28 weeks

25 weeks



28 weeks

Yup, noticeably bigger. And whiter?

Big baby kicks

The baby was having a dance party in my belly last night. I think maybe he missed relaxing on the recliner since we were away from home for a few days? You think? ;) Whatever it was, he was rolling and kicking like crazy! I got one good kick on tape. Wait for it...check it out at about 30 seconds for the action.

my baby can cry??

Ticker to the right says at 27 weeks that my baby can cry. Cry? I read that right after I had gotten my belly waxed. The waxing hurt and the poor baby was pushing away from where the lady was waxing me cause he must not have liked it. So when I read that, I immediately looked at my belly and gasped, "Baby, are you crying? Did mommy make you cry when she got her belly waxed?" I. am. crazy.

no wonder i bruise so easily

My sugary drink test results came back and no gestational diabetes! Yay! But apparently, I'm slightly anemic and now need to take daily iron pills. Not a big deal and not really that surprising either. I think I've always been borderline anemic. I recall taking iron supplements as a kid and I bruise like a peach. So, off to the store to get some pill called Slow FE.

crib mattress suggestions?

Anyone have good suggestions for a crib mattress? BRU doesn't have a great selection. Coil or foam, I'm not really partial one way or the other. As long as it's firm enough, I'm good. But I'm tired of comparing brands. Someone just tell me what's worked well for them....please?

Touchpoints

Recommended to me by my early learning research friends and then also by my pediatrician. Not a book to read cover-to-cover as there's a lot of info there, but one to keep around as your child grows and goes through different stages of development. It's organized well, both by age and then also by category.

It's surprisingly a good, interesting read. Not a bunch of research jargon to bore the pants off you. I love anything early learning since 1) I'm a firm believer in it and 2) the brain science and emotional development stuff fascinates me!

What I like about this book is that it covers cognitive, emotional AND behavioral development issues. Everything from asthma and allergies to temperament to tantrums.

I especially love the grandparents chapter! Helps parents to better understand grandparents actions and vice versa. (parenting how you were parented, parents needing independence, natural competition for the child, etc.) And at the end of the chapter, there's a great list of guidelines for grandparents on how to effectively be involved in your grandchild's life.

Now, I vow not to be one of those "only goes by the book mothers." I'll have to roll with the punches and go with the flow. But this book is a good foundation for me to start from in terms of parenting style and philosophies.

I told my mom about the book and she promised to get a copy and read the intro (all about the theory of "touchpoints") and the grandparents chapter at a minimum. :) Thanks, mom!!

treat of the week

One week it was cup-o-noodles (so bad, I know), another it frozen fruit bars. Brian and I pounded a half gallon zip lock bag of frozen grapes for multiple weeks (he hearts frozen grapes). This week, it's strawberry pop tarts!

I've had one almost every day this week. I have no clue how I even came up with wanting pop tarts. Usually, it's a tv commercial or someone mentions it to me, but I recall no such thing happening. But somehow pop tarts got in my head and I am in love with them right now! I tried to find the pop tarts without frosting on the top -- remember back in the day they used to have that? The ORIGINAL pop tart? Well, they don't make them anymore. Nowadays, these poor kids are just stuck with the extra sugar. No wonder there's a childhood obesity epidemic.

But who am I to complain? This prego can't get enough of the strawberry sugary goodness. Luckily my food "cravings" usually don't last more than a week or two. Next week, I'm sure I'll be on to something else. Hopefully it's something healthier!

i want baby bedford!

Shopping for baby furniture has been a challenge. Options are limited at BRU when you factor in quality AND design. My trusty Baby Bargains book says Baby Cache and Baby Italia are good brands so we checked those out. I like Da Vinci designs better, but their quality isn't as good. In fact, even when we compared Italia and Cache at the store, you could tell Cache was better quality.

Plus, the engineer in Brian HATES that this Italia dresser to the right has a knob in the middle of the door. He says it's an "inefficient use of energy," or something nerdy like that.

I really want a set that has dark wood. I don't have a good reason for why I want that, it's just what I envision for the nursery. Factor that in, and options are even more limited! So, I searched and searched -- Target, Wal-Mart, expensive furniture directly from dealers (sooo nice, but sooo pricey! It might as well have diamonds embedded in the wood).

Finally, I found this Baby Bedford set at JC Penny. Again, recommended by my Baby Bargains book. This Westwood brand got an "A" rating. It's the color I want and the design is pretty nice too!

But of course it just can't be that easy now, can it? The crib is in stock, no problemo. The dresser on the other hand (without the hutch cause we don't really need it) is "temporarily unavailable" in the color I want. So, I call customer service.

The first lady I talk to says there's nothing she can do. They don't know anything -- if it's discontinued, or if they'll get more, etc. Real helpful. So I dig further, find the item number for the dresser in a different color and call back. New lady, much more helpful. She gives me the number of their internet customer service cause my issue is that I can't even add the item into my online shopping bag.

Call them and a very nice woman named Bonnie helps me out. At first I'm skeptical of this lady cause she can't seem to hear the numbers for the item or even my phone number accurately. Not a good sign. But in the end, she says they have this dresser in a warehouse in Connecticut. She doesn't know if they'll transfer it to a closer warehouse for me, but she makes a note and says someone will call me before processing the order (I haven't paid for anything yet).

Please, JC Penny...call me! Cause if not, I'm back to square one. :(

why is my belly so hairy?

Gross, i know. But it's true! Since being pregos, I've noticed more hair on my belly. I got it waxed a couple months back and it's grown back in full force. I assume it's cause of the hormones or something cause this isn't normal. My belly button is about ready to pop out too. Every day it gets closer and closer to being more of an outie than an innie. (Kainoa will hate it!!)

But as for the hair, I'm waxing that bad boy next week!

drinking and driving

Yesterday, I had a doc appointment and did my glucose test. They make you drink this bottle of some sugary drink and then you have your blood drawn. The nurse told me it tastes better cold and suggested we go downstairs to Starbucks and ask for a cup of ice. The barista gave me a big cup and I thought it'd be too much. Boy, was I wrong. Look how much I had to throw down in 10 minutes!

The test shows how well your body breaks down the sugar or something to determine whether I have gestational diabetes. People have said the drink tastes really bad but it just tasted like fruit punch to me. In fact, it kinda tasted like McDonald's fanta fruit punch, which I love. Fingers crossed that I don't have gestational diabetes! We'll see...

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After that, Brian and I had our very first baby class. It was the car seat safety and installation class. I scheduled it first so that Brian and I have a better sense of what to look for in a car seat/travel system. It kinda seems silly to take a class for this stuff but I've heard that car seats can be tricky and it was part of our baby package at Swedish so I figured, why not?

Turns out, the class was very useful! The lady who taught it is a former EMT and certified in all this safety stuff. She says 80-90% of parents don't have their car seat and/or baby placed in the car seat properly. She showed a video with crash test dummies, showing what can happen when baby isn't in the car correctly -- scary!!! The value of "rear facing" and having kids in the backseat until a certain age/weight is brutally apparent in these videos.

She talked about the different kinds of car seats, different features (very helpful!), different ways to install the car seat (lap belt, over the shoulder belt, LATCH system) and even had a book to look up our make and model of car to see what we can and can't do. The LATCH, which is a feature in cars made after 2002, is pretty much useless. They recommend having babies in the middle seat in the back which is usually the seat that does not have the latch installed. Car makers put the latch system on the two outside seats. Makes no sense at all. But when we tried the different ways to strap down the car seat, the LATCH was the flimsiest anyway! Most cars have a lap belt in the middle seat and that works well. If you ask me, LATCH is just plain stupid.

Most interesting things I learned:

• Car seats have expiration dates! The plastic contracts and expands with the temperature and after 6 years are deemed "expired."
• Cars made before 1996 have seat belts without a locking feature which means you have to use the locking mechanism on the car seat when strapping your kid in.
• Rolling up dad's t-shirts to place around babies head/shoulders work better than blankets cause baby can smell daddy and bond. (who knows if this is true, but it couldn't hurt!)
  

At then end of class, I asked for her recommendations for top brand/type of car seat. She couldn't really say (kinda annoying actually, it's not like you work for Graco or something) but she did say the Chicco Keyfit and Graco Safety Seat, now the Snug ride 32, are highly rated.

baby talk

They say talking to the baby in the womb is good. I honestly don't see how mommys-to-be refrain from talking to their bellies. As a prego lady, I'm aware of the baby in my belly every second of the day. It's impossible not to, especially now that he moves so much.

Apparently, babies have different stages of sleep in the womb. Sometimes I feel him pushing on one side of my belly (usually the right). It feels like he's stretching or something. Supposedly, babies tend to stretch when they're in "light sleep." They're fully awake when they kick a lot and then sometimes there's random little kicks when the baby is in REM. Amazing, huh?

Recently, he's up around 8 or 8:30am and kicks like crazy. Luckily, I've been getting up earlier and am less tired so this hasn't been an issue. This morning I was just lying there, awake but not wanting to get out of bed yet, and it seriously felt like Michael Flatley Lord of the Dance was in there. Clearly, the baby wanted me to get up!

But back to the talking. Sometimes I tell the baby what we're going to do or what we're doing. I always tell him good job when he kicks (this is so silly, but I can't help myself) and I tell him where daddy is and what he's up to. Brian talks to the baby every night before bed. And in the last few weeks, he's taken to saying goodbye to the baby in the morning before leaving for work. It's pretty cute. :) (I'll bet he'll be mad that I posted that though)

The baby seems to like music too. He kicks when there's music on tv or when I'm on the computer listening to itunes. I haven't tried the repetitive thing -- playing the same song over and over or reading the same story. They say if you do that the baby will be soothed by that same song or story when he's born. Maybe I'll try that with a cd I really like so I don't have to listen to kiddie music all day long. ;)

There's not doubt about it though, baby can definitely hear what's going on!

25 weeks and counting!

23 weeks


























25 weeks























Don't ask me why my belly looks so shiny...

the baby registry saga

I have spent hours no days on our baby registry. After Brian and I physically went to Babies R Us and spent 3 hours tagging stuff with our laser gun, I then went home, jumped online and have spent countless hours changing everything.

Baby registries aren't like wedding registries where it was all fun and like, "Oooh!! Look, we need those crate and barrel plates! And henkel knives, sweet!" No. It's "Which brand of baby bottle doesn't leak? Has the best nipple to make breast to bottle feeding smooth? Helps with colic-y babies?" And, "Which cribs are the best? Sturdiest? Don't scratch? Should I get the crib bedding set with bumpers?(they ALL come with them, btw) Are diaper pails necessary?"

Then after you gather all the best information, it really will all just depend on what your baby likes anyway. And you won't know that until AFTER the baby is here.

But you can't wait to buy everything cause baby stuff is expensive and my shower invites go out soon. I need to have my registry tightened up by then. So, the research and online changes continue. From friend recommendations, I bought the Baby Bargains book. I would definitely recommend this book to every first time parent!

It's been super helpful as it covers pretty much every baby item you'd need, takes parent feedback then ranks them by brand. It's helped me to wade through the craziness that is BRU and narrow things down. But then I still spend even more time reading reviews on the BRU site about items I'm considering. Sometimes this makes me change my mind or leads me to more research.

Interestingly, Facebook has been helpful too. So many of my FB friends have babies so I've asked a few questions and have gotten pretty good feedback. Ah, the online social networking world we live in.

Then, as I continued to update my BRU registry, I started to get annoyed at their limited clothing and bedding options. Especially bedding. My revered Baby Bargains book tells me that not all crib sheets and clothes are made the same. Some shrink after a first wash and apparently places like Baby Gap have much better quality. So, I checked out their website and LOVE their organic bedding! I don't necessarily care that it's organic (although that doesn't hurt) but the design is so much nicer than the stuff at BRU. I want THESE! But a new snag...Baby Gap doesn't have a registry. Seriously?? So, after more googling I found Wishpot.com. It's a website where you can create wish lists and registries from any website out there. Genius!

So, I created a Wishpot registry for all my Baby Gap stuff. I'm not sure how well this wishpot site will work though. The url to share with folks is some crazy web address. Clearly, this site needs some refinement. But, it's there and if anything I can email folks with a link to my wishpot.

And so, the saga continues. I'd say I'm 3/4 of the way done with our registry. I hope...