Scenes from Baby Floyd’s first shower

Over President’s Day weekend in February I flew back to Bama to help host a baby shower for my sister-in-law Brandy and for my first shower in Fort Payne.  Here are a few pics Brandy took at my shower:

Me with several of the hostesses

 My mother-in-law, niece and sister-in-law came up from Birmingham

Delicious and super cute cookies!!

Some of the shower decor

The shower was held at the church I grew up in, and 14 women signed on to help host the event. Many of them worked with my mom, and I’m so thankful her friends continue to check in on the family and care for us seven years after mom passed away.

Anyway, in the South it’s traditional to give hostess gifts, but what do you get 14 women that won’t break the bank AND will be compact enough to travel from Mass to Bama? Coasters! I posted a few weeks ago about the Christmas gifts I made, and one of them was coasters. While I made four sets at Christmas, I made 14 sets for this shower! It was a bit crazy at the house for two days while I set up my assembly line.

It was also heavy. I didn’t realize how much 14 sets of coasters would weigh (though I should have—I did buy them and carry them to the car), and I knew I needed to carry them on so they wouldn’t break. Thank goodness for small, rolling, carry-on suitcases and really nice TSA agents who compliment you on your crafting ability while checking said suitcase for suspicious activity! Here are a few pictures of the process:

TONS of scrapbook paper needed for this undertaking...

Six sets complete!

And the other eight!

 The day before we had Brandy’s shower in Birmingham. I spent the weeks leading up to the shower crafting for my nephew who should arrive any day now! These are pictures of some of the gifts I made for baby Collier:

Applique onesies

Collier's rag quilt

Burp cloths

I got these from Etsy. Brandy can stick them on Collier's outfit and take monthly pictures.

My friend's mom made an owl rattle, and I included a candle. I also made a book through Shutterfly telling Collier about his grandmother Charlotte.

Preggo sisters-in-law!

Some of you know I started a temp job in January that was supposed to be for about a month. It actually lasted until March 2, which was really helpful financially and as a distraction to entering my third trimester. Even though I only worked there for two months, the women in my department were super sweet and threw me a surprise baby shower on my last day at work. I don’t have pictures from the party, but they gave us a laundry basket full of toys, books and other cute baby items. Such a fun way to end my time at Yankee Candle Corporate!

Pregnancy Observations

Just wanted to share a few random observations/anecdotes I’ve stored up over the last few weeks.

#1. Waddling: Lots of people describe pregnant women in their last few months as waddling, rather than walking. I think the general assumption is that it’s easiest to walk this way due to the size of a pregnant belly being in the way. However, now that I’ve experienced this, I have other causes waddling could be attributed to. (Granted, size is a factor, I just think there are other reasons people should also consider.)

Like back pain. Especially lower back pain. Now, one could say that lower back pain is being caused by the excess weight so we’re back at waddling due to weight. I beg to differ. You could just be me and decide against your better judgment to help move some furniture/other items and strain your back a bit. Don’t worry, it wasn’t too bad, and I learned my lesson. I think.

Leg cramps or stiffness can also create the need for waddling, although if I get a bad enough cramp behind my knee I tend to writhe around or imitate dance styles of the 80s.

#2. Enjoy any public education classes you attend: Andrew and I decided to do private childbirth education. A friend of mine suggested it since I want to try to deliver naturally with the fewest medical interventions possible. Instead of going to the hospital for classes with tons of people where we quite possibly won’t get through all the material while also listening to those who maybe should have chosen a later date to reproduce ask very, how should I put it, “interesting” questions, we do them at home. Our doula teaches classes at one of the local hospitals, but she also does private classes, and we have really benefited from the extra time. We’re able to cover everything at our own pace, and spend more/less time on what matters most/least to us.

Anywho, if you do attend a class at a local hospital or something similar, pay attention to others so you can be sure to leave the class with at least one good anecdote for the water cooler. We did go to “Keeping Baby Safe” last week, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that every couple in the room was genuinely interested in learning infant CPR and First Aid.

Or so I thought.

After we got through the first hour and a half of videos (that’s another plus to private classes—more discussion, less videos) about fire safety, childproofing, etc., we moved on to the CPR stuff. Toward the end, we had the opportunity to practice on dummies. This was when I realized there was one poor soul in the class who just did not want to be there. Or maybe his wife was the poor soul for bringing him against his will. Either way, he was annoying and distracting during our CPR practice, which at least gave us a good topic of conversation for the ride home.

When giving CPR to an infant, you’re supposed to give 30 chest compressions with two fingers, then two breaths. You continue with this 30:2 pattern. The instructor asked us to count out loud as we did the compressions to ensure that we were doing everything correctly. Most of us were mature enough to count out loud but at a quiet enough volume so as not to distract others. Not Poor Soul.

He not only counted loudly; he counted out of order. And he wasn’t counting as he did the compressions; he was counting while his wife did them to try and throw her off. Brilliant.

#3. Others’ comments: I don’t really get a lot of unsolicited advice or strange/humorous comments regarding my pregnancy, but I got one earlier this week that I thought was pretty good. I was at the bank trying to leave, and a little boy was in the way. His (probably) grandfather asked him to move for the “nice lady.” He then saw I was pregnant, laughed at said, “one and a half ladies!”

I laughed and said something in agreement. I truly wasn’t offended, though, as I’ve said similar things before, too. When I have friends with kids who are also pregnant, I generally tell people they have one and a half kids or two and half, etc. However, I could see how that might offend someone. He was older though, so you gotta go with it!

Crafty Christmas #2 (The final saga)

Yeah, yeah, it's a bit late for me to still be recapping the events of Christmas. Sue me. (Really, don't. Though we don't have much to be taken from us...a half-renovated home and two vehicles with 130,000 and 230,000 miles. Pretty disappointing, I'd say!) Anyway, here are a few details of some of the other gifts I made for Christmas.

Ceramic tile coasters
I was mainly waiting to post about these because I didn't get to see my bff while I was in Alabama for Christmas, and I made Katie a set of coasters that she didn't get until sometime later in January. I didn't want her to read about her gift before seeing it!!

Using this Tutorial, I made four sets of four coasters. All you need are tiles, scrapbook paper (or napkins, cards, etc), mod podge and a clear acrylic spray that is waterproof. I went to Home Depot and bought 16 ceramic tiles for a whopping $0.16 each! I had mod podge, bought the spray and also gathered some new scrapbook paper that I felt would match the living rooms of three of my friends. I've never seen Katie's current living room, but since she loves purple, I figured going with a purple/lilac theme was a safe bet.

All you do is mod podge the tile, put the paper down, mod podge on top (several coats) then do several coats of the acrylic spray. Again, check out the tutorial, but this was super easy. I've since made more and I actually like cutting the paper to have a border. The tiles are 4.25 inches square, so I found cutting my paper to an easy four inches around allows me to get the cleanest, neatest look.

Tea wreath

In the first Christmas post, I showed pictures of the enormous rag quilt I made for my friend Sarah. Because that was supposed to be her gift for Christmas 2010, I also made her a tea wreath. Sarah lives with three other women, and they are near the women's college so they have a ton of girls at their house all the time. They drink lots of tea, so I thought this was a cute idea to display your tea offerings. This was the Tutorial I used. I cut out a big circle of cardboard to start:

The tutorial says you can glue scrapbook paper to the wreath for this project, but I made a mess with that. Plus, my 12x12 paper wasn't large enough. I half-panicked and looked through my fabric scraps. I found one that would work and plugged in my hot glue gun. The fabric worked so much better and was much easier to glue and stretch around the cardboard. 

I then glued scrapbook paper to the clothespins and glued the clothespins to the wreath. I added some tea and voila!

Oh yeah, I also added the twine to hang it. I glued it in place between two clothespins so it wouldn't move.

Book letters
For two of my friends I decided to cover wooden letters with book pages. One of these women just finished her master's degree in secondary education and wants to teach English, so I figured it would be the perfect thing to hang in her classroom. Here's the Tutorial for those of you who want to give it a shot.

I needed scissors, an old book, a glue gun and a letter, which I bought at Michael's using a coupon.

Rip out book pages and cut them in strips that are close to the width of the part of the letter you are working on. Roll the strip, gluing at the end, then glue the roll to the letter. I hope Buffy and Ashley didn't read too closely...I used pages from a book Andrew and I had to read for premarital counseling. We didn't love it and decided to recycle it into Christmas presents :)

Book art!

Moisturizing hand scrub
For my step-sister-in-law I made this lemony moisturizing hand scrub: Tutorial.

I had olive oil, sugar and Kosher salt, bought lemon extract really cheap at Wal-Mart and grabbed some lemons at the grocery store. Follow the tutorial for amounts, but I decided in the end using a little less olive oil and more lemon extract worked best. If you cook a lot, this helps rid your hands of smells from chopping garlic and onions and keeps them soft and smelling nice! You can keep it in a jar under the sink or in the fridge if you might not use it often. My friend Kristin made some for friends and herself and found it goes pretty quickly though!

I also made an ice cream sundae basket for some friends and sewed an apron for my mother-in-law. You can find the basket on my Pinterest, but basically, package up goodies that can be used to make ice cream sundaes!! Cones, candies and I made a chocolate sauce, too. Just don't include the ice cream...unless you are running by the store on your way to gift your present!

Documenting the belly

I'm terrible at actually taking pictures of how I look pregnant. Mainly because I decided early on I wouldn't take pictures of my belly changing each week and post them on Facebook...totally cool if you wanna do that, it's just not my scene. Because I wasn't taking them to constantly update my "virtual following," I sort of just forgot to do it in general. I do, however, have a few pics from the journey to this point that I will now share with you. Beware, one is of a naked belly. It'll be okay, you can make it through :) On to the fun...

On the left, we have Baby Floyd at 17 weeks. This was taken about midnight after we got home from one of Andrew's company Christmas parties. I wish I had taken a picture the next morning, because my belly wasn't nearly as "pronounced" then. On the right, 28 weeks. I took this last night after I got to my brother's house in Alabama. Quite the difference...meaning, I actually look pregnant now! And yes, I am in maternity clothes. If you check out the timeline page, I finally bought a few things about two weeks ago and have been incorporating them into what I can still wear of my own clothes. 

Now let's look at me at 20ish weeks, Christmas time:

If you know my brother at all, you can probably envision the events/conversation that led up to this moment. His wife is pregnant with my nephew right now, and Jonathan claims he is gaining weight alongside Brandy. To prove this, he would often stick out his stomach and say they were having twins. Before this picture, he was teasing me that he looked more pregnant than I did. I'll let you be the judge; however, if you look at my belly at 17 weeks, then check it out again at 20 or so weeks, it sort of looks bigger at 17! (I told y'all I had a case of a disappearing belly...)

Since I'm in Birmingham right now--technically Homewood at O'Henry's--and I have the time, I'll share a few of the events of yesterday. If you read my Facebook status updates from the airports you probably got part of this, but I had several funny things happen yesterday as I made my way down the East Coast.

1) Security at Bradley in Hartford: the full body scanners were on yesterday, and I didn't even think about it. I personally have no problems with airport security--do what you gotta do to keep my plane from being blown up, I say! And to my defense, there are a TON of things you can't do/have to remember/be cautious about when you're pregnant. It's a little insane. Anywho, the first TSA man asks me if I have anything in my pockets, a belt, etc. I reply, "Nope, they're maternity pants!" I have no idea if he understood this, but they don't even have zippers.

He sends me on to the next guy, who puts his hands out to illustrate his point, right in front of my belly. He says something to the effect of, "Now ma'am, if you don't want to do this because you're pregnant, we can send you right over here." Click! Duh, a full body scanner would probably not be great. I thanked him graciously and went through the older, "maybe you could sneak something through" metal detector. The TSA man on the other side looked at my boarding pass and said, "I'm very glad you didn't go through that scanner." Such nice people in Hartford!

2) Getting my bags from security. As the TSA lady was quietly calling for back-up into her radio, I knew she was looking at my bag. I can't currently reveal the entire story, as it involves gifts for the 14 hostesses of my shower on Sunday, but basically, I had a tiny carry-on suitcase filled with a taped cardboard box, filled with heavy items. I know, this doesn't help much. Check back with me in a couple days and hopefully it'll make more sense! Another TSA lady takes my suitcase, which weighs 20 pounds, over to the table to put that weird swabby thing inside the suitcase. We have a conversation about what is actually in the box, and as she opens it she exclaims, "Well look at you! These are so pretty! You made these? How?" yadda yadda yadda. We then have a conversation about the wonders of Mod Podge and being crafty. I'm glad she was impressed with my presents; let's hope my hostesses are!

3) The winner of the most annoying Delta agent award goes to....the lady behind the counter at my gate! She totally stressed everyone out by repeatedly telling us how to load our carry-on items quickly, begging us to check a carry-on since 142 people on the plane meant not everyone could put bags overhead and constantly counting down the minutes we had left until push-back. Seriously. Shut up and smile! It's not my fault Delta only gives you 40 minutes to turn a plane around. Luckily I found a teeny tiny space for a very nice man to put my hefty carry-on of breakable goodies. I was going to put up a fight if they made me check that bag.

Both flights were a tiny bit bumpy, Baby Floyd was restless through most of them and I didn't follow my husband's instructions and put that suitcase overhead myself for my last flight. I know, I should've said something to someone, but I was trying to be efficient and quick. I got to Birmingham, had a fun dinner with my dear friend Mabes and slept well at my brother's house. Better still....I'm wearing flip flops today!!!

Second set of baby pics

We had another ultrasound on Jan. 17 so I thought I'd share those pictures. Our baby was slightly less difficult than the first ultrasound--the tech was able to get all of the images of the brain and heart she needed, and she was able to find out that our child does indeed have fingers! However, it's still a stubborn kid because we never got a really great picture of the face. The tech gave us four pictures when we left, and most of them show the face hiding behind an arm, leg or the cord. Here's what we got:

I'm not even going to try and identify what's the cord and what's a limb, but that is a nose and mouth in between the alien-looking parts :)

I think that is the cord in front of the nose...but there's an eyelid on the left, 

part of a nose and part of a mouth

Again, most of the face, but not fully!

We call this one "The Thinker." Baby Floyd can be seen in profile with a little fist under the chin. 

I thought the first three pics went really well with the last face shots we got in December, but the fourth one almost looks like a different child to me! The nose looks different--really everything. And no, pretty confident there aren't two babies in there! 

Cousin Steven's visit

If you had told me 15 years ago that one day I would willingly allow my cousin Steven to visit me and stay at my house for several days, I would've laughed in your face. True story. We fought constantly as kids, but thankfully we've both grown into somewhat mature adults and get along great now.

Steven lives in Tuscaloosa, Ala. and is related to me through my mother's side. Since our moms were really close growing up, my brother and I often saw he and his sisters (and other cousins since his mom had a twin my mom was also very close with). We took beach trips together in the summer, etc etc. Anyway, Steven decided sometime ago that he wanted to visit all 50 states by the time he turned 30. When I got married and moved to New England, it gave him the perfect opportunity to knock several states off his list in one trip.

After months of promising to come visit, he finally made it here on Jan. 11. The first day he was here our plan was to get to Vermont and New Hampshire. We succeeded, but there was this whole flat tire ordeal we first had to endure that resulted in my husband having to walk several miles to pick up the car after we borrowed his Jeep and no one from his office could drive him to the tire place. Woops! He enjoyed the workout, I think :)

So getting a much later start than intended, Steven and I drove about 30 miles north to Brattleboro, VT. Before stopping there, we headed east to Hinsdale, NH to pick up a rock. Steven wants a rock from every state so when he builds a house one day, he can incorporate them into a fireplace. I took some pics and video of him in NH, but the pics are on his camera. The videos are funny, but probably not to the general public--he basically tried to write his girlfriend's name in the snow and misspelled it...twice. And it's four letters. He really wasn't used to the cold up here!

This is from back in Brattleboro. We parked and walked part of the way across the Connecticut River into NH to get some pictures of the river and surrounding area.

Looking into New Hampshire from Vermont

Before leaving VT, we had to get a rock. We didn't find one quickly, and since we were trying to get back to pick Andrew up on the side of the road to make his trek shorter, we didn't have much time. (We also didn't make it to Andrew in time...) Let's just say I found a brick that may or may not have still been part of a standing building. He still wants a rock from VT, which I will find this summer, but the brick will do for now and makes for a lovely story :)

Steven's 25th birthday was Friday, and at his sister's request, we got him a cake with the old fashioned, sugary icing. We celebrated Thursday night so we'd have more time to enjoy the dessert.

Steven works in concrete, which often involves construction sites, so we thought this was perfect. 

He's super excited about me taking his picture!

Friday was a much better day--weather and car-wise. Where it had been snowy, gray and cold on Thursday, it was sunny and WINDY on Friday. At least it was sunny in Rhode Island where we headed. We had to drive through lots of fog and grossness before finding the sun, but once we got to Newport, we found it! We also found Purgatory Rd. and being the goofballs we are, couldn't resist pulling over for a picture. And one of the many rocks we gathered from RI.

After driving in circles for way too long looking for free parking, we ate a wicked cheap lunch at a place called Handy's, let Steven stick his hand in the ocean and then headed to the Cliff Walk. It's a three-mile walk on paved and rugged terrain along the cliffs in RI, and most of it is behind mansions in Newport. RI was under a wind advisory, but we managed to bundle up and walk 2/3 of a mile in and back out. One day I'll go back in the summer and finish it, but I figured the headline "Pregnant woman blown off cliff" shouldn't be part of my life story. 

This last one is pretty cool--2/3 of a mile in is a place called the Forty Steps. A website I found said this was the place where the servants who worked in the mansions came to have parties. Forty steps drop down to a little balcony at the bottom of the cliff. I won't say what we found down there, but let's just say some people need to keep their private affairs indoors, or at least clean up after themselves. 

We left RI and drove back to Mass via Connecticut so Steven could get a rock from that state. He flew in there, and we had dinner in CT, but we forgot to look for rocks. 

On Saturday, Andrew and I took him to Boston for the day, and it was pretty cold and windy. We still had a good time, walked more than six miles and saw the Freedom Trail, both Cheers' locations and had a great dinner at our fave Boston restaurant La Famiglia Giorgio. Baby Floyd also managed to make it up the 294 steps of the Bunker Hill monument. My knees were not so happy on Sunday, but it was a nice workout!

 Next to the USS Constitution, our favorite part of the Trail

At the children's museum that is next to the Constitution

Steven, hoisting a goat onto the ship inside the children's museum

Andrew and I left Steven at Boston Common so he could get a rental car and head to his last state of the trip--Maine. The temps dropped significantly that night, so he got to experience some negative degree weather in Portland before flying out of Manchester, N.H. on Sunday. Hopefully he had a good time, but I think his next visit might be in the summer!