through it in our rooms right across the hall.
Another aspect of it that influenced me to do homebirth was I am terrified of needles, blood, hospitals. . .etc. Seriously, the thought of getting a epidural with that huge needle in my back terrifies me more than labor pain ever could.
Then this week at our child birth class our teacher gave us some statistics on C-section rate in Louisville (where she is from, I couldnt find any info on the web for jasper or evansville)

C-SECTION RATE AT LOUISVILLE HOSPITALS

Norton Suburban---35%
University of Louisville---27%
Baptist Hospital East---31%
Norton Hospital---31%
Clark Memorial---28%
Floyd Memorial---45%

C-section rate in Kentucky in 2005 was 34%
Only 2% of the births in Louisville at hospitals were totally unmedicated
23% of women will suffer side effects from a Epidural

Now Women who Homebirth have a transfer rate of 8-16% depending on the state (which means that 8-16% of women who try to homebirth transfer to a hospital before giving birth
BUT only 3% of those women end up having to have a C-section.
So IF I would have gone to a hospital to give birth and used a OB or Certified Nurse Midwife I would have used Clark Memorial (biggest draw back was 1 hour and 10 minutes from our house) and I Would have had a 28% chance of having a c-section compared to a 3% chance I have being at home with my midwife.


So anyways, back to child birth classes, She gave us some exercises to practice that will be positions we can use in labor and one of them happens to be a squat, yeah I figured out my legs are too short to do it right. .Lol. I can get down but then keeping my feet flat on the floor like she said to and then trying to get back up I always get stuck!! Lol. But I keep trying, practicing and hopefully in a few months I will have it down!

Wednesday we go in for a ultrasound, I am so excited to see our little baby. I already have a strong feeling of what the sex is but we shall see if Im right. Chadd took the day off work and I took off from the girls on wednesday since my dr that I am seeing is in Bloomington and it takes us about an hour and a half to get there. We both have Chiropractor appointments in the morning then we will probably go ahead to bloomington and do some shopping before my appointment in the afternoon.


EDITED TO SAY:
I want to make sure I say that I think there is a time for C-sections. I am not saying all C-sections are a bad thing. If it hadnt been for a C-section I would hate to think what would have happened with my good friend Chelsa. So Im not against C-sections, just trying to prevent a un necessary one from happening to me!

Names

This is what our baby looks like at 17 weeks old above. Cant wait to see him/her on the ultrasound!!



Well, here we are, a week before the ultrasound when we find out if its a boy or girl and we still dont have our names narrowed down. We have 3 girl names & 3 boys names and we both like them all. My original list of names was like 20 names long and I narrowed it down to 3 girl names and 3 boy names for DH to chose from since 20 names is quite overwhelming for any man. Well when I told him the 6 "winning" names he was like, I like them all babe, whichever one you want.
Oh gee your so helpful dear! So here we are still thinking through the names, I kinda have the boys down to 2 names and the girls down to 2 names in my head but we will see what he says about that. Hopefully by October we will have 1 name picked out! Hopefully before then since we are getting so much neutral clothing and stuff for the baby since we arent telling if its a boy or girl all my registry is neutral with a few pink and a few blue items mixed in there. Since we are getting so much neutral stuff I would like to get some monogramed clothes made for the baby in either pink or blue so they have some clothes that are just theirs and wont get passed on to the next baby a few years down the road. I have found a ton of cute things on Etsy that you can have personalized that I will definetly spend way to much money on there if I could!!
17 weeks has passed so quickly, I cant imagine how fast the next 20 weeks or so are going to pass. Im very thankful thought that at the beginning of the pregnancy I lost 20 some pounds that I had gained from the PCOS and was almost back down to my weight I was at our wedding so now I dont feel like I am gaining a ton of weight. I am still weighing in at less now than I was when we got the positive pregnancy test although my stomach is definetly larger. That is a relief for me. One of the ladies DH works with was telling me she gained 100 pounds when she was pregnant!! Oh geez, talk about scaring the crap out of me! If I gained 100 pounds I would almost double my weight. Um no thank you.

My first mothers day as a "mom"

Over the weekend we went to Lincoln State Park camping with my family for Mothers Day. Friday night when we got there it was raining and everything was muddy. The poor dogs had to have baths before bed!


See Cody's dirty paws??
Taking a bath, he hates baths!
My sister and I

All our wet muddy tennis shoes drying out after a hike that turned out to be a mud path due to all the rain friday!


Saturday turned out to be beautiful! The sun came out and dried most of the mud up.
The guys did a lot of fishing on saturday, dad caught one but threw it back and Chadd caught one but it got away before we could get a picture of it. Cody and I just sit there and watched them fish!

Home made ice cream & supper on saturday. Yum!!
Me and cody hanging out- not sure if I was talking or what??

Making breakfast sunday morning- excuse my red pants, they were my pj pants and all I had were shorts for the rest of the day and it was still chilly!
Me and my "family" at the village
Chadd grilling mothers day lunch

My Mom opening her gifts
Taking a little nap sunday afternoon


Taking down our tent

My "gift" from the week-end. It apparantly was sunnier than I thought and I came home with a horrible sun burn on my face. Hurts like crazy!! Oh well, it was a great weekend!!
(Photos compliments of my sister since stupid me took my camera but left the memory stick at home! Duh!)

Show us where you live- Livingroom

Time to show the livingrooms!! If you want to look at all the neat photos go to
Kellys Korner .

Here is my livingroom, these photos were taken last fall but not much has changed. I have a tiny 900 sq. feet home so my livingroom isnt large but it serves the purpose!! Plus that much less to clean, lol!
This is pretty much it. There is a front door on the left side of the room on this side of the couch, and the hallway to the bedrooms is one the right side of the photo. I am standing in the kitchen/diningroom.
And since I usually only decorate at christmas in the livingroom here is some photos of it at Christmas ...

My snowmen above the computer desk! I love these little guys.
My village. Except now I have a walmart village piece that sits in center that I got for christmas. How cool is that? A walmart in my little village. Lol

Show us where you live-Kitchen Edition

Kellys Korner is doing a "Show us where you live" on her blog and its actually supposed to be done on fridays but my kitchen was actually clean enough tonight to take the photos finally! Lol. My kitchen is nothing fancy, its small, its old, it has yucky carpet. But it is functional and it serves the purpose for now. Definetly not my dream kitchen but I wont complain!



As you can see my fridge also doubles as my bulletin board/file cabinet! Lol.

My one lonely wall of cabinets. They actually hold quite alot though. I cant complain on space. I would LOVE to have a full size pantry though. Oh that would be nice! Yes, my counter is always this full! Since we only have the one wall of cabinets everything has to go on this one counter so it always looks cluttered. I hate that about my kitchen.


The view of my kitchen from my livingroom. Yes, see the yucky yucky carpet? Why would you put carpet in a kitchen? I have no ida. Some genius before us decided it was a good idea I guess?
I hate it, its yucky, smells, has stains. . .I am not a tidy cook so many many spills have happened.
Thankfully the carpet is getting ripped up and ceramic tile is going down as soon as we get a free chance.
The pile of lovely tile that is waiting to go down in the kitchen. This pile has been sitting in my livingroom since January when we bought it on sale at $.77 a tile! Woo hoo! It will look much better once its down on the floor though. :-) Lol


These are two of my favorite things in my kitchen. My husbands grandma made the first one for me as a wedding gift and she gave me the 2nd one. These hang on either side of my kitchen sink.


The shelf my husband hung for me right before we got married. It holds all my Ceramic "Grape" pottery for now. My plan was to set all this on top of my cabinets but my cabinets are built all the way to the ceiling so for now they sit here. The glasses in the center was the glasses we used at our wedding.

16 Weeks

Here we are!! 16 weeks! I feel like I really popped out this week!! Front view of the little booger sticking out!!

Whats in a name?

Well, like most couples who are expecting a baby we have been thinking names lately. Which is turning out harder than I ever imagined. We have a list of names that we like. . .so whats the problem? Well. . . Does anyone know how hard it is to find a name that isnt used already or sound like one that is in your family? Especially when your family is large. My Mom has 9 siblings plus their spouses ,33 grandkids & 15 great grands (which my baby will be). . My dads family has 6 siblings plus spouses, 16 grandkids & 1 great grand. Now these are not counting the grandkids spouses that are married. That adds on another probably 20 or so. Then their is my husbands family. . . I dont know exactly how many there is but I would guess combining his moms side and dads side there is probably 50 or so people. So, NOW try to find a name that hasnt been used already or doesnt sound like someones name. Its tricky. .tricky, tricky!
Then of course there are those names that you like but then you meet a kid that has that name and all the sudden you decide that name is NOT for you. . Maybe cause the kid is a little monster? Lol. Now of course we all know the name has nothing to do with how the child acts but somehow you cant quite get past thinking of the kid when you say the name. We had a couple names like that, we likes them but then met a kid with that name and that was the end of that name. .
We also thought about trying to use the names of our deceased grandparents since I have a grandma and grandpa that are gone and he has a grandpa and grandma. We thought it would be a nice way to honor them and remember them. Well, Then we got to looking at the names.
My grandpas name was Amos Hirim and my grandmas name was Mary Lucille. His grandpas name was John Henry and his grandma's name was Ione. (pronounced I Own) Um no thanks. We could have used Lucille since we like the name Lucy but we didnt want to use just one grandparents name and not use the others later on. So scratch that idea. . . .

Despite all that we do actually have some names we like. Who knows if they are the names we will use or not, we may have a name all figured out then at the last minute change it. Lol. Thats how we roll!