Seems Noah (and mom) are going to have some stiff competition in the stubbornness and drama departments.  Walter and I went for a routine ultrasound today at the perinatologist’s office to be sure she was head down (which I didn’t need an ultrasound to tell me) and that all was well in the womb.  Apparently Kate has been enjoying a little too much second hand ice cream and is destined to be a big baby.  At 32 weeks she weighs 5 pounds, 10 ounces (approximately, based on ultrasound) which puts her as an average 35 week baby.  While it’s great she is big and healthy the doctor felt that if she kept up all this growing we may need to consider coaxing her out a bit early.  Early in like 5 weeks.  FIVE WEEKS!?  Might as well be tomorrow for as much as we still need to do to be ready.  While we scramble paint and buy all the things left on our registry I leave you with a few closeups of our little girl.  By the way, she was very annoyed through the whole thing.  The tech would push on her to get her to move and she would punch right back.  She gave tons of attitude and really challenged the tech for these shots.

Here is her profile done with standard ultrasound technology.  For those that think these look like Rorschach inkblot tests, she’s facing the left side of your screen, you can see her nose and lips pretty well, her hand is over her head and her gut is the bubble all the way on the left.

The rest were done with 3D ultrasound technology.  We’ll have to dig out Noah’s and compare.  Here you can see an eye, her nose and her open mouth pretty well.  They tell us that the back of her head is covered in hair but she seems to have a receding hairline ‘do at the moment.  She may really look like a little old man!

And this is when she’d had enough.  Her hand is cupping her forehead, that’s her pinky closest to her eye.  It seems as if we were giving her a headache!  Diva!

It’s birthday time once again in our house.  I turn 30 today.  As a child I remember thinking how old someone who is 30 was, they were on the verge of retirement in my eyes.  Now it still seems like a big number but not nearly as scary or old.  I certainly don’t feel 30, or what I thought it would be like to be 30.  I feel relatively young, life for me (us) is starting to settle, our family is nearly complete and life is just getting started (as cliche as that sounds).  I feel like I have everything I’ve ever wanted, I feel so incredibly blessed for having what I do and I feel like I made it through my rebel years pretty unscathed.  I’m done making stupid choices for the sake of making them and now I’m onto struggling with the right decisions for my family.  Oh wow, I’m a grown up!  Seriously, it’s been a great ride so far and I’m sure it will just keep getting better.

For my birthday today we’re having brunch with my family (my parents, Nikki, Julia, and my boys) and dinner with Walter’s family.  We’re trying to sneak in a child free trip to Ikea in between the fabulous meals to finish picking up stuff we need in preparation for Kate.  Next weekend we’re having a small party with close friends, the celebration I’ve always wanted.  Originally we planned to have Kate here by now so I could make one more series of stupid but seriously fun choices while toasting to the future but Mother Nature had other plans and we’ll have to celebrate with Shirley Temples instead.

Thank you all for your love, support and birthday wishes.  I’m looking forward to my next thirty years and how different they will be from the first.  In case you’re wondering, this is what thirty looks like at 9am – me and my kids -

Notice my fabulous new earrings by the way?  They were a birthday gift from my girlfriend, Raven.  She knows how well Tiffany and I get along! 

Today is Walter’s birthday.  I don’t know if anyone is as excited about it as Noah though!  He woke up this morning yelling “IT’S BIRTHDAY TIME!” and couldn’t stop reminding us.  He ran in and woke up Walter telling him to get to the kitchen for birthday time.  When I didn’t whip out a cake at 6:30am with the respective 39 candles Noah was very disappointed.  We lit and let him blow out our kitchen candle – twice – just to get him to relax a bit.  I made Walter the traditional lucky boiled egg breakfast, he opened gifts and then left for work.  All the way to school Noah kept on about fire and cake and Daddy’s birthday (anyone who knows Noah knows his love for fire).  I gave his teacher a head’s up in case she thought we were raising a pyromaniac (on purpose).  Tonight our good friends Rachel, Robby and Ayla are hanging out with Noah so we can go see the new Batman movie.  We’ve tried to go a few times now, maybe tonight it will actually happen.  And did you hear, the whole world is celebrating Walter’s birthday too?!  They’re having some huge party in China for him at 8pm, it’s such a shame our frequent flyer miles couldn’t get us there.

Happy birthday, hon!

So we’re trying to pick a color for Kate’s room.  It’s not as easy as I expected (and hoped) it would be.  We’ve tried every green and moved on.  We’re now onto pinks.  Anyone who knows me knows that a pink girl’s room isn’t something I automatically gravitate towards (run screaming from would be more like it).  And no matter how pink her room is I’m not getting a chandelier (sorry Mom!).  But we’re stuck between two colors.  The first one is really pink.  Almost bubble gum.  It’s a nice color but it’s a small room and we worry it may be overwhelming once it’s on all of the walls.  The second one is a very pale pink.  I worry that it’s not pink enough.  I want it to be contrasting with the white trim but just enough.  These two colors are right on top of each other in the color swatch palate from Sherwin-Williams so without making a custom color there is no in between.  The color I was looking to emulate was the one by Restoration Hardware, which is horribly over priced.  What are your thoughts?  I promise this won’t be like the kitchen faucet poll.  Promise.

Here is the pink at Restoration Hardware -

And here are the two colors we have.  I realize they look slightly different in every photo and to every person because of lighting and color calibration on your monitor.  One thing I can tell you to help judge is that the brown that’s currently in the room is a really dark tan with a bit of a green tint.

And the fabric between the these two painted areas is what the bedding is being made with.  The green fabric will be the bumper and the crib skirt is white with the pink ribbon trim.

Here is the lighter of the two pinks against our trim since that’s my biggest concern with the light color.  Does it look pink enough or just a different shade of white?  The darker pink definitely contrasts with the trim, I just worry Kate will think she lives in Barbie’s room.  The two colors below are the same color. 

So about 5 years ago I bought these doormats that have been deemed “death mats”.  I refused to get rid of them, they were perfect, we even got the rubber lining underneath, it didn’t help.  We’ve had (and so have some of our house guests) a few slips and many near misses but tonight Noah took the cake.  He walked on top of one and turned the corner and down he went.  The poor kid wasn’t even running.  Man, did he scream!  As with most wounds you can’t really see the extent right away.  As soon as the tears stopped it was pretty obvious though.  Our son looks like he’s trying to become a unicorn.  Maybe I should toss the mats now, that is after I accept my Mother Of The Year Award.  Yikes!

I’ve blogged about “Monkey” before but we have some sweet new photos of Noah’s favorite pal to share.  I’m afraid he’ll take this poor thing to college with him, should he still be in one piece by then (monkey that is). 

We’ve moved in!  We’ve filled every kitchen cabinet and cleaned the madness off our dining room table.  We even removed all the storage behind the table, we haven’t seen the back wall of the dining room in over a year!  It looks AWESOME!  We hope to put a buffet on the back wall at some point since our light and table are off center (can you believe this room is supposed to be a family room?!) and we could certainly use the storage space but for now the emptiness looks so great, especially compared to the boxes of junk and extra furniture that doesn’t belong in a home with children.  Also, although everyone wished us the glory of eternally clean and empty countertops it just isn’t practical.  The microwave, coffee station, toaster and wine rack have no other home.  Everything else you see was for dinner and was quickly cleaned and stored.  I’m so in love with my kitchen! 

So how did we break it in?  We had my family over – mom, dad, sister and niece – and we served an awesome pot roast with all the fixings.  The recipe is ridiculously easy and so delicious.  You can find it here.  We actually got a fresh cut of roast from the Fresh Market (and without grossing you out I’ll say it was as fresh as physically possible) and it made for an amazing meal.  We’d love to do this more often and all we ask is that you bring dessert!  Pregnant ladies are suckers for dessert! 

The fam brought an awesome ice cream cake from Publix.  And of course since Noah is OBSESSED with fire we lit a candle and let him blow it out.  It says “Happy Kitchen” in case you can’t make it out.

My boys have cooties!  Well, Hand Foot and Mouth Disease, or the coxsackie virus, to be more exact.  We think Noah picked it up at school but we had no idea, we are such first time parents!  On Tuesday we saw a blister under his toe so on Wednesday after school I was going to take him shoe shopping, since his shoes must be getting too tight – right?  WRONG!  I took his shoe off after school that day and his feet were covered in them!  We went straight to the doctor’s office to learn it was in deed HFTM, which sounds so gross!  And since it could be dangerous if I get exposed, because of the baby, Walter took two days off of work to handle cootie duty and guess what, now he has it.  Everything we read and everything the doctor’s say tells us that adults *shouldn’t* be able to really catch it, that it’s a children’s disease.  I guess for Walter there are downfalls to never wanting to grow up! 

Here was Noah at the doctor’s office -

And my boys this morning.  Noah’s is getting better, Walter’s is just starting.  Please pray I don’t start showing symptoms!  On the bright side it doesn’t seem to be slowing either of them down, they haven’t caught the fever or loss of appetite portion of the virus and it’s so nice to have all of us together for a few extra days.

I have a gorgeous house AND internet!  Woohoo!  Who could ask for more?  The house is *almost* done!  My contractor managed to redeem himself slightly and has come through with an almost complete addition and kitchen in two days.  The only things left are painting and replacing our kitchen window, all which should be done next week.  But in the meantime we can cook, clean, wash dishes and work (being without a computer was like being without air – ok,  a little dramatic).  I am beyond thrilled!  Now we just need to put it all together and put away the dishes that are living in the guest room half of the office.  I keep telling myself one drawer at a time. 

Our next project is Kate’s room.  With 80 days left until my due date (which I doubt she’ll make it to) we need to get going! 

In the meantime here are the latest photos of the kitchen and the office.  They struggled so much with our hood that it’s covered in fingerprints.  Anyone know how to get prints off of stainless?  The popcorn goes up this afternoon.

And here’s the office.  We’re used to a 10×10 room so our stuff only takes up a 1/4 of the space in our 18×24 addition.  I’m sure we’ll fill it up in no time.  On the other side of the office we’re planning a pull out couch/day bed/futon, coffee table and tv/entertainment system.  The rest of the house will be obsolete before you know it! 

Here’s the whole office for those of you just tuning in.  And yes, that’s a lot of junk.  When we get the window treatments up and the kitchen filled back up I’ll get you a photo of the room the way it should be.

I’m sure you’re tired of hearing about our kitchen, trust me, I’m tired of not having a kitchen.  Because I have to suffer so do you.  We got most of our counter top yesterday.  One piece was cut too small so they’ll bring another one (hopefully this week) for the area next to the fridge.  You can also see my (our) gorgeous new fridge!  I know, it’s huge, I love it!  My mom calls it the Hummer of refrigerators.  Of course nothing, and I seriously mean nothing, has happened without a ton of drama, dissatisfaction and a few tears.  I won’t get into that, you all know I now hate my contractor, I’m trying to focus on the end results when everything is gorgeous, there are no more strangers in my house, and as long as you don’t look too hard the slight imperfections are totally acceptable.  Sigh.