St. Thomas Babymoon!

We’re now back in chilly Cincinnati after a great week spent in St. Thomas for our babymoon! We picked a great week to be gone being that Cincinnati was under a level 3 snow/ice emergency for a couple of days! We had sunny skies and 83 degree weather every day and it was perfect!

Our room was right on the beach and we fell asleep and woke up to the sound of waves each morning and night! The staff was very friendly and always asking how the baby was doing. Izzy loved floating in the waves laying in the sun. Lots of kicks!

While we spent almost every day on the beach, we did charter a private sailboat to St. John. The sail was lovely and our captain took us to two different bays for some great snorkeling and the prettiest water I’ve ever seen! We saw lots of neat fish, manta rays, and I even touched a sea turtle! Hours of snorkeling left us with very sun-burned backs but it was well worth it!

I am so glad that we took this time out to enjoy each other and begin to prepare for Isabelle to come into the world! We had such a great time just the two of us! There was a lot of time to reflect on what our life will be like in the near future – stay tuned for my thoughts on that! Now its back to the daily grind and assembling baby furniture – I’m excited!

Pretty Nursery

Isn’t our nursery nice? The furniture looks so great sitting in our foyer that we may just set Izzy up right there! Not! This has been the home of our furniture since we received it back on January 6th. Another reason why I acted on putting the glider together – can you imagine two more boxes crammed into this space?! One more box is on its way and should arrive while we’re babymooning.

Relief is in sight! When we return from said babymoon, my dad will join us in Cincinnati to take all of the furniture we have piled up in our guest room/Izzy’s room back to his new digs in Toledo! Hooray!! Perhaps he’ll also help Brian move these boxes upstairs so we can get to assembling! Assembling furniture is one of my favorite things to do! (Shout out to Stella, my assembly buddy in college!) I’m really looking forward to putting everything together and in its rightful place!

We leave tomorrow for St. Thomas! While I’m dreading packing (yet another shout out to Stella and the other Boardwalkers who endured her packing sprees), I’m really ready to be in warmer weather and clear blue ocean! Bon voyage!

Gliding Into 26 Weeks!

Today marks 26 weeks! Isabelle has grown to 1 2/3lbs and measures 14 inches! Her hearing is more developed and her lungs continue to grow preparing her for that first breath of air!

Tonights Lamaze class included a tour of the labor and delivery floor at Christ Hospital. It made me a little anxious seeing everything and imagining what it will be like when it’s our turn. We were really pleased with the facilities and it’s nice to have a better handle on what to expect.

We received the glider and ottoman yesterday! I was anxious to see it in all it’s glory so I tore open the boxes and assembled it in the middle of the living room! It’s pretty much heaven! I then took it apart in order to scotch guard the suede cushions. I envision many hours spent reading in the glider once it’s put back together. Ahhhh…

Iz continues performing great Cirque du Soleil acts in my stomach. Brian has had a front row seat for these shows because her most breath-taking (literally) acts occur at night. I better get comfy, it’s almost show time!

100 Days!

There are 100 days until my due date! It’s exciting and overwhelming all at once! We’ve been quite productive lately so that’s making me feel better as we get ready to leave for vacation. This past weekend we ventured out to Babies R Us to register. Going into this, we had a pretty good gameplan:

Get up early-Feed me-Make First Trip-I get overwhelmed and shut down after a couple hours-Go home before I completely break down-Restart process in a few weeks to complete registry.

I am happy to report that we made it through the entire store without ANY meltdowns! I felt good all day and didn’t let things get overwhelming! It was still difficult because we are really clueless as to what it takes to properly care for a baby but I think we did a pretty good job! Only one broken nail when testing the strollers and car seats! I have to give a shout out to Nicole - she gave us lots of advice and recommended products before we started the registry and reviewed it and made further suggestions once we were finished! Thanks Cole!!

Everything else is going really well! Duke has taken to laying on my stomach at night and purring like crazy. I think Isabelle likes it because she gently nudges him back - surprisingly, Duke doesn’t seem to mind! Look how happy he is – really!

Get moving!

In addition to booking a great vacation, we’ve had a lot going on during the past couple of weeks!

1. Isabelle continues to grow! Weeks 23 and 24 brought about an awareness of movement for her…the website tells me to dance around and she’ll enjoy it.  I may just break out Karaoke Revolution and be a rock star in order to please her! Blood vessels in her lungs are developing to prepare her for breathing air! She’s about a foot long and weighs over 1lb, and her taste buds are developing. Lord knows my taste buds cannot get enough tasty food these days!

2. The nursery furniture arrived! We’re still waiting on the glider and 3 drawer chest to come off back-order, but they’ll be on their way soon! Now we have 3 giant boxes sitting in our foyer waiting for a space. We started the giant purge of all of our current furniture. We’re trying to pawn it off on our family first, then I might try craigslist, and anything remaining will go to the Got Junk people. I just wish I could click my fingers and it would all be gone!

3. I met with my friend Amy, owner of amo-ink, to brainstorm ideas for custom thank you cards and announcements! We had a great time catching up and throwing around ideas, I can’t wait to see what she comes up with! She also opened up a new space in the Reading Bridal District to share her great creations with brides-to-be and the rest of the world! If you’re in Cincinnati, be sure to check her out!

4. Lamaze class began! Every Thursday for the next six weeks (well five weeks now) we meet at Christ Hospital, where I plan to deliver, with nine other couples to learn what labor is like and how to manage it through breathing. The instructor, Tepu, is from Finland and is very experienced and quite an engaging speaker! There’s a lot of information to cover but hopefully it will prepare us for labor and make it a little bit less scary and painful!

5. I’m trying to do something active every day. One of the things that we learned in the Lamaze class was that 50% of women delivering at our hospital are induced. By being active and healthy in pregnancy, chances are higher that labor will begin naturally and progress smoothly. I’d much rather that Izzy enter the world right on time, if not a little sooner, and that it’s a rather speedy delivery. I’ve been making a point to do prenatal yoga or walk with Andy each day. As the winter progresses, hopefully I can keep it up!

Final Fling

I mentioned before that at a recent monthly checkup, the doctor recommended that we go on a final vacation before the baby comes. We seriously considered this and decided that with his vast knowledge, he MUST be right! And given the lifestyle change that will hit us so very soon, we’re probably not going to be traveling as much as we normally do so why not drain all of our hotel and flight points and splurge on something fantastic?

We did just that and booked a trip to St. Thomas for the last week in January! Only 17 days away! We’ll be staying at the Marriott Frenchman’s Reef and Morningstar Resort for 5 nights and added on an all inclusive meal and drink package – all of the fruit juice that I can get my hands on! I’m scrambling to find some sort of decent maternity swimwear and loading up on the sunscreen – the doctor also said that pregnant women tan very easily!

I would like to give a shout out to the Marriott Rewards and Starwood Preferred Guest reward programs that helped us accumulate zillions of points to make this possible. I will not, however, give a shout out to Delta – they get a grumpy face for two reasons:

1. When trying to transfer SkyMiles between Brian’s account and my own, they were going to charge us $200! Yikes, this is supposed to be a free trip! But I could turn around and transfer points from my Starwood account into Delta for free and Starwood tacked on an additional 5,000 miles for free! Thank you Starwood for being so gracious!

2. When redeeming the points mentioned above, not only did Delta charge a $15.00 processing fee, but then tacked on an additional $75.00 charge since the trip was 20 days out! I’m over you, Delta!

Despite our grumpiness with Delta, we’re very excited to be taking this trip! We’ll be sure to post lots of pictures when (if) we return!

Is it breakfast time?

So I think that I now have some official cravings! Breakfast food! Primarily pancakes and juice and these days breakfast is a necessity!

On days when we pass up the fine establishment known as IHop we’ve been making big breakfasts at home. This past week for example I bought pretty much every breakfast item at Biggs: eggs, doughnuts, turkey bacon, sausage, English muffins, regular muffins, Special K Redberries, milk, and, most importantly, pineapple orange banana juice! I’m proud to report that since then I’ve consumed each of those items at least once and the milk and juice are done-zo!

Now I’m thinking about the breakfasts that I’ll eat in St. Thomas – check back soon for details on our babymoon!

It’s A Girl!

We had an ultrasound today (12/29) at 22w4d (that’s 22 weeks 4 days for those of you that don’t speak pregnancy) and the tech confirmed that the “hamburger bun” shape signifies that it’s a girl! I don’t know that I’ll ever be able to eat hamburgers again but nevertheless, we’re very excited! It was a very emotional experience and makes the pregnancy seem that much more real now that we can refer to the baby as “her” or “she” and we even assigned her a name! Despite the poll numbers, we’ve gone with Isabelle Grace MacDonald. And I must say, while I hope to not go overboard in the next 4 months, I did scour the sale section at Gap and bought her a cute little jumper and polka dot bib to celebrate the big day! And I can’t wait for pretty much everything in this section to go on sale soon!

Other highlights from the doctors appointment include my first weight gain (I blame it on turkey and holiday cookies), and the baby weighing approximately 1.4 lbs. Her heart was beating at 146 bpm. Izzy is also quite the gymnast, she was completely folded in half during the ultrasound! Everything else is progressing nicely. The doctor said that I can take Tums for the uncomfortable heartburn I’ve been experiencing for the first time in my life. It will hopefully be a sweet relief! Our next appointment comes in 4 weeks when I get to undergo a gestational diabetes test!

Brian and I about to order the nursery furniture. This means that we have to get our act together and purge our house of all unnecessary furniture on the 2nd and 3rd floors. We’ll also have to think about registering soon which is a very overwhelming thought since we know nothing about the important items needed to take care of our little one.  122 days till little Izzy’s due date!

22 week belly shot

Here’s an updated pic of the ever-growing belly! The background sure does beat chilly Ohio!

Girl’s Name Poll

Just kidding. Turns out Brian is still only 50/50 on our girl name. And I will be happy with either of the following names as well. So now, we want to know what YOU think? Isabelle or Lillian?

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