A few pictures from the weekend

Baby's Room

Brieanne has been plotting the nursery since she found out we were having a baby. Even though we do not yet know the gender (9 days, not that I'm counting) we have the whole thing mostly planned out. We've decided that if its a girl we'll add more red accents (see picture below). The inspiration for the room was the book, The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupery, a childhood favorite of mine.

A few pieces of the nursery have been up for discussion (the crib, changing table, etc). We have been doing a bit of researching on safe options for the baby. We found a couple of cribs that we really liked for their simplicity and baby environment friendly. We plan to refinish the rocker my mom used with Brieanne and I. We are also going to refinish my toybox from childhood. We had planned on converting the desk I used growing up into a changing table until Brieanne called on Monday while I was on my way back to work from my doctor appointment. She reminded me about a promotion that both of us had entered in April by one of the crib manufacturers that we were looking at. She won the promotion which meant she won a changing table! So, Brieanne gets the gold star for the week. The changing table and accompanying crib can be see on the dsign sample above. Stay tuned as the nursery continues to unfold.

16 no 17 no 16

Today I had a doctor appointment. After assuring Josh that there would not be an ultrasound he felt more comforted about not being able to be at there. I met my doctor for the first time (just switched from Vallejo to Walnut Creek and got assigned all new doctors). She was wonderful and I look forward to meeting with her in the future.

We received clarification about the due date. Evidently ultrasounds spit out a due date based on some markers from the picture but the doc's office doesn't always go with that. So I thought we were 17 weeks 2 days along but in reality we're 16 weeks 5 days along (four days, big deal). We're back in the middle of October. So we've regressed from onion to avocado in size but that's perfectly appropriate for Cinco De Mayo, right?

Today I got to hear the heartbeat on the doppler device. Truly amazing. Though I haven't felt the baby move yet the doctor assured me he/she was. We'd hear wub wub wub (the heartbeat) then whoosh (a kick) and woosh and wub wub wub woosh. The doctor said "are you sure you can't feel anything because this baby is kicking like crazy." The baby was also difficult to pin down because he/she was moving all over and we kept having to move the doppler to get the heartbeat.

Again, I am in awe of this miracle.

What's cookin'?

Now that I'm feeling better I'm back in the kitchen and experimenting with new recipes...

Sunday we tried this Beef Chorizo Nachos recipe(I didn't use any chorizo) from Sunset Magazine.

I love cooking, I only wish that I had more time to indulge. Another favorite of mine from Sunset is their Edamame Wonton recipe (I added chicken).

I think next time I have extra funds and extra time (ha ha ha) culinary classes will be a pastime that I take up. Josh and I love watching Top Chef (on Thursdays after Survivor because Wednesdays at 10 is too late for us), if we had a bigger kitchen I think we'd start having quick fire challenges in our house to decide who cooks dinner.

Discussions about names

I'd like to share another recent memorable conversation. I thought now that we've got a date for the next ultrasound it might be a good time to discuss names. The following took place about two weeks ago between Josh and I.

Josh: "Where did this 50,000 baby names book come from?"

Jen: "Oh, my mom thought it would be helpful so she let me borrow it."

Josh: "Helpful for what? We already decided baby names."

Jen: "Josh, you can't be serious we talked about names years ago, before we were even married. It was hypothetical now we're talking about a living being."

Josh: "Do you like the names we talked about?"

Jen: "Yes..."

Josh: "Well then what's to discuss?"

Jen: "Josh, I think we should at least talk about it."

Josh: "When I go to a restaurant, I look at the menu, decide what I want and then stop looking."

Jen: "Ok, for the sake of arguement I'll follow your analogy. You haven't even looked at the menu! "

I'm happy to report that I had a captive and cooperative audience for name discussion. (of course being stuck in the car on a seven hour road trip really helped)

One crazy weekend

Our weekend can be summed up like this. Concord - Crestline, Crestline - Rancho Cucamonga, Rancho - Temecula, Temecula-Crestline, Crestline - Fallbrook, Fallbrook - Crestline, Crestline - Concord. Whew, I'm tired are you?

We had a lovely weekend in southern California visiting Josh's parents (Janice was my road trip buddy down to LA, bless her for flying up just to keep me company driving down to Southern California as Josh left early to be part of the wedding festivities). We got to celebrate a wedding for a very dear friend of ours and his lovely new bride, Liza.

Lola got spoiled at Gary & Janice's spending the day chasing squirrels, walking around the lake and snuggling with Gary & Janice.

Baby Smith has transitioned from Plum to Peach and now Lemon. We continue to pray for healthy development. I added a poll to the blog, you can cast your vote for what you think baby Smith will be. The determining ultrasound is on May 20 and yes that means we will be finding out if the baby cooperates.

Musings from the past two months

Josh and I found out in February that we were going to have a baby. I woke Josh up around 2am to tell him. He was in a deep sleep so it took a few minutes to register what I had said to him, when it did he sat bolt up right "Holy ...." Needless to say neither of us really went back to sleep that night. A few hours later as we were still awake we had this "WHAT NOW?" moment of panic, I've been told there will be many more of those to come.

It worked out that we were able to tell both sets of parents in person. Lola really did the telling. She sported a homemade shirt saying "I'm going to be a BIG sister." We're not really dog clothes type of people but it was pretty funny.

For those of you wondering, I have battled mild morning sickness usually culminating in a Saturday morning throw up. Lola is intensely curious about this whole thing and follows me into the bathroom. The first time she got her face right up next to mine as I got a little splash back and shouted for Josh to get the dog and bring me a towel. The next time it happened Brieanne and Brandon were over visiting. Josh had just finished painting our front door and as I ran upstairs I heard Josh calling after me (he had no idea what was going on) "How does the door look? Jen, what do you think of the door?" To which my sister responded, "I don't think she really cares about the door right now."

One of my favorite reactions to the news was my sister. Here is an abbreviated version of our email conversation. * Note: she is the first person we told.

Me: "can you keep a secret?"
B: "Yes."
Me: "I'm pregnant."
B: "Shut up, are you kidding?"
B: "Hello, write me back. Are you joking?"
* I'm furiously typing a response but I guess I can't keep up with bullet finger Brieanne.
B: "Well, if you are check out (insert list of like three or four baby websites here)."
Me, finally: "I'm completely serious but you can't tell anybody yet."
B: "When are you telling?"
Me: "April."
B: "APRIL?"
B: "is it April yet?" * note, this was back in February.
B: "When are you due?"
Me: "October."
B: "if the baby is born on mine and Brandon's anniversary might I suggest Brandianne or Brieandon as the name."
B: "is it April yet?"