Full Moon...

Hello all!  We hope you are all enjoying a little taste of spring like we are in Pittsburgh!  Weather in the 60’s feels warm for us – we’ve heard it’s in the 70’s in Kentucky, and I’ve seen a few folks who already have Easter lilies!  Ours are just buds at the moment, but we know we’ll see them before too long.

In the month since we’ve updated, we’ve stayed busy again!  We are very excited to report that the nursery is nearing completion!  The stripes have been touched up, the furniture has been delivered, we’ve gotten the glider and we have the blinds installed and the valances purchased.  Things we never thought we’d have trouble finding, but have: white curtain rod, rug, and white lamp base with red shade.  We have a few leads, so we haven’t given up hope yet ;)  Also still lacking in the room, as you might notice from the pictures, are the doors.  Apparently we’ve had enough of painting.  We’re on strike.  For at least a few more days ;)  Painting the doors, which will require the oil-based stinky paint, is all in Jarrett’s court, so hopefully he gets motivated to paint soon! ;)

In the pictures below you can see a before, during, and after of Mills room.  The nice neon green color was left by the previous decor challenged owners.

 Before

 Before

 During

During

 Finished (Dr. Suess Theme)

 Finished (Dr. Suess Theme)

 Finished (Dr. Suess Theme)

 Finished (Dr. Suess Theme)

Finished (Dr. Suess Theme)

Also of note: after painting stripes in our condo in Louisville and now on three walls in the nursery, we’re pros – and we’re for hire! ;)

Since the last time we wrote we also took the Babymoon!  This is a new trend, apparently, in which Mommy and Daddy take one last trip before the baby comes.  We traveled to Savannah, Georgia and had an absolutely amazing time!  The weather this time of year in Savannah is wonderful – low 70’s, not humid at all, just a bit breezy – quite nice, and we even missed some snow at home while we were gone!  Our hotel (click to view resort) was amazing even our driver seemed impressed ;)  We ate some amazing food, did a cooking class, walked around and saw all the beautiful houses in Savannah, did a trolley tour to hear some history, and had massages (Jillian’s prenatal!) – utter bliss!  It was so much fun, and we feel so blessed to have had the opportunity to do it!

We are getting close enough to the due date that the doctor’s visits are moving to a bi-weekly schedule.  Jarrett was traveling in sunny Florida last week and couldn’t make it to the doctor’s visit, so Jillian went alone for the first time since we found out we were expecting!  Luckily the practice we go to has offices that are about one block from Jillian’s office, so it worked out well that she just walked there.  Everything went fine at the appointment, with one interesting twist – Mommy is measuring a little big!  For those of you who haven’t been through this, the doctor measures with a tape measure the size of the belly from pelvic bone to the top of the uterus (which you can feel because it feels sort of harder under the skin).  All along Jillian has always measured “perfect” – so it was a little surprising to be measuring big…so big, in fact, that the doctor seemed a little surprised!  Jarrett figures the measurement last week was right around 36 weeks – about 5 weeks ahead of schedule!  As you can see from the belly pic, Mills is definitely popping out there!  From what we’ve heard from other pregnant ladies and read online, it can be normal to measure big, and it doesn’t necessarily mean you will deliver early or have a bigger baby.  But it does make things interesting, and sent Daddy and Mommy to an extent into a bit of a panic!  There is a full moon tonight, so Daddy keeps teasing that Mills is going to come tonight.  He even requested spicy food for lunch, and a walk afterward!  Mommy thinks Mills should stay put for a few more weeks – at least until after the showers!  (For those of you interested, the next two full moons are on April 19 and May 18 – anyone want to start making bets? ;) )

Another adventure for us over the past couple of weeks has been putting together baby stuff.  Jarrett’s work colleagues got us the high chair we registered for at Babies ‘R Us, and we also ordered a glider for Mills’s room that was shipped from Amazon.com.  We were a little concerned about how difficult these things would be to put together and actually reserved an entire morning to do so.  Luckily, it wasn’t as hard as we imagined!  It actually only took about an hour to do both – and we’re fairly sure everything was done correctly ;)  I guess we’ll see what things to come may be harder to assemble ;)

Jillian also got to do a prenatal visit to a pediatrician last week, and had a really good experience at the first location!  The office was just renovated, and they are about to add a fifth doctor.  The nurses were really nice, there is a breastfeeding room and a lactation consultant on staff – all seems like two thumbs up so far!  We are excited to have that decision made!

One other fun thing that happened this month: we scheduled our first family vacation to Gatlinburg!  Mills’s cousin Riley will be coming too, as well as his Aunt Allison, Uncle Nate, Nana Peggy and Poppy David!  We will be staying in a nice cabin and hope to have fun relaxing, cooking, and shopping ;)  We look forward to scheduling vacations with other family members soon!

Up soon for us in preparation for Mills’s arrival: an Infant/Child CPR class on April 9 and two baby showers – we can’t wait!  Looking forward to seeing some of you soon!  Let the countdown begin! ;)