Where We've Been

These are some of the sights of Vancouver, where we spent the past week enjoying a wonderful vacation! I think Baby Payne liked it too, because while we were gone, I started feeling a little bit of movement!!

Flickr picture posting!

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Originally uploaded by psycling

Sara and I put all of our pictures on Flickr. And I just realized this evening that Flickr makes it very easy to make a blog post from a particular picture. So this post is just a test to see if it is working properly. Hopefully you're enjoying a cute picture of Thea when she was a puppy (now she's about 95 pounds!).

As a side note, when baby payne enters our world, there will certainly be tons of pictures. We'll be sure to post some here on the blog, but if you want to see them all, then now's the time to setup a Flickr account. Then, if you tell us about your account, we can mark you as "friends & family" so that you can see all of our pictures. And, honestly, what's more fun than cute baby pictures??? :-)

Let there be (no) light!

Today we are getting some black-out shades installed. Our house is situated such that the street lights shine in through our bedroom windows, and the soon-to-be nursery windows, at night. While we do have blinds in these rooms already, they are better at providing privacy than blocking all of the light. The new shades are being installed in addition to the existing blinds and will block nearly all of the light. Hopefully all of us will sleep better now!

Baby steps...

Over here at the Payne household we've been working hard on a bunch of little things:

• This weekend we finally decided on the paint colors for the nursery. I'd post them here, but the online colors don't really look anything like the actual paint chips. But, the general color scheme is similar to the samples that I posted previously. So the next step is to start putting primer on the walls. We have chosen to use a low VOC paint (Benjamin Moore Eco Spec) for this room. In general, we're trying to make environmentally responsible choices as we put this room together when it doesn't break the bank to do so.

• Sara was hard at work this weekend and finished clearing things out of her craft room (i.e., the room that will soon be the nursery). So we have lots of stuff to get rid of and lots of stuff that needs to be organized in its new location, the upstairs study. It's actually amazing that Sara had time to do all of this considering that she was also so busy making delicious croissants.

• Today we went to the doctor for another checkup. The visit with the doctor was brief. We heard the heart beating again (150 beats per minute today) and got a few questions answered. Then we went down to the lab where Sara needed to get some blood drawn for the second semester screening (aka, the "quad test"). As luck would have it, the lab was both busy and under staffed today so we had to wait about 1.5 hours before being called. Frustrating, but now it's all done. The next doctor's visit is scheduled for March 10. And we should find out if it's a girl or a boy around that time as well.

• The other big news this week is that we heard from several friends who recently added their first child to their family. Congrats to Joel & Nikki, Terry & Chantal, and Tim & Beth!!

Week 15: I like Peaches!!

I am now in my 15th week. According to all the books, the baby is about 4" long (or about the length of an apple or pear), and weighs about 50 grams (about 1.75 oz.). It is starting to develop hair on its head and eyebrows. Its legs are growing and are now longer than its arms. Its eyes are closed, but it is still able to sense and react to changes in light. They say that if I shined a light on my belly, the baby would move away from it, though its still too small for me to feel the movements. The skin is developing as are the bones and marrow. By the end of the week, the baby will have enough muscle control to make a fist.

I'm feeling really good these days. I seem to have a lot of my energy back, but not all of it. It's actually a little deceptive. One day I'm feeling great and I'm out and about and in the kitchen and seeming to resume my normal day-to-day activities. But by that evening or the next day, I realize that maybe I over did it a bit, and I am exhausted and really have to take it easy and rest for a couple of days to recover my energy. My appetite is great (Bryan might claim that's an understatement). Even I'm amazed at the amount of food I can eat! I've gotten to the point where hunger creeps up on me and when it happens, I MUST EAT IMMEDIATELY!!! I've never felt this kind of hunger before! And while we're on the topic of food (one of my favorites these days), I have a new craving/food obsession: peaches. I bought some canned peaches for some stuffed French toast that I was making, and just had a little bite. It was enough to make me realize that I could eat peaches all day every day. I polished off the last 1/2 - 2/3 jar of peaches today as my pre-dinner snack. If we had them, I'd probably eat another couple of jars this evening. Other cravings/food obsessions I've been having include pizza (the more cheese the better), potato chips, and pickles (yes, I have become *that* stereotypical pregnant woman). I'm still finding the smell of coffee completely repulsive...a HUGE change for those of you who are familiar with the coffee-addicted Sara. I have an on-again-off-again tomato aversion as well, though that's been toned down somewhat. And the other really big change is that I'm even getting slight meat cravings. I had some bacon and sausage last night at our Breakfast-for-Dinner potluck, and I actually quite enjoyed it. Though the thought of beef is still pretty gross to me, so I guess I haven't completely changed my ways :-) I'm thinking Bryan would like it if my appetite for a greater variety of meat lasts beyond the pregnancy.

The one other change I've been noticing recently is that I'm actually starting to get a little bump. It's not enough to be noticeable through my increasingly smaller clothes, but it's definitely there! It's kind of exciting. I'm also starting to realize that I probably only have another week or two before I "outgrow" my regular clothes. Time for maternity clothes for real! I've found a few places that sell them at a decent price, including Target and Old Navy. While JC Penny has a great online selection, when we stopped by the store today, there was almost nothing there. So I guess it's time to think about some online shopping...just need to find out their return policy...

So that's my update. Sleep and food are two of the most important things to me these days, and as long as I get those in adequate quantities, I'm happy!!

Rethinking the nursery...

As we think more about the nursery, we've come to realize that our original plans might look a little out of place with the rest of our house. We still like the idea of using green and yellow, but instead of using the Classic Pooh border, we may do something fun with geometric shapes stenciled on the wall. And we may bring in a bolder accent color. As an example, here's some color palettes we are considering:We are also starting to think about how the furniture will fit in the nursery. The room is relatively small at 10 x 12 feet, so I decided to have fun making some to-scale drawings again. This way we can have a better sense of how the various pieces of furniture can be arranged in the room. Here's our current favorite arrangement:

We haven't decided on any of the furniture pieces yet, but we do like Target's new line of nursery furniture. Of course, Ikea is still a strong contender because it's hard to turn down a $100 crib :-) So that's our current thinking on the nursery!