I've Moved

A little while ago I moved to wordpress.com. Here's the new blog!

http://disastersindomesticity.wordpress.com/

All Things Baby

So, besides giving the apartment a once-over in terms of cleaning and organizing, we are done preparing for the baby!!! So we have officially told him that he can come any time he feels like it. Truthfully, giving birth scares the shit out of me. But I am so ready to have my body back and to see my LO and hold him in my arms.

The "nursery" is done. And by nursery I mean the corner in our room that's devoted to the baby. Here's a pic:
I did the decor for less than $30. Not too bad. $20 for the canvases, $5 for the scrapbooking paper, and $3 for the bar to hang the quilt. I guess you should also include the $15 for the basket covers. But that's still under $50.

We got our stroller attachment and I love our carseat with our stoller. Even though they are two different brands they don't look half bad together.
I've also got a really good start on our freezer meals. So far I have:
-3 meals of chicken and biscuits
-3 bags of Indian lentil soup (3 cups each)
-2 meals of beef stew
-1 meal of chicken enchiladas
-2 meals of taco meat
-3 cups of Spanish rice
-2 meals of meatloaf
-2 meals of mac'n cheese
-a dozen molasses cookies

This week I plan on cooking:
-Chicken cachatore
-Meat for beef dip sadwiches
-Summer veggies soup
-Banana bread
-Bran muffins

When I'm done with those I think we should definitely have enough. I also have stocked the freezer with veggies to make quick Indian meals. And I'm printing out easy recepies that should take me less than 30 minutes to make. Also the hospital bags are packed and I've stocked up on the essentials like toilet paper and toiletries.

Needless to say I think we're prepared. Well... as prepared as you can get :-)

37 Weeks

Full term!!! Yay! I'll write more later. Write now I feel like crap today and I've got a lot to do.

Going Home Outfit?

34 Weeks!

I can't believe how fast August went! It's crazy to think that in just a matter of weeks (3 - 6) I'm going to be a mom. I still haven't gotten used to the idea. I think I'm just starting to get used to the idea of being pregnant!

Things are going ok. I'm starting to get really uncomfortable. I'm tired all the time. My hips feel like a Thanksgiving turkey wishbone. And my reflux has hit an all time level of nasty. My blood pressure is still high, so I'm on weekly doctors visits now (so sick of going to the doctor...). My allergies are also horrible at the moment, and I'm resisting taking anything for them.

There are also plenty of good things to go along with that long list of maladies. Our little one is stronger and more active than ever. The result being that I feel him constantly. My stomach moves with each kick, punch, and roll. Apoorva can feel him every night. It's amazing to think that there is a little baby in there doing all that. My nesting instincts have kicked in full force and the apartment is nice and clean :-) I'm lovin that.

And I think it's really starting to hit me that I have a long list of "to-do's" and not much time to them in. I still have to make a big order from diapers.com to some essential stuff like some cloth diapers, our stroller-car seat adapter, and a freaking diaper bag. We also still need to install the car seat and have it inspected. And those are just the essential things that need to get done. There's a huge long list of things that would be nice to get done before the baby is born. I better get moving!!!

New Milestone...

STRETCHIES!!!!!!

Yup. The stretch marks have appeared. I will NOT be one of those lucky ones that does not get any.

NFT

I want this...

Here's the description from the company:
"The Beaba Babycook is a super versatile compact countertop appliance. It acts as a steamer, warmer, blender and defroster all in one! With the Babycook, you won't have to go through the hassle of using multiple appliances. Simply place your vegetables, fruits, meat or fish in the Babycook, steam and puree. It's that easy! In less than 15 minutes you can prepare fresh and healthy food for your little one that still contains all its nutrients and is free of preservatives, unlike store-bought baby food. You can even use it to reheat or defrost precooked foods."

AND, it's BPA free.

I know I don't need it right away, but I'm definitely going to buy it later down the road before our LO starts to eat solid foods. I know I'm going to make our own baby food using organic fruits and veggies. This will make it easier! It's sad that I'm so excited I found this product :-)

31 Week Bump

Yea, I've been gone for awhile...

July was a busy busy month. But the good thing is that we've almost got everything for the baby bought and ready. Just some small last minute things left and the stuff that needs to get done closer to his due date (install the car seat, wash the bedding and clothes). I've also got a few craft projects I want to finish.

Speaking of crafty projects, I started to decorate all of our white onsies to make them a little more interesting. Here's a picture of a few of them. I think they turned out cute. I'm going to do extra so I can give them away as gifts.
We had a 3D ultrasound done a few weeks ago. We had a great time watching our little boy move around, play with his toes, smile, stick out his thumb. We think he looks like DH, especially his nose.I'll write more later. I've got to go get ready for my Dr. appointment. I can't believe I'm 31 weeks today!!!! Hoping he stays in there for at least another 6 weeks!!!!

Life just got a little easier...

So last week sucked! I wasn't feeling well at all. I had a cold that came with a sore throat and a nasty cough (which I'm still trying to get rid of). And while by the end of the week I was feeling better, I got a pleasant surprise when I woke up on Friday. Somehow, I managed to contract pink eye. Yes, that infection that is passed around at daycare, the disease I had not had in at least 15 years. And it was a bad infection. I mean, puss coming out of my eyes bad (sorry if that was too graphic).

I went to an eye doctor here. And I didn't even mess with an optician. I went straight to the big eye doctors (we apparently have a center here that is one of the best in the country... who knew!). The doctor was nice, took one look at my eye and said yep, that's a really nasty infection. Gave me a prescription for antibacterial eye drops (I will not go into the panic I had about taking those while pregnant...). Then he told me I had to basically sterilize my house to I didn't get reinfected (it was that bad apparently). This involved washing all the sheets and towels in hot water, wiping down surfaces (including remote controls and computers) with antibacterial wipes, and getting rid of ALL MY MAKEUP!

What!?! Seriously? Do you know how expensive makeup is? And some of it I didn't think I could replace here, since it's all natural stuff I purchased at a whole foods back in MA. And then some Clinique stuff, which I wouldn't buy at the moment since we're trying to stay practical and save for the baby. So anyway, I did what the doctor said and threw out everything, including all my expensive brushes. And then I headed to Walmart, ready to be dissapointed.

To my surprise, Almay now has a line of natural makeup. Yay!!!
No parabens or nasty stuff like that. I have no idea how good it is, since I wont use it until I know the infection is completely gone. But I'm excited I don't have to go all over the state trying to find natural beauty products. I spent way too much at Walmart yesterday replacing all my stuff. But at least it was a lot less $$$ than if I had actually replaced it with the stuff I bought at Whole Foods or Clinique. I'm not a big fan of Walmart, but sometimes they just make life easier. And at least they are starting to carry this all natural beauty stuff (they actually have a great section in the one here in my town) as well as organic foods.

I'm feeling a lot better, and my eyes are no longer leaking or bright red. I will gladly throw away my makeup and spend $75 if I avoid getting pink eye again. Not fun!

Baby on the move!!!

Boy this baby likes to beat me up! And I love it! He's crazy... especially at night when for about an hour I can feel him constantly kicking and flipping. He's gotten so strong that you can actually see my whole belly move when he kicks. DH has been able to feel it a few times, but I've been able to feel it on the outside every day for a few weeks now. It's amazing!

I've been really bad about taking belly pictures. I'll try and get DH to take a picture tonight and I'll post it tomorrow. I'm getting huge! It's probably weird but I'm happy that I'm getting big because at least at my shower next weekend I'll look pregnant rather than just fat. I'll be almost 28 weeks.

And speaking of our LO on the move, we got our stroller in the mail yesterday! It's from my grandparents and my aunts and uncles. And I love it. I'm so glad I spent the time and energy in doing the research. It's so light and it literally took me 3 minutes to put together. All I had to do was snap in the wheels and the shade. And it's pretty :-)It's a Baby Jogger City Mini. It's 15lbs and has a one pull fold. You literally pull up on one handle and it folds in half. It takes up hardly any space when folded. I'm also going to buy an attachment that makes it so we can just snap in our car seat. Again, it's sad that I'm so in love with all this baby stuff! :-)

Updates

So my baby has a place to sleep!!!!For the life of me I cannot figure out why I get so excited about something I myself will never use, or wear in the case of clothes. We decided on a Graco Pack N' Play for the first few months. It'll be in the bedroom. Not shown in the picture is the mobile and the changing table that comes with it. I put it together a few nights ago to make sure everything was working correctly, but it's now safely back in the box and in the closet :-( I can't wait until it's out permanently.

DH's aunt and uncle bought it for us this past weekend when we came to visit. Very nice of them. We also had a great time visiting with them and his cousin and his wife.

In other news my grandma (who I'm really close to) has told me she will be coming to visit for a few weeks right after the baby is born. YAY!!!! That means my MIL will come later, probably about a month after the baby is born. This works out so much better for me!

Score!

So, before getting married and moving to India and then Indiana I spent 4 years in central MA. It was while I was in graduate school. The town was a small town, but there were 5 colleges in the area, one a major state university, so there were a lot of nice amenities, activities, and cultural events in the area. It was also very diverse. And since most people living in the area were a part of academia, the population tended to lean towards being environmentally friendly, dare I say "nutty/crunchy". There were food co-ops, organic restaurants, farmers markets, and of course, a Whole Foods.

I can honestly say that on a daily basis that is what I miss most about living there. I quickly learned from my new friends and neighbors the benefits of living an organic and all-natural life style. I started shopping at Whole Foods and organic farmers markets for everything. And while I was doing this for health and environmental reasons, lo and behold I LOVED the food available there. And I started to LOVE cooking with fresh ingredients.

In India there was no such thing as organic. But at least it was easy to cook with fresh all natural foods (even if the produce wasn't that great... probably because they didn't use a lot of chemicals which was fine with me). But at least I knew it was for only 7 months. I was looking forward to coming back to the States. I really missed Whole Foods.

Well, we get to this middle-of-nowhere town in northern Indiana and of course there is no Whole Foods!!! The only two choices available in terms of food was Kroger and Walmart. Granted we've been doing ok, since the Kroger has a decent organic section, but I was still desperately missing my Whole Foods.

Well this weekend we got a tip from some new friends on a grocery store in a nearby city called Fresh Market. The minute I walked into the store I was in love. It's not a Whole Foods, but it's very similar, selling a lot of organic and whole food products. I cannot tell you how excited I was about this. I'm only sad that it took four months to find this wonderful place. But really it's no wonder since it's in this tiny plaza on the edge of the city. But now that I've found it I'm supper excited about grocery shopping today.

Quilt Finished!!!

So today I spent the afternoon finishing the quilt for our little one. It's small, since we'll be using a co-sleeper for the first couple of months. I decided to make it myself, since there really isn't any cute bedding out there for co-sleepers (at least that I've found).

Now before you see it, please remember that this is one of my first sewing projects EVER. And I've never made a quilt before.
I'm pretty happy with the way it turned out.

My projects

Since I'm stuck at home (and I'm procrastinating like crazy on deciding if I'm finishing my Ph.D. or not) I decided I needed a new way to be productive during the day. There is only so much laundry and cleaning that needs to be done. What better way than to make stuff for our little man that will be arriving in a few months. So a few weeks ago I went out and purchased a sewing machine and searched online for some easy do-it-yourself baby projects.

I started off with a very easy project, making burp cloths. Basically you only need two things, Gerber cloth diapers and a few colorful swatches of fabric. You do some cutting down to size, some folding in the edges, sew then together and wala! Pretty, inexpensive, & unique burp cloths. Here is a sample of what I've made so far. I've actually made quite a few, since you can never have enough clean cloths lying around when you have a newborn.

Minus the initial investment of the sewing machine, they cost around $1.50 each to make. They are also multi-functional. They can be used as burp cloths, changing pads, or just cleaning cloths.

After I accumulated enough burp cloths, and was a little more confident in my sewing ability, I moved on to something slightly more complicated and made a swaddling blanket. It was still pretty simple though. Just get two yards of coordinating fabric (I used flannel), cut them down to equal size, and sew them together. Here's the first one I made.

I thought the monkeys are super cute. And it will be nice and warm, since our little guy will be arriving in the fall. It can also be used as a blanket to lay on the floor for "tummy time". With the fabric that I used the cost of this was only $6. I plan on making a few more with different fabric. And perhaps matching burp cloths if I am so inspired and I have enough left over fabric (I still have a few cloth diapers that I have to do something with).

So then after this project I got a little bit more adventurous. For the first few months we're going to have the baby in a bassinet in our room for a number of reasons (1) we'll be moving soon after and so it's impractical to set up a whole nursery, and we'll need to second bedroom for guests anyway (2) I'll be breastfeeding (3) since we'll have guests I do not want certain people who shall remain nameless to take over, so having the baby in our room will hopefully prevent that.

Anyway, finding cute bedding is hard, since I hate all the hokey ones with animals and trucks. It's even harder finding smaller bedding for cradles and bassinets. So I decided to make a quilt. Now mind you I have never made one in my life, so I had to go online to even figure out how to make one. Chances are it's not going to be the best quilt in the world, but I'm sure the baby wont even notice.

So that's what I started today, and I got pretty far. I cut out all the squares and basically got the top panel finished. I think it looks pretty good for my first attempt.

The picture sucks because I took it with my iPhone. So in-real-life the colors are much more vibrant (like that yellow is actually orange and the blues and much darker than they look in the picture). But oh well. You get the idea. I'm happy with it and my other half liked it, so I guess that's all that matters. Next week hopefully I will finish it, and it will be good enough to actually use.

Other projects I've been thinking about include changing pads, bibs, wall-art, and a mobile. I've got plenty of fabric left over from the quilt to make a matching mobile, but I really have no idea how to make one. I'm sure there's something on the Internet that will tell me how :-) And not to worry, I am not totally baby obsessed. I have also been making things for the apartment, like the living room curtains and trow pillows for all the rooms. Aren't I just becoming little Suzie homemaker!

Shopping Spree

Up until last week I had not purchased anything for our little man. I wasn't waiting until we found out the gender or anything, since I like gender neutral clothing. But my dear husband is so against buying stuff until the 3rd trimester. Well after the ultrasound I convinced him to let me buy a few outfits at the Carters outlet. And today I found some cute things at Kohls. And then this afternoon I found this site that had cute stuff for Indian-American babies, so I ordered two onesies.

Too freakin cute right? Thought it was appropriate since this baby was conceived in India. I also got one that said "Got Doohd?", which means "got milk?" in Hindi. And these are the other things we have so far.
The last time I was home my Grandma gave me these two body suits.
I think this is enough for now. I need to stop buying things or it's going to get out of control :-) The outfits are just so cute!!!

It's a BOY!!!!

Yup! Our little baby is all boy. He was not modest at all at this mornings ultrasound. He flashed the tech more than a few times. The tech also said it's one of the more active babies she's ever seen. It put on quite a show for us, kicking, punching, bouncing, and flipping a few times. At one point it had the hiccups. So cute.

We are so ecstatic. Everything looks great so far, but the doctors should get back to us sometime next week with the results. But he's measuring right on time at 14oz and his heartbeat is strong, around 150.

I'm so excited that I'll get to meet our little boy in a mere 20 weeks. I wont say I can't wait to meet him, because I WANT to wait those 20 weeks so he can grow nice and big (but not too big, ok little man?).

Living Room Finished

I finally "finished" the living room. By this I mean I made curtains and put them up and also did some homemade artwork to put up on the walls. I still think it has an unfinished look because we can't paint the walls, but at least it looks a little better with some color. I know I'm doing one more art project to hang on the opposite (left) wall. And maybe make some throw pillows and get a colorful blanket. But it's fine for now. (ignore the folding table... DH uses it for his puzzles).

Here's the other side of the living room, which is technically a dinning room. But we decided to forgo getting a table and chairs for two reasons (1) we never sit at a table to eat, we're always on the couch watching TV and (2) once the baby gets here we're going to want some floor space for baby stuff like a playpen and "tummy time". So instead we got a few large pieces to organize all our papers. It also holds our printer and some books. I made another piece of artwork and we got chairs for the bar. We're not doing anything to this space because again, we want it open. In the future this is where the playpen will go. And also perhaps the air mattress if we have more than one person here visiting when the baby gets here.

Our bedroom is almost finished. We got the curtains up and I made the artwork for above the bed. We have to get a few more colorful things up on the wall and some throw pillows. But no more furniture. The current dresser will go in that empty corner, and then the corner I'm standing in will be devoted to the baby (changing table, rocker, etc). We decided to just get a bassinet rather than do up a whole nursery, since we may be moving 3 months after the babe is born. I would like to get a bed (headboard), but it's not high on the priority list right now).


Now we just have to:
(1) Get the guest room ready. Basically buy a bed and a dresser and get something up on the walls. I want to get this done by the end of June.
(2) Buy a changer/dresser, a glider, and a bassinet. We'll probably do this early July.

But God do I wish I could paint the walls. I'm so sick of white! :-)

In other news, I get my big ultrasound on Friday. My doctor typically waits until 28 weeks. However I was a demanding patient and asked him to order one sooner. I'm just anxious to see that it's healthy and everything is growing as it should. So perhaps the next post I will write will reveal the gender (yay!) and have a few cool ultrasound shots.

Bling and Baby Clothes

So on Friday we traveled to MA to moved more of our stuff into a new storage unit. I love going back to MA. We've been gone almost a year, but it still feels like home. I got a cheese sandwich from my favorite deli. I've been craving that sandwich for weeks. Apoorva got me two new beads for my Troll Beads Bracelet that he gave me on our wedding day (the two beads to the right of the elephant). The silver ones all have different meanings, and the one I chose means "unity", which I thought was appropriate with the baby on the way.

After we finished up in MA we drove to VT to meet up with my parents, grandparents, and my brother. It was my brother's graduation weekend, and he was also commissioning into the army as a 2nd lieutenant. I was so sad that he's now in the Army, and most likely will be deployed to Afghanistan soon. But I'm so incredibly proud of him. Here he is taking his oath.


And then since it was mother's day weekend, Apoorva took me to a little baby clothing store in VT and I got to pick out an outfit for our little one. We have not purchased anything yet for the baby, so I was so excited. I decided on a colorful little polka-dot onsie with matching pants and hat. Too freakin cute :-)


Everything was great until we started making our way home. We dropped off the rental car in Burlington and they overcharged us. Our flight to Cleavland was uneventful and on time. However our connection was delayed by two hours so we didn't get home until after midnight last night. The flight was also turbulent. What was funny though was every time there was really bad turbulance (which I hate) my heart would race and then the baby would move around a lot and I felt the first big kick. Apparently (s)he wanted to know what was going on out here that was making me so anxious.

Today I'm exhausted. I only got 4 hours of sleep so i think I'm going to go back to bed for a few hours.

Photography

I have always loved taking pictures. I remember getting my first camera for Christmas when I was 7 or 8. Granted, it was a pink kiddie Polaroid camera, but my parents soon bought me a "real" camera with film.

While I'm not great (yet) I think that I want to use this time of "forced" unemployment to get better, maybe turning it into a great hobby or even something more down the road. Here are some of my favorite pictures I've taken recently.

This is my kitty Fidget. She actually loves to pose for the camera and she's really photogenic. If she hears my taking pictures in the living room she'll come running from wherever she's hiding and sit down in front of me, waiting to have her picture taken.

Here's one of my other kitty, Widget. She's not as photogenic, nor as excited about getting her picture taken. I usually have to sneak up on her.

This was a photo that I took on one of our trips in India.
And as weird as this is, I have a bunch of photos of My Little Pony on our various trips and I love them. I know... I'm weird.


I have to go to the nearest city tomorrow and find a book on photography. I need to get serious about something, or else I'm just going to waste away on this damn couch....