Strollers

I need your opinions. Evan and I had picked out a stroller for a boy, but we are having a girl so we're trying to decide whether this particular stroller is too boyish---or if it will be ok. We really like everything about the stroller otherwise, so tell me...do you think it's ok for a girl, or is it too boyish?



Blue, tan and brown polka-dots are cute, but it's a lot of brown, that's the only thing that really bothers me. Honestly, there aren't too many neutral designs out there, and we definitely don't want something pink and girlish. We hope to be able to use the same stroller for our next child who could possibly be a boy...but we also don't want our girl to look silly in a too-boyish stroller. So serious opinions would be appreciated. It won't upset me, I just want to know what other people think. 4 comments

Posted by Evan and Jen at 7:45 PM

Crazy, busy weekend part 2

Ok, so Evan's parents and Stephanie (his sister) spent the night last Friday night. Saturday morning we slept in a little and had a nice bacon and eggs breakfast, YUM :) Donna had brought us some newborn diapers from Luvs that were on major clearance so that was exciting, we had baby diapers in the house!!! Then, Tammy, a woman from Evan's church back at home sent a book of soothing CD's for the baby. They're really nice and include Mozart, washer/dryer noises etc. really really neat! That was exciting because it's really the first baby stuff we had in the house. We decided to go shopping a little! We went to World Market, Kohl's, and Target. They bought us a couple gowns/body suits for the baby girl. They were cute, green with monkeys, giraffes etc. They also bought the cutest pair of brown shoes with pink polka dots, and boy am I a sucker for polka dots. Kohl's was selling some of the collection of "If you give a mouse a cookie, If you give a mouse a muffin" etc. for $5.00 and the proceeds went to help out children so we bought 2, and Steph bought the pig and the mouse that went with the books!! She's going to have so much fun playing with the stuffed animals while we read her these stories!!! Our little girl is going to be so sick of polka dots by the times she's 2, LOL! It was so much fun looking at girlie clothes, they have a lot of cute CUTE stuff :)

This is very random but we bought a dining room table about a month ago from World Market (our favorite store) because we've had a free table that some friends passed down, their dogs had chewed almost every leg off of every chair, and we thought it was about time we got us a nice one. Plus, they were having an awesome sale! I just thought I would post a picture of it:



I didn't feel like cleaning it off for a good picture, so here you see the diapers, stuffed animals, and the clothing we got. Plus, my new Target purse (love it) and Evan's PEZ dispensers (uh, the boy is 25 and having a child, really you still want to collect these?) But anyways, here's the table, love love love benches, so very happy we finally have a grown up table!

Sunday we went to church and me, Evan, my mom and my sister and Mackenzie met at Babies R Us to get the crib and dresser! Evan and I really need help on what to register for and had some questions about things like strollers, car seats, bottles, monitors etc. and she really really helped us. We've registered for a couple things already, but I think it's going to take us a while, it's so hard, so many tough decisions. So we got the furniture loaded up in the truck, took it home only to find out they gave us the right crib and wrong dresser. Boy was it an ordeal to call them and figure out what happened, and I was not very calm or happy because it's a good 45 min. drive home and my brother-in-law was so kindly letting us use his truck. Well they got it worked out and gave us 20% off of the dresser which was nice, but we had to drive all the way back over there (without Evan b/c he had huddles) and I got to watch as my mom and Amber tried to get this enormously heavy dresser out of the back of the truck and into our garage since there was no way they could get it upstairs. All that work, but we finally have the crib and the dresser, YAY! Here's the pic from BRU



Aren't they cute? They're really heavy duty and seem like they will last! The crib will convert to a toddler bed and eventually a full size bed as well :) Our friends Wes & Diana came over last night to help Evan get the dresser upstairs since the dresser came completely put together (which is nice for Evan not to have to do, but was extremely heavy). We are going to aim to put the crib together tonight after Evan mows the yard :)

I have another treat for you as well. I know some people read this from miles and miles away and do not get the pleasure of seeing my cute little pregnant belly, so I took some pictures. Nothing fancy, and I'm not photogenic but Evan took some pictures. I hope you're happy because normally after wearing scrubs all day I jump into some nice comfy pants and a tank top but I changed into normal clothes just for you guys ;)



I don't know why these pictures look so fuzzy to me, they don't look like that on the computer, but oh well...you get the picture, I have a belly!

We found out that one of our friends Lindsey (who's 2.5 weeks ahead of me) is having a boy, and our other friend Lindsay (who's like 4 days behind me) found out today and I will know tonight (super excited) and Casey (who's almost a month behind me) will find out soon enough! It's so much fun, I can't wait for all of us to have our babies and have play dates :) I'm off for now, have a great rest of the week! 1 comments

Posted by Evan and Jen at 5:53 PM

Crazy, busy weekend 1

Last Thursday, at 18 weeks 2 days, I felt the baby move! I was calling my parents for our nightly talk, and the baby kicked me. Immediately Evan put his hand on my belly and felt it too! A few minutes later it felt like the baby had the hiccups, it was so cool :)

Friday was the big day! IT'S A GIRL! We found out that everything is perfect, her weight/size is measuring great, heartbeat is great, they checked a ton of things like 10 fingers/toes, spine, skull etc. and the doctor says everything looks great!!!



There's a profile of our baby girl, and the crotch of our baby girl ;) I have a lot more pictures too, Evan posted them on facebook and I probably will too eventually, but right now I figure these 2 can satisfy you for a while!

Evan and I both just wanted a healthy baby, we really didn't prefer one or the other, but we had only been able to decide on a boys name, boys bedding/room theme/stroller etc. so I guess maybe for that reason we were almost expecting a boy. We are thrilled about a girl though, we have a lot of work ahead of us, especially with her name because we CANNOT find a name we really like, but we have time!

On the way home we went to hallmart and bought a balloon that read "It's a Girl" and they gave us a box so we could put the balloon in the box, and wrap it and that's how we planned to reveal it to our parents! Then we went home and met the carpet cleaners who cleaned practically the whole house. They were really good and quick and now I feel like our house is so much cleaner!

Dinner was great, we sat down and immediately had Mackenzie opening the box that would reveal what everyone had been waiting for all day...here's the short video




After dinner, we immediately headed over to Babies R Us to look at girlie stuff!!! My parents decided a couple months ago that they wanted to buy us a crib, but we hadn't been able to find one we liked in the color we wanted but it was our lucky night, we finally found one! And this one even had a matching dresser/changing table combo which we love :) My parents bought us both of these and they were a decent price too. They were both in stock but we didn't have a truck with us so we were going to come back on Sunday to pick them up. It was so exciting just to know that we finally found the furniture for our girlie :) Ok...that's all for tonight, will post more stuff tomorrow! 1 comments

Posted by Evan and Jen at 8:26 PM

Long time...

Yea, yea, it's been a long, long time. I warned you at the beginning that I'm not a good blogger. Maybe if I did more, or took more pictures to post of things I was talking about I would feel like my blog was more interesting, but I don't. I'm alive and well. The past few weeks have been pretty uneventful, which in my book is good, we've just been counting down to October 2nd when we hope to find out what we're having!!! 1 week and I cannot wait. I feel like I'm stuck until next week. I can't buy anything, register for everything, pick out nursery stuff...I'm so ready to do that, and to know if we're having a boy and girl, and pick a name out etc.

That's about the biggest news as of late. My belly is getting bigger, it's hard for me to tell how much though because it feels a lot bigger than it looks in my opinion. I'll make a comment that I don't feel much bigger than I was, and then Evan will show me the pictures of me at 6 or 8 weeks and I'm like, oh wow, ok maybe I am bigger but I can't really tell yet. My belly isn't very round, or hard, and I'm not fitting into any maternity clothes, but my normal clothes look ridiculous. I'm ready to be in cute maternity clothes and have a cute little belly but it seems like it's taking forever. I know that probably sounds weird but oh well.

Well, that's all for now. I know it was short, but I updated, just for you Jessica ;) 2 comments

Posted by Evan and Jen at 1:19 PM

So sorry for the last post...

I hope I didn't scare you away with my last post. Great news!!! I have the miracle drug Zofran and I feel better than I ever have pregnant. My two co-workers, Karen and Dawn are awesome and would not let me take no as an answer, bought me said miracle drug which was ridiculously expensive. I seriously felt really bad as they were doing it but they kept saying over and over that that's what friends are for, and we want to help, etc. but still it's a LOT of money. BUT IT WORKS! It was amazing, and instantaneous. I started taking the meds mid Thursday and Friday morning I was up at 5:00am taking a shower (which I used to not be able to do). I fixed my hair, put make-up on (which has been a rare occasion lately) and I even went by Chick-fil-a and had a chicken biscuit at 7:30am. It was amazing---seriously. I have not been the least bit nauseous since I started taking it, I have so much more energy, it's awesome!

Friday after work I met up with my mom and sister and did a tiny bit of shopping. I got a couple maternity shirts, and a sweater. Then we went to Babies R Us and it was a lot less overwhelming this time. My sister helped me out a lot, giving me little tips that only a recent mother would know about certain products. I feel like I'm getting a better grip on the things that we will need and how to pick out which ones will work best for us. YAY! My sister's awesome, and has been and will continue to be a really big life saver I think :) She brought me a basket full of maternity clothes to see if they would fit me, and my coworker Melissa brought me like 5 pairs of maternity jeans as well to try. So exciting, until I tried them on :( There are 2 pair of jeans that could be hopeful, but I'm not quite sure. They were all smalls from motherhood/old navy, places like that, but most were still so big, not even just in the waist, but everywhere. I am a size 0, have been for the longest time, and it's hard enough for me to find adult clothes when I'm not pregnant, so I knew this was going to be a struggle.

Saturday Evan and I decided to venture out into the madness of tax-free weekend (Friday wasn't bad at all) just for fun, not really looking for anything in particular. I had Kohl's cash and I found a bra that I wanted but refused to stand in the line that wrapped around half of the store to purchase it. We went to Target where I bought the bella band! We looked at all the baby stuff again, of course, and then went to lunch. I decided I wanted to look at Motherhood at Crabtree and maybe try on some of the jeans just to see---bad thinking. It was so depressing, one of the ladies who worked there even got the smallest jeans for me, "these have the skinny legs so they're bound to work" NOPE. Then another saleswoman told me to go to "A Pea in the Pod" they will definitely fit you! For those of you who don't know, they carry designer jeans like Seven and freakin expensive clothes BUT just to see, we went there. I tried on some non-designer (still like $70) jeans, nope. I also tried on a few shirts that weren't horribly priced, then Evan saw something hanging on the dressing room door, a whole outfit and was like try it on, it's cute. So I did, I LOVED IT, looked at the price, oh my gosh. How in the world can anyone afford a $200 sweater, an $85 t-shirt, ridiculous! So, needless to say, I don't know what I'm going to do about the lower half of me when I really do start showing, but I think I'll stick with Target on most of my maternity clothes needs.

Today is Sunday and I was able to go to church, YAY! I even wore a dress (which I never do) to celebrate being at church for the first time in 3 weeks! It was amazing too, we had just a very chill worship day, which I needed. Now, after a 2 hour nap today which was wonderful, I'm here updating the blog while Evan makes lasagna for homegroup tonight. Speaking of that, I should probably go get ready and see if he needs any help. He is still being amazing of course, I couldn't ask for a better husband and that's the truth. He's so good to me, so very excited about this child---just typing about it brings tears to my eyes. He's going to be such an amazing father :) 0 comments

Posted by Evan and Jen at 5:29 PM

Yes, I'm having a breakdown...

I'm warning you, if you want to read about how everything is perfect and wonderful you should stop reading right now. I am really close to have a complete breakdown so I'm hoping writing this down and getting it out of my system will help the situation.

So I have had pretty bad morning sickness all along, and it was tolerable and under control for a while after they prescribed me phenergen. This past Saturday it got bad, I started throwing up again every morning. Sunday was bad, and yesterday and today were not good at all, plus I'm back at work this week and being this sick really affects me. Since it had been 5 straight days being incredibly sick I decided to call my OB. I called them at 8:10am this morning and asked to speak with a nurse. I explained that I was throwing up like crazy and I need to know what to do, if I should start taking something else, anything. It took them 8 hours to call me back. They close at 4:00 and the nurse called me at 4:20, talked to me for 2 seconds and said ok i'll prescribe you something else, she said she needed to talk to the Dr. and would call me back when she called in the prescription. So 5:10pm she calls me back and says she called it in. Evan went over to the CVS to pick it up, the generic was $200 for 90 pills. Everyone I know gets generic prescriptions for $10 or even less, but no not me. I still pay $227/month for health insurance which including maternity coverage and yet I can't get a generic prescription for less than $200. So did I decided to break the bank so I can stop throwing up? No, I guess I will live with being miserable or try to fight the nurses again tomorrow. I think I would rather be sick than fight and beg my doctors to give me the time of day.

I'm so tired, and tired of being sick and exhausted. I'm unhappy because I never feel good. My coworker at work is pregnant but she's not sick, not yet at least and I have a couple of other pregnant friends who are not sick, or have gotten their morning sickness under control. They all seem to have it together and it really makes me sad. I've wanted this so bad, to be pregnant, to have a baby, and now that I have it I can't enjoy it. I feel like none of my friends, even the closest ones who know me well don't understand. I feel like they see me as a horrible person, an unhappy person, someone who doesn't appreciate what she's been given. Trust me, I am happy that I'm pregnant, I can't wait to be a mother, and when I feel decent, I enjoy talking about the nursery and baby names, and how we're going to do this and that, I really do. But, no one knows exactly what I'm going through. Everyone I've talked to did not have to deal with sickness, or this much anyways. This morning sickness getting worse, freakin expensive prescriptions, uncooperative OB, is just too much for me. I'm overwhelmed, I'm tired, and exhausted. I used to see the light at the end of the tunnel...and I know there is one, but I just don't see it.

I apologize that this has been so negative, but I have to be real. 0 comments

Posted by Evan and Jen at 8:00 PM

Weekend with the In-laws

Have I mentioned how much I love Evan's parents? Well, I do! Last week was our office's vacation. I didn't go anywhere, but Evan's parents came down on Thursday so we got to spend a long weekend with them and it was great! We ate and ate and ate some more, which was great because I really needed to catch up on my eating. We had Olive Garden, and Japanese, and Chili's...oh, it was great :) Plus, we don't get to see them very often so spending some quality time with them was very nice! We browsed around Babies R Us which I have to say is very scary and overwhelming, but it was fun nonetheless.

We bought 2 baby gates, mainly to use for the dogs for a while. Their room is now turning into the nursery so we're gating off the kitchen/dining room and that's where they will sleep and spend the day. Abbey, my puggle, is still whining when we first put her in there and early in the morning when she hears us. She's very needy and she's going to have to get over that soon enough, but it breaks my heart because she just wants to cuddle with me :) We also bought a baby name book, which we thought would be helpful, but hasn't been so far. I cannot believe some of the names in that book, some I couldn't even pronounce, LOL.

We have 4 dogs running around which made things interesting, but it was fun. It was much easier to lock them out of the kitchen when we were cooking, and lock them in the kitchen when we didn't want them playing and barking in our faces :)

Sunday I wasn't able to go to church with everyone because I was so sick, which was unfortunate. Our homegroup had bought tickets for a durham bulls game so although I was not feeling up to it, we went anyways. It was ok, it was a pretty good game although they lost. 0 comments

Posted by Evan and Jen at 7:23 PM