dan's birthday & some baby stuff

Moving on to week 39, we reach Dan's birthday. It was actually on Tuesday of that week, but we celebrated it ahead of time, on Sunday evening. Dan and Carmen set up pizza crusts that they had made ahead of time, as well as several choices for toppings so people could make their own combinations. (Steve contributed a few more topping choices too.) Rob came up from Palo Alto, and Dan and Carmen's friends—Melanie and Ryan—brought their son Miles, who was born the same day as Elsa. After the pizza party, Elsa and Miles were left with babysitters in their respective homes, and we met back up for bowling at Mission Bowling Club. I was 35 weeks pregnant at the time, so bowling was a little awkward, but it was actually pretty do-able. It just felt like I didn't have very much power with which to send the ball down the lanes, probably because I was carrying several extra pounds and a belly the size of the bowling ball itself.

267/366 mission bowling club

Monday's picture was from the window of the toy store in Noe Valley, which I passed on the way to and from Whole Foods. I was getting in my walk for the day while also restocking my supply of crackers to go with my now-usual bedtime hummus snack.

268/366 little red

Tuesday was Dan's actual birthday, as I mentioned before, and Steve and I joined Dan and Carmen for a low-key dinner of takeout sushi downstairs. I took a picture of the mannequin heads that Carmen had festively set up on the table. They were going to be used in her Halloween display for Eye-Q, which is why she had them.

269/366 partying with the girls

My last ultrasound was on Wednesday afternoon. Because of the gestational diabetes, they wanted to check the baby's size once more. This time, they estimated him to be at about 65th percentile, which sounded much more reasonable than the 97th percentile that they had guessed four weeks before. Who knows how accurate either of those figures are, but the doctor seemed satisfied this time that they wouldn't need any more scans. I also got my money's worth better with my souvenir photo CD on this one, since the sonographer was able to get some decent 3D pictures of the baby's face. Nothing from the previous ultrasound had been worth posting, so it was nice to have a few usable shots from this one.

The other project that afternoon was washing the pack and play sheets so I could put them on the mattress. I had been meaning to take a picture of the pack and play for a while, so this was a good time for it. We plan to use this as the baby's bed in our room for the first month or two of nights before moving him to his crib full time.

270/366 baby's first bed

Next, I took a photo of our newly arrived throw pillow for Thursday's picture. I got this custom made by a seller on Etsy for the glider in the nursery, since it needed a bit of color and some lumbar support. 

271/366 throw pillow

Friday's shot was also of newly arrived baby stuff, namely the baby book and blanket that it had taken me so long to decide on. I'm not entirely sure the blanket is all I wanted, especially since the "sage" reverse side is somewhat more saturated and less earthy than I would have liked. However, it matches the rug in the nursery, and it's grown on me. The off-white side shown here will probably make a good background for newborn pictures too.

I was more pleased with the baby book in person. When searching, I had hoped to find one that was woodland-themed to match the nursery, but it seems that the baby book makers haven't quite caught up with that trend yet. Most of the animal themes seem to be either jungle or circus. There was a baby book with memory box that was designed by the same person/company as our bamboo mobile, but that one seemed to be more about the artwork (kind of a general animal theme) than the content. I wasn't in love enough with the artwork to forgive the skimpy prompts, so I compromised on theme and got the more circusy book below. It's pretty adorable, and it has more of the details I wanted.

272/366 book & blankie

The last shot of the week—Saturday's—came after yet another trip to Whole Foods. Steve and I found these tiny pears, the size of figs, and bought a couple. Since I didn't really have other ideas for pictures, they came in quite handy.

273/366 pair of pears

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.

pretty things

Week 37: here we go. That Sunday, September 9, Steve and I made a Target run to get a few things that we needed, and then we went to Bi-Rite Creamery for our walk and a late snack. With the gestational diabetes thing, I'm not allowed to have a ton of sweet stuff, but I was told that half a cup of ice cream now and then was fine, especially if there was walking afterwards. So we waited in the longest line I've ever seen at Bi-Rite—it was a nice day—and I finally got my kid-size scoop of cookies and cream. It was the first time I tried that flavor, and it was really good.

253/366 kid size

For Monday's picture, I decided to use one of my impulse buys from the Target trip the day before. The "Shops at Target" project, in which Target teams up with smaller businesses to create a selection of goods to sell in Target stores, was actually featuring The Curiosity Shoppe when we went. The Curiosity Shoppe is a cute little store in our neighborhood with some really random and cool stuff. In fact, I had seen paper straws there, like the ones below, in the past. However, most times when I've come across paper straws, they've been in packages of just one color. At Target, I found a package of various colors all together as part of their Curiosity Shoppe collection. I couldn't resist buying some. I plan to use them for food (or drink) photos at some point, but they made a pretty picture on their own in the meantime.

254/366 paper straws

On Tuesday, I spent some time working on thank-you notes for baby gifts. Our baby shower wasn't until that Saturday, but we had received some presents already from people who wouldn't be able to make it to the party. Pictured here: my address book, pen, and the thank-you notes themselves. The shower evite had a pair of deer in silhouette at the top, and I was able to find these thank-you notes with fawns on them that kind of match. Perfect for the woodland theme!

255/366 correspondence

I needed to get a few things downtown the next day, so I also made a stop at Anthropologie. I was kind of looking for more thank-you notes while I was in the area, since I had only been able to find one pack of the fawn ones and was afraid I would run out. No luck with cute cards at Anthropologie or anywhere else I checked, but I got a picture of the day at Anthro anyway. And when I got home that night, I managed to track down an Etsy account for the company that made the fawn thank-you notes. They didn't have any listed for sale, but I was able to contact them and order some more.

256/366 anthro bowls

Thursday was a bit less exciting. I went to Noe Valley for my daily walk and just shot some pear candles in an antique store window.

257/366 the crown pears

More stuff for the nursery arrived from Land of Nod on Friday. We got our owl lamp, the crib skirt, the set of mirrors for above the dresser, and the containers for the cubby shelves. Of those things, the owl lamp was the most photogenic, so that became my main photo subject for the day.

258/366 owl lamp

Saturday, September 15, was next. A year ago on September 15, we were arriving in Barcelona for the beginning of our big Spain and Italy trip. This year, it was our baby shower. Fun fact: my feet and ankles were only swollen at the end of one of those days... and it wasn't this year's September 15! In related news, I'm really glad I didn't have any long international flights while pregnant.

Back to the baby shower, though. Carmen and Alyson hosted it that day at Lovejoy's Tea Room in Noe Valley. There were a few friends that weren't able to make it, so it was a relatively small crowd. On the plus side, it was a good size for Lovejoy's. We were all able to fit around one table and still have conversations with people at the opposite end. We had tea, played a couple of low-pressure games, and opened a few presents. At the end, we even took a group picture outside, wearing the tea room's collection of very special hats.

In my picture of the day, I used one of the adorable edible terrarium favors that Carmen had made for the shower. The light inside Lovejoy's wasn't optimal for pictures—and I was trying not to have a camera glued to my face the whole time—so I did a photo shoot with it in the nursery once we got home. Inside the terrarium was chocolate cake "dirt," candy rocks, a pistachio macaron, and a couple not-so-edible mushroom decorations. Carmen said she got the idea from my Mason jar terrarium—the one in Friday's picture of the day.

259/366 baby shower

That wraps up another week. On to the next!