Calling in the Troops!

Ian and I both have families that get involved.   Some people would find that overwhelming, but in our case, it's been a saving grace for getting things pulled together for Buttons.  Over Thanksgiving Ian's mom, sister and brother-in-law to be came into town.  Maybe they thought we would just feed them turkey (or to-furkey since they are vegetarians), but they soon found out they had to earn their keep to get fed. 

The price of admission was building the two major pieces of furniture that every nursery requires: a crib and a changing table.  Luckily, John is an expert carpenter and the changing table/dresser was built in about an hour, with only one piece put on backwards.

This earned them Thanksgiving Dinner.  To earn dinner the next two nights they had to make the piece de resistance, the crib. Taking a break from the amazing football weekend that it was, John and Ian made the apparatus that can allegedly sleep our Buttons for the next 10 years. (It is one of those that converts to a toddler bed and then to a daybed). As I recall it they had only had a few football beers at this point in time - so totally safe. 

 Next up on the list was decorating the room (beyond the battle of getting the proper grey paint on the walls).  Thank goodness the next weekend brought in reinforcements - my mom, three sisters and college roommate. These lovely ladies not only helped throw me a fantastic shower, but they also helped put up eight decal trees, which came disassembled in about 60 pieces.  

I didn't know this before nursery shopping, but I guess decals are a big deal in decorating now.  They are just big sticker-type things that you put on the wall so that you don't have to mural paint.  Of course, the one decal set I fell in love with had to be shipped in from China and contained five steps to put up each of the 60 pieces: 1) cut out the print from the 20 foot roll of paper; 2) cut out a corresponding piece of 'transfer paper' to stick the print on to; 3) stick print to transfer paper; 4) transfer print from transfer paper to wall; 5) smooth out bubbles in print with a plastic tool [we used a credit card].  Not that the instructions told you to do that.  As I said, this came in direct from China, so the instructions lost some of their clarity in translation.  It took us about 20 minutes to figure out what they were referring to when discussing the 'viscosity' of the transfer paper.  

We split up the jobs to try and get it done quickly before everyone had to fly back on Sunday.  Carina took on 1 & 2, I took on 3, and Shelley took on 4 & 5:

Carina cutting out the tree parts and related transfer paper

Shelley getting the tree parts up on the wall

 Unfortunately, everyone had planes to catch before we could get up all eight trees, so Ian and I tackled the last few that night.  Ian got steps 4 & 5 since he is still allowed on stepladders:

Inspired by the progress of the past two weekends, I conned Blair into taking me to the Target nearby to buy our last piece of furniture that needed to be built: the bookshelf.  The next day, I decided to tackle the project myself and completed it in under an hour (while cooking meatloaf - I think I won the barefoot and pregnant award that night).

Maybe I should have changed out of my dress

Compared to the epic fail that was trying to paint the room, I was blown away at how fast the furniture and decorations were completed when our families came together to help out.  In under 3 weeks we went from bare walls and boxes to this:

As Shelley said, its a 'pintrest-worthy' room that is just about ready for Buttons.  And its a good thing - less than 8 weeks left to go!

Buttons is a Bit Large.

Ian was born 9 pounds 11 ounces.  His sister was just slightly less than that. He swears that he told me this before we got married, but I am not so sure. Either way, it is a Oliver family fact that I am now well aware of, as is our doctor.  Therefore, it surprised no one that I measured a little big on week 28.  The problem was that I was measuring just past week 30, which put me into the 'we have to take an extra look' category.  So, we scheduled an extra ultrasound and I left the office feeling fine, if not a little excited to get to see Buttons one more time.

Of course I then panicked thinking that big could only be a bad thing.  I consulted my family doctor connections and learned that this is one of the 'normal-weirds' for pregnancy.  I've found there are many 'normal-weirds' in pregnancy that you don't find out about until they happen to you.  Everyone knows about the morning sickness, better sense of smell and getting tired in the third trimester.  Not everyone knows that some animals can sense the hormonal changes and start acting differently around you or that low blood sugar and/or blood pressure can cause a minority of women to have fainting spells (the latter was less fun to find out about than the former!).

So, Button's increased size was one of these 'normal-weirds' that didn't worry the doctor(s), but caused me pause.  Ian and I went back to the doc the next week, and they confirmed what we had guessed - Buttons is a bit large.  He is weighing in about a pound heavier than my pregnancy books tell me he should be and is pushing the 80th percentile in size.  If he grows at the average pace of 1/2 a pound until his due date, then we may be in the 9+ pound range.  Yikes! Nonetheless, the doc assured me that everything looks great and we just are one of those lucky few to be growing a big healthy boy.

Google research has also told me that bigger babies tend to sleep better and be more developed when born.  Who knows if that will actually pan out, but the best upside for me is when people stop and say, 'wow you are getting big!' I can agree, and have the knowledge that I (or Buttons - we?) am bigger than average.  It's our new 'normal-weird.'