20 weeks and Old Wives Tales

So here is the basketball at 20 weeks, I keep getting comments about how high I am carrying and that I am all out front so I have definitely heard the basketball reference.

Last week before our ultrasound we tested out some of the old wives tales. The Chinese chart thing said I was having a boy, a list of all types of OWT that you answer gave me a 57% chance of having a boy, and the necklace thing (if it spins in a circle its a girl and back and forth is a boy) says I'm having Girl, Girl, Boy (wowah, I don't know about 2 more kids). So who was right??????

Well without further ado here is Little Miss, yes that's right we are having a perfectly healthy little girl (I'm not sure anyone that actually reads this didn't already know that, but anyway). Our ultrasound tech got some great profile pictures and we even got to see her in 4D. So far so good and all of her vital body parts and development look just great.

I am definitely feeling movement now and she has even thrown a few Tai Chi or Kickboxing moves in this week. I got one kick or punch straight up at my stomach, that felt a bit odd, and then one towards my back. Usually they are pretty low, but those two were after I ate a few M&Ms so maybe I made my poor baby spaz :) This could get pretty interesting as she gets bigger and starts running of room with her crazy gymnastics.

I've done pretty well as far as the shopping so far, I made one trip into Children's Place and they were having mark-downs plus another 40% off that price so I got here some stuff for next summer and then I went into the Carter's store at Keystone and they were having a clearance sale so I picked up a few things there. Since I got that out of my system I think I'm now focused on getting nursery furniture picked out and the all the fun decorating from there.

In case you want to know we are not going to be divulging the name, but we currently have a list of 3 that Adam and I can both agree on, so we'll see if we can make a final decision before we are on our way to the hospital.

Next up:

Nursery Furniture

Crib Bedding

Calling a pediatrician

Getting scheduled for our Childbirth and Breastfeeding classes (probably won't attend till October)

Getting this crazy house done and enjoying each other before our little girl comes to turn our lives into pure blissful craziness!!

Sprouting a Sweet Potato...18 weeks

This week our baby is approximately the size of a sweet potato, about 5.5 to 6 inches long and about 6.7 ounces. This is what Baby P is busy doing this week, passing the hours yawning, hiccuping, rolling, twisting, kicking, punching, sucking and swallowing. The baby can now hear external sounds, especially mama's voice and may even be stimulated or respond to certain voices that are familiar. Wonder if this will make Adam start talking to my belly, or maybe I will start requiring it so his voice will also soothe the baby at 2 a.m.!! Everything I read says I may start to feel movement. I have occasionally felt "something" but when you don't really know what you are supposed to be feeling its hard to identify what is what. I read something that said the baby's feet are about 1 inch long, so they are definitely not real identifiable kicks yet.

At the Phillips home we are also sprouting zucchini, cucumbers, peppers, tomatoes, and green beans. Our garden has really taken off the last few weeks and we should actually have edible food here in a couple of weeks.

Last but not least, we have made some substantial headway on the laundry room and 2nd bathroom area. We nearly have everything painted and Adam plans to start tiling in the next few days. Thanks to Mom and Dad and Michelle and Steve for their help painting this weekend, I was feeling a little useless because I was banished from the area, but we couldn't have gotten it all done so quickly without them. Adam also got one window replaced in the nursery so there is one more to go and we will have replaced every single window in our house. Our remaining items are to get the fixtures into the 2nd bathroom once the tiling is finished, finish drywalling the closet in the nursery, blow insulation into the walls in the nursery, some finishing things on the cabinets in the kitchen (mouldings and such) and installing the hardwoods in the kitchen and dining room. That might seem like a bit of stuff, but compared to the list I made at the beginning of this year, seeing less then 10 items left on the list for the interior of the house to be finished makes for a very happy me!!

The Pop @ 15 weeks

I really don't particularly like this phrase but I guess you can say I have popped. Here is a belly picture at 15 weeks. I'm hoping the popping slows down a bit from here on out or you are going to be able to roll me to the hospital at 40 weeks. The one part that makes me feel good is that I've only gained between 4-5 pounds so that assures me that this is more baby than french fries and frostys :)

One of many parental decisions made

We made our first of I know many more parental decisions by choosing a daycare center to take Baby Phillips to after I come back to work. We toured 3 centers last week and the final decision came down to between a great place called Small Blessings at 96th and Zionsville Road and an equally great place called Heartland Hall at 116th and Meridian. Initially we were probably leaning more towards Small Blessings, in that we liked some of the things that applied more to older kids (like not until they were at least 2 maybe even 3), but after discussing our options it just made more sense for us right now to enroll with Heartland. Some benefits of Heartland are that it is literally right across the street from my work which means not only convenient drop-off and pick-up but also the ability to go visit the baby once I'm back to work full-time. Another benefit, obviously not what we based our decision completely on but a nice benefit, is it is at least $2000 cheaper a year plus add in the additional gas of getting to over to Small Blessings and we can all go on a nice family vacation for the difference.

We are excited that this decision is out of the way and as of last week they had openings in March when we needed to start, so hopefully I get a call soon to confirm our spot. If you can't tell I'm just a bit of a planner, so knowing that something is taken care of and moving on to the next thing makes me feel much more comfortable then having something up in the air.

Now it will be moving on to finding a pediatrician. I don't think I was realizing that I needed to start looking quite this early but after talking to a few other moms they said they looked for a pedi about the same time as daycare.

Its crazy how much planning there is for a little person that isn't even born yet :)

Next post: I'm going to try and take a 15 week belly shot to insure you all I'm starting to look pregnant and not just fat!

Other things under construction.....

Wow it has been forever since I posted anything here. I really do need to update some pictures of the house, but thought I would update any blog readers still out there on some other news. We have a little Phillips under construction and scheduled to be completed around December 1st. We are super excited and relieved to have made it this far in this pregnancy after experiencing a miscarriage last fall. We are very thankful for a healthy pregnancy and baby so far, and pray that things continue in that direction.

This news does affect the house, in that there is a definite deadline for completion and it isn't waiting until November 30th, that might result in a really grumpy pregnant lady that would not be fun for her sweet husband. We hope to have most things wrapped up by mid-summer. If we have some random things like crown molding or something like that to do, I don't care, but the big things will be done.

Thanks if you still follow this neglected blog and I will try to be more faithful about updating it, but you might not just get house updates in the future :O)

We finally slept in our room!

So after a year and a few weeks of living in our house we are finally in what was always meant to be our bedroom. I ended up staying in yesterday since our road didn't get plowed until sometime between 10:00 last night and 7:30 this morning, so I actually moved the bed from the other bedroom, and then when Adam got home from work (mind you he leaves so early in the morning we got another like 4 inches after he left) we moved the chest of drawers and armoire. I'll post more pics of the room fully furnished and stuff, but since I hadn't posted in awhile just thought I would get his update on here. You will notice the one item that remains unfinished is the crown moulding, we figured that was not necessary in order to peacefully sleep in our room so we went ahead and moved in and will finish that at a later date.

A staining we will go......

In reality our closets are basically finished but since I am way behind on blogging this was the project that consumed most of the extra time we had over the Christmas/New Years time.




Below is the old closet once we tore all the drywall down, we had contemplated just making 2 openings for the room I am standing in and having a standard closet, and closing off where you see the purple door. But as I posted previously the contractor that did the framing and my husband decided to have a happy surprise for me and make my side a walk-in closet.










Here is Adam's side of the closet after it was reframed with nice new wood that was plumb and square (made drywalling much easier). We made his opening wider so that we could put in double bifold doors, I think that makes a shallow closet much more usable.

And below is my side of the closet, which as you can see is about 20 inches deeper than Adam's, he seriously probably has less than half the clothes that I do, so I think the set-up is appropriate.

Once Adam got everything drywalled, which by the way was made a ton easier by borrowing an electronic drywall sander from his co-worker, we needed to decide how we were going to fix all the missing floorboards due to the reframing. We finally settled on using most of the spare pieces from Adam's closet to put down in my closet, so that my whole closet would have the original floor like the rest of the room.

For Adam's side we tried to go and find something close that was pre-finished but that was to no-avail unless we wanted to spend $3-4 sq. ft, which we really didn't for a closet. We ended up getting unfinished hardwoods in white oak from Lumber liquidators for like $1.50 sq ft and then found a stain that matched really well. For the next couple of days I went through the process of staining the floor, and as you can see below it came out pretty darn well. We used a product by Mini-wax called Polyshades, it has the poly and the stain mixed together so you basically eliminate having to poly it after you stain. We used the stain color of Classic Oak and I put it on with a 6 inch stain brush. I did 3 coats and between them I used 000 (fine) steel wool for a sand/buff process to the poly. In the photo the two floors meet right at the doorway but I don't think you can tell much of a difference!

And here is my closet floor (below), Adam pieced back together all the flooring scraps we had to make this look right and I think he did a great job. We polished it up after this picture was taken so it looks a bit cleaner now.

One final staining project that I did, was that I needed a shelf above my top hanging rack in my closet, so since we couldn't' find anything that matched my organizers (of course) we decided to by some precut pine and stain it. This one I did the old fashion way and went through three coats of staining and then let it dry then 2 coats of polyurethane to seal and protect it. For both projects being my first staining experiences I think the results came out well. Of course all I did was follow the instructions.

Next up.....is completed closets and a finished master bedroom. Of course to finish the master we still need to paint, put up crown molding, moldings for doors, windows, & floor, change out the light fixture, hang curtains, and then move all of our stuff from the other room. Hopefully that is all done by the end of the month, but of course I never predict when we are going to have things done anymore.