Baby Talk Wednesday: Books Galore

I’m a reader and always have been.  Naturally, one of the first thing I started doing was checking out some books and seeing what I could learn about all things baby.

First up — when I went to the doctor for my 6 week check up, she gave me the book, “Your Pregnancy & Childbirth Month to Month”  This was the first one I dug in to and I really liked it.  It was very straight forward, easy to read, and organized in a logical flow.  I would definitely recommend this to anyone newly pregnant!

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Fresh off this book, and continuing my quest for knowledge, I took on the standard, “What to Expect When you are Expecting“.  I know I’m in a minority on this one, but I didn’t really care for it.  A lot of it seemed focused on absolutely every last thing that could go wrong.  It was also organized differently and it didn’t seem to me like something I would want to come back to for reference very easily.  I didn’t make it all the way through this one…overall, not my recommendation for moms to be.

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With my new found pregnant lady knowledge, the next topic I decided to tackle was ” Babyproofing Your Marriage“.  I found some parts enjoyable and I laughed out loud at some of it, but I found some of it also as negative towards dads.  This was something I hadn’t paid much attention to until I was actually pregnant, but I really don’t like the implication a lot of baby/marriage books make that mom is the only one capable of anything with baby and dad is merely the accessory to help her out.  I was raised with two great parents who were both very involved in raising my sister and me.  We are planning the same kind of partnership, and I never want to diminish Steve’s role as the hapless husband.  Overall, this book was entertaining and we did use it for some discussion on how we would like to bring up our family.

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Steve read through the book I got him with his Father’s Day to be gift, “Dad’s Pregnant Too“.  He found it entertaining, but again, somewhat diminishing of the man’s role in raising a child.  Overall, it was the only “dad specific” book he read, so in fairness, he doesn’t recommend or not recommend it.  :-)

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Next up was our favorite book by FAR, “Bringing Up Bebe“.  I first learned about this book when the Wall Street Journal ran an excerpt of it.  This book is easy to read, entertaining, and I think brings up several good points that jive with how Steve and I were raised, and values we would like to instill in our children.  Concepts that feel almost lost in the other parenting techniques currently in the news.  We both really enjoyed this book, and if you are looking for a different perspective than what is frequently published, I highly recommend it!

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Still left to tackle:  The Happiest Baby on the Block, How Do You Tuck In a Superhero, NurtureShock, and The Last Boys Picked.  My library card is getting quite the workout!

What are your favorite pregnancy/parenting/raising boys/etc. books?  Any that I should avoid??  I got 6 more weeks of reading time to fill!

Spokeo

This your public service announcement from DIYTheory.  I learned about a pretty freaky website recently, call Spokeo.  It catalogs everything about you from any available public source or social media site.  In addition to your phone number, address, etc. the site pulls in your family members, your estimated economic value, and more.

The sort of good news?  Most of the additional information is only available to subscribers of the site.  The bad news, it’s $4.00 a month to subscribe and then anyone can see all of your personal information.  I don’t know about you, but I’d prefer to not have people up in my business!

After some research, there are directions available to remove your information from this site.  Just go to this link: http://www.spokeo.com/privacy, enter your email address and it removes your listing.  I went through and did this for all the various addresses I’ve had over the years to remove me from the site.

::end of soap box::

Hope you are all having a fantastic Saturday!  We’re doing some relaxing and more house projects…I’m so behind on blogging, can someone make more hours in the day pretty please!?!?!?!

Baby Talk Wednesday: Oh the Places You Have Gone

In case you are worried you are having a Groundhog day scenario going on and are still living Wednesday, I know I’m a day late…I’m not sure how it’s already Thursday!  When discussing whether or not Glee was on tonight, I told Steve it’s not on Tuesday’s anymore, so it won’t be on until Thursday, whoops!

Better late than never, on with the show!

As “D-day” gets closer, I was doing some reflecting and was really surprised at all the things we’ve done since we found out Baby P was going to be (and by default, all the things Baby P has tagged along for).

So for posterity if nothing else, Baby P has:
- Road tripped to Minneapolis…twice!
- Attended the funeral of my Uncle
- Had a lemon drop martini and some sushi (yep, before I knew he was to be, sorry Baby)
- Countless girl’s craft nights
- St. Patty’s parade in Omaha
- Flew to Orlando…twice
- Went to Sea World, Disney World, and Universal Studios.  Disney has a surprising number of rides for pregnant ladies!
- Celebrated his daddy’s birthday
- Celebrated his mommy’s birthday
- Adopted a new puppy
- Boogied down at 5 different weddings
- Threw a wedding shower
- Went to the archery range
- Ate dinner at a whole in the wall chicken place that also doubles as a raccoon observatory
- Went to countless puppy and dog classes to get Lucy and Hurley ready for his arrival
- Flew to Colorado for vacation…twice
- Flew to  Dallas…in August…what was Mommy thinking?!
- Attended an open house at Dad’s work to see what he does every day
- Went to the Omaha zoo…lots
- Went on a gondola ride in downtown Omaha
- Went to the Union Pacific Museum
- Attended a baseball game at Werner Park
- Toured a whole bunch of daycares until we found one we all liked
- Cheered on Dad in some softball games
- Road tripped to South Dakota for his Great Great Aunt’s 90th birthday
- Checked out some movies at the theater
- Helped Grandma and Grandpa celebrate their 40th anniversary
- Told Grandmas, grandpas, aunts, uncles, and cousins that he was a boy!
- Hung out while mom and and dad landscaped the yard
- Did a LOT of garage-saleing
- Took the puppies on their first ever trip to the swimming pool
- Met with the insurance agent to get everything all ready for his arrival.
- Went to visit Aunt Kimberly in Dubuque
- Rode on the world’s steepest, shortest, scenic train
- Toured the Fort Worth stockyards
- Cleaned and organized the house like it was my job
- Decorated my new room!
- Went to baby class so Mom and Dad could learn how to get me out of here!
- Saw the Dr. with mom a LOT
- Took a Riverboat Cruise through downtown Omaha

Phew!!  He’s been a busy little guy on top of growing like a champ.  It’s exciting to look back on all the adventures we’ve taken in the last 34 weeks and even more exciting to start planning all the things we want to do with him once he’s here!  Keep cooking little buddy, but we’re so pumped to have you here with us very soon

33 weeks!

Baby Talk Wednesday: Project Nursery

Happy Wednesday!!  Thought I’d drop in to give you an update on the nursery!

Steve spent the weekend on a mountain bike adventure (and if you remember last time he did that, I painted the entire garage by myself) so my mom decided to come down and help me with some nursery stuff (and make sure I didn’t get any wild hares to do anything similar this time).  Our mission for the weekend?  Sewing, sewing and more sewing!  I had been unable to find much affordable, pre-made nursery items that weren’t super pastel, or on the expensive side.  If you remember, awhile back I previewed my fabric choices, and I’m super excited to show you what I did with them!

First up — the changing pad.  My cousin gave me the changing pad she used with her girls, it’s still in fine shape, just needed a fun cover to make it a little more festive.  I picked up some orange minky fabric from Hobby Lobby to fit the bill.  Each changing pad cover takes 1 yd., so I got 2 yards to make 2 covers.  Total cost?  Just under $20.00.

As for how we did it, I don’t want to disappoint, but our mission of the weekend was productivity, not tutorials.  We basically followed this one though from Prudent Baby without much issue at all.

Next on the list?  The crib skirt.  I’d pinned a few ideas and ended up combining them to make the skirt.  If you want to make a similar skirt, check out this tutorial from Domestic Adventure.  Rather than go the velcro route, we decided it would be easier to adjust if we did ties to the mattress spring instead.  I got the idea from Urban Grace.  This was fairly complicated and took us right around 6 hours to get accomplished.  A good portion of that was spent on doing all the math to make our pieces come out correct and strategizing on the orange pleat in the front.  I love how it came out!!

For the ends of the crib, we made 2 panels out of the jungle animals fabric.  I’m excited to make use of the under crib for some extra storage!  (Lucy had other ideas for what the underside of the crib should be used for during the thunderstorm tonight)

Curtains — We decided to give ourselves a mental break and sew some curtains.  Easy Peasy.  I am still figuring out the curtain rod so I don’t have a great picture of them yet, but they are made out of blue zebra and I’m really excited about them!

No worries, once we get them installed, I’ll have PLENTY of photos to show you

Crib Rail Protector/Teething Pad — We were so lucky to get the crib our nephew had when he was little.  My sister in law had been saving it for the last 4 years and graciously gave it to us for Baby P.  The only caveat with the crib is that Aiden had chewed on it.  I figured I’d find some way to cover it up or paint it or something.  Once again, internet to the rescue!  I found a great tutorial from Baby Rabies for a crib rail protector.

This is currently competing with the crib skirt to be my favorite thing we made.  It was really simple but I think adds a lot…especially since crib bumpers are a big no go now days.

I saved the worst for last…one of the first things we decided to make was crib sheets.  I found some awesome green fabric that I loved, and my mom found this tutorial, so we were pretty sure this would be a SIMPLE task, no problem…well…she made one awhile back, and not having a crib mattress at her disposal, convinced my dad to accompany her to Target where she tried her sheet on the store mattress.

This was the result:

It didn’t quite fit over as much as I would like to feel safe knowing it wouldn’t pop loose in the night.  She mailed it down to me, just in case the plastic covering on the mattress was adding too much bulk, but alas, it didn’t fit any better on the mattress we have.  So we tabled it until she was down here.  After a SIGNIFICANT amount of trial and error, and a purchase of a cheap sheet from Target, we were able to figure out how to make our sheet fit.  Again, if you are curious, let me know and I’ll do my best to explain, but we were in the thick of it and didn’t write out a tutorial.

More nursery details coming soon, all told, it was a VERY productive and fun weekend, and it’s so excited to see the crib ready to go for Baby!!!  Less than 8 weeks until he’s due, I can’t believe how fast it’s gone!  I feel like I have too much left to do!