In Need of Suggestions

I plan on registering for baby items when my parents come out this week, and I would welcome some advice. Specifically, I am wondering what items you found to be most important when you were a new mom, or when your child/children were newborns and infants? In other words, what things were necessities? I find that I am completely clueless when it comes to baby items and could use all the advice I can get. Thanks!

Christmas has Come

Christmas has arrived at our condo. Our tree is up, complete with presents underneath it. Our Christmas train is on our "mantle." And we even have an historically inaccurate nativity scene. When my parents arrive this Wednesday, Christmas will be "official."

A Clean Utility Room

In order to prepare for the arrival of Baby Gonzalez, we realized one of the first jobs we need to tackle is cleaning out our closets. We recently started the process by cleaning out the disaster zone we call our utility room. I don't have any before pictures to show you because we'd rather not embarrass ourselves like that on the internet. We do, however, have several after pictures of our work that we are proud to show off.




Tomorrow, I plan to begin the process of cleaning out my own closet. The hard work starts, however, when we tackle the closet in what will become the baby's room. While we have done a pretty good job of maintaining some space for our guests to hang clothes there, we also have lots of junk in there that needs to go. Besides, babies require a lot of stuff, and we need to clear up all the space we can.

Small Changes to our Small Bathroom

We tried a special effect on the largest wall in the downstairs bathroom. Basically, you paint your base color, let it dry, and then cover it in small sections with a darker, coordinating glaze. Then, you take the base of a straw broom and drag it across the glaze so that the base color shows through. It did not come out as nice as I would have liked it. You can tell where one section ends and the other begins, which offends my perfectionist side. But we decided to keep it because it has a bamboo kind of feel, which works perfectly with our Asian theme. We'll see how it all looks when it's completed.





We also picked out a new light fixture to go with the Asian theme we envision for this small space. We think it looks pretty good.

Baby Gonzalez Sends Holiday Greetings

Here's one of today's ultrasound pictures. The baby is doing well and even waved hi. We also got to hear the baby's heartbeat - very strong, steady, and fast.

Baby Gonzalez at 6 weeks

This ultrasound is from our first visit to the doctor, which was 2 weeks ago. I know it's hard to see, but the baby is the little bean inside the circle. If you click on the image, you will get an enlarged view of the ultrasound.

We had a second ultrasound today and will post some of those images, too.

And yes, we are very excited, as are our families. We haven't gotten an official due date yet, but we calculated it ourselves, and it looks like we're due around July 12th.

BU vs. A&M

On Saturday, we enjoyed Baylor's win over A&M with our friends, Bryan and Amy. Good seats and good company made for a great evening, in spite of the cold and wind. Check out some pictures from the game, below.

New Carpet

This afternoon, a team of 3 men came into our home, and, before we knew it, installed some lovely new carpet on our stairs. We love it - so much so that we don't want to walk on it.







Once we save up enough pennies, we plan on installing wood flooring in both of the bedrooms. But first we need to paint the bedrooms. We're thinking a light gray - better to keep the colors in a bedroom cool and calming, we think.

Birthday Camping Trip

Last weekend, we headed out to Lake Whitney State Park for our very first camping trip together - and to celebrate Ted's birthday, of course! The lake is very pretty, and, oddly enough, there's a landing strip in the middle of the park. We got a later start than we had planned and thought we were "late" to set up our campsite. Apparently, we were wrong. The campsites around us filled up after dark, and the next morning, there were people everywhere. Next time we go camping, we will definitely head out earlier and bring more cushion to sleep on and more blankets to keep us warm. The ground gets pretty hard and cold during the course of an evening - go figure.

Here are some pictures from the trip. You can see our campsite, the lake, our campfire, and the inside of our tent.

Thanks!

Ted says thanks for all the great birthday cards you sent him. He feels loved. :-)

One Pumpkin, Many Sides

There was no real plan for this pumpkin. We just let our creativity run wild. We've got one more that needs to be carved, and we think we'll just go with a traditional jack o' lantern face.

By the way, if you are looking for an easy way to make nice clean circles on your pumpkin, break out your drill. Different size drill bits will give you lots of interesting patterns.