Category Archives: Lisa
We’re expecting her to start changing her own diaper next.
You’d think we’d stop menacing her with the camera. You’d be wrong.
effortlessly glamorous
she’s very advanced
As a matter of fact, I was born yesterday.
happy birthday
38 weeks
It is blowing my mind that Nora is (developmentally, at least) ready to be born. I don’t find it hard to believe that she’s 7 pounds and 20 inches long, though–things are getting a bit crowded in there.
This week’s newsletter also helpfully includes early preeclampsia symptoms, which of course I am now convinced that I have:
1. swelling of your hands and face (Yes, but I might just be getting fatter.)
2. sudden weight gain (Well, I’d gained 3 pounds at my last appointment, but my doctor didn’t seem alarmed.)
3. visual changes (I’ve noticed that I see flickers in my peripheral vision.)
4. upper abdominal tenderness (A resounding YES, but it’s the same tenderness I’ve been feeling for months. If it’s worse, I just assume it’s because my tummy is bigger and the problem is naturally exacerbated.)
5. nausea (If today counts, then yes.)
Anyway, probably I’m just being paranoid and it’s nothing or will just go away on its own like my nerve pain. I hope so. Preeclampsia is scary.
In which I try to bore you to death with completely insignificant details.
For better or worse, the nursery is pretty much put together! It feels good to have that task done. The polka-dotted fabric bin on the lower shelf of the white table holds board books and tub books. You can see the Boppy pillow hanging out on the seat of Blake’s grandpa’s rocker.
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The dresser is full of baby clothes and linens that have been washed with Dreft, folded and sorted by size, and put into labeled drawers. The IKEA frog is sitting in a Bumbo baby seat next to George and Martha and a sweet little baby sock sorting thingie I found at HomeGoods. I made the print over the dresser in my letterpress class–it features my favorite quote from Peter Pan.
The top two shelves of the bookcase are full of baby supplies, and the bottom shelf is picture books. The art is two pages from an advance copy of You Were Loved Before You Were Born, written by Eve Bunting and illustrated by Karen Barbour. The book is due out in January.
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Under the window you can see the gift Marci got us–the first baby item Blake and I picked out together. Above the crib are the letter hooks I talked about here. Since I took these pictures, I got some big clear totes at Target to go under the crib: one for extra diapers, one for blankets, and one for stuffed animals. We’re still waiting for our Sophie bumper and crib skirt to arrive from Pottery Barn.
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The light must have been a bit different for this photo, because the wall color here looks closer to how it looks in real life. Anyway, you can see we’ve been messing around with the toys on top of the bookcase and on the shelf above it. We swapped out the fancy (and arguably creepy-looking) dolls I had when I was younger for the Cabbage Patch Garden Fairies I adopted in college. And of course we had to dig out my Boo doll and press her belly a bunch of times. The soccer-playing Build-a-Bear was a gift to Blake from the girls he coached one year, and the other one is Olivia, who Blake gave me for our anniversary three years ago.
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TA-DA! She’d better friggin’ love it.
Amelia and Eleanor Go For a Ride
Our friends gave us this picture book when they found out we were naming our baby Eleanor Amelia:
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It’s about Eleanor Roosevelt and Amelia Earhart sneaking away from a dinner at the White House for a plane ride, and it’s by Pam Munoz Ryan and illustrated by Brian Selznick. The story is so cute, and the black and white colored-pencil drawings are gorgeous.
Our Eleanor Amelia won’t strictly be named after that Eleanor and that Amelia, but I’m hard pressed to think of two better women for her to look up to.