Now if only we had a little more furniture...

Our apartment is cramped. It's cute and cozy but to be perfectly honest it's cramped. We have four full bookshelves, two full built in book shelves, two beds, two dressers, a sofa with a chaise lounge, a recliner, a small desk, a desk chair, a coffee table, a nook for shoes, two dvd cases, the tv and tv stand, four bookshelves serving as pantry storage, and a dining room table and chairs. We also have various boxes and items sitting around because there's no storage space left to shove them. hehe Whew!

And now we have a crib and a cradle and I couldn't be happier! :) My parents visited over the week of Thanksgiving and they brought one of the two beds we now have set up, the cradle, and 9 boxes of my books from home. hehe The bed was mine as a child and will serve nicely as a guest bed for people coming to visit. The cradle was made by my grandpa for me when I was an infant and it's now going to be used for our little one when she makes her arrival. While they were here they bought us a crib and mattress from Ikea and helped us build it and situate it in our room. It's beautiful. Natural wood, simple design - perfect! Once we have a bigger place, the plan is to give the baby her own room and move all of our dining room storage shelving into her room as bookshelves and storage. The stuff in the dining room is dark brown-black and will be a nice contrast to the light crib.

My mom, being the crafty woman that she is, not only arrived with a knitted baby blanket, a hand-quilted baby blanket from scraps of a quilt she made my brother and a quilt she made Craig and I, and a quilt front of nursery rhymes she's going to finish and give to the baby, but she's also said she'll make me my own crib set so that I can have the colors I want instead of the stuff we've found. How awesome is that?!

Craig and I ran into a slight problem while looking for crib bedding. The problem is that Craig wants monkeys for our bedding and I want the colors green, purple, and brown. Those are fairly hard to find together. I can find green and brown and green and purple but not together - at least not without something like butterflys all over it or whatever. Sooo - my mom and I picked out a green fabric and a purple fabric that she's going to use as a back and front to a simple quilt. She's going to use a monkey face I found as a template to put on the green side of the quilt, thereby getting both monkeys and the colors I want and then she'll use the same purple fabric for a skirt. We also found a nice white with little purple flowers to use as the cover for a crib bumper. I can buy the fitted sheets in green, purple, and this really cute monkeys and brown polka dots and we're good to go! There's a wooden wall hanging of a monkey face similar to what will be on the blanket that I'm going to put up on the wall next to either the baby's name or some saying in brown and purple lettering. That's my current plan for the baby's crib space, etc. As you can see, the nesting has begun. :)

All of my mom's generosity and craftiness has gotten me thinking about crafting. I can cross stitch (but then again, a monkey could cross stitch - it's not exactly complicated) and I've been attempting lazily to learn how to knit for some time. I've never really sewed, at least not in earnest, although I've always thought about it. I value the items my mom has made for me so much - graduation quilt, wedding quilt, scarves, wall hangings, etc - and I'd really like to be able to do the same thing for my little girl. I think I want to learn to do more than just cross stitch. As much as I love it and find it relaxing, I also recognize that cross stitch art/craft is pretty tacky outside of the occasional holiday decoration or simple piece. Sewing and knitting have a little more versatility. I'm perusing sewing machines now in hopes of finding something cheap and efficient to start out on. I'm also thinking classes would introduce me to people in the community and since I know almost no one here, that would be a good thing! :)

Baby kicks

It's official - our bean is a kicker. She's been doing it for quite a while now but I felt it on the outside for the first time on Tuesday. Craig felt it on Wednesday. She's very fond of kicking in the belly button area. :) Lots of movement around eating and drinking times. She's quiet when I'm up and moving and quiet (so far) at night.

It's a brief update but I had to make a note. We get a big kick out of her little kicks! :)

And for the really big news...

and the final announcement/post for the day...

We're having a baby girl! :) WOOT!

We went in for an ultrasound last Wednesday morning and found out we're having a baby with 2 legs and 2 arms weighing around 1lb and counting and most definitely a girl! The ultrasound tech was way nice and the whole thing went very quickly and smoothly. The baby cooperated to a degree but as has been the case since the beginning, wouldn't hold still for a minute.

I learned that what I thought were tiny kicks to my bladder whenever it's full is most likely a head butt as baby is laying head toward my right ovary and feet toward my left ribs. Of course, as I type this, she's probably shifted positions. :)

We go back to the doctor on the 4th of December and will get the big run-down about all the different measurements, etc that the tech took and the radiologist looked at. Hopefully all is well!

I'm most definitely visibly preggo now. I need to take a few pictures of me and post them here - soon, I promise - and I'll definitely be putting a picture or two if little Miss Falvo at the end of this post.

On an equally awesome note - we were going to go with a baby co-sleeper attached to my side of the bed but we just don't have the $$ to get something only to get rid of it once the baby's 30+ lbs and have to buy something new. Instead, we've found three different cribs at Ikea that we like that with mattress included are roughly the price of a co-sleeper. The crib can be kept in our room (we have nowhere else for it) less than 1 foot away from my side of the bed so baby and I can be close while at the same time investing in something that we can use a lot longer. PLUS - the crib will be right under a totally blank wall and I can do baby decorations! I was feeling a bit down that I wasn't going to be able to do a full nursery because of space and $$ so I'm completely stoked that I'll have this one little space to make a cute area for baby. :)

We can't wait to meet our little girl! The ultrasound doesn't show much but we already know she's both adorable and a handful!

Job!

I have a job! Woot! It's not much and it's retail but it's a job! :) I'll be a part time seasonal sales associate over the holidays. It'll help buy groceries and perhaps it will lead to a more permanent job but maybe not. Either way, it's a nice buffer and I'm looking forward to being among the living on a regular basis.

I had a meeting this morning that talked about their holiday sales strategies. It was all very new to me as I've never really worked retail before. The people seem friendly so that's a bonus. I go back on Tuesday morning for some training and more information. I'm hoping that the schedules work out so as not to interfere too much with my family visiting for each of the holidays.

Go me! I'm keeping my eyes out for a more permanent job closer to my field but I'm not discounting that I might enjoy my 25% discount on pretty, shiny things and getting paid to talk to people about said pretty, shiny things. Besides, we have a baby preparing to make an arrival sooner rather than later so that's the main focus right now.

That said, if anyone hears of any kind of historic preservation/museum work in the Seattle area please drop me a line! We desperately need dual incomes as we move into the parent/paying back debt phase of our lives.

Explaining My Radio Silence

Sadly...my computer has died. Well, it's not dead so much as resting with a severe concussion and no earthly idea of what it is. It can't find it's hard drive. *sigh* It keeps showing me a folder and either an exclamation point or a question mark. It's been over a week since I've turned it on. Sad to say that this loss coupled with our now complete lack of internet, purloined internet but whatever, at our apartment means not a whole lot of interweb time for me.

I'm currently typing this blog from Craig's computer using the church's internet. Go me.

On the upside, I do believe my computer is fixable but we just don't have the money to fix it at this time - we don't even have the money to get it looked at so for a time it will sit quietly in a corner until things shift.