mid-september mania

Lots of baby-related stuff in week 38's pictures. It was right after our shower, so there were gifts in addition to the various decorations for the walls, which had arrived and were waiting to be hung. Steve and I got the set of mirrors up on Saturday after the shower, but we saved the other things for Sunday. There were the four animal prints for above the shelves, the mobile in the corner next to the crib, and the bunting above the crib. I went with a shot of the crib with the decals and bunting for my picture of the day, since they made a more complete picture together than the other, still slightly unfinished areas of the nursery.

260/366 crib-side

I wrote some more thank-you notes for shower gifts on Monday, but I took a break to snap a picture of our diaper bag (from Hunter and Colleen) and our Sophie Giraffe (from Danielle and Brian). The Sophie was kind of a must-include for our registry, since we've given them to various other friends who have had babies. It's not exactly woodland-themed, but every baby needs a Sophie.

261/366 diaper bag

Our stroller arrived from Amazon that evening, so it became my subject for Tuesday's picture. Dan had reminded us the previous Friday that Amazon was going to start charging sales tax in CA as of the next day, so we ended up ordering the stroller that night to save the extra money. For the picture, I decided that I'd use our door as my background. That meant that I also got to practice carrying the stroller down the stairs. I did it in two pieces: frame and then seat. They're both pretty lightweight, so the hardest part was just finding the space at the bottom of the stairs to open the door. I figured out that I'll probably need to bring down the frame first, put it on the landing in front of the open door, and then bring down the seat (or car seat). Of course, the other option—Carmen's idea—is to store the stroller in the car and just put the baby in a carrier for the short walk to our parking spot. We'll see which solution ends up being most convenient in the long run.

262/366 ready to cruz

Alyson came over for dinner after work on Tuesday night, bringing with her Rhett's half of their baby gift: a onesie featuring a picture that Rhett took of some orangutans. Rhett has made various items of schwag before for his website, Mongabay, but apparently this was the first Mongabay onesie. I figured that warranted use in Wednesday's picture of the day. (And also, I had no other ideas.)

263/366 orangutan love

More new stuff for Thursday's picture, although not baby-related for once. I ordered these ballet flats online, and they came the day before. Unfortunately, they're a little small, so I'm hoping that they'll stretch a lot, like the website said.  

264/366 white ribbon pink shoes

I took a walk down Valencia with Carmen and Elsa to Four Barrel Coffee on Friday. It happened to be Park(ing) Day, so there were a few impromptu parklets set up in parking spots along the way. The one pictured below appeared to be done by an architecture firm, and they had balloons everywhere. Elsa wasn't quite sure what to think of the balloon sword that one of the guys wanted to give her, but she accepted a more colorful balloon flower not long after that. I guess it was less threatening.

265/366 balloons

On Saturday morning, I woke up and Steve informed me that he had ripped a hole in his good jeans. That left him with about 1-2 pairs of wearable jeans, and those weren't in great shape either. It seemed a shopping trip would be necessary. So we went to Hayes Valley that afternoon, found Steve two new pairs of good jeans at Azalea, got Dan a birthday card at Lavish, had ice cream and coffee at Smitten and Blue Bottle, bought meat for dinner at Fatted Calf, and stopped at Fiddlesticks to look at the cute baby stuff. I didn't take many pictures on our outing—just of some stuffed foxes in the window of Fiddlesticks. The foxes are by Hazel Village, which I think is a pretty small operation based in Brooklyn. I had come across them online while doing nursery research, but I had never seen any of their stuffed animals in person before. They're cute, but probably a little expensive for stuffed animals.

266/366 foxy

And with that, there were only 100 days left in the year. Of course, I'm about 20 days behind in blogging still... I need to get cracking if I'm going to catch up (briefly) before the baby comes. His due date is on day 301, but I think there's a good chance that he'll arrive earlier.