Cyber Shower

This past Saturday, our awesome North Carolina friends threw us a baby shower, courtesy of the world wide web! You may ask yourself "how does one throw a shower for people that are four time zones away"? Well, let me show you...

For a couple of weeks before the date of the shower, we started to receive packages! Lots and lots of packages! Now, since these were technically for our shower, we were instructed by our shower hosts not to open any gifts until the actual shower day. So, for two whole weeks before the shower, I had to stare at all of these packages...all day, every day. Talk about some torture!

On the day before our shower, we received some goodies to eat on shower day. These strawberries were to help celebrate the fruits of me and Michael's labour of love!


I was told that I was allowed to eat some, but not all of the strawberries before the shower...or before Michael got home from work on Friday! Hahaha! I only ate one, for the record!


At about 1130 AM (30 minutes before the shower), we started to open the packages! This was wonderful!!

All of our shower guests live in North Carolina, so they all gathered at our friend's, Becca and Mike, house. They had party food and each other on their end!

At noon, Michael and I logged onto Skype and our party guests at Becca's house logged onto Skype, as well. We then were able to see and talk with all of our friends on the east coast! It was so cool! We were able to "hang out" with them for about an hour and half. This was such a great idea and we're so glad that we have AWESOME friends that put this all together! A special shout out to Becca, Mike, Becky, Manning, and Bullard for hosting! We love you guys!

Michael putting together the pack'n'play we received!

Holy crap!

We're in the single digits for the countdown!! :o

31 weeks, 2 days! (Less than 9 weeks, if this baby is on time!)

Freedom showing her excitement when we talk about meeting Joey!

Freedom showing the baby belly some love!

If any of you spoken to me lately, you may have heard about my search for girl scout cookies! I have searched high and low for these stupid cookies. I have passed the girl scouts and their crack when I've been busy and couldn't stop. An angel finally heard my cries and delivered some cookies to Michael at work! Thank you to my girl scout cookie angel! I will heart you forever. :)

Maybe we shouldn't be having a kid...

HAHA!!! These are our friend's two children. They came over and LOVED Bracken's dog kennel! Hmmm, maybe we won't have to worry about finding a babysitter, afterall!

30 Weeks, 1 day! I'm actually wearing a maternity shirt in this photo! (I normally wouldn't wear this zebra print homemade vest, but we were dressing up for a roller derby bout!)

And I know you all love the belly photos with my Bella Band!

If Joey grows as large as this snow baby, I may shoot myself!

Another symptom or three!

There are a few more symptoms that I have been experiencing during this pregnancy.

First off, my nails and hair are growing wonderfully and fast! I am a nail-biter...I know, it's a gross habit, but I have not been able to break it yet! However, with these superwoman strong and fast-growing nails, I am trying to take advantage of this preggo symptom. I'm even filing and shaping my nails so I will not be tempted to bite! So far it has worked! You may have noticed that I'm not wearing my rings. Michael and I decided that I should go ahead and remove my rings before I can't remove them because I'm so swollen! Since I seem to get every symptom, we know it's only a matter of time before the swelling hits. Actually, maybe I have already swelled and that's why I've already gained 35 lbs! Sa-weet! I like this new theory! That damn nurse practioner can shove it! :)

Speaking of hair, your hair grows really fast and becomes very thick (because you aren't really shedding like when you're not pregnant). However, this fast-growing, thick hair doesn't always just apply to the hair on your head! It can ANYWHERE on your body; face, arms, legs, stomach, etc. Luckily, the hair on my face is staying normal! The hair on my head is doing great! However, I am getting quite fuzzy on my belly! ( I would have taken a photo of this, but Michael begged me not to!) This is kind of gross, not so much to me as it is to Michael! Michael hates an excess of body hair, especially on girls! Poor guy...his wife has become this fuzzy, hormonal, masked, goodyear blimp! Less than three more months, babe! :)

There is also this thing called the "mask of pregnancy". This is when your skin pigmentation will change. A lot of times it happens on your face, but it can occur on other places on your body. As of right now, I have this "mask" on my arm. I have this white spot, about the size of a quarter, developing on my arm. As long as the mask stays off of my face, I can deal with the spot on my arm!

Here's a close-up of the spot.

It's like Christmas!

We have our baby showers next weekend! We are so freaking excited! Our friends in North Carolina are throwing us a cyber shower on Saturday! They are all going to get together at our friends, Becca and Mike's house, and talk with us up here in Alaska on Skype. Then they are just going to party together! That sounds like the best baby shower ever! :)

We have started to receive gifts for the upcoming NC shower already! Now, we promised the NC shower hosts that we would not open any gifts until Saturday, March 13th. So, any and every single package we have been getting has been going straight into Joey's room and we're not opening any of them yet! (even if the package is not from Walmart or Babies-R-Us, where we are registered, we're still not opening them, just in case they are for the shower!) I was sort of worried about the whole package pick-up, though. Our post office out here will not leave any packages, big or small, at our house. We have to pick up every single package from the post office. This worried me because I would be the one having to go pick up these packages and if they weighed more than 25 pounds, then this could be a problem! However, all of the packages we have received so far are being delivered by FedEx right to our door! Score!!! :) The FedEx guy has been at our house everyday! It's awesome! I open the door to packages everyday! What a great feeling! :)

These are some of the packages we have received so far! :) Thank you to all of our NC friends and family so much! This means so much to us and we really do feel loved! We love and miss you guys!

Our friends up here in Alaska are throwing us a shower, too. We are really excited about this shower, as well! They have made it a theme party, and you all should know how much I love a reason to wear some sort of costume! The theme of this party is going to be a Moo-Moo party!! Haha! Everyone, even the boys, are to wear Moo-Moos! This is going to be great! Both of these showers are next weekend, so look for photos the following week!

Thank you, in advance, to all of our friends and family in NC and AK! We love all of you and are very honored to have each of you in our lives! We're so glad that you will all be involved in Joey's life!

Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star

I finally finished the nursery!! Wait, let me clarify that statement...I have finished painting the walls, doing the window treatment, and getting the light fixture changed! (We're waiting until after our baby showers to get the baby furniture). I have been working on the room since January! However, since I've been the only one able to work on the room, I have been taking it slow and easy. Michael works crazy long hours, so unfortunately, he hasn't had time to help. :(
Anyways, here are the before and after pics of Joey's future casa!

BEFORE:

This is a hide-a-way bed that is in Joey's room. This bed came with the house and is pretty cool. We decided to make this Joey's room, even though this bed is in it, because if we have a lot of company at once, we can still use this bedroom for guests and Joey can sleep in our room.

The wall with the closet. The door to the house is on the right outside of this photo.

Joey's future window. If you look to the bottom left of the window, you may see a "line" of spackling. There was a huge crack that went from the ceiling, down the corner of the room, and out towards the heating unit. I spackled this 5 or 6 times, then used spray texture on the "fix" so that it would blend in with the rest of the walls (we have textured walls). This process took a week or so because I wanted to make sure that I repaired this crack completely. It took awhile, but my patience was totally worth it!

AFTER: We painted the walls two different shades of blue. Two opposite walls are a dark blue, and the other walls are a lighter blue. We then decided to paint stars all over the room!

Joey's Closet Wall

Closet is to the left, house door is in the middle, and the hide-a-way bed is on the right.
I did not want to have any constellations on the walls, but Michael really wanted the Big Dipper and Polaris on the wall. (This is really unique to Alaska because the Big Dipper and Polaris are on the AK state flag). I painted this constellation, as well as the North Star, on the big wall and I'm actually pretty happy with it. Michael LOVES it!!


We wanted to hang something on the hide-a-way bed just to break up that large brown space. I painted this letters and attached them to the bed. This is just in case we ever forget what we named our baby! Haha!

I put these blinds up myself! I searched everywhere for freaking blinds to fit this window! I finally found blinds at Lowe's and they would actually cut the blinds to fit your window! Perfect! (After I am done with Joey's room, I will be buying blinds to put in our dining room windows!)

The picture on the right is a tapestry that Becky bought us on EBay. I finally found a frame to fit it at Michael's Craft Store. Joey will always know that he is a Wolfpack baby!! Go NC State!

Our house was built in the 80's, so it has a lot of awful light fixtures! Not only is this light fixture ugly, it does not provide much light at all! We decided that this light fixture had to go (as well as the matching light fixtures that are in our room and the guest room...this will be a future project (well, like next week!))!

This is our friend Jill who happens to be an electrical engineer! Michael and I decided that since neither of us have any real experience with electrical wires, and I just should not be doing that stuff right now anyways (see, I do listen to you people sometimes!), we would ask Jill to do this task for us. She came over yesterday morning and removed that ugly light fixture and replaced it with this beautiful white fan/light combo! This fan/light combo was only $20!! Whoop whoop!! I think this is the fan/light we will be using in all of the bedrooms! It looks good and is cheap!

Third trimester!

29 weeks, 1 day! ( Please note: My belly is NOT one round belly quite yet. I am wearing my pregnancy Spanxx, otherwise known as a Bella Band (the white tube top belt) to help smooth things out!)

So, we're well into a week of the third trimester. Here are some things I'm experiencing:

Sleep

I have started to become more tired again. Thank God, I don't have a job because I don't know how these working pregnant moms work, take care of errands, and find time for sleep! I do not sleep very well at night. I get up to pee, work out the 3+ leg cramps I get each night, toss and turn. I have permanent dark circles under my eyes, which I know is a look I will probably be sporting for the next couple of years, so I might as well get used to it, right?


Cold Sores
I get ONE cold sore every couple of years. The last time I had one was when we lived in NC! Well, pregnancy makes your immune system not as top notch as normal, so this is a green flag to those damn cold sores. Oh, and you don't just get one...I think I got five or six at one time on my bottom lip! It is pretty nasty and really does make you want to stay locked up in your house until they go away!


Amy and Liz rubbing the baby belly!

Hunger

I actually have not been as hungry as I have been the past few months. I'm sure this is due to my growing uterus pushing on my stomach! It also is somewhat a mental thing due to my lecture by the nurse practitioner about stalling my weight gain. Whatever the case may be, I am riding this "not eating everything in sight" wave! :)

Exercise

I really haven't been cross country skiing in the past few weeks due to our lack of snow up here in AK. I also really had not been doing much else in the lines of exercise. So, after my horrid appointment a week ago, I have been walking on the treadmill 5 days a week for about 45-50 minutes a day. The time is really dependent on how long the reality show I'm watching lasts! I'm not allowed to watch my trashy reality shows, unless my butt is walking on the treadmill. If I have time to sit around and watch delicious trash, then I have time to get my ass moving!

Hot Flashes

I've heard that you get really hot when you're pregnant. I haven't been too worried about this symptom that much since we live in an icy tundra! This internal heater I have has actually been a quite beneficial symptom versus a pain in the butt symptom. Since I have gained so much weight and am just getting rounder and rounder, none of my clothes fit. This includes my expensive super warm down jacket that I can't live without! Now, not having your super warm down jacket in the winter in Alaska is kind of a problem. However, I haven't really needed my jacket this year since my internal heater is doing his job! Thanks, Joey, for keeping mom all nice and warm!

Protectiveness

I have started to get very protective over this belly of mine. Up to this point, I was still like "whatever" and knew I was pregnant, felt like I was pregnant, but didn't really feel a connection with Joey. However, that has started to change lately. Now, I pay attention to Joey's kicks to make sure he is being active enough. Last week, he didn't seem to move as much as normal and I started to get really freaked out. So I sat down, drank one-liter of cold water and had a pep talk with B-dawg. This worked, and I was elated! Since I know his most active times of the day (which is between 4-6 PM), I now make it a point to count his movements.

I also have been to a couple of crowded events lately and I am super protective of my belly now. I will knock a bitch out if they try to push/slam/bump into my belly. For example, we went to a concert this weekend and the bar was super crowded. Before the show even began, some small troll-sized girl (4'11", 100 pounds less than me) pushed through our group without so much as an "excuse me". What the hell?!?! Bitch, I will eat you! There was no music blaring so that an "excuse me" would not have been heard. You could easily have said "sorry" or "excuse me". Ugh! I also notice that I am not as tolerant of stupid people with no manners. I used to think that I got froggy when I drank. I'm finding that I have zero tolerance for rudeness now that I am sober. I think the sober Sara is actually a little scarier than drunk, froggy Sara! Hahaha! Hmmmm, I guess there is something to this whole "don't mess with a mother and her child" theory, huh?