22 weeks, nesting.

I still haven't really caught the nesting bug, but I'm doing what I can to prepare the house for Emily. My parents ordered our crib this week and it will be delivered next week. The bedding I found on Ebay should arrive at the same time. Chris had the idea of getting lowercase wooden letters and painting them to hang in the room. Not her name, but the whole alphabet, going around the top of the walls. I think it will look really cute, I just have to find the letters at a decent price! Everywhere I've looked only sells capital letters. Anyone know where I can find them around town? I think it would be a fun activity for Audrey to help paint them when she's here, I just have to find the letters first.

Audrey will be here in two weeks! I can't wait. We have most of her room put together, but we need a few more things. We don't have much time because we'll be out of town camping all next weekend, then she will be here a few days later. That means we'll have to do it this weekend, but it's Memorial Day weekend which means it's going to be crazy busy in town. Tonight we're supposed to finish registering at BuyBuy Baby, but Chris may be working until 7 or 8. I'd go tomorrow, but he invited some friends to spend the day at the lake on his dad's pontoon boat. Sunday I've got a baby shower in Austin, and I really would like to be able to relax on Monday.

We'll figure it out, maybe Sunday after the baby shower.

I'm pretty excited about tomorrow. Chris' friend Josh is coming with his girlfriend. I don't know them too well, but they're nice. I invited John and Kristen but they have family in town so they can't go. However, Lauren and Jamie are both going! I'm so glad they can come, it'll make it more fun for me to have some of my friends there. I'll post about it on Monday! I plan on sitting in the shade and reading most of the day :)

I've got my 23 week appointment next week with the doctor. The next one after that will be my glucose test, which I've heard wonderful things about (insert sarcasm here). I think next week will be pretty basic, but they'll be drawing blood again (ugh) next month. After that, I'll start going every two weeks, which means that Emily will be here before we know it! Crazy! I have to just keep reminding myself that all of this will be worth it when I finally get to see her, it's just so hard to be patient!

Here I am at 22 weeks.

21 week picture

I almost forgot!

Bedding!

I finally found some bedding that I loved on Ebay and bought it this afternoon! Hooray!

It comes with: quilt, bumper, sheet, 2 window valences, crib skirt, diaper stacker, toy bag, 2 pillows and 3 wall hangings.

The set retails at $269, sells for $130 on some discount sites, $99 on Amazon, but I got it for $75 (including shipping) on Ebay! Amazing.

21 weeks and we finally have a name!

After going through many names, we finally decided on...

Emily Jean Tyre!

We can't wait to meet her :)

My girly weekend.

I have to brag about my weekend. It was awesome. I finally got some much needed girl time.

During the beginning of my pregnancy, I just didn't want to go anywhere. I didn't want to see anyone. I wanted to sit on my butt at home and go to sleep at 7pm. It wasn't fun. I never got sick, but I felt like crap. If anyone tried to cheer me up, I would stomp on their optimism. I was Debbie Downer.

Now that I'm further along, life is sunshine and rainbows again (ok, not every day, but waaaay more often than before). I want to go out with my friends. I want to see people. Away from my house. I actually drive out of Blanco, it's amazing.

Saturday morning, I headed out to Bee Cave to meet Kristen and Jamie for pedicures! I really needed one, I have gotten to the point where while I can still reach my toes, it's pretty uncomfortable. We all decided on some bright summery pink colors, then sat and gossiped for a good hour while our feet were pampered.

See how happy we are? I forgot my camera, but Jamie had us covered. After the pedicures, we stopped at HEB for some fruit for smoothies, hot dogs and macaroni and cheese (homemade by Kristen, not Kraft). Our afternoon consisted of drinking beautiful non-alcoholic pool drinks:

Floating in our awesome $5 floats:

Lounging in the pool (Jenny and Elijah joined us later on):

And being incredibly jealous of Jamie's stupendous hat:

I found out that I'm allergic to starfruit (after I ate it I nearly lost my voice for about an hour, but it wasn't a big deal). I also discovered that my little girl reacts to the cold pool water and going from being in the shade to being exposed to sunlight! Her eyes aren't open yet but she can sense light and dark, and the sunshine made her wiggle. I was sure to give her plenty of it (with plenty of sunblock of course):

Yes, that is me in all my pregnant bikini wearing glory. John is kindly cleaning the dead frogs out of the pool. There were probably about 50 in there, no joke. They can swim, but they can't live in chlorine. Sad. And gross.

Meanwhile, Chris was at Mudfest in Poth, TX. He had a good time, aside from having to sleep in his car and losing his phone twice. Luckily Davey found it twice, once after Chris had completely given up hope and gone home without his phone, telling me it was lost in the mud. Turns out it was in the front seat of someone's truck. Ah, boys. He came home covered in mud, head to toe. Hard to be mad at him for staying out all night when he looked so exhausted, but I managed for a while. He slept while I spent the afternoon with my mom and visited with my family. Dan is finally home from Lubbock! It's nice when the whole family is home.

Oh, we picked a name! More on that later :)

FINALLY picked out a crib!

Yesterday I went to Babies R Us with my mom and finally decided on a crib! We're getting the Davinci Kalani Convertible Crib:




Pretty, right? Now I have to decide on bedding!

New bed!!!

I came home from work yesterday and Chris looked like he had been sitting around doing nothing all afternoon. He told me he hadn't made it to the grocery store yet, but I knew he didn't have much to do all day. He asked if I would go to the store with him, then mentioned that Roger pooped in our bedroom earlier. And he didn't clean it up.

"What!? It's still there? Did you leave the bedroom door open while you were gone? What is wrong with that dog? Bad dog! The bedroom is going to smell so bad, I can't believe you left it there!"

His reply "yeah it already stinks."

Ugh, fantastic. I'm pissed off, I grab some paper towels, a plastic grocery bag and some Oust and prepare myself to walk into the poop den. Instead of poop, I find...

Oh! It's not poop, it's a new bed! [I did ask him if the dog really pooped or if he just wanted me to go look in the bedroom as a precaution. No poo this time.]

I'm so excited! It's the bed we picked out a while ago, but hadn't gotten around to purchasing. We've been sleeping on a nice mattress on the floor for a few weeks. Chris drove the whole way up to Round Rock, managed to get through Ikea without buying anything except the bed and some kitchen towels (we love their 49 cent towels), brought it home, set it up, AND saved us $50 by getting his own boards & cutting them to size instead of buying the slats that Ikea sells with their beds.

Now I don't have to monkey crawl my way in and out of bed, I can just sit down like a normal person.

He's pretty wonderful sometimes.

Half Baked!

We made it halfway!!! I'm 20 weeks pregnant today, which means we've got 20 more weeks to go! The past 20 weeks have flown by, so our little girl will be here before we know it!

Chris and I went to BuyBuyBaby to look at cribs last Saturday. We LOVE that store. We decided to do our registries at Target and BBB instead of Walmart. If you've never been to BBB, it's the Bed, Bath & Beyond for babies. It's owned by the same company. When you walk in, you think you're in Bed, Bath & Beyond but when you start looking around you realize that it's ALL BABY STUFF. It's incredible. We loved all of the cribs, but they're super expensive. We showed my mom the one we liked the most and she's helping us find a similar style for a little less. My parents want to buy the crib as our shower gift, and I really can't expect them to spend $500 on it! We found a matching carseat and pack-n-play set:

It looks like we may be getting a darker wood crib after all. The ones that we looked at this weekend were much nicer than the dark cribs at Target. You can tell that they're real wood, they don't look painted and we're not as worried about them getting scratched. We found a really cute bedding set at BBB, I love it!

After our trip to BBB, we visited Jamie. She just moved back to Dripping Springs for a while. She had a bunch of people over for dinner and swimming. We didn't get much swimming done because it was cold and kind of rainy, but we had a good time. It was great to see everyone. I hadn't seen Jenny in ages, so I was happy to spend a little time with her! We had fun, I managed to stay awake until 11 before I had to go home. I'm spending this Saturday with Jamie at the pool again. We're meeting up with Kristen and Missy (she's in town from Houston) to get pedicures, then we're lounging by the pool. I have been waiting a long time for a day like this, it's going to be wonderful.

Chris is either going to Mudfest with Josh and Davey (don't ask) or kayaking and fishing with Jerald all day. I'm kind of hoping he goes fishing, because then he'll be back Saturday night. Mudfest is a couple of hours away and he'll be spending the night in a gross camper with a bunch of muddy drunk guys. Sounds terrible to me, but maybe it's a guy thing. I'll enjoy my girl time!

Sunday was Mother's Day! I had asked Chris a few weeks ago if it was silly to want to celebrate since I'm a sort of mom. He said I'm pregnant and a step-mom, so it counts. I told him I didn't want a gift or anything, I just wanted a special day. We slept in and I was really hoping he'd offer to make me breakfast but we were running late so he went to see his step-mom while I showered. We stopped at his mom's on our way to meet my family for lunch. She was getting ready to take Chris' little sister Tori to an awards ceremony for her karate classes. She's doing so well, I'm proud of her! Both of Chris' sisters (Tori and Lisa) made honor roll this year! We've got some smart girls in the Tyre family! It was really nice to see Chris' mom, it had been a few months since I saw her last. She was happy to see me and my belly, haha.

We met up with my family for lunch at Might Fine (mom's choice). It was delicious, as always. We went by their house for cake & ice cream and Mother's Day gifts afterward. I got her some wine and chocolate. The wine label was "Mad Housewife," I thought it was appropriate! It was nice to see the family, I'll probably stop by and see them again this weekend.

When we got home, Chris said that his dad had mentioned that this time next year I'd be asking him to celebrate Mother's Day. Chris replied "yeah, she already is." He mentioned again later (joking) that I wasn't a real mother yet anyway. It really hurt my feelings. I cried. The last thing I wanted to hear on Mother's Day was that I'm not a real mother. Joking or not (maybe I can't take a joke?). I feel like a mother, he told me before that he thinks I'm a mother, but on the day that you're supposed to celebrate that fact I just felt horrible. He did say "happy mother's day" when I woke up, but that's about it. I guess the holiday meant more to me than it did to him. He said he doesn't care if we celebrate Father's Day, but I do. I think it's important. I felt a little better later, we took Roger to the park and watched him chase ducks. Still not the way I envisioned my first Mother's Day, hopefully next year will be better. Maybe a card?

Nursery Advice

Does this all match? We don't really have a theme, which is fine. If we have to replace something, it won't be a big deal trying to find the right pattern. I don't want everything to be pink, so we chose a few things in blue to give her room a little balance. My biggest question- does the bedding match the lighter colored crib we picked out? We decided against the dark stain and really like this cinnamon color, it matches our rocking chair.
We like this bedding, not the crib:

What do you think?

19 weeks :)

I think my belly grows overnight, I swear it gets bigger every day! I took a shower this morning and when I tried to bend over to wash the bottom half of my leg, well, it didn't work. I'm going to have to get a stool in there like an old lady! Chris made a comment about how big I was getting the other night, and I told him that it's going to get a whole lot bigger! He said he couldn't see how (although he did say that my bump is very cute right now), and I couldn't tell if he was joking or not but I decided to google some 8-9 month belly pictures to show him just how big I could get.

Shock and awe! His eyes got huge! Haha. He knew that I was going to grow, but I guess he never really pictured it before then. Good thing I showed him, now he won't be too surprised when my belly takes over.

He's finally coming home tonight! I know, he's been gone 2 days, but it seems like longer. He called on Tuesday night and talked to Roger. Poor dog took off running all over the house looking for dad! He couldn't figure out why he heard Chris' voice but couldn't see him anywhere. Silly dog. Last night he heard Chris on the phone and started playing like Chris was chasing him around, it was hilarious. I feel bad for Chris, they put him up in a crappy hotel in a tiny little town that only has one road. They have a Walmart, but he says it's the smallest Walmart in the world, about the size of Blanco's Super S. He has to go back next week, but just for a couple of days.

I went to dinner with Lauren and Hayley last night, it was great to see them! I'm so glad I have them to help with the baby shower, because I am completely inept when it comes to party planning. They have all of these plans and ideas, and I would have just told everyone on facebook where to show up, thrown some beer in a cooler and called it a party! They've got a handle on the situation. A few suggestions seemed to be a bit much- good ideas, mind you. Just a lot of work. I know I'm not the one doing the work, but it's a backyard BBQ, I don't want them to have to do too much. Thank goodness for those girls, they're great. They kept me entertained all evening, by the time I got home it was bedtime! I had no time to be bored or lonely and got to talk to Chris a bit before I went to sleep.

Oh- last weekend was our sort of one year anniversary! We met on May 1st, a lot has changed in the past year! I never would have guessed things would turn out the way they did, but I am thankful for everything that has happened. We are definitely blessed, I couldn't ask for a better life right now. We celebrated by starting our registry at Target and going to see How to Train Your Dragon. Cutest movie ever, I'm buying it for Audrey when it comes out on DVD.

This weekend is Mother's Day! Some people say that a pregnant woman shouldn't celebrate because she's not a mother yet, but I think that's crap. I've got a baby, I'm a mother. I don't want gifts, just a little recognition. I'm working hard on this baby! We're going to go out to lunch with my family to see my mom, then stop to visit with Chris' mom on our way back home. Should be a good weekend!


19 weeks!

Sleep/Shower

Chris is working out of town this week, and I feel horrible saying this, but I slept sooo much better when he was gone! However, I think it's because I propped his pillows up against my back so I didn't roll over in my sleep. When he gets back I'll get another body pillow for my back and see if that helps. I hope it does, my aching back didn't wake me up at all last night.

He's only been gone a day but I sure do miss him. He's in Giddings- only about 2 hours away. It's so boring at home without him. Last night I was showered and in bed by 7:30, no joke. I couldn't even fall asleep because the sun was still out!

Tonight I'm having dinner with Lauren and Hayley in Dripping Springs! I haven't seen Hayley in I don't know how long, and it's been a while since I've seen Lauren as well. I think we're meeting about the baby shower, but it'll be nice just to see them. I decided that I want a coed shower because I want Chris to be there. It's supposed to be a celebration for the baby, and I'm not the only parent. I think it's important for him to be there, but I wouldn't want to force him to come to a traditional girly shower. I think everyone will have more fun if they can bring their other half, and it'll be more laid back. I'm excited!

Tomorrow night I'm going out to dinner with Brianna! I think the last time I saw her was last year sometime, I'm looking forward to it! Too bad I can't have a margarita with her like old times :)

Here I am today, 18 weeks and 6 days. I'll post about the rest of my week tomorrow, hope everyone is having a great week!

IT'S A GIRL!!!

First of all, I was just so glad that Chris finally got to see her. It was incredible seeing her for the first time with my mom, but it was just so amazing to have Chris there with me when we found out that we are having a precious little girl. I cried. I tried to hide it, but I totally cried. I didn't care if she was a girl or a boy, I just wanted to know, and finding out was the most awesome feeling in the world. It's not just a baby, it's our little girl.

On my way to the doctor's office, I spent a good 2 hours searching all of south Austin for a blank VHS tape. Finally found on, then when I was on Lamar I witnessed 7 lanes of traffic come to a complete stop to let a mama duck and her 6 babies cross the street safely. SO CUTE. I wish I had time to get out my camera; they literally had traffic at a standstill. Only in Austin are motorists on the lookout for tiny ducklings, but will run over a cyclist without a second thought. Ahh.

Chris met me there when he got off of work, I gave him the clean clothes that I brought for him only to realize I forgot deodorant. His feet smelled horrible but I was still glad to see him. I got checked in and he went to get me some snacks because in my quest to find a VHS tape, I had forgotten to eat lunch. Sweet man. We find out that the doctor is running an hour behind, but we only ended up waiting about 20 minutes before they called us in.

The tech came in and asked me if I brought a CD. No, but I brought a VHS like your form suggested. Um, apparently they've upgraded from the 80s and now use CDs but never bothered to update their forms. She had a pink CD (foreshadowing??) that she gave to us, and now I'm stuck with a crummy VHS that I'll never use. She puts the goop on my belly and started looking around. You know how I said it felt like the baby was rolling over and over like a fish? Turns out that's exactly what she was doing. She was like me in the middle of the night, constantly rolling over and adjusting her adorable little arms trying to get comfortable. It was so cute! Every time the tech got a good shot, she'd roll right over and give us the back of her head.

The tech took a look at our little girl's tiny little feet, they're long and skinny like her dad's. Then she looked to see if we had a boy or girl in there. Before she could get a good look, I started cracking up and baby moved away. I couldn't help it, she showed us this tiny little hiney and had her little legs all bent up and looked like a frog! Chris said she was in a runner's stance. The tech finally got a few good shots and she's definitely a girl! Nothing there but the little lines, and she wasn't shy at all.

The doctor came in to look at things and confirm the sex. I made this part very awkward. He came with the tech and another girl. He said "this is my resident, Rebecca, do you mind if she watches while we take a look at the baby?" I said "sure, she's cute!" as in, "sure, Rebecca can watch, my baby sure is cute!" Yeah, didn't come out that way, and everyone thought I was talking about the resident. The doctor goes "and she's smart too!" I felt like such an idiot, I didn't even correct him; I just smiled and pulled my shirt up. Poor Rebecca, she's a pretty girl, but I wasn't hitting on her. I hope I didn't make her uncomfortable. He pointed out the three little lines and absence of boy parts, told us that she looks healthy (the baby, not Rebecca) and sent us on our way!

We called everyone under the sun to tell them the good news, and then got to talk to miss Audrey! She was ecstatic! She asked her mom what the baby's name was, and her mom said that it was up to me. So she said "Daddy, can I talk to Jessica?" She got on the phone and said "do you know that I'm getting a baby SISTER? You're having the baby today? What's her name?" I told her I didn't have a name and we'd have to wait a little longer, and asked her what she thought we should name her. She said "umm, I think I'll call her Ashlyn." Ashlyn is her cousin's name, so I guess it's the first name she thought of. It was still really sweet; I'm so excited for her to have a baby sister! I know she loves her brothers, but a sister will be something new for her.

What a day! I'm so excited about our little girl. Chris already called her daddy's little girl, and I'm sure she will be.