Another four months later…

Wow, worst bloggers ever. Mo was born, we posted. Waited four months, posted again. Waited another four months, and here we are. Babies really do take over your life!

Mo is incredible. She is truly the best baby I know. I don’t know how we got so lucky, but I don’t think we can take too much credit. She’s just so pleasant and easy, and I love her dearly.

We’re having so much fun with her. She’s eating new foods all the time, she’s on the verge of crawling, she claps and laughs, and cracks us up with everything she does. She’s doing good in daycare even though it’s still hard for me to leave her every day. Our time together during the week is so short. I usually feed her in bed in the morning and we snuggle for a minute before facing the day. But then we rush around and out the door, and she’s away from me for 9 hours. In the evening she eats, then naps, then we play for a bit, and she’s off to bed. I reserve my evenings for her and rarely make plans to do anything else during the week. Even on the weekends, I try not to do much that she can’t join me for. I don’t want to be one of those moms, and I do try to make time for friends and date nights, but my time with Mo is limited enough. I soak up as much of it as I can.

Things are good. Things are great, in fact. Just a little busy, that’s all!

Four months later…

Apparently we have a baby and we stop blogging. That was not our intent, but when I logged in today, I realized the last post was January 18 when we announced the birth of Mo!

Things are going well though. For awhile they were tough – the first three weeks were pretty difficult  for a multitude of reasons. I was sick, we were both sleep deprived, I had some postpartum depression, and breastfeeding was a disaster. But things slowly got better, and now Mo is four months old and it’s a whole different situation. She has been sleeping through the night for awhile now (10-12 hours, in fact!), she’s eating like a champ, she’s very happy and interactive, and we’re all loving life.

In what seems like no time, she’s gone from this…

…to this.

My dad likes to joke that it looks like someone inflated her. She filled right out, sprouted eyebrows, lost her hair, and grew some deliciously chubby thighs. We’re so lucky we get to have her in our lives!

Introducing…

It is with much pride and gratitude that I introduce my daughter:

Moselle Doan Z-M

She was born at 12:37am on January 14. She was 6lbs 15oz and 20 inches long. She was healthy and beautiful. And she still is:

It has been such a whirlwind since she was born. Until today, I hadn’t gotten more than a few minutes of successive sleep since sometime late Saturday night! And breastfeeding has been approximately 112 times harder than I anticipated. But it’s amazing, all of it. Even the emotional break downs I have on a regular basis. Totally worth it to be little Mo’s mom.

What’s your best guess for Baby Z-M?

Anybody care to guess a few stats about Baby Z-M? There are a couple different baby pools already floating around, but if you haven’t guessed and want to, here’s your chance. I love baby pools, so I hope you’ll participate. No prizes though, sorry. Except bragging rights, of course.

So what’s your guess?

Sex:
Birth Date:
Weight:
Length:

My due date is January 10. Most old wives’ tales indicate girl, but definitely not all of them.

My own personal guess is a girl on January 14, over 8 pounds and over 20 inches (I don’t remember exactly what I put in the pool at my shower). Mike has refused to commit to any guesses.

Leave your best guess in comments!

Happy Holidays!

We like to do something fun every year for our holiday card. Nothing that requires a lot of effort, because we’re lazy, but something other than the traditionally posed photo. For instance, a picture from our recent unofficial maternity shoot is not at all the kind of thing we had in mind. Instead we thought it would be fun to somehow celebrate our new house.

So, because we couldn’t send cards to everyone, please consider this yours:

As you can see, we’re enjoying our fake fire and meager holiday decorations while I work on my embroidery and Mike reads a very sophisticated book. Sure feels like home! The back says:

We’re enjoying the first of many holiday seasons in our new home.

Please note our new address: 

[yeah right, like I’m putting that on the internet]

(Next year… real fire!)

Happy holidays and best wishes!

We chose not to sign for Baby Z-M (Oberon and Lennie are the cats) because we thought it was a little weird. If I was only 10 weeks pregnant, we wouldn’t include it, so we decided 35 weeks was no different. This baby is very real to us and is already a part of our family, but it felt a little… presumptuous, I guess.

Anyway, we hope you all enjoy the season no matter what, when or where you celebrate!

A room for Baby Z-M

I didn’t intend to put a lot of effort into the baby’s room, but we just moved into this house and this was my first chance to fully put together a room. Everything else is a coat of paint here, new door knobs there. But here I could take a boring empty (not to mention orange) room and transform it into something I love. I couldn’t resist.

Here is what it looked like when we moved in:

And here is what it looks like now:

The sunlight was drowning out the curtains, so here’s a look at those:

I made them!

Here are a few of my favorite details:

Canvas print of the fortune I got shortly before discovering I was pregnant. Ultrasound pictures. Last name initials.

Alphabet I embroidered inside frame I painted. Elephant hook.

Framed elephant print from Dad. Globe night light.

Elephant globe from Mom.

Dictionary prints in thrift store frames.

Paint swatch mobile.

Elephant mobile.

I had so much fun with this room, and I love how it turned out. Hopefully you do too!

Mint green: good for ice cream, bad for wall paint

We finally finished the last painting job we wanted to do before the baby was born. Back when we bought paint for the baby’s room, we also picked up a can for one of the other bedrooms. This was back in early September, and Mike intended to paint both rooms while I was on a business trip. But if you recall, the baby’s room paint job became so much bigger than we anticipated, and it wasn’t finished until mid-October. The other bedroom got postponed as a result.

Finally a couple weeks ago, we moved all the furniture out and Mike prepped the walls for painting. I was at a painting class/party* with some friends one night when Mike put the first coat on the walls. When I took a look the next day, I was appalled. I had picked out what I thought, based on the paint swatch, was a light yellowy-green color. On the walls? Mint chocolate chip ice cream without the chips! This picture doesn’t really show it, but trust me. Mint. Green.

It was awful. And if you’re curious, it was Rice Paddy from Sherwin Williams, which of course looks different on than screen than it it did on the swatch, which was far different than it looked on the walls! Mike didn’t mind it, but I knew I couldn’t live with it. And even though it was a waste of paint and his time, I figured it was better to fix the problem immediately rather than have to move all the furniture out again later when it finally put me over the edge.

We thought about buying some test samples so this wouldn’t happen again, but clearly I suck at picking out paint, so I just wanted to get something boring and neutral and call it good. Maybe we’ll do something fun in the final bedroom or the bathrooms one day. But I just wanted this room done and over with, so boring neutral it was. This time we picked Valspar’s Frappe from Lowe’s.

Yep, just a boring ol’ light grey. I was trying to avoid an all-grey home, but I couldn’t stomach the beiges and tans Mike was suggesting, so we settled on yet another grey. Although, I picked out the mint green, so clearly I should be fired from paint selections! (For the record though, I did choose the colors in the baby’s room and our bedroom, and those both rock.)

Baby’s room – light greyish purple

Our bedroom – light blue/grey

Oh, by the way, those curtains Mike is hanging up there are temporary. I like them, but not with the grey walls. However, almost every room in our home needs curtains, an expense we’ve avoided so far. This room has temporary light blocking curtains because I’m temporarily sleeping in there and I do not do sunlight when I’m trying to sleep!

*You sign up for a one-night class and an instructor helps you paint whatever the art of the day is. We chose a night when they were doing our city’s skyline. There’s also a bar (I had cream soda of course) and you can order in food from a local restaurant. It’s pretty fun. Plus look what we made!

Pool pains

When we were house hunting, we were not in the market for a pool. But then we fell in love with this house, the one we bought, and ta da! It had a pool. I think our families were more excited than we were at this news. A pool in the family, finally! We were excited by the idea too, but mostly we saw work. And yep, it’s been nothing but so far. We never opened it – we moved in in August, so it didn’t make sense – and everything was fine. But then it became fall and it started to rain, and the pool cover sank, holding rain water and it was not cool.

After much research and a recommendation from the pool supply store, we had some family over last weekend to try to fix the problem.

Let’s just say: FAIL. It looked great for a few hours, then it rained again and now I think it’s worse than it was before.

At least my niece and nephew had fun…

The neighbors just threw a plastic tarp over theirs, weighed down with cinder blocks. It, too, is filling with rain water. But we inherited this nice pool cover with the house and I’d rather not ruin it because we don’t know what we’re doing. Alas, I think we’re giving up. Let the snow pile up in there. We have more important things to worry about!

Little reminders

Today Mike and I went to Babies ‘R Us to pick up a few essentials. Baby stuff, obviously. The parking lot was extremely full, but we saw an empty spot near the front. Mike was just about to turn in, then jerked the wheel at the last second. Then this:

“Damn, expectant mothers only. Shit, you are one! Damn it, I missed it!”

The profanity was a bit excessive, but the whole thing made me laugh so hard. I mean, we’re at Babies ‘R Us. To buy things for our baby. That I’m carrying. That is due in 10 weeks. Neither of us is used to the idea yet, apparently! He drove around and pulled in that spot though – it’s one of the only times we’ll get to do that.

I made sure to waddle a little just in case any onlookers questioned us.

I was still laughing, but I was so thankful for the opportunity to park there. Not because we needed to – I’m fine to walk. And not because we had to be close – it was a nice enough day to walk the length of the lot. It seems like such a silly thing, but not everyone who wants to be an expectant mother gets to be one. It made me feel very thankful for my situation.

Getting crafty

Now that the baby’s room is painted and furnitured (it IS a word!), I’m working on some fun decorative projects. Awhile ago I saw an embroidered alphabet that I wanted to replicate, and since embroidered is my thing, it made sense. I made a few adjustments to the original – some different colors, a few less flowery things, and some different stitch techniques. Here’s what I came up with:

For the frame, I took an empty one we had on hand, but it started as an ugly wooden frame. To make it match the embroidery and my style better, I painted a coat of lime green, let it dry, then painted a coat of turquoise. I only did one coat of each so that some of each layer showed showed through. Then I roughed it up a little with an emory board (we didn’t have sand paper on hand) for that distressed look.

If you look closely, you can see layers of wood, green and turquoise.

I kind of love it!

I’ve got a few other projects up my sleeve. Here’s a sneak peek at one: