Ava's Baby Shower

After lots of planning (if you can't tell yet, that's what we do best - plan. And by "we" I mean "Tam") we had Ava's baby shower on November 14th at the West End Golf Club. The venue was great, because while the girls oohed and ahhed and played baby shower games, the guys hacked away on the golf course. Jesse and Amy hosted the affair, and we had roughly 36 guests in attendance. If you're reading this, you were probably one of them, so thank you for helping us celebrate.

The cake was amazing, and we only hope that Baby A comes out as cute as the topper on the cake. Kudos to Tammy Denmark for another incredible cake. We'd like to thank her for coming out of "retirement" to do one more cake for us. We'll have to bribe her when Ava's first birthday is getting close.

Baby A received LOTS of presents from friends and family, and we are very grateful! It was a lot of fun not only opening the gifts, but also figuring out what each one of them was for. (This is our first time at this, after all) After the shower, Jennifer and Becca stayed over and organized all the clothing in Ava's closet in order by size (newborn, 3 month, 6 month, etc.) Then over the next two days, everything else made its way from our living room into its proper place in the nursery.

Here is a slideshow of the day's festivities:



In the meanwhile, we've also been working on completing the nursery. We finally found a glider, after we figured out that the recliner Tam really wanted was too big to fit in the nursery. Who knew that would be one of the hardest pieces to find? We also got lucky on a shopping trip and found a handpainted wooden sign with "Ava" painted on it, and now it's hanging on her door.





And also this week, we went to our 4D Ultrasound appointment, where we were finally able to see more than just the typical 2-dimensional black and white ultrasound image. We spent half an hour mesmerized as we watched Baby A suck her thumb, curl up for a nap (which we poked and shook her out of), yawn, lick her arm, and even give us an unmistakable sign that she's going to be trouble. Look at the images below and guess which one we mean...

What happened to my ankles?

It's been a while since the last post, but things have been chugging right along. The third trimester has arrived, and the defining segment between my calves and my feet has departed. Maybe it's not quite as bad as all that, but there is definitely some swelling.

The last post documented Michael's efforts to put in the new nursery flooring. He got that done, and then tackled the job of painting. It didn't seem like too big a job at first, but he ended up using two coats of primer on EVERYTHING (walls and ceiling) and painting three walls in pink - "sweet baby girl" is the exact name of the color - and one wall in chocolate. Then a light cream color for the trim, doors, and ceiling. 

Once that was done and the masking tape was peeled, the furniture arrived. There was a little fiasco involving incompetent warehouse employees destroying one of the pieces, but it was replaced pretty quickly. Once we had the furniture in place, we decided that we had not done quite enough painting, so we decided to start on the mural. We painted the tree from the crib bedding on one of the walls, and we think it really brings the whole nursery together.  We have a couple more pieces to find (the glider and the rug), but we're very close to having the nursery complete.