Shower Hosted by My Mom

My mom hosted a baby shower for me on the 25th. A lot of the guests at this shower were women from my parents' Sunday School class who have watched me grow up since a young pup. We don't have a lot of local family, but that which we do have were invited as well. My mom did a really great job! Great food. Great games. Great times.

My mom had her cousin Terry supply us with his famous toffee. It is yumm-o stuff. He built a gourmet toffee business starting with my great-grandma's (his grandmother) recipe and making it other-worldly with infusions of other flavors. I like to make the original recipe at Christmas, but his special stuff is truly a treat. You should check him out at Terry's Toffee.

The toffee was put in these cute little animal cups.

Gotta have the train theme. :)
That fabric is the main inspiration for the nursery.

We're trying to do classic trains and planes in the nursery. It's been a little difficult to find decor I really like, so if you have any leads, let me know.

Loretta, Joyce, Linda, Shirley, Joan

Linda, Betty, Barbara, Melanie, Patti, Elaine

One of the neat activities my mom had was that each guest had to pick an envelope. Each envelope had a number on it, but they weren't told what the number represented until everyone had their envelope. Then, what ever number they had represented an age. They were to write a piece of advice for that age. I thought that was a pretty clever idea. Then my dad had a good idea to put a picture in each envelope of the person that wrote that note. That'll take some work, but I think it's a great idea.

Here is someone writing their advice.

How do you get a gaggle of women to be quiet? Make them race to finish a puzzle. It was so funny. There were about five teams and each had to put a puzzle together. The first to finish won. It got amazingly quiet. Such concentration (and competitiveness)!

Present time!

My mom had this darling basket full of goodies.
She even sewed a pillow, bumper, and pad covers.

I was overwhelmed by all the blessings.

My sister, Susan, flew down for the shower.

Davia was quite the social butterfly.

Our official baby book. YAY!!

It really was a wonderful shower. It's amazing to know so many of these women have been a part of my parents' lives for so many years. And it's always good to see family!

My Last Week of Work

This was my last week of work. It has felt like a long road to get here. It has taken a lot of time, a lot of training and a lot of procedure writing. I have not had anyone trained to back up my job for years. There has been lots of talk about it, but just never worked out to find the right solution or person to back me up. Luckily we were able to identify someone who I think is going to work out great. She’s had to absorb a lot of information in a short amount of time and she has handled it as well as (if not better than) is to be expected.

The fun kink that got added to my last week of work was that I was on-call for jury duty. I’ve only been summoned for jury duty once before and I only had to call in once and was dismissed immediately. This time I had to call in everyday to find out. And this wasn’t even calling in at night to find out if I was to report the next day. No. I had to call in at 11:00 am to see if I was to report at 12:30 the same day. Oh joy! So there was this constant threat of having to miss some time from work during my last week. I always figured that once I rolled my big belly in there that they would let me roll right out, so I wasn’t worried about getting stuck on a jury. I don’t think they would want to pause a trial every 30 minutes so I could visit the little girls’ room. But I never even had to report, so that was a relief.

But I think everything got lined up at work as well as it could amidst lots of curve balls. I received a nice little send off and was ready to leave. The last week or two my body has really struggled being at work all day. It will be weird and interesting to be home. I’ve been working normal, full-time office jobs since I was 19 or 20. I haven’t been home for even one week straight since then. Will I get bored? Restless? Start nesting? I’m hoping to have at least two good weeks at home before little Joshua decides he’s ready to get out. I’ll probably go back to work towards the end of January.

Lamaze

Jim and I had our first Lamaze class tonight.

First impression...? Not at all what I expected.

The room was a big stadium-seating-style lecture hall. We had to sit in desks with the little table tops that fold down beside the chairs. We had to fill out some paperwork and all these poor big-bellied women couldn’t even use the table tops. It was a pretty funny sight.

There were probably 30 couples there. The instructor had us go around the room and introduce ourselves and say where we were delivering. If the instructor was familiar with the hospital she would ask who their doctor was.

She just kind of gave some general information. She tends to ramble and go off on lots of rabbit trails. What is amazing is that despite the rabbit trails, she always remembers where she started. We watched one video about identifying early labor symptoms. Then we did about a 20 minute relaxation exercise.

Unfortunately this was just not the intimate Lamaze class I had always envisioned. The instructor admitted our room had been changed and that she was not happy with where we were. There were so many people in the class. The chairs were horribly uncomfortable. And trying to do a 20 minute relaxation exercise was just a joke to me.

The icing on all this cake was one expectant mom in particular who was sitting just two seats from me. I’m not sure how old this woman/girl was, but I would guess around 20. However, her mental age was closer to an early teenager. Her “coach” was her “legal guardian” and I would guess wasn’t playing with a full deck either. The problem was just the constant restlessness and disruptions coming from these two. They were constantly talking and make inappropriate comments. Expectant mom kept eating, leaving the room to get more food, and rustling all her food packages. Then during the video and relaxation exercise she started belching and giggling. I was aghast. I didn’t know how I was going to make it through this class.

The ray of light in this situation was that the instructor teaches this class at another location which was in danger of being canceled to due low enrollment. So she was asking people from our class to consider switching to that one. It didn’t look like this disruptive pair was going to move, so I gave Jim the “desperate eyes” to switch us over. We have to wait for a call to find out if the switch is a go.

Friends Shower

Two of my life-long friends, Melanie and Darcy, threw me a baby shower. This one I mostly invited friends from different walks of life. We picked out a really cute jungle theme for the shower that pretty well matched my colors.

The center pieces were really cute little pots trimmed with ribbon and filled with different stuffed animals that I (Joshua) get to keep.

The main activity was for guests to decorate onesies and diapers/burp cloths. Here are some used as decoration. I thought it was so cute!

Liz makes a burp cloth with a dump truck.

Here is Silas, Andrea's 6 month old son.
Such a cutie pie!

There was food GALORE!!

Creative people at work.
I tried doing one, but quickly ran out of patience. Creation is just not my thing!

Mmmmmm..... Carrot cake. My favorite!
There was so much frosting on this thing it was unbelievable.

Ellie was doing her best to relate.

Present time.

This little onesie was so cute as it says "Bear Hug" and the arms wrap around to the back.

Ashlynn was such a great help all day - handing out games and keeping me supplied with gifts to open.
What a star!

I'm such a sucker for stuffed animals.
I shall call this one Rupert.
(Just kidding, I don't know why.)

Michelle, Andrea and little Silas.

Yes, Joshua is a fall baby. So exciting!

Silas keeping up with the Oohs and Aaahs.

And now we have tons of decorating items.

My party planning buds - Darcy and Melanie.

Nursery

Here are a few more pictures of the nursery. My mom got all the bedding done. It's really fun to see it all put together now.


She did an amazing job on the quilt. ESPECIALLY considering she's never made one before. It looks so great. And once Joshua is born, she will add his name and birth date in one of the corners.




My next project is to make the wall hangings of Joshua's name. I bought a little more fabric and my parents and I played with the order of the fabrics. Jim has cut 8" x 8" squares of wood which we'll mount the fabric and letters on to. Then we'll hang it over the crib.