The Wating Game

I'm 38 weeks and 2 days now and the waiting game begins... When oh when will baby arrive? Here are some guesses:

Nikki: Nov 16
Mai (Shel's grandma): Nov 18
Shel: Nov 19
Valerie: Nov 20
Mathias mam (Shel's uncle): Nov 21
El: Nov 22
Shel's mom: Nov 25
Nikki's mom: Nov 26 (My actual due date)
Shel's dad: Nov 27
Nikki's dad, Hetal and Sapna: Nov 29


Hopefully I don't go past my due date.... if I do, my doctor scheduled an induction on Nov 30, and I really don't want to do that.

In the mean time, we're getting the nest ready. Today we worked on the baby's room a bit more and I'm happy to report it's practically done. We just need to hang some art on the walls and at some point down the line add a book shelf. We also need to put a chair in, but not needed right now. Anyway, here's the room now, after installing curtains, and some narrow shelves:

Nursery

We decided a while ago to keep the nursery decor low key and not too kiddish... and though we're not done with it yet, we've got all the basics done and hope to add the finishing touches over the next week.

Here's the progression of the room so far...

First thing to go in was the crib... Here's Shel (aka baby daddy) putting it together on 8/29:


Here's the finished product... I was so excited to finally have a crib in the room. It took some getting used to, but for a few days, I would just stand in the doorway and admire it every time I passed by the room and got a glimpse of it :)


Next came the bedding on 10/6... I couldn't decided whether to go with a girly theme or a neutral theme... with Shel's help we ended up with a neutral theme :) I really like the bedding we picked out:


The room was getting packed with all the baby things we had started to accumulate from our baby showers and things we bought. Here's a shot of the chaos on 11/3... and this wasn't even half of it... there were several other larger boxes and shopping bags tucked away in the closet and the corners of the room:


We also had a dresser by that time shown in the pic above, but moved to the center or the room.
On 11/3 we added some wall art. Here's Shel starting on the hand painted mural:



Just kidding... we are not that talented.. we used a wall decal. It's not a sticker so looks more like it's hand painted, but it's kinda obviously not :)



And... tada:


It wasn't completely done, but it got really late, so we called it a night and finished it up just yesterday (11/8). We also painted some floating shelves black the weekend before last to match the other furniture and hung them up yesterday.

After a bit of clean up, here's what the nursery looks like now:








We still have to work on it, but happy with the progress so far :) We never could decide on a paint color for the room, so we decided to stick with the beige color we already had on the walls... which means we have to bring in color in other ways... art, maybe some curtains, etc. Should be fun to see what we come up with.

Baby Showers in Austin

How lucky can a girl be? Over the last few weeks, I had not one, but two baby showers... add that to the shower my parents threw us in Houston, and we've had three total! We are very fortunate for these blessings and totally feel the love with this pregnancy.

Shower #2 was thrown by Khona, Neena, Hema and Nicole and hosted at Hema and Mahesh's house on 10/17/09. The food, decor and atmosphere were perfect... they did a wonderful job. Thanks to them and all of our friends who were able to make it! Swapna and Amit flew in from San Fransisco and Anu drove down from Ft. Worth. Everyone else were Austinites. The games were not the typical baby shower games, and one involved beer bottles, which I got a lot of questions about from my family... "why are you holding a beer bottle? hmmm?". Anyway, we had a fabulous shower!

























Shower #3 was a surprise shower for me... it was thrown by the ladies of the ICA (Indian
Catholic Association) on 10/25/09. Shel was in on the surprise, and I was genuinely shocked when what I thought was a small dinner party at Elsa's house turned out to be something entirely different. I looked totally casual, even though Shel tried to hint at me to dress up a bit more... I was like, "why? it's just dinner"... anyway, I should have paid closer attention. We had a great time... those ladies are pros at throwing showers... everyone pitched in for the potluck style dinner. The games were quick but fun, and the gift opening was a mad rush since it was a Sunday evening and everyone had to get home to rest up for the upcoming week.
































All in all... our three showers were great... all different and all fun in their own ways!

Week 37 complete... Full term!

Wow, I can't believe how fast time has flown! I am offically full term as of 11/5/09, meaning it's safe for baby to join us in the real world now. So, the waiting game begins! She can come anytime now, which is scary...but exciting I guess. Shel and I wanted to take bets on when D-day will be ... any takers? He thinks it'll be a week before my due date (11/26), and I really hope so since that would mean that my doctor won't be on vacation and will most likely deliver the baby. If it happens over the Thanksgiving holidays we'll get whoever is on call, and I really don't want that. So, we'll see what happens.

I've been feeling really tired lately... I'm trying to take it easy, but it's been hard since I have lots of loose ends to tie up. Also, Shel's cousin , Keith, is visiting us this week and it's been great, but takes a toll. Hopefully Shel and I can knock out some final "todos" this weekend and then I can look forward to plopping myself on the couch for the next couple of weeks ;-)

My doctor has been worried that I haven't gained much weight, so we did another ultrasound last week... this time we got some shots of baby's face... it's so cute. Shel wasn't there unfortunately since he had his Spanish class at that time, but when he saw the pics he was a bit scared at the images... ultrasounds don't do the babies justice, since their noses look squished and the eyes look sunken, but I thought it was cute. I also saw her moving her mouth... she's practicing her breathing I assume. I can't believe we're going to see our baby any day now!

So, to make my doctor happy, and to take advantage of my last few weeks of pregnancy, I have decided to go wild on a bit of junk food :) I bought some brownie bites and have been indulging myself over the last couple of days. In general, I'm surprised that my appetite has magically grown this week... I have probably gained 2-3 pounds, but it's all for a good cause. :)