A new era - new bed and new room!

At the beginning of January, we started the process of getting Ellie's new room set up. We started with clearing out the bed Grammie and Papa Butter had used when they visited in September, then put all the Christmas decorations back in the attic. We then assembled the bassinet and Ellie was a HUGE help to Mark - he quickly learned where he can and can't put his bowl of screws!
Ellie was very excited about the "pretty" bassinet and seemed to understand that it was for the baby. When she went over and pulled herself up to peek into the cradle, she seemed quite disturbed that there was no baby actually in it yet. We went and got one of her dolls and put it in the cradle and that was a sound solution to her problem!

The next step was finishing her valance - something I made without a pattern. It was scary becuase I drew out what I wanted from my head and wasn't entirely sure if it would look as good in real life as it did in my mind! I get the feeling that my husband shakes his head when I get nervous with my sewing - until I reminded him how nervous he gets with his wood-working...it seemed to speak his language. Although I was nervous, the valance came together very quickly and I am very proud of how it looks and the little finishing touches I did to make it look professionally made that only I know about (or someone who is a better seamstress than myself).


The fun part came the day we brought Ellie's new bed up and got it all assembled. Again, she was in there like a dirty shirt climbing all over everything and being of great assistance to her Dad.


I found this bed last Spring at the awesome second hand store in our neighborhood and since it came with a mattress that was in really good shape, we snapped it up. Mark was a little unsure of the loudness of it, but I loved it - I especially loved that it was made from wood (versus plastic) and would appear to last. Ellie laughed at all the animals and talked about each one and the sounds they make. As soon as Mark brought the mattress up and put it into the bed, she climbed on and exclaimed "bed!" This was the first time we thought that it would be a fairly easy transition.

That very night, Ellie came down with the stomach flu and graciously passed it along to myself and Mark. We spent the following weekend in Radium recovering (while Ellie played at Grandpa & Grandma's), and then had a weekend at home and then finally last Friday decided it was time for the big move.

Ellie and I started moving all her clothes from one dresser to the next - which took forever because my fashionista daughter needed to try on EVERYTHING. It was fun though, and once Mark got home he started helping too and I think Ellie enjoyed it. I had made her a new quilt for her new bed, so after supper we gave it to her and then we made the bed together - she kept saying "oh wow!" over and over and then jumped and played on the bed.

The hardest part for me was when we moved the bassient into the baby's room and told her this was now the baby's room - she pulled her footstool over to the crib and tried climbing back into the crib crying "bed!" over and over. We weathered that storm fine and while I hid my tears till after she was asleep, she was very excited about her new bed.

As of this morning, she has had three successful nights and two successful naps in the new room and bed. We are very proud of her and hope that the transition is exciting and not overly stressful.

6 weeks and counting!

Today is 6 weeks until our due date, according to what the doctors say (I'm sticking with my on-line calculator thingy that said March 6th (not the 7th) was the official due date). It's hard to believe that we're in the final stretch of Baby Project#2!

So far things in preggie land have been good, aside from the normal malady's that strike a woman when she's building a baby. The big watch lately has been my blood pressure - it was an issue with my first, and likely contributed to Ellie being so small at birth (4lbs 11oz, or 2138 grams).

Since Ellie was so small, she was placed in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) immediately after birth. They called her a "feeder-grower" in that they just wanted to watch her closely to make sure she gained weight and grew properly. She was short (only 17" tall), so she never looked scrawny like the majority of the NICU babies did, and she soon became the favourite NICU baby to care for. They rated her size as "<<<3rd percentile" - I wondered how many "less than" signs could be put in front of a percentage to make it reduce to the next-smallest number! Though we had excellent care from our nurses and doctors, there was a lot of emotions for us to deal with because we didn't know when we were going to take her home, and thanks to the kindness of my nurses on Post-Partum, I wasn't discharged until Ellie was so we were able to go home as a family the first time.

Very early in this pregnancy, I was on the maternity floor at Rockyview Hospital and walked past the NICU and emotions surfaced from Ellie's birth that really surprised me. Who knew that two years later things would surface that could surprise you! Mark and I started praying that this baby would not be little or need to spend time in the NICU at all - I forget that sometimes when you pray, God answers you quite literally.

So at my ultrasound two weeks ago, when the doctor met with me after to review the results, I burst out laughing when he told me that this baby was rating in the 95th percentile for size. Uh, wow!! Of course I had to explain myself to this kind doctor, so since he found out that our fist baby was a miniature one, he wanted to see me again just to keep an eye on Baby's growth.

I am very thankful that we appear to be having a baby that will not need to spend time in the NICU, and am humbled again by God's sense of humor to our prayers. I guess I'll be tucking away all my preemie-sized baby clothes that I was going to have ready "just in case" we had another miniature baby!!