Week 24!

January has been a fairly quiet month. Spent the majority of it at home which was nice after the holiday craziness. February will not be the same, stuff planned every weekend.

All in all the pregnancy has been moving along pretty well, no major aches, pains or anything too much out of the ordinary. It's been pretty boring thus farm which is just fine with me! It is getting harder and harder to do some things. I did my first trade show in Indianapolis this past week and then also went to see a client and the combined 2 day trip really drained me, a lot more than normal. Thankfully all but one meeting that I have later this week in Louisville, Ben will be with me and I will not have a booth at any of the rest of the trade shows. Do have a 45 minute presentation later this week, but I've already done it once, so shouldn't be too big of a deal.

I've started the registering process and looks like we have 4 baby showers planned.

Thus far the majority of my registering will be at Target and BabiesRUs/ToysRUs. I have also started a registry at www.landofnod.com and may register for a few minor things at www.potterybarnkids.com, they just have some fun stuff that I can't seem to get at Target or BabiesRUs. Still have to go to the stores and register there, but I've done a few things online at all 4 of these webpages.

As for showers, looks like we will have one in Elkton on March 20, one in Elkton on March 27, one in Sikeston on April 3 and then another smaller one in Owensboro at some point in March.

I've picked out the furniture which we will get from J C Penny, hopefully I will get that ordered within the next month.

I've gotten the guest bedroom pretty well put together and Ben and I devised a plan today to rearrange the guest bedroom so we could get the treadmill in there as well, so again, that will all get moved around in the next month or so. After the treadmill is moved there isn't a ton of stuff left in the nursery room, so shouldn't be too hard to get put together.

We don't go back to the Dr until Feb 22 and after that appointment we will start going every 3 weeks and our "Baby School" at the hospital starts the first of March.

I really don't understand people who enjoy being pregnant....granted thus far it hasn't been anywhere near as bad as I imagined, but I'm ready to get back to doing normal stuff, now just with a baby. Wine, hot tubs and sushi will be first on my list!!

She's still a girl!

Week 23 started off with another Dr's appointment today. They did a quick ultrasound to confirm that Mallory can still be named Mallory. I will not bore you with more ultrasound pictures that look the same as the previous ones, but yes, it's confirmed, she is a girl!

So, now on to choosing middle names. We have 2 picked out....Addison and Carrington (which is my prefereance) because I think it would be neat to have her middle name start with a C because Ben and I both have C middle names. I like Addison as well, but she will be stuck with MAW as initials until she gets married....just not sure on that. Oh well, we've got 4 more months to figure it out!

We spent this weekend finally going through the last boxes from the move that we just shoved in the garage because it's crap we really don't need anyway. Most of it I haven't even seen in 2+ years....so lots of stuff pitched in the garbage and the rest in nice plastic tubs that will eventually make it up into the attic. Then just some straightening of the rest of the stuff and we will be good to go.

Neither of us have ever parked in this garage since we moved in and with new baby, I WILL be parking in the garage once she arrives, so we are much closer to that happening! Although I'm still not sure if the truck will even fit, but I don't plan on driving the truck once the baby is here anyway. Hopefully I will either drive the car for a while and I'd like to get an Acadia.

So that's it for the here and now. Everything seems to be progressing along well and I'm sure it will all be here before we know it. And I will now start buying a few things, I refused until today when we reconfirmed she is a she!

I just mentioned to Ben today, this is going to be a little harder than bringing Tucker home when he was a puppy, but they could weigh about the same.

Also, I'm thankful for O'Douls, Becks NA, any non-alcoholic form of beer....it at least mentally helps! Thankfully work hasn't been overly stressful lately to require wine!

Week 21, Daycare is checked off the list

I being the planner that I am, can now check Day Care off the list of things to worry about. Thankfully my friend Mendy, who I grew up with in Elkton, has a 2 year old and another on the way at the end of June, has a great day care that she's used with Elle since she was 6 weeks old and she highly recommends it.

So, Ben and I toured the KB Kids Day Care Facility last night. It seems like total chaos to me, but I suppose it was controlled chaos. They keep kids from 6 weeks through kindergarten, they always have things for them to do and TV is not one of those things. They only get TV for 30 minutes only 1 day a week. Which seems weird compared to my preschool days filled with sesame street 4 times a day, but I think this will be good. They also start teaching them Spanish at like age 2, so crazy.

So, day care is checked off this list. I am so thankful that there are people out there that can be preschool and day care teachers because I was about to go nuts in the few minutes we were there.....just not my thing!

Another great thing about this day care is it's right off Hwy 231 on my way to work everyday, so it will be easy access. It's actually right near the last set of ghetto apartments we lived in while waiting to sell our house, which the area really isn't ghetto, the apartment complex was just cheap and not my idea of good living, but that's beside the point. It's a nice newer building and Ellie seems to have done really well there.

I also ran across these two webpages that have toys listed that are either 100% American made or at least ones NOT made in China. When I start registering I'm going to attempt to avoid crap made in China, it just annoys me. And I may not be able to avoid it entirely, but as much as possible.

So, try to avoid buying my child stuff from China! I don't think they can get anything right over there!

http://www.toysmadeinamerica.com/

http://www.squidoo.com/toysnotfromchina?utm_campaign=direct-discovery&utm_medium=sidebar&utm_source=retired

Since when do I live in Wisconsin???

Apparently Kentucky is the new Wisconsin and South Georgia is the new Kentucky.

This cold weather sucks!

Let's see, high of around 19 today with a low of about 5. Tomorrow isn't looking much better and then I think maybe by next Tuesday or Wednesday it will finally be above freezing.

Gratefully we didn't get much snow, somewhere between 1-2 inches, but enough to muck up the roads. They are finally clearer tonight but it's a slow melt when the high is only 19.

Tucker isn't lingering too long outside when he goes to the bathroom. We've just had him in the house during the day since it's been so cold. He's such a spoiled critter!

So, all is well with us otherwise. If the roads allow I will go to Stefanie's daughters 3rd birthday party tomorrow in Elkton. I do wish for that I wasn't pregnant because they are going to have a huge blow up jumper in the shape of a castle in the church activities building, because I'd be all about jumping if I wasn't pregnant!!!

Oh well, I'll just have to remember that idea for Mallory in several years.

Onto week 21 on Monday!

carrying around a canteloupe

'Tis week 20, 1/2 way there, and this week the baby (Mallory) is the size of a canteloupe. Seems a little odd to compare your little one to various fruits and vegetables, but I suppose it does make it easier to determine how big they are getting.

I am beginning to feel like I'm carrying around a canteloupe! Still no kicking that I really feel yet, I get the occasional flutters of something going on down there, but no obviousy kicking, and as much as she was moving on the ultrasound, looks like I'll get a lot of kicking!

I'm trying to keep some sort of exercise routine going. I have no intentions of being the size of a whale just because I'm having a baby! I'm pretty much right on target in regards to weight gain, so that's good. I've been walking on the treadmill several times a week and hope to get in the routine of walking for at least 30 minutes every morning and then perhaps doing something else a couple evenings a week.

The first half hasn't been to bad, I really don't feel pregnant other than my growing belly now getting in the way of things that used to be easier! Will probalby be glad it should be warmer the last couple months so flip flops and other slide on shoes will be an option!

Enjoy your week, Ben, myself and our little canteloupe will!

Peeling back the years....

It's always an adventure when re-doing your house and seeing what may be under layers of wallpaper, etc.

Since our house was only built in 1991, it's not quite as much fun, especially when the idiots who built the house decided not to paint or prime the walls before wallpapering, so many of you have hear me gripe and gripe about the chore it has become to remove this horrible wallpaper.

Please, no more home remedies on getting it off, trust me, we've tried everything!!!! Ben has come up with the best way, and that's with a heat gun, which works well, but you have to be careful. Yesterday we got to check to see that the smoke detector works because some of the wallpaper got a little too hot! Oh well, you are supposed to check those a the first of ever year, so that's off the to do list!!

We are currently working on redoing the guest bathroom. I wanted to get that done prior to baby and it should cost less to redo than the kitchen or our master bath which is the only 2 other rooms left to do.

The horrible linoleum has been ripped up and John my handyman has tiled it for me. So, the walls must be dealt with next before we can get the vanity back, etc. So, I was going to just re-wallpaper it until I realized that the wallpaper I wanted cost $60 per double roll and I was going to need 7 rolls.....not paying that much. So Ben decided he would tackle the wallpaper with a heat gun, and it's working well.

In "peeling back the years" this lovely pink wallpaper is what we found. I was like 14 in 1991 and I know good and well this horrible pink wallpaper would have never been in style. Don't know what these crazy people were thinking, but just thought I'd share the lovely find with all of you! Hopefully the wallpaper removal will wrap up soon, toilet is going in today and then we can finish it up with a nice coat of paint!

Happy 2010!!

Hope you all got to ring in 2010 however you pleased. We went out with Susan, Nick, their good friends Heather and Jason and then my good friend Greg Lyon, who we haven't gotten to go out with for almost 10 years. I won't get into why, but he's in the middle of a divorce, so it's fun to get to go back out and spend some time with him.

Clarksville is not really the hopping spot for New Year's Eve, but we had a good time and took in a couple games at the bowling alley to ring in the new year.

Looking forward to a great 2010!!

We also think we may have come up with a middle name. We are pretty sold on Mallory as a first name but thinking perhaps Addison for the middle name. That would make her initials MAW which I'm not sure what to think about that, but we will see! Sue came up with Addison, so perhaps since I named her at 7, she can pick a middle name at 25!