In early January, we started childbirth classes in preparation for labor and delivery. Among the many options out there, we selected the Bradley Method classes on the recommendation of several friends. The classes focus a lot on relaxation, nutrition, exercise and showing the husband how to be an active participant in labor. It is a lot of common sense and will hopefully lead to a natural birth when the time comes. It is a long set of 12 classes which will run until approximately a month prior to the estimated due date. We have also learned in class though that the average pregnancy lasts 41 weeks and 1 day, making us a bit skeptical of our 40 week date. That, and every baby we know lately has arrived later than “due”.

While our felines need no help relaxing on an hourly basis, they do appreciate the class because it comes with a workbook of articles, information and assignments. Ezzy and Fred demonstrate in the following photo just how well it can be used by multiple cats at a time even.

Today marks exactly 3 months until my due date of April 22nd and so I have entered my third trimester of pregnancy. My symptoms have been relatively minimal, at least in the second trimester, and so I’m hoping that things don’t go downhill too quickly from here. Mostly my complaints are having to get up in the middle of the night, every night, heartburn issues upon eating almost anything lately, dizziness, and getting up from the floor is tougher by the day. I, and my boss, have grown accustomed to my 10 hours of sleep per night and resulting 10am arrival at work. Jordi has had no trouble adapting to, and participating in, this change. Mostly we’re looking forward to the actual arrival of the baby. It has been good to see our friends’ children as reminders that there is a real light at the end of the tunnel, even though that light will continue to disrupt my sleep. We’re well on our way to being prepared too. We have a crib, changing table, rocking chair ordered, some clothes and a place to put them. We ordered shades and I’ll be making curtains soon and a matching nightlight. Whats left? Deciding on diapers, a crib mattress, and rearranging some furniture.

We’ve had some complaints that this blog has too many babies and not enough kitties. So here you go.

This is Mio. He’s modeling a scarf made of the remnants from Jen’s newly hemmed pants.

Sadly for us, the fabric we picked out last week was not available in the quantity necessary for all of my projects. We even looked on eBay and found more, but still not quite enough. So this morning we went out to more fabric stores, this time hitting the local quilting shop near Alewife, Cambridge Quilts. Here we found more fabric and found a group of fabrics that we really liked and having ruined our chances last week by not buying immediately, we bought all the new fabric we will need! Here’s some pictures from the manufacturers website of the patterns. The green will be the curtains and changing table fabric. The blue stripe will be the lampshade. The red, and a yellow polkadot (not pictured) will be part of the quilt in addition to the other two. Maybe our daughter will become a biologist!

After the excitement of yesterday’s baby shower, we still had enough energy to work on some more baby projects and so we went to two fabric stores to try to find fabric for the baby’s room. I will be making curtains, a quilt, a lampshade, and decorative swatches for the changing table out of this fabric and coordinating ones. The paint color for the room will also be based off of the fabric. We’ve got one more store to hit today, but so far this is our front runner:

The green is a little more lime (yellow) as opposed to mint than the photo shows. The bunnies are 2 1/4″ tall. We’d paint the wall a yellow matching the circles. We could also then add some orange highlights matching the carrots. The wood color behind the swatch is what most of the furniture in the room will be (crib, armoire, bookcase) but we will also have one dark wood piece (changing table) and the trim in the room is also a dark orangey wood). We like it because it’s juvenile but not too babyish. Another important criteria is that, although we’ve been told we’re having a girl, if the ultrasound was wrong and we have a boy we do not want to feel like we need to redo the room. We have one more store to look at today and maybe we’ll be able to make a final decision soon.

Yesterday I had an enjoyable afternoon at our friend Rachel’s baby shower. A huge percentage of our married friends have had children this year which means there were a bunch of new babies to meet! We ate, played a few games, and opened gifts. Here are some cute photos from the day:

Sharona and Lilia

Ryan (Saru and Justin’s Son)

Deb holding Jace (who unfortunately was feeling a little under the weather)

One of the projects this weekend was to assemble our crib. Many of our friends had trouble getting their crib in a timely manner and so we ordered ours around Thanksgiving and it came in even quicker than they promised. Although these projects always prove to be somewhat frustrating, overall it went quite well and we had it together within an hour and a half.

You might be asking yourself, what is this horrible room in the background? It is not (big surprise) the baby’s room. It is our basement, which is where the crib will be staying until we have room/need for it upstairs. Jordi currently works in the future baby room every day from home.

We’ll be posting more frequently with updates and pictures now that I’ve setup this blog.