Can we say overwhelming...Baby registries

Jason and I have officially completed one of our baby registries....only 7 1/2 hours after we started! We started our main registry at Babies R Us and have been to the store on two different weekends. We still have to go back a third time to completely finish it up. What started out as a lot of fun, quickly turned overwhelming as we stared blankly at the rows of strollers, car seats, and furniture, not having a clue as to what to include. The wedding registry wasn't that bad. You just scan in all the items you liked and thought were cute. Well, now we're shopping for a tiny human being, so safety and ratings become an issue, not just cuteness. Thanks to a recommendation from a baby book we have, we picked up Baby Bargains which helped us make some of our decisions. Also, many of you guys gave us your recommendations on stroller from posts on facebook, which we greatly appreciated! I will say, my favorite part of Babies R Us is the furniture section in which they have gliders to rest in! I couldn't have been happier to put my feet up and rest while Jason read through our Baby Bargains book finding which brands ranked the safest. Another favorite memory with the registry was Jason and me attempt to fold down and unfold strollers! I'm sure other customers could tell that we were first timers as we sat there making feeble, pathetic attempts to fix the stroller we managed to fold. One nice family came over to us to help Jason figure out how to put together a snap and go frame stroller. I love the boxes that say "one hand" or "3 second" fold....somehow this label did not ring true for us!

Jason spending way more than 3 seconds attempting to fold up this stroller!

Tips we learned the hard way about baby registries: always bring a snack and bottle of water (a hungry, tired pregnant woman does not lead for the world's greatest shopping partner), research the brands ahead of time so you don't stare blankly at rows of strollers for an hour straight, and make sure to locate the glider section, this will greatly help your tired feet!!

Maternity clothes or clothes for oompa-loompas??

So the time finally came when I could not fit into my existing clothes, and this is with me already going up one size from my normal size. Now before I go into this, I need to request that judgments on my tiny size be put aside or told only in secret away from me! Ha...j/k!! Most of you guys will get a kick out of my new dilemma, but let me tell you, I was not pleased as I stood in the Kohl's dressing room feeling like an oompa-loompa from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Let me explain....So the main problem is my size. As many of you know I am on the tiny size and naturally have trouble finding clothes to fit me. I often shop in the Junior's department, however I haven't found a Junior's department that has a maternity section in it...thankfully! So the problem came when my pants were unable to button without making me feel like I was a bloated, stuffed cow. On to the maternity section we went. We tried Kohl's first since we heard that Kohl's had a petite maternity section. They did and well, it didn't work. Most of the shirts I tried on were huge...making me look even more pregnant than I already am. And the pants....don't even get me started! The only pants we found were the ones with the sewn in belly bands and they were huge!! The worst pair that I tried on had the most puffy hips, then went down into skinny jeans...making me look like the world's funniest oompa-loompa. Who in their right mind would put a pregnant woman in skinny jeans??! Sorry if any of you disagree, for me skinny jeans were a huge no-no! Jason was standing outside the dressing room, telling me "you need to try this pair on. This pair is what you need." Don't ask me how he knew what I needed. It turns out he didn't. I tried that pair on and walked out of the dressing room looking like a clown! I looked at him and asked him, "this is what I need, huh?" Feeling defeated, we tried going back to the Junior's department and tried moving up one more size in the pants section. Another no-no. The waist fit just fine, however the rest of the pants still look like I'm wearing clothes that are too big. We finally left Kohl's absolutely defeated and only buying one shirt. Thankfully, Target and Old Navy came to the rescue both having nice maternity clothing that not only fit and came in my size, but also looked cute! I have officially decided that I will be keeping all of my maternity clothes until I hit menopause, because I'm not risking going through this hassle again!  

Baby bump at 15 weeks along. These were my old jeans that I cannot wear anymore. In the picture, the pants are actually unbuttoned as buttoning them would have been way too uncomfortable. This was the last time I wore these pants....bye bye normal jeans.

I'm the puppy...

As I said, I am the puppy and poor Jason is the kitty at approximately 11:30pm each night when he tries to wake me up from the couch to get me to go to bed. I saw this Valentine's Day card and thought the image was probably the most realistic to our situation. Thankfully, since I moved into the 2nd trimester most of my symptoms have subsided. However, the one that has stayed and gotten worse as been my energy levels. The new phenomenon in our household is my bedtime. I can be awake and alert at 9:30pm, watching TV or having a conversation, but come 9:45pm I'm out! And when I say out, I mean out. And since I can no longer curl up in a tiny ball, thanks to my expanding belly, I take up much more of the couch, leaving Jason with one tiny cushion. He does good, letting me sleep, but right about when he's ready to head upstairs for bed, he tries his best to gently wake me up and move me to our bed. This does not usually go over very well! Apparently, I am a whiny, pregnant baby when asked to move...ha! I whine, throw a small tantrum, and then eventually wander my way upstairs. I do manage to make a half incoherent apology before I head upstairs...thankfully, that part of my brain is still working! However, a few times during the weekend, I have made the decision to stay on the couch, sharing the couch with the cat until 6 or 7:00am. Thankfully, several of my co-workers who are either pregnant or have been pregnant in the past can attest to this new change. Apparently, I'm not the only whiny, exhausted person out there! 

Broccoli Anyone?

So today I officially became an accidental a-hole.  Perhaps I need to explain this a bit.  We found this great book in the store a few weeks ago which is for soon to be dads and it talks about a number of different personalities that dad's can have.  One of these personalities is the accidental a-hole, a guy who certainly means well, but inadvertently makes things more difficult for his pregnant wife.  When I read this I kind of figured it would be me, and sure enough I didn't disappoint.  Tonight I was getting dinner ready and I've been on this kick to try to clear things out of the pantry, fridge and freezer that have been there for a while (see earlier blogs about Amy needing a wide variety of food).  So I saw a bag of frozen broccoli that's been there for months and I figured this would be a good time to use it and open up some more space.  Now keep in mind that Amy a) hates broccoli, b) has always hated the smell of broccoli and c) is pregnant and therefore very opposed to strong smells.  Well I start cooking the broccoli which to me smells fine, but as soon as she comes downstairs she scrunches up her face and asks what is stinking up the whole house.  I innocently tell her that I'm just cooking some broccoli, and needless to say she wasn't too pleased with my decision making process.  It didn't really occur to me that with her already not liking the smell or taste of broccoli that cooking it while she's home may not be the best idea.  So for the next 10 minutes I ran in between the kitchen and the living room spraying air freshener and making sure I didn't burn the house down.  I also had to eat it as far away from her as possible which wasn't exactly the romantic dinner I had envisioned.  So that is how I was officially inducted into the accidental a-hole club.  I'm pretty sure that 99.9% of dads that are out there are already part of this club, so if you have any similar stories please feel free to share.  It would certainly help me feel like less of a jerk.  Needless to say, I think I'll wait to have my next helping of broccoli around this time next year (just to be safe).

Winter Wonderland

As many of you have probably heard, this has been a pretty nasty winter for Connecticut.  I think so far we're up to something like 80 inches of snow or something ridiculous.  After I got done shoveling our cars out, I took a bunch of pictures to give everyone a better idea of what that looks like.  Keep in mind we got the 2 feet of snow from that one storm about a month ago, these were taken on February 2nd.  So I'll take you on a quick tour.  This first picture is the front of our place, the pile of snow to the left is sitting on what should be my parking spot (which is now located in the "overflow" lot like a half mile away).  Pretty sure I'll get that spot back some time in June.

Here's a view of our mailbox and the street sign to give you a better idea of the height of the snow.

Now we go to our front door which as you can see has been decorated by mother nature.  Thankfully some of these "decorations" have fallen but needless to say we don't linger on the front porch for any length of time.

Now to end our tour, we'll move to the back of our place.  On the left of the first picture is supposed to be our A/C unit (haven't seen that in like a month and a half) and we actually do have steps coming down from the back door.  In the second picture there appears to be a robber inside our house (not sure why she chose a baby blue covered mask, but what can you do?).

Even though there is a crazy amount of snow (and it doesn't seem to be going anywhere anytime soon), it will definitely be a winter to remember as it marks the start of our wee one's life (perhaps after this he/she will be more inclined toward winter sports).

Some Assembly Required...

So for Christmas this year one of the gifts I got for Amy was a glider.  She's wanted one for years and from what people have been telling me it will come in quite handy with our new baby.  Of course, this wonderful piece of furniture does not come assembled (that would be too easy).  I should have known I was in for trouble when I went to pick it up from the store after it came in.  I had been told when we bought it that it would have no trouble fitting in our car...seems like that might have been a slight exaggeration on their part.  The box wasn't even close to fitting in the trunk, and only with the front seats slid nearly all the way up and door swung all the way open was it barely able to fit in the back seat.  Then the next challenge came with getting it upstairs to where the baby room is.  The first problem is that the box is gigantic and difficult to hold with only one good wrist, but the second problem is that our stairway is very narrow.  So I found out that if I held the box I would have to drag my hands along the walls to get it upstairs...not exactly a pleasant feeling.  So, being an engineer, I improvised and managed to "roll" it up the stairs by pivoting it on each step.  At least now it was in the right room, now comes the tough part.  I've assembled a lot of random furniture over the years so I figured this wouldn't be a big deal.  I was right, except for one step.  All the steps are fairly detailed and straight forward except for the one crucial step in the middle which connects the two sides of the chair together.  All they showed was the two sides with arrows pointing toward each other, and then went on to the next step.  I had exposed dowels and screws and all kinds of things that weren't accounted for, so how the heck is this supposed to work? 

And of course I couldn't just have peace and quiet to do this, I have my lovely cat Peanut perusing through the pieces knocking them all over the place.  That's the last time I ask him for help!

But finally, all the pieces managed to click into the right place and I got the thing assembled, not bad for 2 hours!  Then I figured we could each take a seat in it and "practice" with our furry babies.

As you can see from my picture Peanut wasn't exactly being cooperative.  So I passed my first test at assembling baby furniture, though I don't think I would be at the head of the class.  The nice thing is that I get to practice on several more pieces of furniture...yay.