24 Weeks Pregnant

Now that we know the baby is a girl and we’ve seen her on the ultrasound, reality is setting in even more. She’s coming…and soon!

Since I accidentally revealed it on Facebook and we’ve been pretty open about it to anyone who asks, I’ll just go ahead and tell you what our little peanut's name is:

Norah Claire Galloway

The name Norah came about because I wanted to pass on Lenore, which is my middle name and was my grandmother’s name. We just had a hard time thinking of another name that went well with Lenore, and I’ve always liked Norah, so we decided that was similar enough and sounded better with Galloway and other middle names that we could think of. Travis thought of Claire, and I really liked it too. I’m not sure what his train of thought was. Anyway, we think it’s a nice name!

Norah is probably still about the same size as she was at the ultrasound last Wednesday…she’s just over a pound (I’m not sure how they calculate that…I guess from the measurements they took of the lengths of different bones), and probably about 11.5 inches long. Her ears are supposed to be fully functional now, and her skin is getting more opaque and more pink. I can’t wait to see her rosy little cheeks! In the mean time, though, it makes me so happy to know that she’s having a good ol’ time in there just playing with her feet!

At the ultrasound, she was upright with her spine along my right side. I don’t think it’s a problem yet that she is still right side up, but I’m a little concerned because she seems to be in that position all the time (always kicking my bladder!), and I don’t feel her flipping around as much as I did when she was smaller. I’m going to ask the midwife about it tomorrow. I know there are different exercises (more like yoga positions) you can do to try to get babies to flip. (I’m assuming you all know what I’m talking about, but just in case you don’t, babies are supposed to be born head first. Doctors pretty much always do a c-section when the baby is in the wrong position.)

The other thing the midwife said we would discuss tomorrow is the glucose test for gestational diabetes. At an OB office, they would automatically administer this test, but since I have none of the risk factors, Amy said I can decide whether or not I want to do it. I don’t think I will.

Now on to fun stuff! We had been waiting to register for gifts until we knew the baby’s gender, so we finally got to do that this past Saturday! We went to Target and Babies R Us. It was actually kind of hard to decide what we would need! I think we got all the essentials. We didn’t register for any clothes because I’m sure people will pick whatever they think is cute, and that’s fine with us. We’re not too picky! We also were going to register on the cloth diaper websites we’re ordering from, but we decided it would be easier to ask for gift certificates so people won’t have to order one diaper and pay shipping on it and wait for it to arrive…

Mr. Travis Cleverpants found us another bargain while we were at Target! We had been a little concerned about finding a stroller that would match our car seat (you can put the car seat into any Baby Trend stroller…)

Oh! Norah says hi! She’s kicking hard! And it feels like she might be head down now!

Anyway, we had looked other places for a stroller that would work for us, and most of them were the complete wrong color. I mean, I don’t need it to be the exact same color scheme, but they clashed pretty badly. So at Target, the first thing we looked at were the strollers. They happened to have a great Baby Trend jogging stroller that was two different shades of gray, which would match fine with our gray, green and blue car seat. It had nice big bicycle type tires and a swiveling front wheel that can lock straight – just a really good quality stroller all around. It was a pretty good price ($99.99), considering we’d seen the same stroller several other places for $120, so we registered for it even though it is a pretty expensive item to put on a registry. But THEN, Travis walked down the aisle a little further and saw THE SAME stroller (except black and gray instead of all gray) in a slightly beat up box on clearance for $55!!!!! We didn’t really have an extra $55 lying around, but we decided it was ridiculous to ask someone else to buy it for us for $100 if we could get it for just over half that amount. So, we bought it and brought it home after first making sure that Target would allow us to return it in the event that we found something wrong with it.

It’s perfect! It’s completely brand new with no missing parts! I think it was just on clearance because it was considered a “seasonal” color!

I looked at a Babies R Us flyer, and their regular price for the same stroller/car seat combo we ended up with is $220. We spent about $115!! We just got really lucky, thanks to my hero, Mr. Cleverpants. I love him dearly. J

This is a long blog post. I’m sorry.

Last thing, I promise: I’m nesting! Again, now that we’ve seen the baby and named her and everything, reality is setting in. We have to be ready for her! Also, we have two baby showers coming up in about a month, so we need to make room for Norah’s things. My plan is to reorganize one room a day and figure out what we can get rid of and actually do it! We have half a closet – come to think of it, half of one closet and half of another – full of stuff to consign or sell on Ebay or take to Goodwill, but I just haven’t gotten around to actually doing it yet. Anyway, I think one room a day (maybe just on my less busy days) will be doable. I had every intention of starting with the kitchen today, but instead I cleaned and vacuumed (thoroughly!) and shampooed the downstairs carpet, which took a LONG time. And it really needed to be done. So I forgive myself for not organizing the kitchen today. Tomorrow I have to run some errands, but hopefully I can start on it in the afternoon…we shall see.

I’m gonna stop ranting about my life now and let you get back to yours! Have a great week!