Nursery

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Slowly but surely the nursery is just about finished. It still needs a few more things on the walls and some other minor touches, but it is mostly there.

Well I found a way to justify the mini chandelier purchase after all. It's called IKEA makes amazing things for cheap. Thank you, Switzerland. And thank goodness for a great friend that made the pit stop at IKEA in California to seal the deal. I also took the advice left in my comments from my previous nursery post and installed a dimmer light switch. Brilliant.

My friend Stephanie gave me some great dresser knobs from Anthropology for my birthday 5 years ago. I liked them but I thought it was a random gift at the time because I wasn't quite sure what to do with them. I am very much not a hoarder but I have felt the need to hold onto these knobs for all these years because I knew I would use them some day. Nice work, Sonk. They work perfectly and add nice character to the dresser.

My most favorite item in the nursery was the first gift I received about a month after we learned we were expecting. My extremely talented best friend whipped out this beautiful "egg money" quilt in five days. You can't nearly see how amazing it is from the picture, but there are about 300, 1"x1" squares of adorable retro fabric. All of the fabric is from scraps my friend either already had or that she gathered from her fellow quilter friends.

Recently I have been spending more time in this room than in ours, aside from sleeping of course. I really enjoyed nesting my little heart out during my first week of maternity leave. Who knew folding and hanging tiny clothes and sitting in a rocker could be so entertaining?

Baby Flood

This little girl is definitely equipped for arrival thanks to the amazing support of family and friends and to some incredible baby showers … 4 of them! I feel like it might be more fitting to say I was flooded instead of showered. We are still in awe every time we walk in the nursery and see all the itty clothes, blankets, etc., etc..

Unfortunately I didn't snap any pictures at my first shower with all my friends from church since I am a complete amateur at this baby shower thing and was having too much fun taking it all in to take any shots.

My second shower was a double-shower for me and another girl in the office that is due the same week as me but with a boy. It was so great to have someone to check-in with frequently and to compare notes with that was experiencing similar things as me. The shower was our boss' idea and they graciously sponsored the event and turned over the logisitcs to our marketing/PR department to make it happen. They did such a wonderful job with the food, décor, details, etc. etc. There are about 50 people in a pool for a gift card for guessing the closest date/weight/length.

Shower numero three was a great experience. My sister Jen organized it, but many people

pitched in to help her with all the details. There was just something so special to me about being in a room filled with most of my favorite people in the world … people that have essentially helped mold my character and are a huge part of who I am. People that have known me my entire life, childhood friends, high-school gals, college peeps and of course family. I went home that night so thankful for the people in my life. I don't believe in coincidences all that much. I feel pretty strongly that different people are placed in our paths at certain times and throughout different experiences and hardships to help us get along. Looking around the room at this shower reminded me of this very thing.

Shower number 4 was a total surprise. I am pretty hard to surprise most of the time since I am pretty intuitive but these ladies did a great job keeping under wraps. The Young Women and my fellow fabulous leaders were sneaky and planned a little party when I took a mini-sabbatical from mutual last month to take birthing classes on Tuesday nights. They set up a mini sweat shop and made hair bows and flowers. I am pretty excited about them and about the fact that they all met my acceptable head-to-bow-ratio size requirement. They also surprised me with a fantastic quilt they made.





Our little miss made out like a bandit after all of this was said and done, and there were literally only a handful of essentials left to pick-up. She is one lucky gal to have such an amazing fan club before she is even born. We feel incredibly lucky and blessed and are getting really excited for her to get here and play with all her gifts!

Go Gators

Handsome Devil

Niels' 10-year class reunion was earlier this month on 10-10-10. Clever, right? Even though I wasn't super thrilled to waddle in 9 months prego it turned out to be a fun night and on a whole it was surprisingly less awkward than we both expected. I was pretty grateful that we both went to the same school so I knew most of his friends and didn't have to be a wallflower all night.

I will say that I do think it is interesting how Facebook and blogs have eliminated much of the excitement/shock factor of class reunions. We show up already knowing what people look like, where they are working, how many kids they have, what they "like" and of course what they need for their Farmville crop. My prediction is that reunions will eventually become extinct because of this very thing. Perhaps the 10 year events will stick around but I am thinking that the 20^th and 30^th ones will eventually become a thing of the past. Just saying.

September

September started with the great news that Niels passed part I of the NBDE (National Board of Dentistry Examination, becasue I know you were wondering). In a previous post I celebrated the milestone of him just taking the dang thing, but I figured we shouldn’t get too rowdy until the results came back even though I knew he’d be fine. I'm so proud of him and it definitely feels good to officially be more than half way through this chapter of life we call dental school.

Both of us are especially enjoying the additional time he has after school these days now that he is in his third year and is mostly in the clinic working on patients. That basically means a decrease in tests and homework, and an increase of interesting patient/procedure stories. One of my favorites so far is when he had to extract a man's front tooth because there was no way to save it and when he was all done with the procedure the patient looked at him with an extremely puzzled face wondering where his replacement tooth was. Um, there was no replacement tooth to put in … poor guy.

I think I may have mentioned before that I kind of like my nieces. Avery, the youngest of the brood turned 3 last month. This kid makes us laugh nonstop and usually without even saying anything. We just look at her mischievous eyes and can tell she is always plotting something in her little head. It is so interesting how siblings grow up in the same home with the same parents and have completely different personalities. It has been so fun to watch these girls grow up. Unfortunately, it’s happening way too quickly but word on the street is that’s how it happens. I guess we will experience that for ourselves pretty soon.



September equals fabulous soccer weather in Las Vegas so we have enjoyed going out to a few of the girls’ soccer games. Sydney has played for a few years now and is really becoming quite aggressive. It has been fun to watch her team advance from all of them huddling around the ball a few years ago, to actually spreading out and having strategies and plays.

Now Taylor usually does dancing/acting classes but decided to try her feet at co-ed soccer this season. She's doing great, but I can't help smiling when she runs with her hands out like a dancer and occasionally calls her uniform her costume.

We also took 8 hours of "prepared" childbirth classes. They were worthwhile-ish but I am not sure how helpful they were for me since I had read about most of the content they were teaching or I had heard about it from friends. However it was nice to be able to ask the nurses questions and I also think it was good for Niels to learn more about the whole process. AND he got to learn awesome skills like swaddling.

One of the funnier memories of the class is when we got to tour the hospital and more specifically the delivery rooms. We walked in with our group and the nurses started pointing out all the amenites, the crazy amounts of machines and the stale hospital bed. I got slightly misty-eyed and then I looked at Niels and his eyes were somewhat frothy as well. When we compared notes later that night we discovered that we were both emotional for two completely different reasons. I told him that the tour kind of scared me and gave me anxiety becasue I was envisoning myself giving birth the entire time and he laughed and said he that he was emotional because he was excited. Classic.

FAIL blog

I get frustrated when I neglect the blog and then feel like I don’t even know where to start and how far back to go when I finally catch the wild hair to update. I feel silly for going back a few months because bc by then most things are not all that newsworthy anymore. And then I begin to argue with myself about why we even have a blog. I say, “Self, we really aren’t that interesting. Maybe I should dump this thing.” But then self rebuttals and convinces me that we are having a child any day now and cute children ensure fresh blog content regularly. Self wins debate. Let’s just hope she’s cute, and not just that motherly bias kind of cute.

So until our little content maker arrives in t-minus any day now, I will dig into the archives and post some of our latest happenings and whereabouts.