Baby Shower!

First of all, I'm sorry it's been so long since I posted. I had all sorts of grand plans to keep up with this once a week, and that didn't happen. Perhaps now that we're getting close, I can get things posted more frequently. It's far more likely to happen now, since I've cut back to part time at work.

So! The Baby Shower was two weekends ago now, on Sunday, September 28. This was our cake. The m&ms were personalized and said "Baby Zaxxon."

We got the idea for this watermelon fruit baby carriage from the shower of one of Dean's coworkers, Brandon, and his wife Charli. We thought it was cute, so we decided to have one, too. My Dad carved it for us. It was good practice for pumpkin carving.

Dean's sister made this diaper cake for us. It's got a ton of diapers, some toys, and small bottles or samples of various baby products. She, Dean's mom, and my mom threw the shower for us. And they did a great job! Thanks, you guys!



We had a couple babies at the shower, which was a nice addition to the atmosphere. This is Gavin, son of Dean's coworker Mike and his wife Steph. He's about 4 months old.

And this is Lucy. She's the daughter of my coworker Christin, and her husband Aaron. She's about five months old.



My friend Cora surprised me by flying out from Washington state for the festivities. It was awesome to have her there.

One of the games was to guess how many m&ms were in the baby bottle.



Another game Dean's sister came up with was to break up and melt several different candy bars inside of diapers. We were allowed to look and smell, but not taste, the candy. We then tried to identify which candy bar was which.

This was rather disgusting, since it looked a lot like poo. It didn't help that the diapers were warm when we first picked them up (they'd only recently been nuked in the microwave.) Tim here has the right sentiment.



Here, Dad and Charlie examine one of the mystery candy bars.



Since the party was co-ed/couples, we thought it only right to have a game the more macho men might find fun--a beer drinking contest. Of course, since it was still a baby shower, we had to incorporate a baby element into it. So we had a race to see who could drink their beer the fastest--out of a baby bottle with a newborn nipple.

This took several minutes to complete. At first we thought Dad had won, but it turns out he bit a larger hole into his nipple. Shame on him, both for cheating and because that nipple can no longer be used for our baby. Charlie was the actual winner.



We also had our guests play a game while we opened our gifts--Baby Gift Bingo. Everyone got a blank bingo sheet, and they were supposed to fill out the squares with items they thought we were going to receive. Then they marked the items off while we opened the gifts. There were quite a few prizes still at this point, so we were able to have several winners.

This is our haul. As you can see, we received quite a bit. Thank you notes aren't out yet, but to anyone reading this, thank you for everything!

We knew Dean's mom was going to be knitting something for the baby, but we were amazed at how much she actually made. There were something like four gift bags of clothing, blankets, stuffed toys, and burp cloths that she had made (some was sewn, not knitted.) This is a saque set and blanket.



Cora gave us Star Trek clothing and bibs (Star Trek was one of the bonds that kept us together during our childhood.)

This superhero onesie was from my parents. It even has a cape!



These are shots around the room of our guests. Steph, Mike, Aunt Jackie (who flew out from Georgia to attend--another nice surprise!), Sarah, Charli, and Brandon.

Lisa, Tim, Sela, Jolene, and (Great-) Grandma Virginia.



Sela, Jolene, Virginia, Charlie, and Julie.

Julie, Lannie, Veronica, Mom, Dad, Jan, and Bill.



Jan, Bill, Dan, Kim, and Christin. I estimate we had about 34 people there while everyone was still present. It was a lot of fun! Thank you to everyone!

For anyone who would still like to help out, check out the links on the top right of the blog. There are still some items on the registry we'd like, and I'd still appreciate gift certificates to the Denver Diaper Company (we're going to try cloth diapers for at least part time, and it's a bit of an investment initially, but saves lots of money over time.) Also, food that can be frozen would be appreciated so we can avoid cooking much right after the baby is born. The Home Bistro delivers frozen meals that can be heated pretty quickly, although homemade food is always good too.

Keep checking back, we'll post final pictures of the baby's room soon, along with other projects. And in the not-too-distant future, we'll be posting pictures of our little bundle of joy!

Nursery

We spent the last few weekends getting the nursery ready for Zaxxon, and we're pretty close to finished. First, Dad came over and helped us get the jungle mural on the wall.

It covers the west wall of the room and also goes over and behind the door. It looks really nice, we're very happy with the result. It went up like wallpaper, and although it took a while to do, it was faster than we'd feared.







Then, Dean and I painted a few spots on the east wall with magnetic paint (special thanks to my cousin Audra for having some in her room, which gave me the idea) and then we painted over that. Now there are a few parts of the wall that magnets will stick to. Not really heavy ones, but the thin, flat ones work best.





We also purchased some new curtains, which we had to order b/c our local Linen's N Things was sold out. The previous curtains were white and no thicker than bedsheets, so lots of light came through them. Since babies wake up all the time anyway (and the room faces south) I didn't want Zaxxon waking up at dawn just because there was too much light in the room. The new ones do a much better job of keeping the room dark.














I also put some shelf liner paper at the bottoms of the dresser drawers, so now there's no rough wood to snag clothing.

We put magnetic paint on the door too, and we still need to paint over that (we're deciding on colors.) But other than that the room is pretty close to being done. We still have to put the crib together and put some decorations up, but that's about it!

In other news, we had our first childbirth class last week, and have another tomorrow. We're learning all about how things work and ways to relax and breathe. The class is basically making us acknowledge how real this is, which is a little scary.

Zaxxon is getting bigger and still wiggling around. In addition to little kicks and punches, I've started to feel pushes and twists and turns. Zaxxon has even had the hiccups a few times now (which feels like tiny little rhythmic spasms.)

I'm extremely glad that we went to Rome when we did and not later. My general comfort level has gone down in the weeks since we've been back (I'm more sore, and get tired more easily, and my feet are swelling) so it was fortunate that we scheduled the vacation when we did.

ROME!!!

Alas, we’ve been home from our vacation for a week now. With the trip behind us, we both suddenly realized how little time we have left before the baby comes, and that we need to get moving on prep stuff!

But back to Rome. Ah, Rome! It was a lot of fun. It was also hot, and a lot of walking. We both got plenty of exercise as we wandered the streets. Everything’s very compact, but you still have to go quite a ways to connect the dots. I likened it to Vegas--if you’ve ever walked any distance on the Las Vegas strip, you may have told yourself that your destination isn’t very far away (oh, that’s only two hotels away!) but the massive size of the resorts on the strip means that walking two hotels is the equivalent of 4-6 city blocks. Rome felt like that.

This photo of me with my belly protruding is in front of the House of the Vestal Virgins in the Foro Romano (the Roman Forum--basically the government district for ancient Rome.) The vestal virgins served an important purpose in the cult of Vesta (goddess of the hearth): they had to keep the communal fire going no matter what. They would serve for 30 years--10 to learn, 10 to practice, and 10 to teach the next generation. They were also given great privileges in a society where women didn’t have many. However, if they failed to remain virgins they could be buried alive.

This is inside the Colosseum. There’s only a small portion of seats remaining, which you can see between us. You can see the remains of lots of corridors that would’ve been below the floor for use in transporting gladiators and animals, or to flood the arena for naval battles. They’ve reconstructed part of the floor, so you can see the level that would’ve been at. Behind Dean on the first level is where the emperor would’ve sat, and behind me is where the senate would sit. The large entrance between us on the floor level was the winner’s arch, where the gladiators would make their entrances and those who survived would exit. There’s another arch underneath where we took this photo that was the loser’s arch, through which they would remove the bodies. It’s hard to imagine this place completely filled with seats. Hardly any of the arches would’ve been visible from the inside.

It was neat that so many famous sights were visible from the patios of restaurants all over the city.

Unfortunately you can’t see the dome in this first photo--we couldn’t really get far enough back to really get a good shot of it. This is the Pantheon, and it has the largest dome ever built before the development of reinforced concrete. They say it looks really neat inside while it’s raining, and you can watch the water pour in the hole in the middle. It didn’t really rain while we were there, though. The Pantheon survived and is in such good shape b/c it was converted into a Catholic church. The artist Raphael is buried here. We didn’t get many good photos from the inside, b/c tripods seem to be illegal in Rome. Most of the sights we went into told us we couldn’t use tripods, (they even made us check it at the coat check at St. Peter’s!) which was very annoying. It’s nearly impossible to get a good photo of the inside of a church when the lighting is too dim to work without a flash but the things you want to get a photo of are too far away to be lit up by a flash (or they’re telling you you can’t use a flash either.) Dean couldn’t get as steady of shots as he wanted on the video camera either.

This photo is of me in front of the Madonna del Parto (Madonna of Childbirth) in the church Sant’Agostino. The image is considered the protector of women in labor and is revered by expectant mothers. Going to some of these sights was very moving.

This is St. Peter’s Basilica, the largest church in the world and the center of Catholicism in Vatican City. We tried to see the pope, but he wasn’t here. Ppbth! We’d heard that he would celebrate a public mass every Wednesday at 10:30, and the tour book said it was free but that you needed tickets b/c of space availability. We tried to see if our resort could fax a request for us but they had trouble with that. One person there also told us she thought the pope was out of town. We weren’t able to get to the Vatican before Wednesday, but we did get online and looked at the Vatican’s website, where we thought it said the pope WOULD celebrate mass on the 13th. So we got up early and managed to get there around 10:00, but when we got to an information point and asked if we could still see the pope, the woman told us that he was at his summer home in northern Italy. That was disappointing.

The church, however, was quite amazing. Nearly every surface was covered with artwork. As an American, I’m used to churches with one altar, but St. Peter’s had numerous side chapels all over the place. I still don’t know what they would all be used for. We spent some money in order to climb up to the top of the cupola (550+ steps.) Boy, was that a workout! Once you got up into the dome, the walls curved inward so you had to lean over as you climbed. The view from the top was spectacular, though. We learned that St. Peter’s is, by law, the tallest building in Rome, which meant that no other buildings could crowd the view. This photo is on the roof about halfway up. If you zoom in, you can see a crowd of people hanging over a railing at the top of the dome.

This picture is of Michelangelo’s Pieta. It’s the only work that he ever signed, b/c when it was unveiled he was only 24 and people didn’t believe so young an artist could’ve created it. We saw the Sistine Chapel, too, which was in the adjoining Vatican museum. The image on the Sistine Chapel is actually copyrighted by Kodak! Kodak made a deal with the pope some years ago that they would clean the ceiling if they would be granted the copyright until 2020. (It was in dire need of cleaning b/c for the first 400 years of its existence it was lit by tallow candles, which left cooking grease all over the ceiling.) We also went into the crypt, where we saw the final resting place of Pope John Paul II and the tomb of St. Peter (the first pope) which the high altar was built directly above.

This is Dean and I taking a bath. Well, we were in the Terme di Caracalla, anyway--the most luxurious of the imperial baths. I was actually surprised that they let us walk into this room, b/c the tile is still on the floor. The complex was huge, and I kept trying to picture a modern health club here. Except with everybody naked.

Unfortunately, all good things come to an end. This was us eating our final gelato as we waited for the shuttle to take us back to the resort on our last full day there. The gelato (ice cream) was amazing--the fruit flavors tasted like they were made with fresh fruit (which I’m sure they were) and the more traditional flavors were incredibly rich. Yummy!

Zaxxon came in handy a few times, at least when it came to getting seats on buses and trains. The baby didn’t move much the first few days and I think I threw off it’s schedule by going 8 hours away. But by the end of the trip (just in time to go home and throw off its schedule again) it was moving around a lot. There was one evening we found a toy store in the Piazza Navona that was closed, and were thinking about coming back the next day to buy something for Zaxxon from Rome. Then Zaxxon started kicking, so I knew the baby wanted us to come back!

Nursery Furniture

We've been busy during June and July working on some furniture for the baby's room. Dean and I each had old dressers (that had once belonged to our dads) which we decided to restain so they'd look nice and kind of match the crib. (We only need one now, but I figured it was easier to do both of them now so we don't have to bother when kid #2 comes around.) And while we were at it, we decided to make the changing table we bought match, too, since it had a whitish paint on it which was rubbing off in places.

My parents came over twice and Dean's parents once to help us strip, sand, and stain the darn things. It turned out to be a lot more work than I'd anticipated, particularly since it took us a while to get the hang of the stripper so we had to redo almost everything after the first try. The fastest part was the sanding, when we had several people and four power sanders going at once.

The first coat of the stain went pretty quickly too, although I have to offer a word of advice: never, EVER buy a 2 in 1 stain and polyurethane. You think you're skipping a step, but you're really just buying a product that doesn't work as well. Any product that gets less even the more brush strokes you apply is a waste of money b/c you can't go back and correct mistakes. I was honestly a bit upset after seeing the first coat on the changing table (that was the hardest, since it had some many small pieces and angles.) I thought of all the time and energy we'd put into prep work and was so disappointed with the result. I didn't want all that effort to have been a waste! Well, thankfully the second coat evened it out quite a bit, and so you can't really tell that it's uneven in places unless you get up close (and who's going to do that to a changing table?) And it definately looks better than before.

Everything sat in the garage for a few weeks (while my poor car was subject to the elements in the driveway) so the smell would go away, and then we had to dust everything off when we brought it inside. But now we're closer to having the nursery furnished!

This will be the last blog entry before our vacation. Dean and I strike out for Rome on Friday morning! Whoo hoo! For once in our lives, we managed to get a lot of packing done early, so we're feeling pretty prepared (although there's still a fair bit to do before we go.) Once we get back, we'll post some pictures of the three of us (hee hee) at various locations in Rome. See you all on the flip side!