Holy costume party, Batman!

We ended up babysitting for our friends Arian and Daniel's two little guys (Hudson and Jude) yesterday. I hope the boys enjoyed it as much as we did :)
Besides dressing up in bat-gear, we made milk tea, and played a winnie-the-pooh "memory-esque" game... which we totally lost. Hudson was A LOT better at that game than we were. We knew we'd have to change Jude's diaper at least once during the afternoon, so i decided that Ben should do it, just to make sure he knows how... before we bring home our own little diaper-dirtier. (which could literally be ANY time now) Success. He did it, and Jude (or Thunder Thighs as we like to call him) was a very patient test-subject :)

polka dots a-plenty

We've been working on Peanut's room for months now, and it's finally come together. We love it, and we're excited that it actually feels sort of like the vision we set out with :) always fun when that happens. Anyway, here are pictures of Peanut's room:



This is Ben's creation for Peanut, it was his idea when we saw these vintage Alphabet cards with animals on them one day. He did an AWESOME job figuring out how to display them all, and hang them up. though, a few of the animal choices are a little... odd.


so for the most part, Peanut's room is done. Now all we need is Peanut, ... and some diapers.

We also FINALLY took some pictures of the new flooring we had installed just before Christmas. long overdue (the pictures AND the flooring).


It totally changes the feel of the space, we're really happy with it.
in other news, Emigre has warmed up to "the belly". we think she and Peanut will be best buds.

survival mode

this week was all about the survival. luckily we did, ...survive. I got some kind of stomach virus or food poisoning on tuesday night in the wee hours, which was horrible. putting me out of commission for a full day of production week at work, which upped the craziness factor. but, in the end i lived, the baby is fine, and the magazine went out. And we'll all live happily ever after.
We also had our last (most likely) ultrasound of Peanut yesterday, lookin' good. currently 4.5 lbs, and about 17.5 inches "tall". The doctor's exact words were "Well, it certainly won't be the BIGGEST baby in the nursery". we didn't get to see nearly as much as we would have liked, mostly just kidneys, heart, and other organs, and the heart is the only one we could recognize. But it was really workin', and it was really cool to be able to see it so much more developed, before it looked like a blip on the screen, but now you can see the two separate chambers and everything. But we did get a cute "profile" picture of Peanut's face. Ben's convinced we only saw organs so that our gender surprise didn't get ruined. But we did also get to watch Peanut trying really hard to suck its thumb, except the aim's a little off... no thumb in the mouth yet. but sucking motion = check.

enjoying a post-holiday coma-like state.

We've had a whirlwind couple of weeks... literally. two weeks ago we finally made the decision to rip out the flooring in our home and replace it. We're SO glad we did, though it ended up meaning that (due to previously scheduled committments) we had to move all the furniture out of our office-on-its-way-to-being-Peanut's-room, and our great room/living room/dining room on Sunday December 21st. That way the construction (or rather the initial "destruction") could start on that Monday at 7am, and be done the following day at 9pm. This had to happen because we had Christmas at our house this year. SO, we had to move all the furniture BACK in on Tuesday night late (THANKS to Amy and Ben's help) and clean up an inch or so of thick dust from cutting all the flooring, not to mention putting up our tree and other christmas decor, and then grocery shopping for Christmas day festivities, and wrapping our gifts. We were exhasusted by the time Christmas was over.
However, Christmas day was GREAT. Mae and the Klinglers came over, and we made a big Christmas brunch, as is our tradition. then we hung out, opened gifts, cooked, talked. We LOVED having the family over for the holiday. We'll definitely want to do that again.
Then, we had a few days of "Rest" to set up baby's room more, and put together some more furniture. It's definitely starting to look the way we envisioned it now, but we still have some more decorating to do in there before we're ready to show it off to the cyber-world.
Ben's parents came to town on Tuesday, and i had a baby shower with all our friends in town, which was SO much fun. Several of my friends live out of town now (and some out of North America), but it was a HUGE blessing that everyone was able to come and celebrate. It was SUPER cute, and i had the BEST time. Mae took our nursery "theme" (we're not theme people, but we get asked what our theme for the room is all the time-i guess circles/polka dots is as close to a theme as we'd want to get) literally, and here is the cake she made. As stylish as it was tasty.
All the guests chipped in to buy us our stroller, which we are SO excited about, so here it is:

It is pretty much the cadillac of strollers, this thing really does turn on a dime. We tested it briefly with Emigre the dog in it, and it is one... smooth... ride. Though, she looked kind of freaked out.
ANyway, it was a great time. We also thoroughly enjoyed having Ben's parents in town for as long as we could get them. They bee-bopped around town with us while we:
- visited Arian and Daniels new digs (which are only FIVE minutes from us-yipeee!!!)
- checked out the long-awaited skyline chili fountain which debuted at Amy and Ben's on New Year's Day. that was... well, something you HAVE to see. (and smell) hah!
- they gave us our car seat and crib bedding for Christmas, so we all got those things set up
- did a little shopping
- and we took them to dinner at one of our favorite chinese spots. Yum!
- there was also a rousing game of Cranium, a tight race. But we found that I (Grace) and Robb had an eery connection, and pulled out a win.

It's been an incredibly busy couple of weeks, but we have had a blast. Just a few more finishing touches to Peanut's room now, and then we'll post photos, and show everyone our new floors soon.