Getting Ready for the Baby

For such a little person, LJ sure needs a lot of stuff. We spent pretty much all day Saturday, buying/setting up/arranging different things for her, and we're probably only half way down the list of things we need to get before she comes. I'll just give the highlights of some of the things we've either been given of gotten ourselves in the last week:

Car Seat and Stroller: We setup the car seat and stroller that we got at the shower. We still need to install the seat in the car but it actually doesn't look too complicated. We're pretty impressed with the ability to move from the car to the stroller and stay in the same carrier, hopefully she'll sleep that much more now.

Swing: We liked the original swing on our registry because of the motion it made, and because it was tall and hard for the dog to get into. But we decided that there was only a chance that LJ would actually sleep in whatever we bought so we went with a more traditional one.

Cloths: Well we didn't buy any more cloths, but we put what we have now into her dresser.

Huge Giraffe: We thought it would be fun to take pictures of LJ next to a huge stuffed animal while she was growing up, instead of measuring her on the wall. We went with the giant giraffe. Hopefully she won't be scared of it. We're not sure what Lucy will do when she finally notices it but we think it will be entertaining.

Camera: We liked our old camera, but on the belief that LJ would do something cute and we'd only have a fraction of a second to take a picture before she stopped we wanted one that was faster. The one we picked had a lot of the settings that a SLR would have, but the main thing is that it's pretty fast.

Working on the Baby's Room

Lately we've just been working on getting the baby's room all set up. Adam's parents came down last weekend to give us his old changing table and dresser. While they were here and we had a van so we picked up the crib. It was a tight fit, we had to unpackage everything, take out some seats and leave Kristin and Adam's mom at the store, but we got it home eventually.

Then we did some more work on arranging in there. We've cleared out most of the things we were storing. We moved the Christmas tree to the garage and then setup a big bookshelf full of Kristin's old stuffed animals and some of the baby books we have all ready. There's a panorama we put together of the room. The lighting makes it kind of lame but you can get an idea of what the room will look like when we're done.

We can almost envision a baby being in the house now ...

Getting Ready for the Baby

We have a crib! Well, almost. D'Artagnan isn't big enough to bring it home, so they're holding it at the store until we borrow a van or truck or something to come pick it up, but we will have it soon.

It's been quite the ordeal finding a crib. We started looking about three weeks ago at all the furniture stores in town. We went to 5 or 6 different stores and were told at all of them that they don't carry cribs, which was kind of sad because we wanted to actually see the crib, not just order it online and hope that we liked it when it came. We did end up getting a glider for the baby's room that weekend, so it wasn't a complete loss, but I was starting to get worried that she was going to have to sleep in the sock drawer.

But then I was telling someone that we couldn't find any cribs in town, and they suggested Babyland. So I went on Monday, and as soon as I got to the parking lot I knew it was going to be great. The closest parking spots to the door were reserved for expectant mothers! So that was pretty exciting. Then, when I got in the store, they had so many cribs! They have the store set up like little nurseries so that you can see how the crib looks in a room, so I had a great time wandering around and trying to imagine Lumberjack in there. I didn't make any decisions, but a couple of days later Adam came with me and we got it narrowed down to two. Then today we went to actually buy one. It turned out that they didn't have either of the two that we picked out in stock and it was going to take 6 - 8 weeks to get them in, which would probably be okay, but we're due in 9 weeks, so that's cutting it pretty close. But the lady at the store said that they have one in stock that isn't a floor model that looks just like one of the two that we had picked out but it had a dropside. So we saw a picture of it and we decided to get that one!

I took a picture of the one that they had set up at the store. The one that we're getting isn't the same color - it's lighter by a shade or two. And it has the dropside, and I think she said that it has a drawer underneath, too. But the shape of it's the same. And now the baby won't have to sleep in the sock drawer!

I also got pretty excited at Babyland because they had a little display of baseball books and toys for kids. We got Lumberjack "Chicago White Sox 101: my first team-board-book." It's so cute! There's a page in the back where there's a picture of a White Sox hat and you can put in the baby's picture so it looks like she's wearing it. I'm pretty excited about teaching her all about being a White Sox fan.

Thanksgiving Update

For our first married Thanksgiving we headed up to Adam's parents' house for a few days. Lucy's always pretty excited to see her grandparents and uncle, but we weren't sure how she'd handle seeing the whole family, so we brought her a rawhide bone to distract her. Unfortunately, Lucy has enough doggie instinct to want to bury or hide her bone before she eats it, and she hid it somewhere in the house. We still hadn't found it by the time we needed to leave, so maybe when we head back for Christmas she'll find a nice little surprise.

Lucy also had the excitement of meeting her cousin puppy, Prescott, for Thanksgiving. Adam's cousin Dan brought Prescott over for the day (he's the other dog in the pictures with Lucy) and the two puppies had such a good time chasing each other in circles around the outside of the house. Lucy discovered that running on top of the pool cover is not the best idea, but luckily for her she's light enough she didn't pull the whole thing in.

Adam and I had a lot of fun hanging out with the family on Thanksgiving Day. It was the first time we'd seen most of them since we found out about the baby, so we got to talk about that a lot. Adam got to show off the ultrasound video to several people, so that was a good time too.

The next day we headed to Bryan, Ohio to visit with the Oxenrider grandparents, which included a visit to the world famous Christmas Manor. That's where we saw the John Deere Christmas tree, and also where we got the "Our First Christmas Together" ornament.

I'm a big believer in setting up the Christmas tree as early as possible, so when we got home after Thanksgiving we set up the tree that night. It's a little big for the size of the living room, but it's so fun to come home and see the lights through the window! We've had a bit of trouble convincing Lucy that she's not allowed to dig under the tree, but I think she's finally figured that out.



Last night, we went to see Handel's Messiah at the arts center on campus. It was a little bit of a surprise to us that it was in German rather than English - the fact that it was Mozart's arrangement didn't make it into the advertisements. But we still had a good time, and we found out that Lumberjack is a big music fan too. Whenever the music got really loud or exciting, I could feel her really kicking and rocking out. When it quieted down or stopped, so did she. It was our first indication of anything personality-wise, and it was so cool!