secret santa swag (and a song)

This year I decided to participate in a few different secret santa swaps.  One I did through reddit, and was sent a crochet book with a mildly ugly baby on the front.

I really have no desire to crochet blankets, but if I want to, now I have a book.

My baby has enough blankets, seriously.  But at least I got something, and the gifter put some thought into it which I always appreciate.

Another secret santa I did this year was a milspouse one, hosted by fellow sub wife Wife of a Sailor.  I was really excited when I got my match (yet another sub wife!) to send to since I had been reading her blog for over a year.  I'm still kicking myself because she announced her pregnancy the day after I sent the package out!  I definitely could've thrown some baby stuff in there . . . oh well.

As for who had me, it was a mystery until I got my package in the mail earlier this week.  When I got the package from my apartment's office, it was jingling!  It contained a sweet card from Ashley at Ashley Amazing.  It also contained all of these awesome and festive decorations:

It actually had 2 towels, but it was laundry day so one went in the bathroom right away!

There's some jingling bells both in the little sleigh and on the wreath holder that's sorta tucked behind the towel.  In her card, she said the countdown tree was for next year, but I liked it so much that I added it to the display on the bar already.

I told you I got more cards!

Ashley, thank you sooo much for all the fun stuff!

And since I saw The Nutcracker last weekend with some friends, I will leave you with my favorite dance and music from that, the Trepak (Russian dance).  I had this stuck in my head for days!


Have you ever seen a gal about 9 months pregnant try to prance about the room doing her best ballerina impression?  Um, because that just might have been me last week . . .

 

preparations for a quiet Christmas at home

We've been doing a little preparation for Christmas, but to be honest, it's nothing major even though we're "stuck" here and no one's coming to visit.  My mom mailed us our stockings and I put up a little display on the bar.

One idea that I got this year was to hang up the cards we've been getting from others, and I really like how easy it was and how it looks!  I just used some twine, tape, and paperclips--all things from around the house!

It now has a lot more cards on it :)

And what about that hideous tree I have on the bar?  I "won" it in a Dirty Santa exchange and have decided to make the best of it.  It will probably be going in the trash eventually, however.  At least the gift also came with a $10 gift card to Cracker Barrel (along with an expired coupon for free hashbrowns at Waffle House.)

B's captain is actually the one responsible for bringing this gift.  He even used a Victoria's Secret bag to wrap it in.  Classy, huh?

We also decided to drive across the street to the U-Cut tree farm and cut down a tree!  I've never done that before, and I definitely thought it was a more "northern" thing.  Who would've thought we'd have one around the corner here in FL?  It took some convincing on my part, but it was only $30 and we scoped out the trees in advance on a walk to make sure they weren't too big for our apartment.  Most were sand pines with skinny trunks, so they were fine.  We got one and threw it in the the trunk of B's Buick Century.  We didn't even tie the thing down since we weren't going too far.  I say that I did most of the hard work--yes, B handed me the saw and said, "This was your idea, here ya go."  Yeah, I married a total Grinch.

This took less than 5 minutes to saw down.

I went to Wal-Mart and decided to "splurge" and get a pretty tree-topper.  That didn't pan out for us, unfortunately.

The branches at the top were too thin to support anything even remotely heavy.

So I returned the pretty topper for a 97¢ bow with a twist-tie on the back.

Maybe I'll buy a real tree skirt in the after-Christmas sales.

Also, here's our awesome Christmas card for this year.

The back was my favorite part!

Okay, to tell the truth we had more than one set of cards because I won 50 free cards from Tiny Prints (the ones above), but their price per card was just too high to buy the extras I needed from there.  (For the others, I found an amazing deal at cardstore.com that included postage and will definitely be using them more in the future if they run stuff like that again!  I actually paid less than the price of the stamp per card, honestly, and the cards came out pretty nice too.)

Check back tomorrow for some holiday tunes and to see what I got from my milspouse secret santa blog swap!

a pregnancy update

I don't post about it much, but maybe I should since it's what everyone asks me about the most!

I don't think I could've asked for a better pregnancy.  Seriously.  I'm 35 weeks along, and most nights I don't even have to get up to use the bathroom in the middle of the night.  That might change when she drops, but I'll deal with that later.  The first trimester remains the worst part of this so far, and I didn't even throw up then.

I told someone the other day that this is going "better than textbook."  All of those "par for the course" pregnancy woes that I'm mostly not experiencing.  If I wasn't feeling her move and kick all the time, I'd probably be concerned.  But everything is great.  I had an appointment today and found out that she's head-down for now, so let's hope she stays that way!

I've had fun tracking my stats every Wednesday (sometimes Thursdays, sometimes I forgot).  Here's a graph of my weight gain and another of my stomach circumference.  I love me some graphs!

I've gained 27 pounds so far and am not ashamed!

I'm almost 40" around!!

I love the circumference one because you can kinda see when I "popped"--I'd say 22-24 weeks, which is when I really started looking pregnant.

Some fun things I've gotten to figure out:

• Clipping my toenails.  Luckily, it doesn't have to be done that often, but it's not easy!  My fingernails are growing at an alarming rate.  I've had people say this is due to prenatal vitamins, but I think that's bologna.  I took prenatal vitamins when I wasn't pregnant and there was no difference.  
• My hair isn't falling out as quickly.  I have a ton of hair and used to lose a lot of hair every time I washed it, and for most of this pregnancy it's only been a few strands.  My mom told me that about 6 weeks after the birth, I better be ready for tons of it to fall out!
• Working out has gotten a lot harder.  Climbing the stairs to the office I volunteer in winds me.  My usual elliptical routine takes a lot more out of me than I'm used to.  I'm definitely toning it down now and just trying to keep the endurance up.
• Setting up the nursery.  Holy cow.  This took us 2 days of just sorting through all the clothes and gifts we had gotten.  We're only missing maybe two semi-crucial items (like a trash can/diaper pail).
• Speaking of dipes, I got my first order of cloth diapers in the mail!  I found a pretty good Black Friday sale online at this site--I had been tracking prices of the covers I plan to use.  I now own 3 covers (all are different brands), a cute giraffe cloth pail liner, a small wetbag, and some other cloth essentials.  I haven't had to buy any prefolds because both diaper cakes that were given to me used cloth!  I think they're just generic Gerber ones, but I'm gonna try them out first before buying any more.  I was also given a ton of leftover size 1 disposables from my sister and tons of normal wipes and washcloths/wipes from everyone under the sun, so hopefully we'll be set for a bit.  I do have my eye on some other cloth stuff too, and have been doing my darndest to win some of it in giveaways.
• Labor plan.  You wanna know my plan?  It's called "wait and see."  I have nothing against epidurals, but if I'm able to do this all on my own with no drugs, then hooray for me!  If not, whatever.  B and I took the "Childbirth Preparation" course offered by our hospital, so this is all starting to sink in that it's actually gonna happen!

And of course I couldn't leave you without some belly pics!  Here's an overview of how I've progressed.  I seriously do no feel as huge as that last pictures makes me look, and everyone I know keeps telling me that my belly is "cute and small."  Not sure if I believe them!

The very last picture was taken Saturday morning (12/17)

In 2 weeks I'll be considered "full term," but I'm hoping to make it to 39 weeks because it's best for baby.  I am ready to meet her soon though!