Week 39 - Baby Mania

By Marnie:
Over the past few weeks, I've come to realize the kind of hysteria that an upcoming baby brings out in people.  I've received more calls, texts, emails and facebook posts from friends, family, and coworkers in just this past week than I think I've gotten in my entire life!  It's a little overwhelming knowing that so many people are anxiously awaiting the arrival of Baby Ov and are looking for any clue that she's on her way.  Rest assured, we can't wait to share the news once she's here!! 

There are so many things I'm excited about with the upcoming arrival of our baby girl.  I really can't wait to meet her.  I want to see what she looks like - what color hair does she have? Does she even have hair (we saw some hair in one of her ultrasounds so I'm pretty sure she does)?  Does she indeed have a long second toe just like Mike's?  I'm so looking forward to learning her personality.  I can't wait to see how Stella reacts to having a baby in the house and how the baby likes Stella!!  One of the things I'm most looking forward to is seeing Mike as a dad.  One of the conversations I have most frequently with this baby is how lucky she is to have Mike as her daddy.  I know he's going to be an amazing father - he knows how to have fun and be a kid and I know he'll be this little girl's best buddy.  At the same time, he knows when to be serious and I am confident that he will raise her to be a wonderful, respectful, confident, compassionate, caring, creative, responsible, amazing woman.  I've got the things like diaper changing, swaddling, feeding and bathing down, but I'm sure I'll learn a lot from him when it comes to being a great parent.

As we wait for Baby Ov to arrive, we have been trying to relax and enjoy these last few days/weeks together before, as everyone tries to tell us, our life will change forever.  One piece of advice we were given was to see a lot of movies because it will be a while before we have the time to see one.  We're both movie fans so we've seen lots of them lately. 

In addition to seeing a few movies this past weekend, Mike (happily?) complied with my wishes to clean the house again.  Thankfully it didn't need the in-depth cleaning we did the weekend before, but I still felt the need to spruce the house up a bit.  I also continued my streak of making food to freeze so that when we're so busy with this baby and tired and worn out, we at least have some food to eat.  I figured it out last night and there are around 70+ servings of food in the freezer right now.  I feel like I may have gone a little overboard, but I'm sure I'll be happy about my obsessive preparation a few weeks from now.

I'm feeling really good - so good that it's really hard to imagine that this baby is almost here.  I expected to feel pretty uncomfortable at this point and even a little miserable but I honestly feel no different than I did a few months ago.  When people learn that I'm due in less than a week now, they comment that I don't look 9 months pregnant.  Mike and I agreed a few days ago that between those comments and how good I feel, we're almost starting to feel like my due date must be off by a month.  I know that's not the case, but again, it certainly doesn't mentally prepare us for the very imminent arrival of Baby Ov.

We took a pic of the bump tonight.  I tried accentuating it a bit so you get the full effect.  This may (hopefully) be the last glimpse you get of it before it's replaced with a picture of me holding our baby girl!!

Week 38 - And Now We Wait

By Marnie:

2 weeks from the official due date. Before I knew our due date, I swore to myself that I wouldn't focus on a DAY because babies very rarely come ON their due date. It isn't easy to do and I certainly think of February 6th a lot, but I'm really doing my best to not focus on that day. I try to think more about the fact that this baby could come anywhere between now and 3 weeks from now. Either way, that's soon! I've had many requests from others on their preferred timing for Baby Ov to arrive (I'll get right on that!) and even more predictions for when she'll arrive (most predict that she'll be late - so not what a 9 month pregnant woman wants to hear!!). I'll take what I can get - what I'm getting is pretty darn good. =)

The big to-do this week was that our crib came in! They delivered and put it together on Thursday. Once Mike came home, he and our neighbor took the glider up to the baby's room and I commenced with all the arranging. I can't express how happy I am to have the room all put together. I spend a lot of time there now, sitting in the glider and thinking about our Baby Ov sleeping in her crib or rocking with me in the chair. Agh - I can't wait!! Here are some pictures of the now complete Baby's room!



The first picture is taken from the door as you enter the room.  You may be able to see Stella's backside as she's sniffing around the crib.  She's been enjoying checking out the new room - she misses being able to hide under the bed and being able to look out the window from on top of the bed.  She DOES like the baby's toys that are on the bottom of the bookshelf.  We're trying our best to discourage her and as much as I'm tempted to move the toys out of her reach, I realize we have lots of years of toys that she's going to have to learn to leave alone.  Or, she'll just share.  We'll see.

The second picture is of the crib and the giraffe and elephant paintings I did. The last is of the dresser and the Stella painting I did a few years ago.  As you can see, the room is very simple.  It's not over the top baby or over the top girly.  We painted the room not long before we found out we were pregnant and with ceilings as tall as ours, we were NOT up for re-painting in a more suitable baby or girl color.  I would have loved to put one of the paintings above the crib, but with earthquakes here in LA, it's not advised to hang anything above a bed and certainly not a crib!  So there it is.  We love it and are so excited to show it to our baby girl!

Now that the room is done, we're officially ready here at home.  We cleaned the house this weekend.  By cleaned, I mean that we dusted, scrubbed and vacuumed every surface in this house to within an inch of it's life!  I'm not sure this place has ever been so clean.  I just hope I can keep it somewhat close to this clean at least until Baby Ov arrives.  One of my fears is that I'll go into labor and our house won't be clean and then we'll have to bring a baby home to a dirty home.  Crazy, I know. 

Week 37 - Technically Full Term

By Marnie:
So we're now at 37 weeks which is technically full term. What?! Seriously? How in the world are we here already???

I'm feeling nearly completely prepared at home. We ordered all of our last minute must have items for the baby from Amazon last week. It was an exciting few days of lots of boxes showing up and unpacking all the fun baby stuff. I also packed for the hospital this past weekend. I travel a fair amount for work and am use to packing for a business trip, but I was at a total loss as to what to pack for having a baby! It took me forever to figure out what I wanted to take with us. I may not have everything I'll need or want, but at least the bags are packed and we won't have to figure that out when I go into labor.

Now all we need is a crib... Well GOOD NEWS! I got a call last week from the baby store and they're delivering and setting up the crib on Thursday. Woohoo! I couldn't have been happier. Had the woman calling me on the phone been right in front of me, I may have kissed her. I can't wait to walk into our baby's room and see it with her crib all set up and ready for her to sleep in.

Besides getting the crib in the room, there are just a few small things I would like to get done before her big arrival. I'd love to get one more good house cleaning in, make at least one more meal to freeze, and we really need to figure out what Stella is going to do when we head to the hospital. For all the planning we've done, I can't believe I've left that one detail out.

We had an appointment today with another ultrasound. Baby Ov looks great. She's measuring a bit smaller than expected but my doctor isn't worried. Her prediction is that she'll be between 6 and 7 pounds at birth. I'm quite curious to see how close to that prediction she actually is!

We took an updated pic of me last week which is attached below. I am thankful that I still feel great. I can only hope this continues for the remaining 3 weeks!

The Island.

by Mike

At this point one might refer to me as a guest blogger, as my presence has been inconspicuously absent from any postings lately. Marnie’s had the play-by-play covered, keeping everyone up to speed on the details, so I’ve decided to look back at some of my early thoughts. When we first learned we were expecting, obviously I was excited - and since we kept it to ourselves for a while, I would walk around with a smirk, thinking--

“I am special”
“you don’t know it, but I have a secret”
“seriously... I am going to blow people’s minds once I unleash this news”

And then I started looking around.

And then I started noticing.

Having a kid is about the least unique thing in the world. They’re everywhere. All those strollers in my way at the farmer’s market - filled with kids. Those honor roll bumper stickers - kids. Double-stroller outside the coffee shop - two kids at once - can't match that parlor trick. Then we took those baby classes - a dozen couples who are not only going to have kids, but have them in roughly the same time frame as we were - excuse me, people, WE WERE SPECIAL!

Part of my brightly colored world had turned to brown. My parade forecast called for rain.

Then I started thinking about one of my favorite shows - Lost.

Some of you have seen it, a lot of people gave up on it, great many web pages were dedicated to deciphering what it all meant. I can tell you what it meant to me - it was an exercise in perspective. The drama that went on on that island - and it was great drama, truly crazy stuff - would go unknown by the rest of the world. And yet, there they were, the characters - running, fighting, dying, falling in love, smote by smoke monsters (I really miss this show) - pouring their blood, sweat and tears into that limited life because that’s all they had - it was truly their whole universe.

And that’s what this is for us - this is our island. On a “big world” scale, very few people will notice if we have a baby or don’t have a baby. The world is going to keep on turning. Proud Mary’s gonna keep on burning. But it matters to us. We are having a baby. And she’s coming soon. And we’re excited and it’s the biggest thing that’s ever happened to us. And Marnie has prepped with the meticulous strategy & diligence of a pro football coach - we’ve got stacks of diapers, lists of to-dos, lists of to-don’ts, bins of clothing sorted by age - we know not only where the main entrance to the hospital is, we know both routes to the emergency entrance should the main entrance be inaccessible.

We’ve got everything covered except that doggone crib.

Til next time... thanks for reading.

Week 35 - Happy New Year!!

By Marnie:
Week 35?! How did we get here so quickly? How in the world is it 2011? It's hard to believe how close we are to the arrival of Baby Ov. There's not many days that go by when we don't proclaim "just __ more weeks!!" We're making our way through the last of our baby preparation list. I continually fret over what's left to do while Mike is able to relax in the knowledge that we've gotten most major tasks done. Quite typical for us.

I mentioned a few posts back about how it had been four years since our first date. New Year's Eve was the fourth anniversary of our second date. I seem to remember staying up most of the night and into the next morning during our second date. Fast forward four years later - we watched New York ring in the New Year and then headed to bed. In our defense, we got up at 5 AM the next morning to head to Pasadena and see the Rose Parade. It was one of my goals to see it and Mike surprised me with tickets he bought all the way back in February!

We loved the parade. The weather was perfectly clear, sunny and crisp. We had great seats and oohed and awwed over each of the floats. The pictures below are a few of our favorite floats. Note the gloved hand in one of the photos. There was a man sitting two rows ahead of us who waved his hand high at each passing float. It's actually a miracle that of these three photos - just one of them has his hand in it. At first it was a bit annoying but by mid-parade we got a kick out of his waving hand. I bet he had a sore arm today.

Mike has blogged a few times about his hopes for Baby Ov. He wants to be sure she isn't afraid "toss her hat in the ring", would like to keep her off reality shows like "Bachelor Pad", and wants her to understand basic airplane etiquette. I concur with all of his goals for our little girl. After our morning at the Rose Parade, I have a few things I'd like to add to that list.

About halfway through the parade, a few girls from one of the Rose Bowl game schools showed up to find their seats. They were in the row behind us and from the time they sat down until the end of the parade, they had a constant running broadcast of their thoughts of LA/CA/Pasadena/the parade. They were of the opinion that everyone in California was rude and had no manners whatsoever. They felt that weather was freezing (one of them was wearing a little dress that came about 6 inches above her knees with nothing covering her legs and short boots). They thought that every school band marching in the parade came from their state. They proclaimed that never in a million years would they ever live anywhere other than their home state. All in all, they just couldn't wait to get out of Los Angeles and back to their great state!

I'm all for a little pride in where you're from but my hope for Baby Ov is that she isn't so small minded that she believes everything in the world revolves around where she's from. I want her to have a healthy love for her home, mixed with curiosity and respect for places in the world that aren't exactly like what she's grown up with. Mike and I have both been lucky enough to do some traveling through the years and have even lived in a few different states than where we grew up. I hope we're able to provide our baby girl with some of the same opportunities we had. I want her to take in the differences of the place she's visiting, be respectful and appreciative of the new experience and put any potential negatives into perspective.

It's a daunting prospect to know that we're going to raise an actual person. It's up to us ensure she's a functioning and productive member of society. And hopefully we can keep her off reality tv shows, have some etiquette on planes, not be afraid to try something new, and appreciate new and different places and experiences.

Here's to a happy and healthy 2011 for all of you. We're so excited about what's to come in the next year!