In 7 weeks... (hopefully)

This bump will be no longer! Instead, I'm hoping that I'll be holding my baby in my arms! :) I'm still feeling very well. Now that we've been to childbirth class and completed 1 load of baby-related laundry, we are very excited to meet our baby!!!

Baby Shower!

This weekend was my baby shower in Appleton. It was so much fun having friends and family together in one spot! My mom came for the weekend and my dear friend, Jess, and her mom made the trip up Friday night from Chicago also! We had a great time catching up and spending time together. The shower was on Saturday afternoon. Jared's mom and sisters did an awesome job decorating, making delicious food and putting the whole thing together. Our baby is very blessed and lucky to have received so many cute and wonderful gifts! Thank you everyone!! My mom and I had fun the rest of the weekend putting together and organizing the baby's room. I'm feeling much more prepared for the baby! Here are some pictures from the weekend and of the nursery:

Christmas and New Years

We had a great week off of school for the holidays. We were in the car a lot but got to catch up with lots of family and friends which was great! We started the holidays by sharing Christmas with Jared's immediate family. Jared's mom made all the girls aprons. Here's a picture of us modeling the very cute aprons!


Next, we headed north to Minocqua to celebrate Christmas with my parents. We enjoyed delicious meals (below is a picture of my mom's beautiful table) and relaxed. My mom gave me (or should I say, the baby) the blanket she'd been working on for a long time. It's so great and comfy and I know the baby will love it! Jared gave me a sewing machine so my mom and I had fun practicing with it and ended up making another baby blanket with the scraps from the blanket she made. We also received a new flip camera to capture footage of the baby-so stay tuned in a few months for live video of the baby!




We then stopped in Appleton for one night and then went south to Chicago to visit with my high school friends for lunch at Jess's (delicious soup!) and then into the city for a baby shower for Jess Robertson and me at Megan's apartment. It was such a fun night, lots of laughs and great food! Thanks everyone for the party and the great gifts!





We ended the week by going straight to Door County for New Year's weekend with Jared's dad side of the family. It was great seeing everyone and relaxing for the weekend. We even got to witness some pretty crazy people (including Jared's cousin) take the "25th annual Polar Plunge" into Lake Michigan on New Year's Day. The wind was whipping at about 40 mph and the temperature was under 20 degrees- I froze just watching the people!





We got back Sunday and decided to de-Christmas the house. Now we're focused on finishing the baby's room and getting all ready for our bundle of joy to arrive in less than 3 months!

Baby pictures!

We had our appointment with the specialist on Friday. The doctor was looking to see if the baby still had the small spot of fluid around its heart and it does. The doctor still doesn't seem too concerned about it and wants to continue to monitor the heart. He's hoping that it will just absorb itself before the baby is born. If it doesn't, then he will monitor the heart after the baby is born. The fluid is only 2.4 cm which is 4 mm more than normal. He told me that if gets over 5 cm., they become more concerned about it. I will go back in 6 weeks for another appointment with him to check it. The other piece of information we found out is that the baby is measuring on the rather large size again (86%) so I now have to go back in for another ultrasound in 3 weeks to monitor the size. The bonus to all of this is that we get to see the baby a lot! We still don't know what we're having but we're finding it awfully tempting to find out since we've been given so many opportunities! Here are a few pictures from the appointment. Can you guess what the black and white picture is? Yep, that's the feet. I was asking the doctor about what keeps pushing up on my ribs; he put the monitor in that spot and this is what we saw. :)

The other pictures are of the really cute curtains my mom made this weekend to cover the filing cabinets in the built-in shelves in the baby room. I really love them and they match the blanket she made for the baby! Thanks, Mom!

The beginning of the nursery...

Here are a few more recent belly and nursery pictures. I'm officially 27 weeks today. The baby is due 3 months from tomorrow! I can't believe it- I know it's going to go so fast. It's feeling really real now that we've started putting the nursery together. We have the crib set up and a few things on the wall. The room still has extra stuff like a bed and random odds and ends, but we're making progress!

Happy Thanksgiving and Merry (early) Christmas!

Jared and I were in Appleton for Thanksgiving. We started the weekend by having Jared's family (11 adults + 2 babies) over for lasagna on Wednesday night. On Thursday, we enjoyed a yummy meal at his aunt's house. Jared then worked on Friday and Saturday at a friend's Christmas tree lot selling trees. This of course means that we also got a tree and put it up on Saturday night. Here are a few pictures.



Baby update: We had an appointment almost 2 weeks ago where we had another ultrasound to check on the baby's heart and size. The baby is still a little big, but was only in the 70th percentile. The fluid is still around the heart. The good thing is that fluid hasn't changed in size, but it's still there. So, we're going to see a periantologist (not sure if I spelled that correctly) at our next appointment. I think it's just a specialty doctor that really examines babies while they're in the womb. Our doctor still feels pretty sure that this is not going to be a big deal but feels that it should get a double check by the specialist. She also said that this doctor would then maybe decide what to do when the baby's born (possibly an echocardiogram or something to check that the heart is functioning properly). We feel pretty confident that this is not going to be a big deal (we even checked with our heart surgeon-neighbor and he seemed to think it wasn't anything to be worried about). The great thing is that we get to have another ultrasound! I love getting to see our baby. He/she was very active at the last appointment- kicking and flipping all over the place. I love it!

Hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving!

p.s. did you notice? We got a new camera!!

21 Weeks!

I'm over the halfway hump! Here are some updated pics! Again, I apologize for the really poor quality. We're planning on buying ourselves an actual camera for Christmas. :)