01/30/2008 - 29 Week Belly

We took a lot of pictures at Christmas but decided that I was due for another "official" belly shot.

Eric chose this outfit when we first started taking the belly shot pics. I was skeptical about being able to wear it for all of the pictures, but so far I'm still able to squeeze into it! We'll see if it continues to "fit" over the remaining 11 weeks!

Baby Grau continues to become more active. I usually feel her move some during the day at work but I feel the most movement when I'm lying in bed at night just before I go to sleep. Eric was recently able to feel some of the movement and I've actually seen my belly move a couple of times, which was also pretty cool. Showing more and feeling more movement have definitely made the pregnancy feel more "real".

01/12/2008 - Pink Gingham

Mandy's mom used various shades of pastel gingham to decorate her nursery (almost 30 years ago!) so she was very surprised to hear that PB Kids is still selling it and even more surprised that her daughter was interested in using it!

Our mom's and Mandy's Aunt Carole bought us a couple of items off of our registry for Christmas.

These curtains have a blackout panel in an attempt to darken a room that gets a lot of sunlight. We're still hoping that little opening above the top doesn't let in too much light.

This lamp has such a cute shape in person and will look great on the dresser.

This changing pad cover is so soft and the gingham liners will be very cute in some baskets that we plan to use with the changing table.

I found a changing table at a consignment sale for $15 (you can't beat that!). Eric's dad is currently refinishing it along with Eric's old dresser. We're all doing what we can to make sure that he doesn't get bored with retirement :)

01/06/2008 - Painting the Nursery

Eric painted the nursery the weekend before Christmas, but we just took down the painters tape today. At first we had talked about doing a darker second coat but we are officially sticking with the original color.

I think he had some fun with it :)

Here's the final color! It's probably hard to get a good feel of the color on the computer, so you will just have to come see it in person!

I took this picture of Daisy while Eric was painting the nursery. She got into a fight with another dog and got a cut just under her left eye. Daisy thinks she's a lot bigger than she is and tends to instigate things with bigger dogs. They usually just ignore her (or she out-runs them!) but this dog decided to teach her a lesson. The wound is just about completely gone now, but we hope Daisy remembers this experience for the future so this doesn't happen to her again!

Kathy Update

A few weeks ago, I posted a "pregnancy" picture of Kathy and me and said that she could be having her baby any day now. Kathy delivered Marley Sophia Harper (in a record short labor!) on December, 18 (the day before her big brother Ty's birthday).

She is even more precious in person!

12/25/2007 - Merry Christmas!

For our last Christmas "pre - Baby Grau", we did our usual tradition of attending mass and exchanging gifts with the Graus on Christmas Eve and driving to the Driggers' on Christmas Day.

My brother and Eric both got Guitar Hero for their Wii's. They played together a bunch and Eric has continued to play his every night since we've been back home :)

After spending a few days in Columbus, we had to get back to Chattanooga to get ready for a retirement party for Eric's dad. We were a little nervous about hosting a dinner for 15 but we were very excited with how the party turned out! Here is a video clip from the party and you can see pictures under "Photo Albums" on the right.

12/20/2007 - 23 Week Doctor's Appt.

Today was my 23 Week check-up. Since my doctor was delivering a baby at my 20 Week visit, he did a thourough scan of the anatomy this time. Here's what he told us:

• Our baby has a 3 vessell umbilical cord (which means the umbilical cord developed properly)
• The spine is fully formed and has good curvature
• From viewing the nose and lips, our baby does not have a cleft pallette
• All of the organs (stomach, bladder, kidney, liver, etc.) look good
• The heartbeat is in a good range (about 132)...we still love to hear it!
• The bone measurements indicate that the baby is growing at a rate that puts her within 2 days of our due date

He wasn't able to get as good of a view of the genitalia as the PA did (just based on how the baby was positioned), so he gave us a 95% probablility of girl as opposed to the 99% that we got last time. We'll continue to check on the gender, but as you can see by the previous post, we're proceeding forward assuming that Baby Grau is a girl!

He didn't print off any new ultrasound pics this time (she still looks pretty much the same :)). We'll post another update when I go back in 4 weeks.

12/16/2007 - Nursery Bedding

Here is a picture of our bedding. I actually found it in June on clearance at PB Kids. Even though I wasn't even pregnant yet :), I knew it was exactly what I would want if we had a little girl one day, so with it being on clearance I went ahead and got it!

I also got the crib skirt and bumper.

Here's a close up of the bumper. At first, I wanted a white crib to go with the bedding but I think the black will be more versatile if we have a boy later and when we convert the crib into a full size bed. And now that I see it together, I think the bright colors are really going to "pop" against the black.

You could maybe tell in the crib pics that we've been experimenting with a paint color. We decided to paint another sample in between the white trim, since the paint color that's already in the room was kind of skewing our perception of the color. We still think it may be a little bright/light since this room gets so much natural light but we're still thinking about it.

The only piece of furniture that we have purchased for the nursery is the crib. We're going to use Eric's old dresser and paint it black. I found these drawer knob pulls on E-Bay that coordinate with the bedding. I was very excited about this find!

These prints are another E-Bay find that coordinates with the bedding. My cousin, Kristy, gave me these at our gift exchange this weekend.

This is another Christmas gift from Kristy and Matt. It's a super cute toiletry bag for me to take to the hospital. It will also work great as a smaller diaper bag.

Here is an updated belly shot from our weekend in Blairsville. You can see more pics from the weekend under Photo Albums on the right.