BIG!

Today Andy and I went to the doctor for an additional appointment to check up on the baby.  Last week I was measuring a little large in the belly (I blame the 37 boxes of popsicles I consume on a weekly basis), and that, combined with the fact that she was measuring at the 92nd percentile at 30 weeks, had the doctor a little concerned.  So we went to visit with the ultrasound technician for what would be the SIXTH ultrasound of this pregnancy.  We thought maybe we'd get some good pictures this time.  HA.  Look at the best we got:

Hands in her face! EVERY. SINGLE. PICTURE.  Literally every picture we have of her from 12 weeks gestation on has her hands in her face. The tech said she has lots of hair and I'm guessing by this stubborn streak that it's going to be BRIGHT RED. Still, though, I think she looks pretty cute all snuggled up in there.  She looks less alien in these pictures than the last one.

When all was said and done, the tech provided us with a weight estimation.  As of this morning, she's clocking in at an estimated 7 lbs, 9 oz.  ALREADY.  And yes, I did say I am only 35 weeks along, meaning we've got about 4.5 weeks (at the most...I hope) left for her to just grow and grow.  Her weight right now has her in the 98th percentile for gestational age.  The good news is that there's no plans at this point to induce me or plan a C-section; the doctor said we'd just wait and see what happens.  She also said that if I could go two more weeks, she'd be happy, which means we're really coming down to it, so maybe it really IS time to put the car seat in the car and go get it checked out at the fire station.

Also, I'm back to measuring totally normal.  Today I didn't even feel so big!

I swear that bump is ALL BABY.  Oh, and probably popsicles, too.  I think this picture is deceptive because yesterday I was at the gym and caught a glimpse of my profile in the mirror in the locker room while I was changing and I almost passed out because I looked so incredibly huge.  This is probably why everyone was staring at me while I was (walking) on the treadmill.

Speaking of gym, my exercise routine is coming to a close.  I went to yoga last Wednesday and it was pretty difficult to get into most positions (even with modifications!) comfortably.  I mostly just wanted to lie on the floor and sleep, which I think distracts the other people in class.  I did go to the gym yesterday to walk, but by the end I was having some light braxton-hicks contractions and my belly just felt heavy.  Also, I have been having some random leg pain from the baby settling on one of the major nerves in my thigh, so I think that my days at the gym are numbered, if not over, for now.  Hopefully I can keep doing some stretching and moving around at home to stay limber and loose - I'm probably going to need it!!

Finishing Touches

I'm 35 weeks pregnant now - hard to believe that we've basically got a month (give or take) before the baby makes her debut.  We figured this weekend would be a good time to wrap up some final projects in the nursery.  This week's project was art!

A few months ago I was peeking around on the internet looking for art ideas that tied in with the woodland "theme" we'd started with the tree decals and I stumbled across Amy's Sullivan's Etsy Shop. Amy makes beautiful modern prints of all sorts of things from bears and whales to even weeds and chairs (seriously! Go look at her stuff, it's really cool!!).  When clicking through the site I also found these incredible cryptozoology prints of legendary creatures that I figured would be right up Andy's alley.  The second he saw them, he totally fell in love with them and I knew that's what we'd be putting up in the baby's room.  I put him on the task of picking a couple for us to hang (I was thinking 2-3) and he ended up buying a collection of five because he couldn't choose.  When we received our prints in the mail, Amy was sweet enough to throw in the 6th print for FREE along with a really sweet note about how to care for the prints and thanking us for our purchase, which I love.  Buying from Etsy is like buying something from a friend.  (Sorry Amazon).

I was so eager to get the pictures into frames that I didn't take any photos of them before I put them on the wall.  I DID, however, take a picture of Ripley helping me get everything framed:

I was going to get them custom framed, but we just spent all our money (even with a 70% off coupon at Michaels) doing this with some other art that Andy bought me LAST Christmas and couldn't even imagine what doing six more things would cost.  A lot of the other stuff we have in the house I framed myself by just buying some mats and frames and figured that would be okay for now.  Bonus - the frames were buy one get one free at Michaels, so we only paid like $36 for 6 frames.  Bargain!

Here are the pictures now that they're up on the walls.  You can go to Amy Sullivan's Etsy Shop (or come visit us!) to get a better view of them.

The Loch Ness Monster - note the baby Nessie.  All of the prints have the "monster" with its baby version.  These pictures are so cute I can barely handle looking at them, and if you know Andy, you know how perfect these are for any child of his.

Jackalope!  True story - due to the crafty taxidermied specimens of these you'd often see at places like Wall Drug, I spent a significant period of my childhood thinking these were real.

Kraken! Look at the baby krakens!

Sasquatch - indigenous to my home state of Washington. Also, kind of a hippie.

The Merman.  LOOK AT THE BABY MERPERSON WITH THE WATERWINGS!! I die!

Chupacabra.  Also not completely convinced this one is made up.

We also put up some shelves to display the baby's books.  Eventually I know we'll have too many to store on the shelves, but it's added cute art and keeps them accessible.  I may put a third shelf up later to have one that she can get to once she's up and moving around.  The shelves are from Ikea.  Thanks to Amazon, we can buy Ikea items even though we don't have one up here.  We just have to suck it up and live with the fact that all of the items cost twice as much than if we'd bought them from Ikea directly...

Many of these we got for our shower! Thanks friends! 

So here's the whole formerly blank wall:

before:

and after!

The other two prints are hanging on the wall next to the opening to the closet.  I forgot to take a picture...

I can now confidently say that the room is basically DONE.  We still have to put sheets on the crib mattress, hang the mobile, and get a changing pad for the dresser, but that stuff is all pretty simple. Also, we plan on having her sleep in the room with us in her pack n play for the first chunk of time anyway, so the crib can continue to wrangle stuffed animals for the time being.  I really love how the room has come together!!

Alaska Botanical Gardens

Happy Memorial Day weekend everyone! We're enjoying a nice long staycation weekend in Anchorage.  There's nobody in town, so it's been the perfect time to run errands and get stuff done without having to deal with normal weekend crowds.  The weather's been warm and rain-free still, which would ordinarily mean that we'd be spending lots of time outside, but mother nature has other plans for us.  Some of you may have heard about the big wildfires that are burning in Alaska - one in Soldotna on the Kenai Peninsula and another in Tyonek north of Anchorage.  Something about the wind has made it so the smoke has settled pretty firmly on top of Anchorage, which means we have to limit our outside activities.

Yesterday morning I took a picture of the sky with my phone.  This is looking east from the top of the sledding hill by Service High School.  Ordinarily, this view is FULL of mountains.  Not this weekend!

One thing we did want to do was check out free day at the Alaska Botanical Gardens.  I'd heard they were also holding a plant sale with plants they grow at the gardens (meaning, hopefully, plants that would also grow in our yard...), so it seemed like a good day to finally make a trip out there.  Thankfully the smoke wasn't too bad when we got there, and we were pleasantly surprised by this little gem just a few minutes from our house (and! it was free!)

All of the visitors were totally preoccupied with the plant sale, so we had the place pretty much to ourselves.  Even though it was early in the season, and some things were just starting to pop up, there was quite a bit to see.  Andy's being a nice husband and checking out the construction of the ginormous pergola.  I told him we need one of these in our yard.

The pergola is covered by an Arctic Kiwi - we have one at our house, too!

We also saw a number of swallowtail butterflies in the garden.  They're so pretty! One even posed for us, which was really sweet.

We really enjoyed walking around to see what kind of things grow up here - something new for me.  I wrote down names or took pictures of the signs when I could so I could take note for future garden planning.

Yes, we still have tulips blooming in almost-June.

And Narcissus (Daffodils)

Our yard is pretty empty right now, ESPECIALLY in front, but we do have one plant that's blooming like crazy.  I've been wondering what it's called so we can buy some more of it...thankfully it has a very memorable and completely adorable name:

Pigsqueak?! I love it!

These next two are extra-spready groundcovers that I think would also do well in our front yard.  This one is called Tartarian Statice.

And this is Aleutian Speedwell.

The botanical gardens also have a really impressive collection of primroses, which grow incredibly well up here.  I think we must have seen 20 different kinds, though I only took pictures of a few.

The gardens also have a ridiculous amount of peonies (one of my favorite flowers!), which weren't quite in bloom yet.  Andy and I decided the gardens would be a great place to visit when the moms come up this summer and we need some easy little outings to do with the baby.  We didn't buy any plants because someone there told us they sell them all year, so we figured we'd have time to do it later in the summer.  Looking at all of this it's so hard to believe that it was just finishing snowing this time last year and now we're surrounded by all of these beautiful flowers.  I love it!

Suddenly Summer

Long time no blog! I wish I had a great excuse for why I've neglected the blog for the past couple of weeks, but honestly I would say it's just the awesome weather we've been having.  Though it's a little disheartening that we haven't had ANY rain in something like 2+ months, it's been sunny, warm (hot even!), and gorgeous these past few weeks and all we want to do is sit out on the deck and enjoy the sunshine.  Of course I'm sure this means it will probably rain for the entirety of my maternity leave (and for when our parents come to visit!) so I'm trying to soak it up while I can.

A couple of weeks ago, we went to Talkeetna for a night away.  We headed out right after work on a lovely Friday afternoon.  This was May 2nd.  Can you believe it?!

The weather was awesome all the way up and the whole day Saturday.  It was kind of hazy out, but you can still see Denali, along with my Denali-sized baby bump (I'm sure I'm bigger now!)

I have no idea what this sign signifies, but this is the kind of thing you see in Talkeetna, so I had to include it.

On Saturday morning we headed out to the river to take Ripley for a walk.  At this point, just a few weeks ago, the river was just starting to break up.  Ripley didn't care, he went right in anyway.

Look at that view.  Ahh...

Poor Andy had to do a lot of Ripley wrangling along side the river.  There were quite a few people out on the banks birdwatching, which Ripley desperately wanted to participate in.

Here's what they were looking at.  Terns!

Some of the prettiest birds ever.  I love watching them fly.

And float around on little icebergs.

It was a really nice day or so in Talkeetna, even though it was very quiet.  We'd never been there in the low season (pre-Memorial Day weekend but after the winter activities are done) and it was so sleepy! Still a great place to visit though!

I think that was the biggest crowd we saw all weekend.

So as I mentioned, the weather's been wonderful.  We've spent the last couple of weekends sprucing up the yard and getting ready for summer.  All my pots are finally planted, and I've got some pansies...

...and marigolds...

I even planted some strawberries on the deck just for fun.



Our tomatoes are already blooming...

Along with all sorts of other flowers (more pansies)...

...poppies!

I don't know! I think some kind of bellflower? It was the first thing to bloom in the yard when the snow finally melted.

It's been so warm lately (in the 60s and 70s! I love it!) that the LILACS are even blooming.  I don't think we had lilacs until early June last year.  Also, as a horrific reminder, this weekend last year we were doing the March of Dimes walk in the SNOW.  We had to miss the walk this year because we had baby class.  We should have done baby class in February when it was 15 degrees outside!

I also planted some citronella, which we're hoping helps to cut down on the mosquitoes.

And the birches are leafing out!

Even my rhubarb is coming up quickly.  I love this time of year.  Everything seems to be in a race to get going.  I swear the garden looks different every day.

These are my delphiniums which last year made it up to eight feet tall.  I wonder if this extra shot of sun will make them even taller?

And even the ferns are coming up, though slower than everything else it seems, probably because they're in the shade.

All this plant activity has completely filled the air with pollen around here.  Thank god Andy and I seem to be (knock on wood!) missing the allergies we got last year.  We heard on the news the other day that between local blooms and some giant pollen cloud that rolled over from China or Russia, Alaska had more pollen in the air than anywhere else in the WORLD.  It sure seems like it since every time we send Ripley out, he comes back looking like this:

He would also like me to tell you that he's bored of all this plant talk and would like to go to bed now, so I guess we're off!

I promise to be more blog-attentive in the weeks to come.  We've been doing some other exciting stuff like baby class, birthing class, and other baby to-dos, so I'll fill you in on all that soon.  I can't believe I'm already 34 weeks now! Time flies!