Getting Organized

From the day we moved into our current house, Sara and I have remarked that the floor plan is not ideal for a family with young children. We live in a "loft-style townhome". It is three stories, with two bedrooms on the top floor and one bedroom on the bottom floor. One of the bedrooms upstairs is the master, the other is a loft (one side of the room is open to the living room below). Since we want the nursery to be quiet, even when people are working in the kitchen or watching TV, the loft seems like a bad choice. The remaining option, is the room on the bottom floor, so this is where we are putting the nursery.

Of course, the room for the nursery is not sitting empty right now. It has been Sara's craft room and office since we moved into this house. So this past week we purchased some new furniture, and some new shelving, and are basically putting everything from Sara's office into the loft. Now the loft will be a shared office space for Sara and myself. But, to make this work, we need to get super organized in order to fit two rooms worth of stuff into one room.

This is why I'm greatful that we live near an Ikea and a Container Store. Ikea has all kinds of inexpensive bookshelves, desks, etc. And the Container Store has the Elfa shelving system which has given us a ton of storage space in an otherwise normal closet. But enough of the advertisement...

To make this work (and because I'm a little too organized sometimes), I needed a drawing of the room layout with all of the new furniture. Here's what I came up with (yes, the drawing is to scale, and yes I'm a dork, and yes I'm proud of it!):
So I spent most of my winter break executing this new setup. The new shelving is installed in the closet, the new desks are setup and functional, and the new bookcase is already holding books. Now we have enough storage space to move stuff from Sara's old office up to the loft. So, um, if anyone wants to help carry stuff just swing on by :-)

The fun stuff (painting the nursery, hanging the Classic Pooh border, etc) should be started by the end of January. So stay tuned for more details about our house reorganization. And Happy New Year to everyone!

9-Week Update

Today marks the beginning of my 9th week. For the most part, I've been having a pretty easy first trimester, though the past week-and-a-half, I've started noticing a significant increase in the nausea. But fortunately, I've started to find ways to manage it. I've been wearing Sea Bands, which are acupressure wrist bands designed to reduce nausea. I didn't realize how well they were working until I forgot to wear them one day. Boy did I regret it! But within about half-an-hour of putting them on, I was feeling much better. Now I wear them 24/7, only taking them off to shower, and I think it's making a big difference for me!

I also discovered that I felt worse in the 4-5 hours after taking my prenatal vitamin. After doing some reading, I learned that the high doses of folic acid can upset the stomach. I've started breaking the vitamin in half, and taking one half in the morning (after a full breakfast) and the other half after dinner. It's made a big difference in how I feel. It seems that the vitamin, that is so good for the baby, is a major culprit in making me feel sick. I'm glad I've found a way to make it work for both of us.

My appetite is definitely off. I never really know from one day to the next what I'll be able to stomach. The only real constants for me are oranges/orange juice and vanilla ice cream (though not at the same time). In general, though, I'm finding the dairy and simple carbs seem to be the best bets for me. Cereal and milk, bagels and cream cheese, mac & cheese all seem to sit well with me...and like most pregnant women, I've found that saltines are my friend! I'm finding that the baby seems to really like broccoli, but other vegetables aren't sitting as well. And, most unusual for me, my normally vicious sweet tooth is all but gone. I can eat a couple of bites of something sweet, but that's about it (ice cream doesn't count). But I'll take something crunchy and salty any time (mmm...tortilla chips).

Finally, one of the things that is bugging me most is the insomnia. Why did no one tell me til *after* I got pregnant that insomnia is such a common symptom? I have been finding it very difficult to sleep at night, even though I'm completely exhausted! I can be too tired to even open my eyes, but still have it take several hours to fall asleep at night. And once asleep, there's no guarantee that I'll stay asleep. If I wake up again during the night, it will probably take another couple hours for me to fall asleep again. It's quite frustrating, especially when I have to get up and go to work having not slept more than 4-5 hours.

So that's what being 9 weeks pregnant looks like for me. While not the best I've ever felt, I know it could be so much worse. I'm not puking, I'm managing the nausea, and trying to keep in mind that over the next few weeks, as I get closer to second trimester, the symptoms will fade, and before I know it, I'll be feeling almost normal again!

Merry Christmas!

I'm writing this late on Christmas Eve. Tomorrow is the big day! Sara and I have sent Christmas packages to all of our immediate family to share our news. We wish that we could tell everyone in person, but that's just not possible with our family in all corners of the country. So, as an alternative, we thought it would be fun to announce Sara's pregnancy with a Christmas gift. By the time people are done opening presents, our parents, and siblings will all know the news!

To be honest, we're very excited to be sharing this news. In part because we're just so excited about all that is to come. And, in part, because this has been a hard secret to keep. It's hard to not just shout it out to the world. And it's hard with all that Sara's been going through (she's always tired and nauseous these days) as her co-workers, friends, and family probably wonder why she's been kind of out of it lately. They will all soon know.

After our immediate family hears the news, we plan to share it with other friends and family that we talk to over the holidays. And, if you know, feel free to pass the word along. The secret is out!

For those of you that want to catch up on all of our baby news, we encourage you to go back and read this blog from the beginning. Each new post on the blog appears at the top of the web page. So if you just read down this page, you'll be reading everything in reverse order. To read it in the order we wrote it, you can follow the links on the right side of this web page, under "Archives". Start by clicking on November, and then start reading from the post at the bottom of the November web page. This will be our very first post (called "Welcome To Our Blog"). Enjoy...

So Merry Christmas to everyone. We hope you're as excited about our news as we are!

The Secret Keeper

So, as you know, we've made the decision to keep the pregnancy a secret, at least until Christmas. There is, however, one person who knows.

My friend K is getting married in April, and I'm one of her bridesmaids. But, she had to place the order for the bridesmaid dresses by mid-December, before we were letting the secret out. I'll be about 6 months along by the time of the wedding, so I didn't really have much choice but to order a maternity dress. (The color of the dress, though will be more like this.) She is placing the order for all the dresses together to ensure that they come from the same dye lot, so there wasn't really any way to get around it. I had to tell her.

Shortly after coming back from our confirmation of pregnancy, I was chatting with her online, and I gave her the news. I have to admit, having at least *one* person who knows makes the secret-keeping a little easier. Being able to tell one person about what I'm going through, the excitement of seeing the heartbeat and other things, makes it easier for me to not slip up around other people. But K knows that she is not allowed to tell a soul until after Christmas!!

First OB Visit

Today was Sara's first OB visit. We decided to both go to these doctor visits. I can provide moral support and learn what's going on first hand. And Sara seems to like having me along :-) So it works out well for both of us. The plus side for our blog readers is that you can hear about our visits from different perspectives.

The visit was probably very routine for the doctors, but it was certainly memorable for us. They did the usual poking and prodding at Sara. We filled out paperwork about our medical histories. And Sara had some blood drawn. So what was the memorable part? They did the first ultrasound. Sure, there's not too much to see at this stage. But we could see the heart beating! They also measured the baby's length. Based on the measurement, they estimated that we are 7 weeks and 5 days along. We were previously estimating 8 weeks and 4 days. So they bumped the due date back a week, making the new due date Aug 2. If our baby is on time (and they always are, right?) then he or she will come on a Saturday. Very convenient!

That's the big news for today. But the other fun part about days when we go to the doctor is that Sara and I get to eat lunch together. Given our busy schedules, we rarely see each other during business hours on weekdays. So that's always a fun treat, and something that I'll be looking forward to when the next doctor appointment rolls around.

A Classic Nursery

Being the planners that we are, it's probably no surprise that we're already planning out the nursery. We decided on a color scheme pretty quickly.



Look at all the pretty greens and yellows!

Then, when we were wandering through the baby section at Target one day, I saw lots of really cute Classic Pooh nursery stuff, and it was almost all in the color palette were thinking of. We both loved it, and decided right then and there that we are going to have a classic pooh nursery. Here's how it's looking so far:

We really like this wall border:


(It's called "Patchwork Pooh")

We're thinking we'll place it along the middle of the wall (maybe about 36" - 40" up). Below it will be one of the pretty sage greens, and above it will be a nice soft light yellow. We'll probably paint the trim a very neutral cream color.

I'm really excited about this nursery! After Christmas, I'll start cleaning out the craft room, purging things that I don't need, and re-distributing the rest through the house as we reorganize other areas to handle the overflow. Once we move the furniture up to Bryan's study, we'll start the painting and decorating!

Anyone want to help paint this winter?

Is There Something In The Water?

These days, it seems rare for a day to pass when Sara and I don't hear about another friend who is pregnant. Perhaps we are just more aware of such announcements, but I'd say that there's a miniature baby boom going on among our friends. To give you a feel for it, the following friends either just had a baby in the past couple of weeks, or will be having a baby soon: Sheila, Chantal, Nikki, Kate, Sarah, Nimi, Tiffany, Aprille, Linda, and Jennifer. And that doesn't count the handful of friends that have an infant at home.

It could be an age thing. Many of us are approaching the 30 year mark. It could be that many of us got married around the same time, and somehow 5 years into marriage is the right time to have kids. Or, perhaps it's just something in the water.

Right now, it's somewhat frustrating for Sara and I to keep hearing these announcements from friends. Each time we hear something, we just want to say that we are also expecting and share our thoughts while learning from our friends experiences. But, for reasons previously mentioned, we will wait a little longer. So each time we hear the news from a friend we just smile and congratulate them. There will be plenty of time in the future to share stories.

And this gets me to the exciting part. Since we have so many friends going through this at the same time, we will all have a great support group. The friends we know who are pregnant include friends from church, some of my friends from high school, some of Sara's friends from college, and even one of Sara's close family friends. Not only can we share tips about pregnancy (both the women and the men), but our kids will all be about the same age. Perhaps they, too, will grow to be friends as they get older.

So I, for one, am glad that there's something in the water! Congrats to everyone out there who's expecting. We're all in this together...

Already A Great Dad

Not surprisingly, I'm finding that the fatigue of pregnancy is really taking its toll on me. I come home from work and it seems that by 8:00 I'm already horizontal on the couch. Which means that I'm too tired to read any of the pregnancy books that Bryan ordered from Amazon. Yep, you read that right. While I was sleeping away after falling asleep way too early, Bryan went on the computer, researched pregnancy books, and bought the ones that seemed to be the best based on various reviews. Now, while I'm asleep before I've even thought about bedtime reading, he is making his way through the Mayo Clinic Guide to A Healthy Pregnancy. I'm not kidding when I say he knows more about this whole pregnancy thing than I do. A recent conversation in our house:

Me: Ick. My face is really breaking out. It's Awful!
Bryan: I was reading the other day that acne is fairly common in early pregnancy. It's a result of all the rapidly changing hormones. There's not much you can really do about it, other than wash your face every day. But you shouldn't take certain acne medications, because they are bad for the baby.

We've had similar conversations as well, only regarding some of the ickier, less benign early pregnancy symptoms. I'll spare you the details.

He's also started researching day care centers, and playing around with the budget to fit it in. And of course, he has made it clear that it is important for him to be there with me for all the OB appointments.

I am overjoyed at being pregnant and the prospect of being a mom. What makes it even wonderful for me is seeing how excited and happy Bryan is about it all as well. He is truly my partner in this whole experience. Not surprisingly, I'm spending a fair amount of time reading up on various pregnancy websites and forums, and the more I read about others' experiences, the more I realize that this sort of paternal involvement seems to be the exception and not the rule. From helping out with dinner when I just don't have the energy to helping me better understand what's going on in my body during pregnancy; providing reassurance that all my irrationality is completely normal for pregnant women and giving me confidence that the baby is continuing to grow and that everything seems to be healthy and normal, he is showing me that in addition to being a great husband, he will also make a great dad. And that makes this whole process that more more wonderful and exciting for me!

Thanks for all you do, Bryan!

Keeping Secrets

We have made the conscience decision to not tell people that Sara is pregnant until around Christmas time. Our motivation for this is twofold. First, we need some time to come to grips with this change in our lives and to learn a bit before sharing the news. And second, the early stages of pregnancy are always risky and we wanted to get through this phase before making a broad announcement. We are both in agreement about this decision, and so we are working hard to carry it out.

Why is it hard work? We are both so excited that it's hard to not just bring it up in conversation. And, to make things even more difficult, we have a lot of friends who are pregnant or who recently had a baby. So the general topic seems to keep coming up in conversation anyway. In fact, just last night we were at a young adults event at church and there were two other pregnant women there, and a 3 month old baby. But we were good, and we kept our secret.

It was also really hard to keep the secret over Thanksgiving. Jeff and Nadine (my brother and his wife) were visiting for the holiday. And Sara just had the first positive test result the day before they arrived. So clearly it was on our minds! And it was really hard to keep the secret when we had some friends visiting from Iowa last week and the topic of pregnancy came up in the evening's conversation.

Fortunately, Sara and I are both professionals at keeping secrets. Well, sort of. Since we both held security clearances when we worked for the government, we know a thing or two about keeping secrets. Even so, I do wonder how good of a job we are doing. When people around us start talking about baby things, are we just a little too interested? Do we know just a little too much about car seats, baby carriers, and strollers? Do we talk too loudly when our windows are open and the neighbors are passing by? Who knows. At least this secret won't harm national security if it gets out! And, fortunately, we don't have to keep the secret for too much longer.