Project Mattress

So like I obsessed about cribs, now I'm obsessing about mattresses.  Just as with the crib, I thought I had made a decision and now I'm thinking I want something else.  Here's what I have it narrowed down to.

No compromise Organic
   Pros: most affordable
   Cons: noise and puffiness
I saw a floor model @ the baby earth store, and it was indeed noisy and puffy as some of the reviews on amazon had indicated, reviews also questioned durability

All Natural Latex
   Pros: my sister has this and loves it, it's super comfy, uses wool for fire retardant
   Cons: my niece sometimes gets sweaty, my bro-in-law thinks the pliability of the mattress makes it a pain to change sheets

Nook Organic
   Pros: you to not need a puddle pad or mattress pad, breathable latex (to prevent the sweating mentioned above), uses wool for fire retardant
   Cons: I've never seen it and there are not many reviews to be found, the price is higher than the other two

And now on to the, "What will the baby sleep in for the first weeks/ months?" question.

Pack n Play with Organic Cotton
   Pros: free, good for travel
   Cons: cannot have this right next to the bed, not totally non-toxic (and after making the crib such a healthy environment it feels wrong for him to begin his time at home in anything less), terrible reviews and no longer available (but my sister never had a problem with it), cardboard and thin foam for mattress

Arms Reach Mini Co sleeper
(this is what I really want)
   Pros: baby is right next to the bed, good for travel, can probably find one on craigs list
   Cons: the mattress is a foam that is treated, and I would want to buy an replacement mattress, not totally non-toxic

Put the nursery crib in our room

   Pros: not buying anything extra, completely non-toxic, I'd feel better about splurging on a nice mattress

   Cons: pain to dissemble, can't have baby next to the bed, baby has to sleep/nap in our room

Anyone want to voice their opinion or advice on the matter?  Let me know what you think is the best deal!

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The Nursery Theme

People have asked me for the theme/ color scheme in the nursery.  Here are a couple pictures to give you an idea!

Bedding - I didn't pick a set, because so much of the money is wasted on the bumper and crib skirt.  Since my awesome crib does not need a skirt, and bumpers are supposed no-nos, I focused my search on sheets.

Curtain from Land of Nod
This is the overall color scheme.
Major bummer: this is out of stock till February!

Organic sheet from giggle.com

Decoration - I'm still at quite a loss here, but here are some pictures I really like.

Lanterns to hang from the ceiling.
I'll probably add ribbon to dangle down.

I LOVE THIS
Can someone tell me how to make it?
A stencil perhaps?

This expensive wall paper, I really wish it was a piece of art I could buy.

I like the use of scrapbook paper on both of these names.

I like the wreath, but don't know that it's a worthwhile craft.

I would LOVE opinions, and suggestions.  Within my immediate family I'm the craftiest and most design savvy, but that's really not saying much! (please note, this includes only those related to me genetically)

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Needles in a Wheat Stack

Every year for the past 4 I seem to have the same problem.  My body decides that its #1 job is to produce mucus.  It is often accompanied by loosing my voice once or twice, sneezing on occasion, and a cough.  The first year that it happened it lasted from around Thanksgiving to Easter.  Not the whole time, but on and off throughout.  During these phases I usually feel pretty good, it's just really obnoxious.  Occasionally I think the drainage causes infection, but just minor, and then I get over it.

Let me frame this all with the fact that I'm not a big fan of pharmaceuticals.  However, the first year this happened I went to the doctor, got a round of antibiotics ... it did nothing.  I went back, they gave me an inhaler ... it did nothing.  I took allergy pills with a decongestant: they helped, but made me loopy and dried me out.  The next 2 years I was very inconsistent with what I took, and just let my body run its course.

This past week the mucus producing fairies returned, and I went to the acupuncturist.

Hubs started seeing an acupuncturist when he was dealing with all of his hand problems, and credits the Dr (along with massage and some physical therapy exercises) with his return to being normal again.  Now the acupuncturist didn't just do acupuncture, he assigned hubs with lot of homework: breathing exercises, stretching, nerve gliding exercises.  He also tested him for common food allergies, using a crazy and unsubstantiated science called "applied kinesiology," and found reactions to peanuts, tomatoes and casein.   However, after he eliminated those foods, he noticed a decrease in puffiness in his hands.

So, I went to my appointment today.  Long story short I reacted to histamines, wheat (but not gluten), shellfish, dust and pet dander.  I then had a 20 min acupuncture treatment to reset my immune system.  The Dr thinks that the more quickly and completely that I can eliminate wheat the faster I'll see this clear up.  I figure I'll give it a month and try to do it cold turkey.  If it causes a significant improvement, I'm a believer.  However, this means no stuffing or pie at thanksgiving, and no cookies or cake at my baby showers. :(

I suppose I've been Paleo-curious for about a year, so why not give the wheat-free thing a try?  For those that don't know what a Paleo diet is, it's basically no grains.

Anyway, I'll keep you posted as to how it goes.

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Rich

About a year or more ago I was at Panera Bread with my boss and a co-worker.  I was struck with a very real dilemma: Asiago Cheese or Everything bagel?  My stomach did not know.

I decided on the Everything simply due to the fact that it was cheaper.  When I relayed this quandary and my solution (with much enthusiasm) to my boss, she said something to the effect of, "Don't live with a spirit of poverty."

I was half offended, half amused, but the gist of her words stuck with me.

When I thought about those words later, I laughed to myself: her husband is one of Dave Ramsey's biggest fans.  After all, I was just being wise with my money & resources.  I don't think I really understood the heart of the message.

Flash forward to about a week and a half ago:
I was looking up local photographers for a maternity & baby pics.  I was thinking about how much I love having memories captured with photography.  I started thinking how much I would love to have someone there to photograph the labor and just after birth, and how I'd love to have an outdoor family session and a studio maternity session.  I was thinking how great it would be to be able to own all of the images to archive.  I started to remember how picky I am about photography.  I started to feel really poor, and really sad for myself: there is no way we could afford everything I wanted.

After about a day or two of feeling really down, I realized how rich I actually am.  It hit me in the, "oh my gosh, I just remembered" kind of way.  Not just rich as in comparison to the rest of the world, which we are, but more that we are richly blessed.  We have so much for which to be thankful.  I felt kind of dumb that I had let this slip from my mind, but I also felt a huge weight lifted off of my shoulders.  Feeling sorry for yourself can get pretty burdensome.

Poverty is the curse of never having enough.  Poverty is not the state of being poor or needy, it is the state of wanting, it's the torment of never having enough.

So although I'm not going to have a professional photographer by my side to capture every moment, and they are not going to retouch them and hand them over at no cost, I'm more okay with the fact that I'm not going to get everything that I want.  I'm richly blessed.

I have come in order that you might have life—life in all its fullness.
John 10:10

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October has Arrived

The month has arrived & the low last night was 54!  The weather is glorious.

How bad is it that I really wanted to pull down the Christmas tree last night!?

Here's 2 bump pics side by side for fun!

16 weeks

26 weeks

I definitely did not realize how much I had changed!  It's pretty exciting.  I'm super eager to meet him, but I'm glad that I have about 3 more months to prepare.

On the preparation front:

We're registered.

We've made major progress on the conversion of the dining to office & office to nursery.

We're taking Bradley Method classes (more on this later).

We've taken two classes at the hospital: child birthing & breastfeeding.

I've started some exercises & and have become more vigilant of my diet - I want to start developing those taste buds for yummy flavors early!

I'm so glad I/we have moved from not really preparing, through crazy research, to having a plan and taking things one step at a time.  I'm sure that bouts of crazy research will happen again, but I think this time it will be a little more paced, and a lot less frantic (who knew circumcision was such a hotly debated topic!?).  But thebump.com's checklist assures me we're taking care of the things of which we need to take care, on time.

Last night I really felt like my pre-pregnancy self.  I went to see the Hubs play at The Tasting Room, and hung out at the bar and chatted with the bartenders, who I consider friends.  I even stayed till after mid-night!  What a rock star I am!  It was really fun to hang out in a chill environment and listen to Hubs rock out.  I think the cooler weather & being with friends really energized me.

There's a lot of self doubt that goes with being pregnant (and being/becoming a mother), but today I kinda feel like, "I got this, and it's gonna be awesome."

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Small group

If you know me, you know I love food.  I once had someone say to me, "you know a lot of people say that they always think about food, but I'm pretty sure you actually do!"  Or as other people have put it, "you are a fat girl stuck in a skinny body."

In recent years, especially since leaving dancing, I've toned down my food voracity, but I still really, really love food.

This past week was my turn to cook for our small group.  I decided on Brazilian Style Seafood Stew from my absolute favorite cookbook ever (really the only one I use, since everything else I find online), The New American Plate.  It's healthy cooking with TONS of flavor.  The health emphasis is on getting as many different phyto-chemicals as possible.  Think "5 a Day the Color Way."

I don't have any pictures of the stew, but I do have a mildly amusing story:  The stew called for one serrano pepper.  The asterisk next to it notes to wear rubber gloves to handle fresh chilies.  I've cut up many a jalapeno before and thought nothing of this suggestion.  Well as a massage therapist I keep my nails very short.  On the day I cooked the stew I had cut my nails exposing the more tender/ thinner skin that is usually covered by nail.  I finished seeding and chopping both peppers (for a double batch) and had moved on to some very pungent garlic (please note my eyes are already watering from an onion), and the tips of my fingers begin to burn, followed by the skin between the bases of my fingers.  I washed my hands several million times, and even put baking soda on them, but nothing but cool water seemed to help.  I sat down on the couch for a while, because I was in sensory overload, and then baby went to town like he was Lars Ulrich during mandatory Metallica.  The kid did not stop kicking for like an hour and a half!

On the drummer note: I bought this super cute shirt at Target thinking Hubs would be so excited about his future potential rock star offspring ...

and the first thing Hubs says is, "yeah, but he better not be a drummer."  When I gave him a "what?" look he said, "all drummers are weird, and it's the drumming that makes them that way."  A simple, "aww, that's so sweet," would have worked for me, but whatever, next time I purchase something music related for our offspring I'll make sure it's a guitar, cello or piano (the approved list of instruments).

BACK TO THE FOOD!

To compliment the seafood stew served over brown rice I made these tasty little fritters!

Brazilian Black-Eyed Pea & Shrimp Fritters

You can find the recipe here.  I wasn't feeling up to a repeat drum session, so I subbed the pepper for 3/4 tsp of cayenne.  This was a little too spicy for my taste, but not too much that I couldn't still enjoy them.  Next time I'll add more flour till the "dough" is REALLY stiff, since mine fell apart in the frying process.

I  also mixed up a side salad with red & green leaf lettuce, arugula, and spinach with matchstick carrots, bell peppers and sweet tomatoes.  Dessert was strawberries and little bowls with broken up pieces of white and dark chocolate: simple, cool, refreshing, buttery and bitter.  I thought it was the perfect end to the meal.

Hubs likes to tell me that small group is not all about food and hanging out with cool people.  And not that I don't really enjoy delving into the Bible, I do.  But good food and good friends are pretty stinkin' awesome too!

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Date night

Yesterday we adventured to the "Fast Track" Prepared Childbirth class.  I'm still processing a lot of the information, and I'm sure I'll talk about all of that later when I've better sorted out my thoughts and opinions, but for the past 24 hours (probably more) I've been consumed thinking about and trying to research things.  It's what I do.  I'm on or I'm obsessive!

For now, however, I am going to focus Friday's lovely "date night."

Although he did not have a gig scheduled, Hubs got a call around 1pm asking him if he could come play a networking event from 3 - 5 that day.  Because we didn't have any official plans that would be disrupted by this, and shoot, bring on the unexpected money, he went off to play.  Things were rocking so much they paid him to play an extra 45min.  woot, woot.

However by the time he was all packed up I was famished.  Since we have a small mountain of gift cards from various occasions (one dating back to 2006 ... don't worry I checked that it doesn't depreciate!) I sorted through them and chose the Chili's/ Macaroni Grill/ Maggiano's/ On the Border to spend: thanks aunt julie!  Hubs came and picked me up and off we went to indulge in ginger root cream soda, marsala cream sauces, and enough bread and olive oil to hold you over for a month!

This is from my sister's b-day dinner, but I don't have one of us from Friday.

Amazing (but heavy) Ginger Root Cream Soda

It was a really great time for us to talk about becoming parents.  We talked about how we were raised, our impressions of our parents, what we hoped to emulate in our parenting.  We are both so very blessed to have parents that are still together and still love each other; to be raised in homes where we always knew that we were loved and felt valued.  It really is such a gift.  We also talked about our fears.  We laughed at ridiculous things our parent's did:

My mom once let me spend the night at a friend's house hours after my dad had "grounded" me.  She exclaimed, "I just don't understand what grounding is!"  In her defense my father never explained his terms of what grounding meant, but even as an 8 year old I knew I shouldn't be allowed to go spend the night somewhere.

Thinking back I don't ever remembering a grounding that stuck: my dad would cast the punishment, and then leave (both parents were shift workers, so more often than not (from my memory), it was usually just one parent home).  My mom would be more than happy for us to keep ourselves entertained with our friends and so the grounding would end.  Oddly enough my sister and I were/are total rule followers and both have a healthy respect (and fear) of authority.  Even though in the home my sister was often defiant and outside the home I often got detention or warnings for talking too much!

Anyway, we ended our date night with Tutti Fruiti frozen yogurt, and headed home to our puppy love, Dancer.

Yesterday was exhausting.  It had emotional ups and downs from, "oh my gosh, I'm so in love with you and I'm so excited about bringing a child into the world with you." to "if you make that smirk or crack a joke like that in Labor & Delivery I'll take your life."  Funny thing, this being pregnant!

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