Week 30: Hairbows and Nursery Decor

Baby girl and I have reached Week 30 and I think I can speak for her when I say we're feeling pretty good about this third trimester business.

 

She is a very busy little thing- squirmier than her brother or sister, but she feels happy and all her stats continue to look perfect. I passed my glucose tolerance test with about a hundred points to spare- as I always joke with the nurse, if my body had a problem processing sugar and carbs, I think we'd know by now. I treated baby and me to a trio of sugar cookies on the way back to work after my appointment because passing tests should always be rewarded.

 

I continue to gain weight within the recommended ranges, which has never happened before. I'm up 20 lbs. from my first appointment, whereas with L&C I think I was already close to +30 by now. I can't account for the difference, though not working across the street from a Great American Cookie Company and not having access to free firm lunches probably has something to do with it, as does the fact that for the first time ever I have felt like exercising while pregnant. Nothing crazy- just some prenatal pilates and barre DVDs I grew inexplicably fond of around 15 weeks. For a while I did 30-50 minutes of videos, 4-6 days a week. Then I didn't want to them any more, so I did 0 minutes of videos every day of the week, and now I'm back to doing a video or two on the weekends. When I want to do them, they make me feel good and strong and slightly less large. When I don't want to do them, they make me feel like my time would be better spent making cookies. So I generally do. I'm really all in or all out on the exercise front.

(Hairbow specially chosen to turn her portrait dress into a Christmas dress, because I'm economical)

I've spent the last week (or three) obsessing over baby headbands on etsy. The combination of my cheapness and refusal to spend more than $20 on my order, combined with a sudden overwhelming need for All The Hairbows, and the endless variety and quantity from hundreds of shops with all different pricing structures and shipping costs maybe caused me to lose my mind a little. Selecting my four favorite headbands from my one chosen shop (because additional items ship for way less!) became The Most Important Decision Ever Made and when I finally made it and turned to selecting a little bloomer/bow set for our newborn portraits I became concerned about my heart rate and had to close my laptop.

(You cannot imagine the number of hours I spent squinting at this picture and obsessively cataloguing the outfits hanging in baby girl's closet to match up which colors she would need. YOU CANNOT IMAGINE. I won't even add them up myself.)

So I went back to my previous obsession which was selecting newborn portrait outfits. It is very hard to coordinate five people to look nice (these will be our annual portraits/Christmas card pictures as well), but not stiff; to look coordinated, but not matchy. Add in the fact that I will be 7 days post-partum and have no idea what I'll be able to fit into and you get hours of picking out outfits online and trying to look at them in side by side browser pages to see if they blend. The picture below is Claire modeling her outfit- she loves it and it's exactly the sweet, nice, but not too nice look I'm going for. Now if only everyone else's outfits would magically appear in front of me in Target like that one did.

 

In other accomplishments, baby girl's nursery is all ready!

 

She is taking over a portion of the guestroom with the attached full bath that is right next to L&C's current room in the kid corridor (a corridor with doors we can close at each end after they go to bed; very handy). She is only getting a portion because I'd like to keep a functioning guestroom for as long as possible to house friends and the scattered members of my family whenever we force them over for a visit, and because I spent too much on that bed frame right after we moved here and I thought we were done having babies to think about getting rid of it. And really, it's not like she needs much space.

 

 

 

(Side note I mentioned to Landon that maybe in a few years when baby 3 was out of her crib, the girls would share a room and he'd have his own and he was appalled. APPALLED. He looked at me with wide eyes filled with hurt, and asked why they would get to be together and he would have to be all by himself? Why would he be punished like that? We'll see if he changes his mind at age 8-9 when it will be time for the switcheroo, but if he doesn't I would love to do the big room with camp style bunk beds and keep my beloved guestroom all pristine and child free.)

But back to now- the room started taking shape when I was pretending not to peruse etsy for nursery decor at 8 weeks pregnant. I found this trio of bird prints and bookmarked them just in case we found out we were having a girl.

 

Then we bought a long low dresser at Ikea to use as a changing table and storage for all the clothes and accessories that won't fit in the teeny tiny closet.

 

I found the bird cages on clearance at PBK.com and the ABC print is by the same etsy artist as the birdie print. Gardenridge supplied the super cheap frames, the lamp was already in the guest room, and the little birdie pot holding the Honest Co. toiletries was found for $2 on a sad clearance shelf at Michael's.

 

Then my co-worker and good friend mentioned that her daughter's old baby bedding might be a perfect match for my birdie prints. And it was!

 

Despite my prior statements to the contrary, I switched out the grown-up bedding for coordinating colors when I found every single thing I needed at TJ Maxx for less than $60 and then found the perfect curtains for $15 at Marshall's. The big bird print was already in the room, the flowers and vase were switched out for a few bucks at Hobby Lobby, and the custom bird pillow was an etsy indulgence.

 

I'm inordinately fond of it.

 

The bookshelves (formerly filled with romance novels and formerly formerly in our Austin study) are now filled with little frames and birds and the bird houses the kids painted for their little sister a few weeks ago.

 

I'm quite pleased with the whole thing. It's bright and cheerful and completely different from my two nurseries of days past while still being functional and well within the budget I wanted to spend. The kids love the room- it's the first room they show people who visit the house, and they are so very excited for their baby sister to sleep in there.

I can't wait for baby girl to arrive either. I've done just about all the prep I can, even her birth announcement/2013 Lag Liv family Christmas card is all designed, thanks to my talented friend, and I can't wait to insert the pictures of our baby girl and our whole family dressed in the coordinated outfits I haven't yet found. I'm far more comfortable and tolerant of pregnancy this time around. Oh, I still don't enjoy it, but I really can't complain (yet). But while nine more weeks to go doesn't sound too bad, and I want her to grow as big and delicious chubby as possible, I am oh so ready to meet her. I want to snuggle her and introduce her to her siblings and just get on with the business of being a family of five.

Nine weeks to go!