Preliminary Furniture Shopping

According to my BabyBump phone app, I have somewhere in the ballpark of 200 days to go. As I stare at that number I think to myself... how on earth do I maintain a blog for that long? I know there will be posts about doctor visits and kicking and gender reveals eventually, but what happens in the other 190 days?

I've decided I will most likely go over products and baby gadgets I enjoy to fill in where I literally have nothing else to talk about. Hopefully this will serve as a helpful tool in choosing what products are right for me as a new mom and young mom (and maybe you too if you've happened upon this blog via a search engine or something of the sort).

My mom and I went out yesterday to do a little preliminary baby (window) shopping. This was not a trip intended to purchase anything, but rather a chance just to see what's out there (mainly in terms of nursery furniture). For me, venturing out into the sensory overloaded world of baby this early is probably a good thing. With so much going on, I like knowing that I have time to really go over my options and pick what I truly want rather than something I have to have because I've procrastinated my searching endeavors to the last moment.

Our first stop was at Burlington Coat Factory. Coats? What? Indeed. It's not just a place to get coats. They have a lot of discounted things including baby items. And then we did the obligatory Babies-R-Us run. So many nursery options. Luckily, I already know what "theme" our nursery is going to be so I don't have to worry about that. I really just have to focus on the furniture.

Our nursery will be fairly neutral (please, don't confuse neutral with boring!) with bits of a sagey/baby green. We'll throw another color in there once we find out the sex, but there will definitely be green involved. The main theme will be sheep and lambs. There will be plenty of time to discuss the theme in depth later, when I know more, but for now I'm just going to post a couple of the furniture options we looked at yesterday.

[caption id="attachment_259" align="aligncenter" width="560"] Westwood Geneva Collection[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_258" align="aligncenter" width="560"] Suite Bebe Barcelona Collection[/caption]

There were a lot more and if I remember what they were I'll come back and update this post later! We took pictures of most of the things I liked but mom has those :)

10 Weeks Pic

[caption id="attachment_253" align="aligncenter" width="560"] 10 Weeks Along[/caption]

Well here's the first one! No bump yet, but maybe a little bloating. ;) Initially, the chalkboard was a great idea (not exactly original..... but I like it anyway). And then I started lettering....and wiping it off.. and re-lettering... By the time I got to the "0" in 10, I was ready to find a new, and much easier idea. But alas, I had all these supplies, so I barreled through it anyway and I'm moderately happy about the outcome.

These photos will come every 2-3 weeks depending on how patient I'm feeling. Doing them every week would get monotonous and I would run out of typefaces (ones I can almost draw, that is..) fairly quickly.

The plan is to put them all into a book at some point, with other things like the sonograms, poems, craving, etc.

That's all for now folks. :)

Dream Land

Now that I've had a chance to recover from Max's seizure, I think it's time to post about something more lighthearted. (Max is doing well, by the way. While I was certain, in all my horror, that he would never be the same ole Maximus, it seems I was wrong. Thank God.)

I actually wrote this about 4 hours before Max's seizure with intentions to post yesterday.. but well.. you know. Anyhow, here it is:

You read a lot about dreams becoming more vivid when you're pregnant, and boy, they weren't kidding. The dreams are probably one of the first things I noticed before I even knew I was pregnant.

Generally, (before pregnancy) my vivid dreams were spaced out and didn't occur too often. Now I dream very often and very vividly. Not all of them are worth sharing, but here are some that I think you might get a kick out of. I know I did.

Dream One: I can't remember all the details now since this one was a week or so ago but the cast included Channing Tatum, Myself, and several people from my high school. We were all contestants on American Idol. But this was obviously not a normal American Idol in Hollywood. We were all on boats that docked into a place like Venice, except it had a dome over the whole island. We didn't do any performing in the dream, but I do remember passing Randy Jackson and Mariah Carey on gondolas and having intense discussions.

Dream Two: The most recent dream I had, I dreamed we had a girl. (In real life, however, I still maintain that it will be a boy.) But she came out as big a one year old, even though she was actually several weeks early. We were all excited but disappointed that we hadn't had any baby showers yet. So we really didn't have anything for her (crib, car seat, diapers... etc). Anyway, immediately after delivery I was walking around the room wondering where we were going to have dinner. And as Jill said in real life, "That sounds about right.."

Okay, maybe they aren't as funny written down as they were in my head. Oh well! I'll probably do more dream posts if anything else comes up that funny (to me...) or interesting.

My Sweet Max

Now that I've had a couple of hours to completely drain myself of tears... (Okay not completely because they still surface every few minutes..).. I guess I can update you on what has been the most traumatic night I've experienced in my life thus far.

Around 4:45 this afternoon I decided to take a little nap before Cory came home. Of course Max and Ace came with me and we all piled into bed. I woke up shortly after to the bed shaking. It was my sweet little Max. I panicked immediately and kept calling him and asking if wanted to go outside. It was like he couldn't see me. He could hear me and he wanted off the bed but he couldn't see the floor to jump. I walked over to him and he leaned against me so I was able to help him off the bed. He was having a very hard time walking but he made it out into the hallway. Once he was there I called Cory and told him something was wrong with Max, at which point Max started to seize and I completely lost my sh*t. I covered him with a towel and just hovered over him for a minute. I felt nothing but absolute terror. It went on for a few minutes and then he stopped. He didn't move, but he was breathing really heavily. He didn't respond to me calling him, but he finally lifted his head and growled at me. I went into the office and closed the door. I heard him get up and walk into the kitchen. He was very disoriented and I had no idea what to do. I took Ace outside to his runner and Cory's brother came over to help get Max into the car so we could take him to the vet. By the time Cory got home, just a couple minutes after max was in the car, Max was visibly better.

When we got to the vet, the drew some blood to send off to the lab, did their best to ease my worries, and sent us on our way. They said to keep an eye on him and not to be worried unless it start happening a lot more often.

We brought him home and and then Cory and I went to grab something to eat. When we got home we gave Max some time outside then I brought him in and gave him a bath.

He's currently laying on the couch with Cory. He's had a rough day, but he seems to be mostly back to being Max. My hopes are that this was a one time thing and that he just got into something he shouldn't have.

Sorry for the depressing post on what's supposed to be a joyous blog! But my pups are my only children until baby Taylor arrives, and I can't imagine either of them not being around!

10 Weeks and Counting

Ten whole weeks! I know, I know, it's still super early. Most people I know wait to tell everyone until they're safely out of the first trimester, but I'm terrible at keeping my own secrets.

I think the most logical next post for the 'ole blog should be on how I've been feeling and things that have changed. Most of you already know of my unabashed love for food. All of it. I'm not into the discrimination of any kind of food; be it fast, organic, green, home-cooked, of animal origin, of plant origin, from the land or from the sea. Well, that's certainly changed.

Weeks 5-8 proved to be the most difficult so far. I lost my appetite completely (and about 12lbs) and stayed fairly nauseated most of the day. This was particularly hard at Easter when all my favorite foods were being cooked in mass quantities and my heart and soul wanted to devour them all, but my stomach and brain insisted that I do no such thing. I'm getting upset now just thinking about it. Fortunately, that's as bad as things got in terms of morning sickness.

The last couple of weeks have been much better. I started slowly increasing my meal intake and now feel like everything is almost back to normal. Almost.

Here are a few things I still have some issues with:

• Pizza {Although, I did have small portion of a white, all organic veggie pizza at Grant Park yesterday that didn't give me issues. I think it's mainly anything that would come from a chain pizza place}


• Mayo based things {*GASP* my most favorite condiment}


• Leftovers {Once it goes into the fridge.... it's lost forever}


• Curry {I don't have much of an explanation of this one, but I gag when I think about it}

And here are some things I'd like to have all the time:

• Cold things {Popsicles, slushies, frozen drinks in general}


• Fried rice

I can't really think of anything else, food-wise. Another thing that has changed (errrr, completely gone out the window) is my memory. I told someone I work with that I was going to be 28 this year and I fully believed it. It wasn't until a week or so later when I asked Cory how he felt about turning 28 that he reminded me we would only be 27 this year. Terrible.

To distract myself from thinking about being pregnant every minute of everyday, I've been keeping myself occupied with gardening and yard work and really anything I can do outside since the weather has been so nice. I've also been making lists about all the things that need to be done around the house before baby Taylor makes an arrival. It's a long list. A very long list that I'll probably post another time.

I suppose that's it for now. Stay tuned, I'll probably start taking bi-weekly photos very soon.

And I'll leave you with an excellent video from my best friend Jill, in case you missed it on Facebook:

Our New Adventure

Well, as it turns out.. Surprise! Cory and I are expecting our first peanut this Fall! We're both pretty excited and maybe just a little terrified. We had our first ultrasound appointment on April 10 and everything looks good so far.

We were able to keep the joyous news fairly quiet for the first few weeks, only telling close family and super-close friends. Now we're ready to let the whole cat out of the bag and share with the rest of the world.

[caption id="attachment_25" align="aligncenter" width="560"] Our little peanut.[/caption]

We decided on a blog as an outlet to share our adventures through pregnancy and beyond with our family and friends. One of the main reasons is so we're not cluttering your facebook pages with a million pictures, tales of how terrible I'm really feeling today, and future tales of poo and vomit. This way you only have to read about those things if you really want to!

So here it begins! Hope you'll have as much fun reading this as I will writing it. Try not to laugh too hard because regardless of how many blogs and books I read, I still have no clue what I'm doing. :)

Oh! And by the way, our tentative due date is November 17!