32 Weeks: 8 Months!

Yep, that's right, I'm 32 weeks pregnant!  

Contrary to popular belief (including my own, until I got pregnant..), you don't give birth AT nine months, you are pregnant THROUGH the 9th month, for a grand total of 40 weeks.  That's a long time!!  But a fun time so far, and it has been a very fun week!

Baby Mildren got two baby showers this week from each of our work places!

OHE

First, my wonderful elementary school I worked at for quite awhile, Oak Hill Elementary, threw a cute jungle-themed baby shower complete with delicious cupcakes and designer diapers!!  It was great to connect with my OHE friends, and great now that we have some more needed baby gear!  Have I mentioned how much I love diaper cakes?  They are awesome!

Cute little jungle table centerpieces  :)

 Home-made baby booties and hat!

 A cute book, Whose Ears?

 So many sweet baby items!

 A decoration for the nursery 

Monkey!

 Friends Mitzi and Betsy

(Betsy took all the pics for the shower, thank you, Bets!)

 Chelsey, friend and mom of Baby Nolan 

(his pic made a blog appearance recently! What a doll)

A cute argyle Pampers diaper -- I love it!!

 P & C

Then, James' company threw him a shower, complete with an ice cream cake, a generous Babies R Us gift card, and big box of diapers!

The cake reads, "...and Baby Makes Three"

 "Is this how you hold a baby?"

 ...Taking advice from coworkers on baby naming 

You can never have too many diapers...

We are so grateful for such supporting friends and workplaces!  Everyone has been super excited for us, and we appreciate the enthusiasm immensely!

Halloween Pics 2011

Here are the pictures from our Halloween!  We celebrated in Springfield, MO, for Linden's 30th 'Young at Heart' birthday party.

80's Linden

Vanilla Ice Rob

 Alien-bursting-from-body Beth

Revenge of the Nerds James

31 Weeks: Comfort Zone

Well, that baby belly is a dead giveaway that life is becoming less comfortable!  :)

Praise:  the baby is very healthy and doing well.  Doctor visits are smooth and Baby Mildren's heartbeat is strong.  He is kicking all of the time it seems, which is pretty fun! According to 'What to Expect When You're Expecting,' at 31 weeks, he is roughly 18 inches long and weighs more than 3 pounds.  That said, he is growing, growing, growing, and so am I!

Creature Comforts -- where did they go?


Sleep Interrupted:  I am a hard-core stomach sleeper, and up until just this week, I've managed to stick to my normal sleeping patterns...this week, though, being on my stomach crushed my lungs (and baby?), and I gave in and opted for the side sleeping option, which isn't nearly as comfortable, no matter how many stupid pillows I cram around me.  Grrr!

Pick Up:  Bending over is now a hassle, and I have to ask myself how much I really need to pick up something off of the ground, or whether or not I should put it on the ground in the first place...it's not that it's painful, it just feels, well, squished for breathing and belly room.

Shoe-tying:  Putting on socks and shoes is about as fun as bending over to pick something up, and I've gone from leaning down to tie my shoes, to now employing the Mr. Rogers method of crossing my leg over my knee and going about the whole business from an elevated angle.

Exercise:  Sad but true, walking for exercise is still leaving me with a lower side ache, so I'm stuck with the elliptical or stationary (worse yet, recumbent) bike.  These are both machines that I dislike in general, but they seem to be good options for now.

Feeling the burn:  The heartburn has restricted my diet somewhat, and I am eating less in general at one time (this is a major hardship, I like food!), and less spicy foods to alleviate the heartburn.  But the Prevacid is doing most of the heavy lifting on that front! ha!

....I still manage to sneak in that daily cup of coffee on the way to work, there are just some necessities I can't let go of!

The Name

Well, James and I think we have landed on Baby Mildren's first name!

We are 99.9% sure he'll be William (we want to call him Will).  

We both have grandparents named William but they go by Bill, so Will would be different yet with the family connection (mom's Dad, and James' Dad's dad).  Will isn't too trendy or too stuffy, and we like the way it sounds -- "Will Mildren."

So there it is!

30 Weeks: Baby Shower

30 weeks

7 1/2 months preggo

Danica, Linden, Beth

This was a crazy busy week, ending in a great baby shower here in Lawrence!

We spent one evening taking the "How to Take Care of a Newborn" class where we learned how to bathe, swaddle, diaper, soothe a baby.  It was informative, and we actually learned a lot.  We didn't really know how to swaddle well, and the bathing was very interesting, too!  They also showed pictures of what 'normal' looks like for newborns, which is very different from your 1 month old baby to prepare you that your baby might not look exactly like the Gerber baby from its first moment of life.

I spent basically the rest of my free time this week doing written comprehensive exams for my education administration licensure program, writing more 35+ single-spaced pages!  Yuck!!  But I had an end-goal of finishing before family and friends came into visit for a Lawrence baby shower.

On Saturday morning, James and I went and took a tour of the maternity ward at Overland Park Regional Medical Center.  The tour went along at a fast clip, and it definitely is getting more 'real' that we are going to have an actual baby.  We are choosing to deliver in OP rather than Lawrence on the recommendation of my doctor, because OPRMC has a Level III NICU, so just in case something goes awry, the baby is already where it needs to be for any immediate help.

Cara, Kim, Kristin

Sunday afternoon was the baby shower, and it was about the cutest thing ever! 

My dear friends Cara, Kim, and Kristin hosted, and their great taste and eye for detail were evident!  Since the nursery will have a jungle theme, that was also the theme of the shower, and they had set up plush jungle animals and baby books throughout the house.  Kim made some delicious cupcakes surrounded by jungle animals, and the jungle diaper cake was just too adorable!

...There was more great food than just cupcakes!

Then Baby Mildren was definitely showered with lots of cute presents from generous very friends and family!

The girls also had some fun and funny games to play.  

First, we played "Celebrity Jungle," in which guests had to guess who celebrity baby pictures were of.

Next, guests had to match up animals with their animal baby name (who would have known that a baby cockroach is called a nymph?!).

Finally, guests had a list of characteristics, and then columns of "Mommy" and "Daddy" and they had to pick which parent I would most likely say I would want the baby to take after in that area...for example, whose eyes do I hope Baby Mildren takes after?  The categories were wide-ranging from Dance Moves (James, of course!) to Common Sense (me, of course!).  My mom ended up getting the most correct with what I chose.  Then, I had James do the list after the shower, and he actually got the most right!  He knows me pretty well!

I cannot get over what an outstanding shower my friends hosted!  They made it very special.  It was absolutely lovely, and I am so blessed to have such caring friends and family.  Baby Mildren will be lucky to be surrounded by such wonderful people.


After the shower, when we came home, James and my dad had assembled the baby crib, so the room is finally starting to look like a nursery!

29 Weeks: Halloween!

This was Halloween week! Other than working lots with two late nights for parent/teacher conferences and working on my comprehensive exams, we squeezed in some fun after all.

 James and I did some pumpkin carving with friends from the Methodist Church, and attended a costume party/30th birthday party for my best friend, Linden.  Sadly, I forgot my camera for the birthday party, so pictures of us in costume will come at a later date. (spoiler alert: James went as a nerd from Revenge of the Nerds and I had an ET alien bursting out of my body :)

Here are some of the pumpkin creations.

Happy Halloween!

 Go Hogs!

 Charlie Brown

Haunted House