hello baby

WEEK 38: Bag is packed. Friends were getting worried about this one. It oddly felt more important to put up the wall stickers before packing the hospital bag, perhaps because having the bag ready to go felt like we were giving the baby permission to come. Jeff also wasn’t crazy about the idea of a holiday baby. I told him I’d see what I could do.

WEEK 38: 4th of July weekend. This first picture is from the 3rd, right before Kristi’s taco extravaganza and Steph’s 31st birthday karaoke party. The second is from the 4th, during our very humid hike and before our senior citizen-esque date, an afternoon movie followed by a 5:45 dinner. Bedtime has been coming earlier and earlier these days.

WEEK 38: Rachelle was right - this shirt is not nearly long enough any more. I didn’t believe it when she predicted it, as it was the longest tank I owned at week 14. But I have to manually stretch it now before I put it on and the hand that looks like it’s holding up my stomach is actually covering the space in between where my shirt ends and shorts begin.

WEEK 37: Baby’s room complete. The amount of hours spent on the putting together of this room has been pretty intense. From big things like the shelves and the glider to little things like the crib sheets and the sound machine, the vast majority of baby gear in this room has been highly researched and typically involved multiple rounds of second guessing and returns. Who knows what the baby will end up taking to in here, but it is awfully cute, don’t you think? Jory, Dan and Tannen all deserve props on design, furniture assembly and wall sticker decor. Great work you guys.

WEEK 37: Mag’s first visit! Even though it took Mags almost four years to get out to see us (a fact I never tire of reminding her), she’s already looking into booking a return visit next month with Kas to help take care of the baby, so I guess I should stop giving her a hard time.  Oh, and props to Kas for being the first sibling visitor by the way. Her mojito-fueled law school studying continues to impress me. So Mag and Trace’s Austin weekend was marked by a French Bistro, World Cup soccer, outdoor chickenfoot, breakfast tacos, a hearty walk around Town Lake, the Alamo Drafthouse, Highball, watermelon juice, Big Top candy, Stag menswear and a leisurely Sunday morning at Mozart’s on the lake. I’m thinking the next visit will be more about bottles and diapers than anything else, but both Kas and Mags have reassured me that they are looking forward to this. What good sisters I have.

WEEK 36: Em, Kev & Harrison took their first family vacation to Austin this week, what an honor! It was so fun to get to hang out and we even used Harrison as a guinea pig to test out our carseat. Some of the pictures above are from the Salt Lick, one of Austin’s most famous bbq places. While we all consumed far too much smoked meat, Harrison continued his impressively healthy eating with a meal of chicken, broccoli and cottage cheese. I hope we’re lucky enough to have such a star eater. And a big thanks to Em for providing endless hours of baby advice on topics ranging from baby gear to medical questions to general it’s-helpful-to-know-this type stuff. I’m so glad that Em had a baby first out of the two of us!

WEEK 36: Austin baby shower! A huge thanks to Tannen with help from Antoinette, Dan & Jory for an absolutely fantastic baby shower at one of my favorite wine bars, Uncorked. One of the many highlights included making personalized onesies with washable markers. There were multiple designers in attendance as well as the owner of the cutest baby store in Austin (Wee). After seeing what they created, there were talks of a potential new line at the store. And baby Anderson will be debuting the look in just a few short weeks :)

WEEK 35: Thanks to the cute baby blog iheartbaby.com, I’m now the proud owner of a three-piece Paige Lauren newborn clothing collection. It’s organic, super soft and nicely gender neutral. Note: For the 18 of you who guessed “boy” in the baby pool, you’ll be happy to know that the outfit above is from the  website, not one of my new pieces. Very cute, but not so male appropriate.

WEEK 35: The baby is now the size of a pineapple. Finally, a fruit/vegetable that makes sense. For the last six or so months, I’ve been receiving a weekly email from babycenter.com that talks about the development of the baby that week and equates it to a common fruit or vegetable. The shapes started out very cute in the beginning, like a blueberry or a clementine. They then proceeded to get more and more random, including lowlights like medium shrimp (not a fruit or vegetable), jicama, and the ever-popular hothouse English cucumber. I’d almost given up on this portion of the email, but they saved it this week with the pineapple. When I look at my stomach, that seems about right. We’ll see if they can keep the streak alive.

Other highlights of this week: we had our first baby class on Tuesday and Rachelle came to visit on Saturday. She asked if the baby was moving last night and it was - just like the night before, it was lightly kicking at an impressively steady pace. Rachelle put her hand on my stomach and started laughing. She said that’s not kicking, your baby has the hiccups! This made much more sense, though I am secretly bummed that the baby hasn’t already developed an advanced sense of rhythm already surpassing both parents.

WEEK 34: The BOB, the swing and the stroller. This weekend, we took advantage of the annual sale at REI and picked up the ever-popular jogging stroller known as the BOB. A big thanks to Pinky, Rocky, Sandy and Stella for funding much of the BOB purchase, it’s one of the few items that we knew we wanted from the start and didn’t change our minds about. The swing and our car seat/stroller - an entirely different story. While it would take entirely too much time to explain the hilarious stroller/travel system escapades (and the no less drama-filled swing indecision), I’ll just say that my sisters & parents remained good sports through both ordeals and we now couldn’t be happier with both. To anyone who thinks that baby registering will be similar to wedding registering, I can emphatically say it is not. And if you do need help, I have a 20+ page document that I can email you to get started. Just let me know.