We headed down to D.C. this Sunday to take a peek at the cherry blossom trees. In the five years I’ve lived here, I haven’t actually seen the trees in bloom during their peak time. This weekend happened to be the peak, so we ran down on the Metro to gawk at them with thousands of other tourists. Fortunately for us, it wasn’t all that crowded. The weather was nice, but very cold. Not too many people were keen on going out into 50 degree weather to look at trees I suppose! We got some good shots of the trees as well as the petals. Here is one of our favs:

I also have the obligatory “fatty” picture of my 24 week belly. My face is generously cut out of the picture because I was given Maurice the “please take this picture quickly so we can go to the slaughter house and slice off some bacon from my growing fat arse” look — at least, I feel like my face is puffy! I don’t think it helps that I’m so shrot-waisted. It seems to be all baby at this point, which wouldn’t be far from the truth. Bah. Anyway, belly shot:

 

I have to admit, I thought it wouldn’t be so bad walking up to the Austin Grill (our favourite D.C. restaurant). It was about 2.5-3 miles from the area where we took the pictures, and it would have taken forever for us to use the Metro with all of the line switches. Never again. I never knew what an aching pelvis felt like until I reached the doorway of the Austin Grill and begged for a seat. Note to self: don’t be a hero, get a freaking cab next time.

SLEEP! Oh — my — god… Maurice snores, that is no big deal for me usually except when I am kept awake not by him really, but by the baby. I got up to use the bathroom last night around 3:30am, right on time given my 2-hour interval rushes to the porcelain god, when I noticed crazy vibrations in my belly every few seconds. Great. Olivia had the hiccups for over an hour last night. At first it was funny and cute, then after 10 minutes I really was like “ok… you can stop now” so I could sleep. Not so lucky.

She finally stopped hiccuping around 5am, but I already booted Maurice out of the room so I could sleep at least somewhat in between the hiccuping and odd snorting noises he was making. Personally, I think he conspired with Olivia to ensure I wouldn’t get any sleep last night. I feel like death today, but at least I can post saying I felt the hiccups for the first time.

Needless to say, I demanded a Starbuck’s Mocha Latte at lunch to help give me at least some caffeine. I get decaf, but it still has enough in it to make me feel somewhat alive and in the conscious realm. I think I should stay away from Warhammer code today though, just to make sure I don’t destroy something…

We didn’t expect to get to this part this weekend, but we had both finished a lot of school work yesterday afternoon and decided to go ahead and put together the IKEA nursery furniture. It’s actually a lot more sturdy than you’d think. We didn’t feel comfortable with the crib; however, the rest of the furniture is splendid. Besides, who wants to spend $500 on a dresser and hutch that’s just going to get beaten up by a toddler in a few years? We spent in total $370 (including tax) on the set. There’s one other piece that needs to be hung up, but it’s just a shelf with some decorative hooks on it. Below is a picture of the IKEA furniture and how we arranged it in the room:

The model is “Leksvik,” which is the same model we used for our shelving in the living room. What you see here is a thin hutch (with the lovely keepsake gift from Maurice’s grandmother) and the changing table/dresser. The attachment for the changing table actually detaches so you can just use the dresser portion in the later years. It’s pretty nice!

Maurice and I ordered the crib last weekend thinking it would take 15 weeks to get here given all of the horror stories we had heard regarding special orders for cribs. Though we had received many generous offers for cribs, this is one pleasure we really needed to take part of with our first child together. We received a phone call this morning that alerted us to the fact that our crib arrived in 6 days from the time we ordered it. Honestly, I was floored. I didn’t think it would get here this soon, much less on a free day when Maurice wasn’t working so that we could go pick it up.

We were both so excited that we rushed back (after a pit stop at Famous Dave’s BBQ of course) and started putting it together. I had to clean out the sewing room. This was a little sad, because it’s as if I lost a bit of my studio for the handbag business. I know that’s slowed down quite a bit since starting graduate school though, so it’s easy to let go of having my own personal space. Here’s the before picture:

And here are the after pictures! Note, this is only the beginning. We have several gorgeous pieces of nursery furniture from IKEA that we’re putting together for the dresser/changer, hutch, and shelving. We just couldn’t do it tonight!Maurice happily putting the crib together (after I gave the pouty face around 9pm):

The crib after it’s been all assembled with a nice, firm mattress (Note: the dropside is in the down position… it’s not really supposed to be that low. We’re going to refrain from using the dropside anyway, since it isn’t really needed when the mattress is so high in the first few months):

And of course, an obligatory close-up shot of the teddy bear that I just had to get:

As we add more pieces, we’ll update the pictures in the blog. For now, we’re going to just settle down to play some Warhammer and watch TV!

GIRL!!!

Little Bit was very cooperative this morning for most of the ultrasound. I say “most,” because she was very… how do I say this… discrete about her nether-regions. The ultrasound technician was very patient and kind. She got one really good shot of the baby’s girl parts though, and we both agreed (of course Maurice is sitting there wondering what the heck he’s looking at). As soon as she let us see the goods, Little Bit put her hand down there and surprised the ultrasound tech, who immediately said “OH darn! She moved her hand down!” Haha. Very cute indeed!We only got one picture of our little girl today, a profile, but it’s better than nothing:

She’s  got a very cute nose there and her hand was up at her face before this picture was taken, so you may see a bit of how her lips are pursed as if she had just suckled a bit. It’s very neat to see it up front on the huge television screen, that’s for sure! Let’s hope the poor kid gets a better chin profile later, or the poor thing will look like me from the side

Additionally, she is measuring in the 34th percentile, so pretty much right on target for her gestational age. The doctor said everything was “perfect” and we had nothing to worry about in terms of abnormalities. We are truly blessed!

So, sometime in July, we hope to show even more pictures of Miss Olivia Grace Nelson