I finally got around to purchasing a mirror and working on creating a chalkboard to document baby Stern’s progress. I didn’t have any luck, I think all the DIY spirits were working against me. The paint streaked and created lines on the first coat; I tried a different brush on the second coat, which seemed to help, but when I went down last night to start writing on it the chalk pulled the paint right off the mirror. I nearly cried. 😦 I’ve been working on this for a week and want to start using it so badly. So, that board is going in the trash and to move the process along, I’m just going to buy an actual chalkboard and get these creations moving.

Horrible fail on the painted mirror…

Here’s a week 14 mirror picture, promising next weeks will be a little more creative!

How far along: 14 weeks!
Total weight gain/measurements: 7lbs
Maternity clothes: I have a pair of maternity jeans that I started wearing a few weeks ago when this little belly popped and I have to say they are the most comfortable things ever
Stretch marks: None, yet
Sleep: Sleeping great, except for 2am wake ups to pee
Best moment of this week: Scheduling our gender reveal!
Have you told family & friends: Yes!
Miss Anything? Lunch meat – like subs and hoagies
Movement: not yet
Food cravings: anything salty – Doritos, cashews, Chipotle, Sun Chips
Anything that makes you queasy or sick: Greasy food
Have you started to show yet: Yes, little belly popped out about 2/3 weeks ago
Gender prediction: I have no idea, not even a feeling. Although Dan and my mom keep referring to the baby as a “him”
Labor Signs: No
Belly Button in or out? In
Wedding rings on or off? On
Happy or Moody most of the time: Happy!
Looking forward to: Feeling the baby move 🙂 and Spring Weather

If you saw my post earlier this week, we’re starting to put together ideas for the nursery. Pinterest has my head spinning with way too many cute ideas and what I thought would be an easy Craigslist pick for a refurbished dresser, has turned in to a multi-state man hunt for the perfect piece of furniture. Dan and I are headed to Virginia this weekend and our crossing our fingers we find a treasure that will fit perfectly in the nursery.

So lately everything has me a sappy mess. Whether I’m watching Puppies 101 or the Zillow commercial where the family’s buying a house and dad comes home from war. But I have to tell you, watching this 3 minute video really made me smile and cry.

Take a gander. But I warn you, you made need a tissue or two.

We’ve been talking about nursery ideas for awhile now and we’ve settled on the main color – grey 🙂 For those of you who know me, I know, surprise – surprise. But, it’s honestly one of the easiest to pair an accent color with once we find out if we’ve got a boy or girl on the way. We had to go a few rounds on the shade of grey, but here’s some pictures of the final colors.

So we’re doing one wall of big stripes and these are the two colors:

And the darker color for the other 3 walls:

It’s really bright in this room because it’s on the backside of the house and gets an enormous amount of sunlight during the day, so the colors will definitely be a bit brighter too. As for the accent colors, here’s some things that have caught our interest from Pinterest, but no absolute, hands-down decisions made yet. Although, I’m really loving the yellow.

And Dan’s loving this blue color. It’s growing on me 🙂

I think we’re in for some tough decisions over the next 6 weeks. We plan to paint in April and I’d love to have nursery furniture by then. We’re also not going with your normal nursery set. We picked an adorable crib and I’m on the hunt for a large dresser to double as a changing table. The room is rather small, so we’re going to utilize the large closet to store a good amount of things. That’s what’s next on the “to-do” list – cleaning out that closet. Yuck. One step at a time.

I’ll leave you with an updated belly pic. Yes, we’re still in sweats because spring has not yet arrived.

Now that we’ve let the cat out of the bag, I promised myself that once we got pregnant I would start a blog to document the ins and outs of this journey. Dan and I found out we were pregnant January 10, 2014. We chose to keep it fairly secret until we got through the first trimester. We were completely surprised by the news, overjoyed with what was happening and praying for things to stay positive. We told our families a few weeks after we knew, and just keeping it a secret for that long was a challenge! There are so many people who are praying for this little guy or girl and we feel extremely blessed to have the love and support of our family and friends throughout this journey.

We were lucky enough to have our first ultrasound on February 3 and we got to see our little baby! What an amazing site – to see that little flicker on the screen of a healthy and strong beating heart. Everything looked great! Our official due date is September 16, 2014. We had another appointment earlier this month, March 14, and we got to “hear” the heartbeat. Let me tell you, you wait for the longest time and you have no idea the overwhelming emotion to hear the most amazing sound. It gives you so much hope in what is happening and your heart just grows tremendously to know your little baby is doing so well. We had an ultrasound the week before and both Dan and I were shocked at how much growth had occurred. To actually be able to see little hands and feet – he/she would not stay still the entire time, but the technician said that was a good thing that it was moving all around. Such distinction and such growth in what seems to be so little time – it’s just so exciting!

Here is the first official picture of Baby Stern (February 3).

And from our second ultrasound/genetic screening (March 8).

Going forward, I am going to try my hardest to keep up and keep track of my journey through pregnancy. Hopefully someday we can look back on this and remember what a wonderful time in my life this has been.