My friends Sarah, Rachael, Cari-Beth, and Ashley threw me a baby shower a few weeks back.  I know, I know…I’m behind on posting about my showers.  I apologize.  So here we go.

Sarah made the most adorable name banner for Grayson.  What talent.  She is awesome at throwing parties/showers.

She also made these adorable hangings of my belly shots that show my growth throughout the weeks of my pregnancy.  They hung just about the refreshment table.

They ladies made an amazing coffee and ice cream punch (decaff) especially for me.  I love this stuff.  It taste just like a Starbucks frappachino.

Meet Sophie,  my future daughter-in-law.  Just kidding.

Sophie is my friend and neighbor Betsy’s little girl.  Derek and Betsy grew up together and have been great friends since the 4th grade.  Now Betsy and her husband Jonathan live just down the block from us ,and have a daughter that was born in January.  We like to joke that Sophie and Grayson will one day fall in love and get married.  Wouldn’t that be nice?  To know the girl your son marries since the day she was born.

Sophie got all dressed up for the shower.  Just look at those flowers on her shoes.  The girl really knows how to win a boy’s momma over.

Not only was Sarah the hostess, but she played double duty that day writing down all the gift for me.  My baby sissy was in Ireland at the time.  Yeah….like I felt bad for her.

Here I am with all the lovely ladies that helped host the shower.  Thanks girls!

Sarah made me a mommy-to-be pin to wear during the shower that consisted of a cute green ribbon and pacifier.  Every time I got near Sophie she tried to put the pacifier in her mouth.  So funny.

See that adorable owl I’m holding?  Sarah knew what my little man’s bedding looked like, and said she went on a mission to find the perfect owl to go in his room.  I think she nailed it.  She found this adorable handmade owl at the Carrot Fever Etsy shop.  The second I walked in the door I noticed the owl just chilling on top of the gift pile and I melted.  I love this sweet little guy so much.

Here’s the loot.  Thank you so much to everyone that was able to attend the shower.  We love you all and are so blessed to have you in our lives.

7/8/10 :: day 245

I read somewhere this morning of someone explaining 1st trimester exhaustion as being almost coma like, and I totally agree with that.

(10:35am)  I am so tired today.  I got somewhat of a decent night’s sleep last night, but I think all of the mid-night potty breaks and lugging around a medicine ball in my belly all day is really starting to wear this little girl down.

Have I mentioned that my hips hurt.  And I’m not just talking about the sides…even the back portion of my hips hurt.  I don’t think that part even moves.  How in the world can it hurt?  I am constantly hearing bones move and often feel them shifting as I walk.  On occasion, I can hear my left hip click when I walk.  Thanks relaxin!  By the end of the day I am walking around with my back a bit hunched and waddling around the house.  I look a bit like a hunchback named Egor.

7/10/10 :: day 247

Dang!  I’m really feeling the weight of this big ole fat baby now.  I’ve learned or discovered in the past two days that I can no longer stand from a sitting position with in a few seconds, even IF I have help getting out of the chair.  There is so much weight in my belly that once I’m on my feet I have to stay hunched over for a moment and slowly straighten out my body until completely upright.

My sciatica is back!  It went away for a few weeks when the kid moved up in my abdomen and into my rib cage, but he didn’t stay there for long.  No sir.  He is slowly beginning to drop.  I wouldn’t quite call it lightening yet, but his shimmying his way downtown.  Oh yeah, back to the sciatica.  Now that he is moving his way back down into my pelvis he has landed once again on my sciatic nerve causing momma a bit of numbness.  Since there are only two positions I can sleep in now, my right side and my left side, I try to give each side a fare shot in sleeping time.  However, sleeping on my right side causes this little boy to press extra hard on that nerve and I typically wake up do to a funny feeling in my leg or foot.  Typically that feeling is numbness.  It’s not your typical numbness though.  I don’t get the exterior numbness that is usually associated with your leg being asleep.  It’s almost an internal thing.  When I touch my skin I can feel my fingers, but just below that layer of skin is where the numbness kicks in.  Often times it just my heel that numbs out on me.

In fact just the other morning I awoke to the front part of my lower leg an foot on my right side feeling this way.  It stayed that way for a couple of hours.  I guess Grayson wasn’t ready to scooch himself off that nerve quite yet.

7/13/10 :: day 250

Last night when I was trying to fall asleep I started feeling some light, but sharp pains in my upper belly.  They didn’t bother me if I laid completely still, but being as pregnant as I am that didn’t work for me.

This morning when I got out of the shower I noticed a sharp pain on the left side of my temporary baby housing place, and now at 9:10am it is still there.  It comes and goes.  I wonder if you can have or just feel contractions on only one side of your belly?

(9:52am)  The pains in my left side are gone, but I am now having Braxton Hicks contractions that I tried to walk off.  It helped a little.

Saturday night making it’s way into Sunday morning I awoke to stomach pains.  I was dreaming about the pain so it must have been going on for a while.  While I was dreaming I was aware of the pain in my dream.  As I began to wake up I was not certain what was going on or why I was waking up.  I was confused.  Then it hit me…I was in PAIN.  It felt like severe stomach cramps.  I remembered that with Braxton Hicks contractions you are supposed to change whatever activity you are doing.  If you are sleeping/lying down…get up and walk around, etc.  So I did.  I stood up and walked around my room while attempting to stretch my belly a bit.  I figured since I was awake I might as well use this opportunity to go tinkle.  It was 4am in the morning and not my usual 1:30am or 3am potty time, but I figured why the heck not.

(4:33pm)  I have been having some light BH contractions all day today.  It’s kind of exciting, but also quite scary.  I go to the docs tomorrow to have one of those “fun” exams.  Maybe I’m in early labor.  That would be awesome!  But if I am I just hope he holds out one more week so he will not be considered premature.

Can you say “Cutest Burp Clothes Ever”?

One day while trolling Etsy I came across these precious burp clothes.  I found them at the Lilacs & Lollipops Etsy Shop.   These precious little things, that one day will be covered in spit-up, are made with premium pre-folded cloth diapers and Amy Butler fabric.

I may not even pass the burping duties off to Derek just so I can wear one of these babies on my shoulder.  Maybe.

The onesie making magic of Erin strikes again!  (Sorry for the shotty pics.  I snapped them with my iPhone @ my desk.)  Today, Derek and I went to lunch with his co-workers  and in true “guy” fashion they presented us with a gift card as a baby gift.  I’m all about the gift cards.  You never have to return a gift card.  They help fill the voids in the necessities when you’re having a wee one.

Some of you may not get/understand some of these onesies, so I will explain them for you.  The 1st 5 images are from the show It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia.

I’m pretty certain the “Project Bad Ass” onesie is going to be a church outfit.    Juuuust kidding.  Maybe.

The “Fact” onesie is from our other favorite show The Office.  You’ve gotta love a good Dwight Schrute fact.

And well this last one….I have no clue what it’s in reference to.  Me blog?  Please.

We’ve had a few showers and received more than our fair share of baby clothes.  Now the question is what to do with all them dang baby clothes.  Hang them up of course!  Well not all the clothes.  The closet is way too small for that.  But we did want to optimize the space we do have, so I asked my handy husband to add a second hanging bar and shelf to our too tiny closet.  He was more than happy to do so.  Or at least he faked it well.

The closet already had a high hanging bar and shelf, but I wanted a bit more hanging real estate so I asked Derek to add a lower bar and shelf.  He knocked that out in 30 minutes flat.

On the floor of the closet is Grayson’s hamper.  I decided to forgo the traditional looking hamper and use a colorful plastic tub that I picked up on the cheap at my favorite store….Target…of course!  I figured why not get something that fits the style of the room and is easy to wipe down.  Kids spit-up and barf on everything!  Or so I hear.

I covered the shelves with some cute, but boyish, contact paper and painted an accent color in the closet.  I thought by painting this random bar of wood (I have no clue why it’s in the closet…it does absolutely nothing) I could tie the closet to the room a bit more.  So, I took the same color I painted the room, Online Grey, and painted this wooden accent bar within the closet.  Kinda makes it PoP, don’t ya think?

I purchased an inexpensive fabric box at Target to house the multitude of bibs and burp cloths we collected from our recent showers.  And on the shelf next to the box I have a stack of swaddling blankets, and caps for the baby to make sure he is always nice and toasty.  On the top shelf, I have two empty Rubbermaid tubs just waiting to be filled.  It’s nice to have storage ready and waiting for future “junk”.  Kids always bring about extra junk.  Oh yeah,  I am currently storing our stash of diapers up there too.

One of our shower gifts were these cute clothes dividers.

I thought about looking into something like this for his closet.  Since at the beginning, you have a variety of sizes in clothing.  Someone beat me to it.  And the dividers she gave me are just too cute.  Now all of Gray’s hanging clothes can be organized in his closet by age/size.  I’m hoping this will save me time in the “searching for something in his current size” department.

Has anyone else tried this organization method with their kids clothes?  How did it work out?

While taking my weekly belly progression photo yesterday Derek and I decided to goof around and take a few what you would call “maternity photos”.  Here’s a taste of what my talented hubby captured.

Now that’s a lot of belly.  Don’t ya’ think?

We hit the lake again this weekend.  I am no longer a pasty preggo!