24 Weeks

Holy Cow, where has the time gone!! We're already 24 weeks. That means we have 16 weeks, at the most, until Emily arrives!!!

Here are some interesting facts about a baby at 24 weeks...This week Emily is about 13.5 inches long (head to toe) and weighs in at about 1.25 lbs. She'll start putting on more fat at this point and will gain an extra 5oz to 6oz a per week. Her lungs are continuing to develop and produce surfactant, getting ready for life on the outside! Basically from here on out, Emily is just getting bigger and stronger and getting ready for birth. All of her organs are formed and functioning, she has fingerprints, taste buds, can hear, and can sense changes in light.

I spoke to our lawyer again two days ago and he said he would put the packet in the mail. I'm hoping it'll be here tomorrow. He's in Europe for 3 weeks, go figure, so we'll file our papers with the court when he gets back.

The nursery is basically finished. Eric and I are probably going to order an airplane chandelier for the room, since right now we just have a normal ol' ceiling light in there. The chandelier will be one of the finishing touches!

I'm so excited to be flying to CA this weekend. It's Patti's birthday on the 30th, and we're going camping in Fort Bragg. I haven't been there in forever! I have such great memories of camping trips there almost every summer when we were kids, and it's also where Eric proposed! I'm so excited to get to see my family again...it's been over 4 months! I'll also get to see Lori on this trip, and can't wait to feel my baby move! It's going to be a fun and exciting week. I'll post again when I get back, and I should have some nice pictures to share too :)!

23 Weeks

Emily is now 23 weeks! She can weigh up to 1.25lbs and is about a foot long!! Quite a long way from the dividing ball of cells she once was! She now resembles a newborn! Emily is still piling on fat which will help her stay warm when she's born. Surfactant is now beginning to develop in the lungs. This will allow the air sacs to remain open when Emily takes her first breath and ensure her lungs keep work properly. Amazingly, a baby born at 23 weeks has a 16% chance of survival (with the right medical treatment), but every day in the womb counts...and the chances rise to 44% at 24 weeks!!! We're shooting for at least 37 weeks!!!!

It really hit me this week that Emily could be here in as little as 14 weeks!! We are still dealing with the lawyer and trying to get our paperwork started. I contacted him at 18 weeks and he was supposed to send us a packet of information. When I hadn't received anything after about 2 1/2 weeks I called him again. He said he hadn't forgotten about us but he was tied up in an ugly probate case and would send us our stuff soon. Well, I still haven't gotten it. So, we'll be calling him tomorrow to let him know if we don't have anything by next Wednesday, we'll need to find another lawyer. Luckily, since he hasn't sent us anything yet, we haven't paid a retainer fee or signed any contract. SO, we'll see what happens. The adoption process and paperwork is what is stressing me out the most. I'm mentally prepared to bring Emily home and I know I'll have everything I need when she gets here. I'm just paranoid that somehow the paperwork won't be done. I would hate to have to put Lori through that!!!!! So, one way or another...things will be getting done by the end of next week!!!

Lori has sent me a few more belly pics and I'd like to share them. I think she looks beautiful, and I'm so excited to see Emily growing!

One and a half walls done :)

I wanted to post a few more pictures before I get ready for work tonight. I finished the chair rail yesterday and will upload those pictures later. Here are a couple pictures of the decals finished on the wall :)

Almost there...

We were excited to see the other airplane wall decals arrived in the mail today and we were able to make some good progress in the nursery. Right now the little decals are just taped to the wall so we can make sure they're in a good spot before permanently sticking them up. I went to Walmart earlier and got a cute book shelf with cubbies. Emily already has a decent collection of books, and this will be a nice place to store them! I worked more on the chair rail, and I think I can get the rest of it painted over the weekend!! So, here's the latest and greatest!

A little preview

So we got our little skywriter in the mail the other day. Since the nursery is still under construction, we just taped it up to the wall to see what it'll look like. WE LOVE IT!!!! As soon as the chair rail is totally done and painted we'll move the crib back into position and then we can put the decals up on the wall. We're still waiting for the other ones to arrive, but I hope they'll get here soon! :)

PS: Obviously, the birds at the end will be moved somewhere...I'm afraid of birds, so they might end up in the closet, lol!! (Thanks DAD!!!) hehe!

22 Weeks

Time is really flying by!! I can't believe we only have 18 weeks, at the most, before we get to meet Emily. Eric and I have been keeping busy working on the nursery. We got the chair rail up and now I just need to put on the finishing touches and paint! I think it looks really good for two people who have never put up a chair rail before!!

So here are the neat facts about Emily at 22 weeks: This week Emily weighs in around one pound and is about 11 inches long head to toe! At this point Emily can hear well, and loud sounds may startle her. Eric and I have made a CD of us reading stories that we are going to send to Lori so that she can play them for Emily and she will get to know our voices. We read Horton Hears a Who, and I know that someday Emily will crack up listening to it. Eric and I were laughing so hard listening to the recording!! Between flubbing lines and starting off a paragraph as the narrator and then switching voices half way through after realizing it was a character speaking it turned out to be really funny!!! We have a couple of other stories to read to her, and we each also recorded a little message for her. Lori reports that Emily continues to kick and move around a lot. She also said that Emily is more active during the day, so we're praying that keeps up after birth, hehe!

21 Weeks

This week Emily is 21 weeks along. She weighs about 12 oz and is around 10 1/2 inches long, head to toe. She's about the size of a large banana.
This week the bones continue to harden and movements become even more coordinated. Sleep wake cycles are starting to develop, and you can try to determine of you'll have an early bird or a night owl.

Eric and I are having a lot of fun continuing to work on the nursery and hope to finish the chair rail in the next couple of weeks. I have had fun shopping for Emily and have learned that I should probably stay out of Baby Gap!!! Haha!

Lori reports that Emily is still kicking up a storm and moves a lot. I can't wait to see her in a month!

Time is passing so quickly! I can't believe it's already been 8 weeks since we decided to adopt!! Only 19 more to go (IF Lori actually goes 40 weeks!). I can't wait to meet my daughter!

The Nursery Is Really Coming Along!

And I love it!!! Eric and I have finished one wall (paint and chair rail). I wasn't totally sold on the color of the chair rail last night, but after sleeping on it and looking at it again in the day light, it has really grown on me. Thanks to a manual miter saw (we couldn't quite justify buying a power one!) and some wood filler, the chair rail looks perfect. You can barely tell where the two pieces are joined together, unless you're standing in the room and looking for it! Eric and I had our first experience with the coping saw today. Not easy, but we finally got it. The coping saw allows us to join the rails on perpendicular walls together like a puzzle instead of having to cut mitered corners. (Wow, I'm starting to sound like Bob Vila! Ok, maybe I'm not quite that good yet!!). Anyway, you have to trace the profile of the rail onto the back of another rail and cut it out perfectly so they'll fit together. I wouldn't say our was PERFECT, but darn close. Thanks to our trusty old friend, wood filler, and some fresh paint you won't be able to tell!

Today I also ran to Joann's Fabrics to look for some more airplane stuff. I ended up buying a bookshelf to hang on the wall for $9. I got some little wood plane cutouts for about $0.50 each. When I got home I used some of the white paint left over from the dresser to paint the bookshelf, and the pink paint we're using for the chair rail to paint the little planes. A little glue, and VOILA, a really really cute bookshelf that goes perfectly in our nursery. I'm going to make another one tomorrow. Not quite sure where I'm going to hang them yet, but we'll figure that out later.

I'm having a blast working on the nursery. I love to work with my hands, and painting and making little things for the nursery satisfies my crafty side! So far, the nursery is coming together just how I'd pictured it!

Here are some more pictures of our progress...


One wall finished...a lot more to go!


Bookshelf after being painted white


With pink planes added :)

DIY installation of a chair rail...take 1

Thank God for DIY videos online! For some reason, it all seemed so easy in my head!! Mitered corners, flush joints, coping saws...HUH???!!! Between the Home Depot website, diy.com, and wikipedia I think we might be able to figure this out, lol!!! You'd think two people with college degrees (one who has a masters with a minor in math) could do this...but it's really not that simple!!! It doesn't help that we have rounded corners either!!!!! Thank goodness Home Depot is only about a 3 minute drive from the house...they're gonna know me by name in there! I think the people in the paint department already do! So, keep your fingers crossed for us, and I'll post some pictures after we've made some progress!

--Jenny (aka - wannabe DIY Queen!) haha

Registered and bought a crib

Today Eric and I headed to Babies-R-Us to make our baby registry. It was a lot of fun, but also a little overwhelming. It's amazing how much stuff you need to get!!!!! I think we ended up spending about two hours in the store. We found a crib we loved, and decided to buy it. They were running a deal that if you bought any crib $299.88 or higher you got a free crib mattress ($119 value). We found a crib on sale for $299.99 (originally $369). Since it was a floor model, they took an additional 15% off. So, for about $275 we got a brand new crib and crib mattress. I didn't think that was too bad!! Here are some pictures...



Eric getting everything ready





Almost there...


Emily's Crib






Tomorrow we'll head to Home Depot to get things ready for the chair rail. We'll be visiting our neighbors to see if they have any tools we can use to precision cut the angles we'll need to make them fit nicely. We'll be ordering the pink plane decals for the walls as well as the name skywriter decal that will spell out Emily to go above the crib.

For now, I'm headed to Albertsons to get stuff to make tacos for dinner. Mmmmmm!!!!