Flutter, flutter, tap, tap

At 21 weeks, I am pretty sure that I'm feeling the baby a little bit. Having never been pregnant before, I'm never 100 percent sure that's what it is, but it feels different than anything else, so I would just have to assume it's the kiddo.

I have been trying to describe the feeling to people, but it's very hard to put into words. Everyone always says it feels like a little "flutter," which I would agree with, but I also think it feels like someone lightly tapping or poking your skin. It's very light right now, but hopefully Baby will just continue to get stronger and the movements will be more apparent. Because Baby's Dad is very anxious to get to feel it now that I can!

At 21 weeks is also when Baby has decided to hit a major growth spurt. I swear I woke up on Wednesday and was sticking out two inches more! Maybe it's just all in my head, but I really notice a difference. But of course, this is a good thing because it means Baby's growing like it's supposed to!

I took this picture on Monday morning (pre-growth spurt in my opinion):

A helpful tip...

If anyone is looking for a way to not have to spend a lot of money on baby stuff, one way is to have your sibling have a couple of kids first and then take all of their stuff! Not that this was my plan all along, but my older brother and sister-in-law are parents to my adorable niece and nephew and generously passed on a lot of baby items to us this weekend. We are so very grateful!

Thanks to them we don't have to buy a tub, Boppy pillow, swing, bouncy chair, Bumbo chair, bassinet, ExerSaucer or activity station (where the lay underneath it). 

**Note - yes, the ribbon on the bassinet is pink, but we do not know the baby's gender and are not planning on finding out. The bassinet is from when my niece was born. My nephew slept in it too and is showing no signs of being tramatized, so we'll just leave it too. :)

It really does help a lot, though there's still plenty of stuff to get for this kiddo! We're off to register for more stuff this afternoon. This is another reason (besides him liking "projects") that Chris is looking to finish the basement - so we can have more room for all this stuff!!

Again, we are extremely thankful for having family that is willing to share their things with us. Another friend/family member of mine has already said we could have a few of her things as well. We are so blessed!

More updates to Baby's room

We're getting more and more prepared for Baby to arrive. While we had most of the basics for the nursery in place, we were (and still are) missing a few pieces. We recently were able to pick up the glider we had ordered and also bought a bedding set.

Here's the new view when you come in the door. We set up the glider and bought an end table and lamp to go with it (for all those late-night feedings!). Due to the bright sun outside, you can't see the nice valance that came with the bedding set, but it's a nice light green with some polka dots on it. Chris put up a curtain rod a couple weeks ago (but now he's running out of "projects" in the baby's room, so he's already started looking into finishing the basement!). We haven't found much to put up on the shelves yet, but I think that will come with time. So far, there's just a book about the ocean, which was a gift from Baby's Grandma Sell, who just couldn't resist. :)

Here's the view from the other corner of the room. The bedding set also came with a diaper bag which is hanging on the closet. The cute turtle on the dresser is a nightlight, and was Baby's Valentine's Day present from its Daddy.

Belated Dr. appt recap

My apologies for my absence! I would love to have some kind of excuse, but the last couple weeks have just gotten away from me and blogging got shoved to the back of my mind. Sorry! We've both been busy at work and then in the evenings, one of us stays up working late and the other falls asleep in front of the TV around 8:30 (I'll let you try and figure out who is who).

But we did have our monthly check-up with the doctor on the 20th. It was a pretty quick appointment, mostly just to check all my vitals and of course, hear the baby's heartbeat.

Here are the stats:
Heartbeat: 150 beats per minute, heard loud and clear by Mom, Dad and the Dr.
Blood pressure: I never remember the specific numbers, but it was in the normal range
Mom's weight gain: 10 pounds, right on track for 17 1/2 weeks (Meaning I'm in full-on maternity pants now!)

Our next appointment will be the biggie! Even though we'll be 20 weeks this week, we're not going to do the next ultrasound until March 21, because we both want to be there for it and one of us is starting to travel for work. So we'll have to postpone it a bit, but it will be well-worth the wait - a 70-minute ultrasound, followed up by a check-up with the doctor, who will also go over the ultrasound results.

Battle of the (Baby) Bulge

After years of trying to stay a certain weight and continue to fit into a particular size of clothes, it's an interesting twist to be OK with weighing more than I've ever weighed and not be able to even zip up most of my pants, let alone button them.

I had been able to wear my "normal" pants (with a few of them phased out) up until week 15. Then most pants started getting a little too tight and I used a ponytail holder to keep the button part together. But it was only a few days until I realized that strategy wasn't going to last and I had to move on to the Belly Band. A big thanks to my sister-in-law who gave me hers to use (along with a ton of other maternity clothes). The band is a stretchy fabric circle that goes over your normal pants and holds them in place, so you don't have to button them.

As we hit week 17, I started to think that the band wasn't going to last much longer either as zippers started to not go up very well. This kid REALLY hit a growth spurt!! Thankfully, leggings are back in style and I've been able to wear those kind of stretchy pants without fail, but yesterday I gave actual maternity pants a try.

Without further ado, I present the Baby Steinhoff-bump at 17 weeks:

It's hard to tell in this picture, but I find it hilarious that my rib cage is the same size, but then there's just this incline as you look down my torso :)

What will this baby look like?

While it's a pretty safe bet that Baby Steinhoff will have dark hair and dark eyes (though you never know what kind of recessive light-haired gene is out there in our family trees), it's still fun to think about what this little boy or girl might look like. Though the better question is how tall is he or she going to be?!? :)

Luckily for Baby Steinhoff, its parents were pretty cute babies themselves. Exhibit A:

That's me on the left and Chris on the right. That hat kills me every time!!

(Thanks to our parents for supplying such adorable pictures...and children)

And while I always have had dark features, Chris actually did have lighter hair when he was little, so it's possible our baby could too. Exhibit B:

Too cute :) His aunt Joyce sent this to us last week, saying she is sure this Baby Steinhoff will be just as cute as its dad. I agree!

Now, the baby can look like either of us all it wants, but I hope to God that some of the trends we both fell into (hello, we grew up in the '80s and '90s!) never, ever resurface.

Exhibit C:

May the bright "Bill Cosby" sweaters and the neon backgrounds that graced our school photo sessions never return in our child's lifetime.

Exhibit D: 

And please, please, please may glasses that take up over half your face never come back in style. Fingers crossed that our child gets its father's eyes anyway, so it won't even have to deal with glasses in the first place.

It will be fun to look back on our baby pictures and compare features once Baby Steinhoff arrives!





The making of a nursery

Our house currently has three bedrooms - ours, a guest room and one that pretty much only housed my keyboard and guitar. It was a pretty easy choice to make that the baby's room. It wasn't long after Christmas that Chris decided it was time to get started on the nursery. I believe this was for two reasons - one, he loves projects and has run out of other things to do around the house until he finishes the basement this spring, and two, to get the big stuff done before he gets really busy at work.

Since we didn't know the baby's sex and are probably not going to find out, picking out a color scheme was the hardest part. We looked online for ideas and came across a room that was one base color with a set of stripes around the top. We loved it and also decided that we were going to go with an ocean-theme for the decorations. This just made sense because a lot of our time is filled by fishing! We went to our local paint store and found a nice blue that didn't look to "boyish" and was named Watery, as well as a nice cream color to make the stripe. And away we (and by we, I mean Chris because he did it all) went!

He started with the cream stripe and then began taping around the edges of everything before starting work on the blue. He had to use a couple of different techniques to get his lines just right for the stripes and I was very impressed with his craftsmanship. *Note, that grey thing hanging in the middle is a ceramic fish my sister-in-law gave me a long time ago. We thought it was perfect to hang from the light fixture. Chris just has to watch his head when he goes by it :)

I didn't get any action shots of the actual painting since I was supposed to stay away from the fumes, unless we would have gotten some air moving through there. But here's the "after shot" of Chris taking off all his tape and hoping his lines came out OK.

And as you can see, the stripes look AMAZING! We've had people ask if it was a stencil or if it's wallpaper, but nope, it is all paint and some skilled measuring and taping done by my dear husband.

Now you may be wondering, what are you going to put in that big stripe? Well, the pictures we found online had artwork, shelves and a cool artwork piece with the baby's name on it. So we are stealing all of those ideas, but we'll have to wait until after it's born for that name one.

Chris got right to work some of the wall art. Not many people know this, but besides his talent in painting walls, my husband is also an extremely talented artist. We have three 2x3 paintings of his hanging in our house and a few things he did in high school art classes around the house too. So he started on the pictures of ocean creatures we wanted to put on the wall. We found a clip art image of some online, so he used those as a guide to then freehand draw and paint on canvases.

A fish, seahorse, crab and turtle. Chris also built and painted the frames.

A jellyfish, octopus and starfish. Chris also built and painted some shelves to go up in the stripe.

Last weekend, we went and looked at furniture. We found a glider at HOM Furniture that will be a cream color to match the stripe, but it won't be in for awhile. We then went over to Babies 'R Us and found a crib and combo unit (dresser that can also be used as a changing table). We were able to take home the floor model of the combo unit and the crib came in last Friday. So it is really looking like a nursery in there!

 The view when you walk in the door. *Note, the glider will go in the empty corner.

And the view from the back of the room.

So even though we've got about six months left before baby arrives, we're sitting pretty good on having its room ready. We've got some bedding in mind and need to get the stuff for the changing table on top of the dresser, but we're well on our way! It's pretty cool looking in there and thinking about the person who will one day inhabit that space :)