Baby's Room: Now With Chair Rail!

I already wrote this entire post once, saved it, and posted it, only to have it disappear completely. Hopefully it will work this time or I'm going to be quite furious. Anyway. . .yesterday Cy and Frank got started early in the morning on the chair rail for the baby's room. After doing the chair rail and the molding in the dining room, they are quite experienced now and were able to get the baby's room done really fast. (And on the first try!) It looks great! The chair rail really makes the two colors in the room look good.
Once Cy finishes sanding the chair rail and touching up the room, all we have left is to put the baby's furniture together (all which we have, strewn about our house in various boxes), and put the bedding and curtains in the room (which we also have), and we will be all ready for the baby girl! (Or at least, her room will be all ready for her.) :) So exciting!

Yesterday I also had my worst episode of "baby brain" thus far: I took my socks off at some point during the morning. A while later, I went to put my camera away after taking some pictures, and found my socks in my camera bag in the slot where the camera goes. . .with no recollection of putting them there. Weird. Especially since I have never been a forgetful person.

Photography Blography

I decided today that in order to motivate myself to get back into some photography, I would start a photo blog chronicling my attempts. I plan to try to shoot some photos daily or at least a few times a week (we will see how it goes).

You can follow my amateur photography attempts at: http://www.photosbycarissa.blogspot.com

The name of the blog is "Cat's Eye View," Cat being a family nickname. I had to come up with a title on the spur of the moment, and that seemed kind of cute for a photo blog, albeit a bit on the cheesy side.

25 Weeks. . .and counting!

I went to the doctor on Monday for my monthly checkup. They had me right at 25 weeks and I was measuring right on target. Everything else was great at the checkup. The funniest part was when the doctor tried to find the baby's heartbeat. She initially found it right away, then there was lots of static and it went away. The doctor explained that the baby had just moved. So she moved the wand and found the heartbeat again, and then there was a bunch more static and the baby ran off again. After a few times, the doctor declared, "I will chase you down!" and did eventually get her long enough to get a good reading.

I crack up because every time I'm in the doctor's office, one of the doctors or the nurses is always telling me, "Wow, she's really active" as if I don't already know this. . . especially since baby's favorite time to wiggle and frolic and turn somersaults and kick is anytime I am trying to sleep! I am not complaining though. . .I am very happy to have an active baby in there. I rarely have a chance to doubt her well-being since she moves around constantly.

Anyway. . .things are going great and I am almost into the third trimester. I go back to the doctor on Feb. 16 for my glucose screening, and then after that, I will start going every two weeks since it will be getting close to the big day!

I finally got around to getting a belly shot to put up here (this is for my family, who are having a hard time being 4 hours away while awaiting the first grandbaby). I feel super huge already but people keep telling me I'm still pretty small. I'm just trying to stay active as much as I can and trying not to stress about the weight gain. I'm just trying to do what's healthy for the little girl and once she arrives, I can worry about me later. :)

First Look: Baby's Room

Here is a first glimpse of the baby's room. Keep in mind that it is definitely a work in progress at this point. Cy and Frank painted the room green and pink yesterday. It is very bright, and we love it! We have some bright pink and green paisley bedding to go in there, so the colors aren't totally random. Also, Cy and Frank are going to put in a white chair rail between the two colors so it will look really clean once that is done. But here is how it looks so far:

Christmas 2009

Christmas this year turned out to be nice and fun, despite a change in plans. We had originally planned on going to my grandparents' house in Virginia for Christmas, but when my grandmother came down with shingles after Thanksgiving, we had to rethink our plans. After lots of varying opinions from doctors, we decided that it just wasn't worth the risk for our baby girl or for my dad with his "bum heart." So my dad, mom, and Rachel came down to Charleston to spend Christmas with us and our billions of Christmas trees.

We had a good time. We had a big pot of homemade noodle soup for Christmas Eve, went to the Christmas Eve service at Redeemer, then came home and had a white elephant type gag-gift exchange. It was pretty hilarious, especially with this year's newest and most coveted gag gift: a set of "nun-chuks" (the handles are actually shaped like nuns).

Rachel managed to survive the suspense of waiting until Christmas morning to open presents, and we all got a pretty good stash.

Me pouting because I got coal in my stocking.

Rachel trying on her brand new vest right over her pj's.

Cy and what might have been his favorite Christmas gift, the Simple Human plastic grocery bag holder. He was installing it in the kitchen mere minutes after opening it. . .

Mom and her pashmina/shawl thingy that she was afraid made her look like some old Mexican lady. . .
Dad acting like Uncle Gary so that none of us would miss him. (scary)

We invited Frank and Andrea over for Christmas dinner, and we had quite the smorgasbord of food: roast beef, cheesy potatoes, several veggies, pasta salad, mandarin orange salad, a pound cake and various cookies for dessert.

The day after Christmas, we went and saw the new Sherlock Holmes movie with Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law. Most of us thought it was pretty awesome. The rest of our time with family was spent watching movies, playing Wii, and we got to go see the lights at the James Island Park.

After the family went home, Cy snapped into go-mode and began dismantling rooms and furniture and hauling stuff around to start getting the baby's room ready. If it was up to him, he'd have the whole room painted, decorated, and ready in a day or two, with all of our baby stuff purchased. He is super excited about our baby girl (we both are).

Speaking of baby girl, I think she might have scored the most presents of anyone at Christmas. :)

We had a great holiday and we are now looking forward to a great year in 2010!

Grades are in. . .

I managed to finish my MA in English with a 4.0! Yea! So that will look good if I ever completely lose my mind and decide to apply to a PhD program.

It's a Girl!!!

It's official! We found out Friday morning that we are going to be having a baby girl in May! We went to the ob/gyn on Friday for our 20 week ultrasound/anatomy scan. They scheduled an hour to look at all of the baby's systems, like the brain, the heart (beating at 141 bpm at the beginning of the exam), and kidneys. They measured the arms and legs and saw how much the baby weighed (11 oz. - right on target for 20 weeks). The best news of the visit was that everything looked great - she is healthy and developing well.

She is also extremely active! (Which was no surprise to her mom, who has been feeling her turn somersaults in there pretty much all the time these days.) She was asleep when we first got there, but after a few pokes of the ultrasound wand, she woke up, gave us a big yawn, stretched her whole body, and started wriggling around like crazy. By the time we got to the end of the ultrasound, she had actually flipped all the way over!

Finally, once all the important stuff had been checked out, the lady asked us if we were ready to find out the gender. The baby actually cooperated for this, and we got several very clear shots. The lady asked us to guess what we saw on the screen. Neither one of us really knew what we were seeing, but Cy was brave enough to guess "boy." (It seemed like the obvious choice since it is a Shealy baby!) But the lady said, "No, it's a little girl" and showed us the girl parts on the screen. We are so excited! We are having tons of fun picking out all kinds of pink stuff for our baby girl. We can't wait until May when we will finally get to meet her!

I am posting a couple of pictures from the ultrasound. I won't embarrass the poor little baby girl by posting her girl parts up here for the world to see. ;) I may also post a tummy picture of mom & baby if I feel brave enough. . .there hasn't been much to see until about a week ago, but a little belly is poking out some now.