Getting Ready for Baby

Baby's crib. We got a crib free from Ryan's friend at work and we painted it white. It turned out so cute, I love it! Vivian made the bed skirt which I'm in love with and the quilt hanging on the crib. She is one talented sewer.

Car seat

 Baby's closet with all the clothes ready for her to wear.

 Changing station with the diaper cake there ready to be used. 

We used the bookshelf to display some of her stuff. It turned out pretty cute, I think.

Baby's stroller. Can't wait to go on walks with her!Love the pink!

Baby's bag for the hospital all packed and ready to go! Can't wait for her to come!

Installing the car seat in my car

He did such a great job. Nice and safe for baby to come home!

Ryan's Birthday Party

We had a fun birthday BBQ/family get-together yesterday for Ryan's birthday. It also happened to be my due date and everyone kept telling me if I planned something for that day, then she would inevitably come and we'd have to reschedule. Well, it didn't work because I'm still pregnant. But we did have a really fun birthday BBQ. (We won't say how old he is because he gets incredibly depressed about it. In fact, the whole time if anyone said happy birthday to him he said, "it's not my birthday yet!" He is still in the denial stage of grieving).
Anyway, we had Lynne, Dave, Owen, Lila, Kelli, Brian, Cadence, Cameron, my Mom, Nate, Brooke, Gavin, Jackson, Paige, Jason, and my friend Rachael and Brian over. It was quite a big group for our tiny apartment but thankfully, the sun decided to come out and we were able to play and eat outside. It was really fun. Ryan grilled steaks and burgers to perfection and we just hung out and had a good time.
When it came time to have cake and ice cream, Brian told Cadence she could have cake once the candles came out of the cake. So we put the candles in the cake and put them in front of Ryan to start lighting and she goes up to Ryan and asks if she can sit on his lap. We sang a very out of tune Happy Birthday and then before we were even done, Cadence starts to blow those candles out! I think she has had a lot of practice on this because she took out more than half of those candles on there! It was totally hilarious. After they were all blown out she turns to me and says, "Can we take the candles out now?" haha! That little girl cracks me up! Anyway, we had a fun time and thanks to everyone who came to celebrate with us!

 Ryan finally got to blow out like 3 of his own candles. 

Ryan and I. This is my 40 week pregnant picture. Enjoy it because I'm really hoping it's the last pregnant picture I will be taking. (And if you are wondering, I don't wear my own clothes anymore, that shirt is actually Ryan's... It's just more comfy that way!)

Pillows

Last night totally convinced me that pregnancy should actually be measured in how many pillows you use to sleep. For the first 2 trimesters I only slept with one pillow like a normal person. One pillow for under my head.  I was mostly normal except for the fact that I had to sleep on my side. Then came the huge belly that demanded  a pillow of its own. Pillow count: 2. One under my head, one under my belly. Still didn't feel like I was too uncomfortable. Then Ryan decided to go off to Asia and I had to add pillow #3 behind my back since he wasn't there for me to lean on. I was pretty much living in a pillow fort, surrounded by pillows on all sides. Again, I was still pretty comfortable, but I was pretty sure that 3 pillows was the max and it meant I was ready have this baby. I mean, where else could you put another pillow? Last night proved me wrong. I woke up at 2:30 in the morning with horrible heartburn. I'm pretty sure this baby girl was sticking her bum up in my stomach and forcing all my food up into my esophagus. It was not pleasant. Enter pillow #4. It's a gigantic pillow that props me up so the heartburn will go away. This and a couple of tums seemed to make the heartburn at least bearable to I could go back to sleep. The only difference is with pillow #4 came complete discomfort. This better be the max number of pillows for pregnancy because I'm ready for this baby to come and I'm running out of pillows!

Baby Shower

 One of my best friends Stephanie and her sisters threw me the cutest baby shower ever! It was so much fun and so cute! It was perfect for this cute little girl. Thanks to the Brassfields for all the hard work and for everyone who came to make it perfect!

 Me at 37 weeks pregnant

 

 Steph and me

 

 

Some of the really cute decorations

 

 This was where I opened all the presents. Everyone was so nice and this little girl has more clothes than I know what to do with! I am going to have to change her 3 times a day to get her into everything she has!

 

 The fun food table. It was vintage circus themed: hence the cotton candy and the popcorn machine. I love it! So cute!!

Best sandwiches ever!

 Yummy food!

 

May

It's May. In case you haven't heard, I'm due in May. And here May is. Crazy. I can't believe it's already here. It seems like January and February went so stinking slow and then all the sudden here is May. Not sure what happened there. Now, I'm not such a fool as to think, "this is the month she is going to make her appearance" because you know the second I say that she is going to come late and make herself a June baby. So I will stick to, This is the month that she is due. Sounds less finite anyway. 
I decided 34 weeks was the time that things got really hard. Work has become almost impossible. All the bending down and being up on my feel for 12-13 hours is just plain hard. There are times when I'm working where I really think, what am I doing? Why am I not at home lying in bed with Ryan rubbing my feet 24/7? Those are the questions of life. I'm actually thinking that bed rest sounds pretty amazing right about now... haha. People ask me at work when I'm due and I say, "May 27th." Their next question almost every time is when my last day of work is. "May 25th" I'm beginning to think I am crazy for working until 40 weeks but maybe it will urge this little girl out a little sooner. Just maybe.
The other question we get all the time is if we have picked a name yet. The answer unfortunately is no. For some reason this time around I feel like I have to see her before we name her. We definitely have a list of names we like but we don't have ONE that we love yet. Hopefully seeing her will inspire us.
We are feeling a lot more prepared for this little girl to come these days. While Ryan was out of town, my mom came to stay with me to keep me safe and be here in case I went into labor sans Ryan. While she was here, we emptied out the spare bedroom, boxed a bunch of stuff up and put it in the garage to make room for all of baby girl's stuff. It isn't really the nursery I was hoping to have but it will work for now until we get a house one day. At least now we have a place for her to sleep, a car seat, a place for her clothes and diapers, etc. Now, every time I walk passed the room I don't get stressed out since it is pretty much ready to put a cute little girl in. We are so excited and I just can't believe that Sunday I will be 37 weeks!! That is technically term! I can't believe it! We are so excited to meet this little girl so soon!

31 Weeks

I am currently 31 weeks pregnant! That means only 9 weeks left until the big due date. (Although I'm just kinda expecting to go over, so it will probably be longer than that!) But it is so weird to think that in only 6 weeks this baby will be considered "term!" Crazy to think about that. I honestly don't think about it very often because we are so not ready for her to come. The spare bedroom is a complete mess with all her clothes and stuff we've gotten for her. However, the essentials are missing. No car seat, crib, changing table, rocking chair, diapers, wipes, etc. Let's just say, we better get busy!
The pregnancy has been going along very well and I couldn't be more grateful. I can officially say that morning sickness has disappeared (thank goodness) and I am feeling pretty good most of the time. I feel large and it is kinda hard to find a comfortable position to sleep but Ryan is good at rubbing my back until I fall asleep. (He's a keeper) So far, I have only experienced a little bit of swelling in my feet after a long day at work but my blood pressure has been great. She has been moving around like crazy lately, which is so much fun. We like to talk to her and tell her that she has to stay in there for a little while longer. However, she doesn't have a name yet (we are still taking suggestions!) so we just call her Baby Girl. It's a fine name for now...

Here are some fun belly pictures. It's amazing how big I've grown in the last 6 weeks. She really started to poke out lately!

Happy St Patty's Day

We had some leprechauns visit us! Yummy green milk and waffles!

California!

We had so much fun in California last week! Lynne and I took the two babies and headed for warm weather. While we were gone, Utah had its only snow storm. It was perfect planning on our part, if I do say so myself. When we got back, Utah decided to go back to its unusual warm winter weather.
The best part of going to California is just being around all our family there. Its so fun to have the grandmas, aunts, cousins, brothers, sisters, nieces, and nephews around! (Albeit 4 kids two and under makes for a whole lot of loud!) We had some fun hanging out at home, going shopping, going to the beach, having family parties, etc. Here are some fun pictures of the week!

Cam was so funny. He got all wrapped up in the yoga mat and then tried to walk. Obviously he fell and then he would laugh and laugh! So cute!

Bubble baths in Grandma's bathtub. Cade insisted on wearing her bathing suit! Funny.

Suckers for the little boys! It was adorable to watch them together totally enjoying every minute! Cam tried to share his sucker with Owen and Owen was not going to take his own sucker out in order to take a lick of Cam's. These two boys crack me up!

When Cade saw that I was taking pictures of the boys with their suckers, she said "wait for me," grabbed her own sucker, and sat down for the picture! She couldn't be left out!

My dad played airplane and then would flip the kids over his head. They loved it and it gave my dad his workout for the day! What a fun grandpa!

My family was so sweet and while I was in town, they threw me such a cute baby shower. It was mostly family and then a few close friends. I am so grateful for all the adorable things everyone got for our cute little girl. She is already totally spoiled. We had Daphe's gyros for the food and it was so delicious! We ate, visited, opened presents, and then laughed all night long about everyone's labor stories. There were like 4 pregnant women and plenty of mothers there so comparing stories was pretty fun!

The adorable decorations. I was just loving all the pink!

I was surprised to see my good high school friend Jenna show up! She was so cute and even came the next day for my mom's famous waffles. In high school my mom used to make my friends and me waffles. Apparently they are infamous now because my friends still remember them and request them every time they see my mom. It was fun to see her again and be able to catch up with her.

Us at the beach. I say "us" because it's me and little baby girl. She loves the beach already!Lynne, Lila, Me, and baby girl at the beach. Doesn't Lila look so cute in her little outfit! She is so stylin'! The family at the beach with the kiddos and all! We ate at Rubies on the pier outside. The kids chased the pigeons all around and we enjoyed the warm breeze. It was such a fun trip and we already can't wait until we get to go back!

Good News

On Monday I had my 28 week appointment. This was the dreaded appointment where I had to drink the gross non-carbonated orange soda. Seriously, its hard to not throw up after drinking that thing. I was really nervous this time because a) last time, I failed the first screening and b) since I was measuring big, I was nervous this time I actually had diabetes.
The first bit of good news was that I was actually measuring normal this week! I was measuring just under 30 cm, which is only like 2 cm big. That is considered normal. They said that she was probably just in a different position last time and they are not worried about her being big anymore. Yay!
As far as the glucose screening goes, I had to wait a little longer for the results because my insurance has to send my blood to a different location to get it processed. So for the last 4 days I have been worried that my results were going to be too high. I called yesterday for some reassurance but they must have been really busy because no one ever called me back. So I called again today and they said they'd call me back but then I looked online to see if the results were back and they were. I PASSED! Oh thank heavens! I couldn't be more excited. And not only did I pass, but the numbers were actually really good and not even close to the high limit. Must have been those yummy eggs I had for breakfast that morning! haha
Anyway, so now that things are looking back to normal, I can take a little breather and just enjoy the little girl kicks I get all day long! I'm pretty sure that is the best part of being pregnant! Now starts the every 2 week check ups. We are praying that everything continues to go well and little baby girl gets here safely! Can't wait (but we will) to see her!

Lila's Blessing

Dave and Lynne blessed Lila on February 5, 2012. I love blessings because it gives us the opportunity to see all our family! It was a pretty chaotic week but we did pretty well with the 4 kiddos (sometimes more with the cousins and such) running around Lynne's house. I didn't take too many pictures but here are some cute ones from the trip.

Great-Grandparents with LilaGoing on a walk

We took the kids for their first time bowling ever. They totally loved it! It was so much fun to watch them roll the ball down the slider thing and then just sit there and watch the ball roll. Owen was so intent on watching it the whole way! It was adorable!

HUGE

Lately, I've been watching those numbers on the scale go up and up and there is nothing I can do about it but say, "Hey, this baby must be HUGE!" Which would justify those numbers going up so fast. Well, my most recent appointment confirmed that to be true. You see, I'm only 24 weeks along. For those of you who do not know, after 20 weeks, the Doctors start measuring how high up the fundus (top) of the uterus is. The number of centimeters should correspond with the number of weeks you are. So, I should be measuring 24 cm's. Except I'm not. And that is because I'm huge. I am measuring a whopping 30 cm's! That is 6 weeks bigger than I am supposed to be. The midwife told me, "Well, maybe you are just growing a healthy 9 lb baby!" and then I cursed her for saying such things.
At this point, they aren't really worried about it. We are just going to wait until my next appointment and if I'm still measuring huge, then we go to another ultrasound to see why. So if you could spare a little room in your prayers that everything is indeed okay, we would greatly appreciate it.

Lately

I feel like I have so many posts with this same title. I guess it is because sometimes nothing fantastic has happened that I need to dedicate an entire post to, but lots of little great things have--so why not put them into one big post?

--Work has decided to cross-train the Pediatric nurses to the NICU. My hospital just built a large NICU that can hold up to 24 babies and apparently they are short-staffed at the moment. That means any time they don't need us upstairs on Med/Surg/Peds, we get to go play with itty bitty babies.(And because of the lovely weather we have been having--read "no snow"-- we have not seen very many sick kids, which means we have been in the NICU a lot!) Mostly, I have just had "feeder-growers" which are babies that are there to learn how to eat. Most have NG tubes and require regular feeds through them if they can't finish their feedings orally. With these patients, I have 3 babies and let me tell you, it gets so busy!!! It is like having triplets!! I cannot imagine ever having triplets. Seriously, when do you sleep? You feed the first one, change them, get them back to sleep, then go on to #2, then #3 and then you have maybe 45 minutes until you have to do it all again. And that is only if everything goes right. For all those who are having multiples, you are a better person than me. I would die. Anyway, the NICU is fun for the most part although by the end of the day my feet and back are killing me from the extra weight/baby I've been carrying around lately. Also, the fact that we had about 7 hours of training before they threw me out on my own makes me nervous every time I'm there. (Not really on my own. The NICU nurses are very nice and will answer any question you have but I do have 3 patients all to myself. It scares me sometimes for sure, but I'm getting more used to it.) I always joke when people ask me what kind of nurse I am--Medical, Surgical, Orthopedics, Pediatrics, ICU, Post-Partum, NICU... Who knows what they'll throw in next!
--Ryan's work can be summed up in one word lately: stressful. He is incredibly busy and has multiple projects he is working on all at once and everyone wants theirs done first (of course). I am just so thankful for a hardworking husband who does his best to support us. And the best part is... he is REALLY good at it. He always has calls from different companies asking him if he wants a new job. Maybe one day, but for now, he stays at LanDesk.
--Ryan found out he is going to Europe for work... again. And no, I'm not going with him. I wish I was but, I'm not. What do you do? Oh ya, I go to California. Lynne and I magically planned a trip to California during the exact time that Ryan is going to Europe. I think it is fate really.
--The pregnancy nausea has finally started to ease up. I have even worked a couple of days without taking Zofran. That is just a miracle to me. Not to say the nausea is completely gone, but I can't even remember the last time I threw up and THAT is saying something, my friends.
--I absolutely LOVE the fact that I'm having another girl. I seriously couldn't be more excited. When people ask me if I know what I'm having I say, "A Girl" with the biggest grin in the entire world on my face! It just makes me so happy! I realized today at work in the NICU that I know nothing about boys. I know, I'm sure I will learn once that opportunity comes, but for now, I'm content just knowing about girl things.

Jackson and Gavin

Just thought I'd let you know that I have really cute nephews. Brooke and Nate make some cute babies.

Cinnamon Rolls

I was looking at pictures from when Ryan and I were dating the other day. I came across these pictures from when Ryan was trying so hard to woo me where we made homemade cinnamon rolls together. It was his dad's secret family recipe and at the time I was not allowed to know all the aspects of the recipe, since I was not yet a Gardner. Well the other day, I asked Ryan if we could make Cinnamon Rolls and since I'm still not sure I qualify for the Gardner family recipe, I had to go it on my own. I chose this recipe since everything I make from this blog is completely delicious and these did not disappoint. The frosting especially is so delicious!
I also learned something about myself during this process. Something I already knew but is manifest to me every time I start baking. As much as I really do not enjoy cooking, I LOVE to bake! Cookies, brownies, cake, cupcakes, cake bites, rolls, cinnamon rolls, etc. I just love it. Maybe because they are so delicious to eat! Anyway, here are some pictures of the deliciousness.

Please excuse the fact that I look like death. I believe I just came off a 13 hour shift!

Best News Ever

Expecting a GIRL May 27th!

What's that I said, a GIRL?!?! It has been said numerous times that Gardners do not have girls and yet here we are, having girl #2! Can you believe it? And the even better news? She is looking completely 100% healthy! All her measurements are normal and she is the cutest! Here, see for yourself...

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Because even strangers are asking when I'm due, here are the belly pics thus far!

Besides the nausea and vomiting I've been experiencing for pretty much the entire pregnancy, we are loving this pregnancy. I started feeling her move around a little later than I felt Olivia but now I feel her move around daily and even Ryan has felt her move a couple of times when she was especially rambunctious! We can't wait to meet her cute little face! Love her!