A Week of Amazingness: Part 1

Week 30-Part 1 

The thirties have officially arrived and it is another milestone that I have been looking forward to for some time!  Not only the 30 week mark but also the week of our ‘Welcome Autumn’ Celebration and some much needed time with close friends and family.  While Lauren was our AMAZING host of the event, we decided to have it at our house which meant that the ever growing ‘to-do’ list of household chores absolutely needed to be done this week,  no questions asked.  Chris and I were busy beavers for 4 nights straight practically getting everything as perfect as we could to include shampooing carpets (which should be done almost monthly with 3 pups!), painting and putting finishing touches on the nursery, cleaning the garage, prepping the guest room and then of course all the weekly house chores that need to be done like the day before guests arrive so that the dogs don’t wreck havoc on what we already completed. 

How big Is Autumn?

How appropriate is it that she is about the size of a butternut squash this week?  I couldn’t resist the urge to go out and get a squash not only to demonstrate her size but also to make a yummy butternut squash/pear soup that I’ve been dying to make this fall.  She’s reaching close to her birth height by a couple of inches this week and has definitely breached 3 pounds by now!  Amazing how there has been 24 pounds of weight gain and only a 3 lb baby but I’m pretty close to being on track for 35-40 lbs of weight gain which is right where I should be at full term.
 

This week I began doing kick counts, once in the morning when I wake up and at least once in the evening.  The magic number is 10 kicks/movements in an hour and it usually only takes me max. 3 minutes to feel that-she’s busy inside of there!  I attribute it to the fact that a.) it is getting to be cramped quarters and b.) her brain is now developing more than ever and her movements are becoming more coordinated and predictable.  So crazy, cool!

How am I feeling?

I have definitely been a little bit more tired and in need of longer nights of sleep, the energy levels seem to drop more quickly in the middle of the day and I have found that eating is now more of a priority because I feel my stomach has little room left in there and while I may not feel super hungry, I still try to eat something every couple of hours. I feel like my whole day revolves around food sometimes, it's crazy.

I’m being told by one of my weekly pregnancy resources

No new cravings this week, still eating my eggs and organic milk with Omega-3 for brain building foo. Lots of Greek yogurt, which always gets her kicking like crazy, and of course my exaggerated sweet tooth.  Just perfect as the holidays near!  ;-)

Nursery Progress

Having the party this weekend definitely had us prioritizing to make some much needed progress in the nursery.  After all, the only thing completed in there was the crib!  We both agreed that we wanted the walls to be a shade of a ‘celery-like’ green-not too soft, not too loud.  Chris took it in his hands to go to Lowes and collect every shade of green sample that they had.  I was so proud and thankful that I didn’t need to go there and sift through the hundreds of colors!

We decided on our pick.  It was called celery green and in my opinion, I thought it would be perfect.  Example number one. 

I was so wrong and the picture definitely doesn't do it justice.  And here is Chris's reaction to our first color 'oops'.  This picture however does reflect how we were both feeling! :-)  Notice Lola happily sleeping through the debacle of cleaning the paint wand.  Oh, to be a dog!

The reference I use is that it looked like Big Bird ate some limes for lunch and then threw up on our walls.  It was a wretched yellowy, limey color that was neither inviting nor pleasing to the eye so it was back to the drawing board after a rough night of wasting a gallon of paint and cleaning the paint wand ( which took almost as long as the painting itself!).

Back to the drawing board.  I took my sister with me to Home Depot next after Chris and I got online and decided on what was called ‘Pea in a Pod’.  It was a ‘bluer-green’ but not too blue and was bright, but more muted than our last obnoxious choice.  I thought it was perfect, but Chris thought differently and so we found ourselves in a ‘paint battle’ that I found to be tremendously humorous-we just couldn’t agree together. We painted a wall and then decided to stop just to be on the safe side.  We both wanted to agree on the color and if Chris wasn’t pleased then I wanted to find a compromise.  So lighter, and softer we went down to a ‘Grassy Mist’ I believe it was called and Chris picked it up after work on Tuesday.

 I went to teach my last yoga class that evening until Autumn’s arrival ( which had a rockin’ 10 students) and came home to this.

 

I was SO PLEASED! Instantly when I walked into the room it felt cozy.  I liked the brighter green for that pop of color but the soft green walls balanced it perfectly and I couldn’t have been more happy with their decision.   It was ironic because as I was describing the dilemma to one of my students (which by the way, handmade these ADORABLE booties)

She suggested ‘Paint the walls different colors!’  And that’s exactly what I came home too. Quite ironic but in a good way!  Lauren is an expert trimmer and did all the trimming on the walls for us while Chris finished off the main painting.  Our goal was for us to get it finished by Wednesday night so that Thursday we would be able to put on the decal that I had ordered from Etsy that I was dying to see up on the wall.  We ran out of paint Tuesday night, so one more trip to Home Depot and then Wednesday evening we completed the last of walls and reflected on our ability to compromise (or rather Lauren and Chris’s ability to think on their feet and make the decision to just go for it!)

We were pleased with the colors and against the dark bamboo floors and white baseboards the green really popped.  I can’t wait to see how the decal, curtains and a rug accent her room and make it look complete!