More Maternity Pics!

They're done! Yay! My awesome photographer and now friend, Lyndsay Stradtner, put together a great slideshow of a whole bunch of pictures from our session a couple of weeks ago. I love them and I'm so glad I have these pictures to look back on and remember how exciting this time was for me. Once again, consider yourself warned: you will see more of my big bare belly in these pictures than you will ever want to see.

Click here for a slideshow with music. Sometimes it takes a little time to load up so be patient. Oh, and since we have failed miserably to keep his name a secret to pretty much everyone but extended family, I told Lyndsay to go ahead and include his name at the beginning. Also keep an eye out for Kona's pictorial debut.

And because it's my favorite:

New Poll!

Vote on when you think Baby S will arrive!

Oh, and that second option should read "on HIS due date" but Blogger won't let me change it.

Sneak Peek (35w6d)

Are you tired of opening this page only to see a picture of my fat feet? I thought so. Time to share some nicer angles of "little" ole me. Yesterday I was fortunate enough to be photographed by a very talented photographer - Lyndsay Stradtner - as well as my good friend MC who is shadowing Lyndsay to enhance her own awesome photographic abilities.

Lyndsay has already posted three "sneak peek" photos from our session on her blog. Warning: These photos include my bare pregnant belly, so if that freaks you out, I guess you won't get to see my awesome pictures. :) Lyndsay is putting together a slideshow with a whole bunch of other shots from the session, so stay tuned and I will post a link to it as soon as it's finished. Kona may even make an appearance in a few of them.

To any of our readers in the Austin area, please consider hiring Lyndsay Stradtner of Life in Motion Photography to photograph your family. She is one of the nicest most talented people I have met, and you will not be disappointed.

Missing: Two Ankles

Last seen about two weeks ago.

Keep in mind that I'm only 32 weeks and I sit on my butt in front of a computer all day. The next time you encounter a pregnant waitress, salesperson, or some other profession that requires her to be on her feet all day, please be extra nice to her.

More Shower Pics

Two more to be exact. Sorry all, we were just having too much fun to take more than just pictures of me opening gifts.


The cake was beautiful and very tasty. Light blue whipped cream frosting with dark brown ribbons. Good work, Jen.


And that's me. Ann took a ton of gift-opening pictures - thanks Annie! However, you only get to see the one that hints at the fact that I indeed was born with only one chin, and that I will someday get rid of the second and third chins that have appeared thanks to baby boy here.

30w2d

It's been a while since I posted a new belly picture. Sorry it's blurry. The camera battery was about to die so Jon had to take it fast. You get the idea.



Last Saturday was my shower in Austin. It was a blast and I have a bunch of pictures to post, but they're on Ann's camera at the moment. As soon as she gets a chance to upload them I will post a re-cap. I do have a couple of pictures of the awesome diaper/gift cake made from scratch by my sister-in-law, Jen. Yeah, she made this:


Front


Back


Each diaper was individually wrapped with a piece of ribbon. That is some serious attention to detail. You would not believe how excited I was about the pizza pan that made up the base of the cake. See, I've got this addiction to Tombstone Pepperoni Pizza that started way before I was pregnant and I've never had a real life pizza pan before.

A Very Austin-y Weekend

The thing to do on the weekends when you live in the Austin area is to take your boat out on "the lake" along with a bunch of friends, a bunch of beer, and 10+ gallons of sunscreen. Most often, "the lake" refers to Lake Travis.

Funny story about this terminology. When Jon and I were engaged in 2004, I took a trip to Minnesota without him over the 4th of July holiday to scope out wedding reception sites with my mom and sister. During one phone conversation with him, I told him I was bummed out and bored because all of my friends were up at the lake for the holiday. He said, well, why don't you just go to the lake and find them? I started laughing so Jon says, what's so funny? I told him, in Minnesota, the term "up at the lake" refers to any of 15,000 individual lakes, not just one lake like where he grew up in Austin. I would have been driving for weeks trying to find all my friends at their respective lake cabins.

Jon's parents were kind enough to let us take their boat out last weekend and we had a great time.


Captain Jon.


Sean and Tyler with some delicious Lone Star beer given to them by fellow boaters after the guys drank all the beer on our boat.


In Texas, you are never more than a stone's throw from the nearest BBQ joint. Brisket y'all?


Please refrain from asking if there are whales in Lake Travis. That's just pregnant me and Jon hanging out in the boat while Sean took the helm for a bit.


This picture gives you a small sense for how popular this lake is. We parked for a while in an area called Devil's Cove (might be the same thing as Devil's Hollow on the map link above). This is basically a long and narrow inlet where everyone parks their boats and ties off to the boat next to them. Then it's just one big party until the food and drink run out. This is just one row of about 50 rows of boats that were packed into this little area. Crazy.


I swore I wasn't going to subject our readers to yet another nursery post, but I can't help it. On Friday I received a package from mom containing the long-awaited window seat cover. I am in love with it and can't wait to hang out in the window seat and read stories with our little guy:

Third Trimester (and a How-To)

Third trimester already! As in home stretch. As in three months left. As in let's get some crap done before baby boy gets here! (Yeah, that's his name, Baby Boy. No, we don't have a name yet. No, we're not going to tell when we do. No, I don't want to talk about it, but thanks for your concern, we love you, really).

Two things we accomplished this past weekend were to hang a room-darkening shade in the nursery (thanks mom!) and complete the window valance. I thought I would share with you how I painstakingly created this masterful work of wondow art.

How to Create a Window Valance

1. Take old window valance and have mom iron on some ribbon when she's visiting you.
2. Decide you need a second one to make it look fuller.
3. Purchase window panel that is "pretty close" to the same color at Target since first window valance has been discontinued.
4. Set up sewing machine.
5. Get overwhelmed and ask mom to do it next time you are visiting home state. Tell her you thought it would be so much more special for Baby Boy to have something made by grandma.
6. Hang second valance and curse when it doesn't match the first. Decide to make second (now third) valance out of remaining window panel fabric.
7. Set up sewing machine.
8. Get overwhelmed and ask mother-in-law to do it next time you are visiting her. Tell her you thought it would be so much more special for Baby Boy to have something made by grandma.
9. Iron ribbon on both new valances.
10. Hang valances and brag on your blog about your ribbon-ironing-on abilities.


New valance. Check out the ribbon. I did that.


New room-darkening shade. It works so well in fact that I need to add some sheers for when we want some diffused sunlight in there.

More Nursery Progress

We finally finished the closet! Well, almost, I have a lot of organizing and label-making to do yet. Jon did the painting and fixed the holes I put in the drywall (oops) and I installed the closet organizer. It's a far cry from my dream Elfa closet system at the Container Store, but it'll work. He even has an extra hanging rack to grow on.





I also had a chance to wash and put on one of the cute sheets and the changing pad cover I received from Jamie and my Aunt Lisa at the shower last week:

Double Digits

I just want to point out that our baby ticker is now showing double digits. :)

Baby Shower - Minneapolis

Here are a couple of pics from my joint baby shower with my cousin Jamie in Minneapolis last Saturday. I will post more as I get them. Enjoy!

(Some people told me all they could see was red x's for a while - I think I have that fixed).

With Grandma.

With diaper cake made by Aunt Gerry.

Opening gifts with Jamie.

Still opening gifts. Our friends and family were very generous.

The cake made by our family friend, Carolyn. Carolyn has made all my cakes since I was a little girl.

23w4d

You don't get to see my head because the only shot I could get with the self-timer this morning included a horrendous bottom-up view of my double-chin. I figure, let's give the people what they want, the gut shot:





Kona hasn't been getting much face time on the blog these days, so I'm posting a picture of him with his Humunga Tongue:

Chris and Ann's Wedding

This is going to be a short post, but I wanted to get some pictures up of the fun times we had at Chris and Ann's Wedding in Colorado on Saturday. If you would like to see the full set of pictures, click here.


Jon and Shannon


"Godfather" Drew and Shannon


Ann and Jon


The Couple's First Dance


Jon and Cojimar


Drew, Shannon, Jon, Nathan, and Lopey


Mac, Louriann, Jon, and Shannon
(I'm sporting a 23-week baby belly folks, cut me some slack on the arm pudge).


The lovely bride at the end of the night.


I couldn't resist including this picture of the couple's adorable niece.

And the Crib

Too bad I already used the clever "my crib or yours?" title a few posts back. Turns out the crib wasn't so complicated to put together. I love it to death and I can't wait to but the little guy in it for the first time. Maybe if I keep telling myself over and over again that he's going to be one of those great babies that sleeps in his crib rather than our room from Day 1, just maybe I can will the forces of nature to make that happen.

Halfway There and Nursery Progress

We're halfway there today - 20 weeks - crazy how fast the time has gone. This last weekend was great. My mom came for a visit, we found out we are having a healthy boy, the nursery furniture arrived, we had brand new carpet installed in the guest room and nursery, and we had the first BBQ/pool party of the summer with my mom and Jon's family. Here are some pics of the furniture and a few projects from the weekend:


The crib. Looks a tad complicated so we decided to wait a couple of days to put it together. This is a good shot of the fabulous new carpet too.

I picked out this red microfiber fabric to cover the window seat cushion. Also, with mom's help, we added some ribbon to a plain chocolate brown valance to tie it in with the bedding colors (the blanket sitting there on the window seat).

Close-up of the DIY valance. It barely made it across the width of the window so I need to pick up another one (and add the ribbon to it) to make it look fuller.

Dresser/changing table with hutch. The set came with both brown and polished pewter drawer pulls which I have yet to change out. I did get to two of them on the top dresser drawer and I can't wait to do them all. I love the contrast with the metal knobs. The little plush lobster on the left has become my inspiration to eventually add some sea life inspired art work and decor.

The tall dresser. Still needs its metal knobs too.

Finally, a cute picture of how I greeted my mom at the airport on Thursday. She called me during her layover in Denver and I told her she had to wait until she got here to find out what we were having. I greeted her at the airport in Austin with a big bunch of blue balloons. She figured it out. She's pretty sharp.

It's a...

BOY!

We had our big anatomy ultrasound today at 19w4d, and we are having a healthy baby boy. All of this organs and limbs look great and all fingers and toes are accounted for. Here are some pictures:

Profile of his face and you can see a little arm in the back.

Here is his profile from the other side. He just didn't want to move those arms for us. Check out that belly!

And the goods. I think we can safely say he's all boy.

Nursery Design Ideas

I put together a couple of potential nursery design ideas this past weekend. I like the "red" design for either a boy or a girl, and the "pink" design for a girl (obviously). It's tough to see in the pink sheets, but there are some little spots of turquoise sprinkled throughout the designs. To give credit where credit is due, the sheets are from Caden Lane, the wall letters and closet pulls are from Giggle Brush Designs, the crib skirts are from American Baby Company, and the storage bins are from either Bed Bath & Beyond or Trend Lab.

Click on the images to make them larger and easier to read.

Why today is fabulous

Seriously, I've had a great day so far today. Good enough to put it all in a blog post. I suppose to a lot of people it's little things, but when a bunch of nice little things happen in one day it's cool.

So far today:

*I got my hair cut and colored. This wouldn't be a big deal except that I hadn't been in there for about 3 months. Three months worth of hair growth on super-strength prenatal vitamins makes for some pretty severe roots. I feel so much better about myself when my hair looks good.

*While I was getting my hair cut, I got a call from my OB's office with the results of our Quad Screen test. I just had the blood drawn on Wednesday and was told I wouldn't hear the results for at least a week. Everything checked out fine so we are thrilled. This tests screens for Down Syndrome, Trisomy 18, and Spina Bifida, and it has a relatively high rate of false positives. To hear back already that our little peanut is healthy is awesome.

*I dropped off a bag of clothing that no longer fit me along with a gift card for a girl I know of through the Nest today. Her house was struck by lightning last weekend and is a total loss. Luckily she, her husband, their baby, and their pets were able to get out. They lost all of their possessions and it felt really good to give her some nice clothes that haven't fit me for about a year now and were just gathering dust. I wish I could have given them more.

*Our good friend Chris saved the day and took a huge weight off our shoulders. The kitchen sink at our condo in Denver was leaking and our tenants were understandably sick and tired of dumping out pitchers of water each day. A plumber was going to charge us $120/hr just to show up. That doesn't include parts or anything else. One $40 faucet and an hour and a half later, Chris was calling me to tell me it was fixed.

*I checked out two consignment shops I hadn't been to before (Between Friends and Pumpkin Patch) and got three new outfits for under $50. Almost all of the maternity clothing I have purchased are used/consignment. Why should I pay $50 for one shirt I can wear for 6 more months when I can get it for $8 hardly worn? Somehow I feel like it's less wasteful too.

*Across the street from Between Friends is this place called Wally's Burger. By now it was 2:00 and I'd barely had anything substantial to eat so I was about ready to eat my own hand. Seriously, this was one of the best fast food burgers and fries I've had in a long time. For those of you familiar with Mighty Fine, it was just about as good and almost as messy.

*Which leads me to my last item - my new t-shirt. It made a lot of people smile today and who doesn't like to make people smile?

T-shirt by 2chix.com

The day's not over yet, and I'm looking forward to a fun night with Jon. He's had a long week of training at his new job and I think he's more than ready for the weekend to start. The plan is to see a movie, so I'm off to Fandago to see what's playing.