Jungle Girl!

Laurene gave us the coolest present ever. They're these wall stickers from Blik Design, and I think out of the numerous nursery design pictures I've seen, Alf's little corner of a wall in our room is my favorite. Seriously, it trumps all those other fancy nurseries that I've seen - she's truly a really lucky girl. Because Al and I live in a tiny little apartment in NYC, there is no way, we could have a real nursery for the baby. We've been spending the last month, purging our own stuff and moving things around to make room for the baby. I'm glad that in the midst of all this madness, that we're still able to create her own little space for her (even if its confined to the crib). In fact, even when we move to a bigger place and Alf finally gets her own room, I'll probably use the same kind of art to decorate her room. I love that it looks modern, and not frilly (so not my style), and best of all, I love that its pretty unisexual. On top of that, high contrast colors (black and white), are really good for infant development -- so the art will make our already genius of a baby even smarter (haha)! Anyway, here it is:




Besides, putting up the wall art I also had the fascinating task of washing all of Alf's clothes. I had no idea, that you needed to wash all newborn clothing before they get to wear them. So yesterday, was spent trying to slowly wash all of Alf's stuff. I did SIX loads of laundry yesterday and this is the aftermath:

Single Gestation?

Sigh... so one of the things that I dislike the most about being pregnant is gaining weight. I KNOW its natural to gain weight, and I KNOW that I'm supposed to get bigger, but knowing that doesn't really make it any easier. Do you remember the scene in Knocked Up when Katherine Heigl is super pregnant, and she's getting weighed in the drs office (in KOREATOWN) and the nurse has to use the big weight (I think they're the 25 pound markers) on the scale to weigh her? Well, that happened to me yesterday. I also didn't see my regular doctor yesterday. I had some slight complications, and the Dr made me come in for a quick check-up. Everything is fine with me and the baby, but the doctor that saw me yesterday took one look at my belly, raised her eyebrow and said "Single gestation?" GULP. She then proceeded to measure my belly and went "Your baby's a big one, eh?"

I knew I wasn't going to look like one of those celebrities that can just grow a belly and everywhere else looks nice and normal. But its kind of disheartening that I still have ways to go till this baby comes out and I'm already looking (and feeling) like a whale.

So everyone thats curious as to what I look like -- thats what I looked like last week while I was in LA. I'm humungo! But please don't tell me that. =] Just lie and say that I look cute.

3d/4d ultrasound

Yesterday, Albert and I decided to to get a 3d/4d ultrasound for baby Alf. The doctor's office does have a 3d transducer in their ultrasound machine, but they usually spend 30 seconds at the end getting a shot and thats it. If the baby isn't cooperating with the position, or as Alf likes to do, cover her face with her hands, then you don't get a good shot. At the ultrasound place yesterday, we spent a whopping 20 minutes trying to get good shots of Alf and capture some videos. I made sure to drink juice right beforehand (do you know that sugar can wake up a sleeping fetus?), so we can get her to roll over and show her face. Alf, being the genius baby that she is, did roll over and gave us some good shots. =]

A pretty good shot of Alf's right side of the face. I swear... does she or does she not have Albert's nose?


Heres one with her face resting on her hand:


Right when we were about to finish our session, she started to wave good bye at us. Maybe she was tired of the tech poking her around and wanted us to go:


A video of the waving portion. It took me an hour and half to extract this portion of the video and upload:


And in true tradition, we wouldn't be good parents if we didn't embarrass our yet-to-be-born child and exposed her goods (or more like lack of "goods"). Yes, people, this is Alf's vajayjay. We have gotten confirmation from 4 different people that Alf is a girl, so if she comes out a boy then..... well.

Growth Scan Ultrasound

Even now, I still get nervous before I go to the doctors. It is hard not to conjure up worst-case scenarios about the baby.. but thankfully progress has been very good. Baby Alf weighs 2 pounds and 11 ounces. The doctor said that was 66th percentile.. which in my mind was perfect. She's a bit bigger than the median baby, but not too big. Being too big is not good.. well, for obvious reasons.

So here is the profile shot:


I thought it was pretty obvious what was what in this pic, but Al said he had trouble looking, so here is the cheat sheet:


This is the 3 dimensional frontal view of the picture. Its really hard to see on the computer. If it makes sense she's covering her face with her right arm:


And again the cheat sheet:


Heres one interesting tidbit. Fetuses get the hiccups! And I can totally tell the difference between hiccups and kicks or jabs. Its pretty cute that she's already getting drunk on amniotic fluid (which by the way, is just her urine).

So for those of you that don't know, I'm totally pro-medication and all for pain-free stuff. I have the philosophy that once you feel the first symptoms of a cold, then you should pop them cold pills and zap it out of your system before it gets worse. I know a LOT of ppl that disagree with this, but I've always been pretty adamant about how its foolish to "suffer" through things when you don't have to. So you would think that at the first sign of labor, I'd yell to the doctors "Hit me with the epidural, baby!" I always thought that I would get an epidural. Weirdly enough though, in the past few weeks I've had a slight change of heart. I've become more and more interested in natural childbirth methods and I've started to read up on the subjects. Now, I am so not the type of woman that really wants to enjoy labor pains and totally afraid of hurting my baby with the epidural. Gazillions of women get an epidural and they turn out fine (doctor says theres a 1% risk). I just haven't been able to figure out exactly why I've had this change of heart. I'm still afraid of labor pains, but theres just this part of me that doens't want to get an epidural and deal with it. Anyhow, I signed Al and I up for a Bradley Method class starting in a couple weeks, so maybe I'll learn more then.

Also.. heres a note to those who say Cal is an overrated #2. Shame on you, especially if you're a Cal alumni! I understand where it is coming from, but who else in this nation deserves to be #2 over us? Tsk tsk.

Entering the home stretch!

I've been pretty lazy about updating this blog... but then again, nobody really knows about it either (yet). However, I am, now, starting to get really excited about the baby, and our apartment is slowly looking more and more like it is getting ready to welcome a new human being, so it'll be fun to update.

In the next week, I'll be getting another ultrasound, and on Saturday Al and I are going to go get a 3d/4d ultrasound done, so I should have a lot of fun pictures to update with.

The last few weeks, we've been keeping pretty busy with moving things around in our tiny apartment to make room for a crib and other major purchases.

Here is the crib, courtesy of Al's parents (thanks!):



The bedding is from dwellbaby. It has a lot of cute, modern patterns, and I was devastated to find out that their stuff was so freakin expensive. And this is where persistence counts - after a lot of research and a couple of phone calls, I found out that they hold bi-annual sample sales, and their 2007 fall one was this past week! After battling a lot of scary moms using their strollers as weapons, I came out victorious with crib bedding and a lot of other goodies (stroller blankets, towels, burp sets) at 60-80% off!

We also splurged on some wall art. Its called "Jelly Bean Tree":


Doesn't the picture make you feel all happy, warm and all fuzzy inside?

And finally, here are some picturees of the stroller, courtesy of my parents:

Its a Bugaboo Frog, and I'm totally tempted to monogram the fabric or something, but Al's convinced me not to.

Here is the stroller frame with the carseat attached to it:


Anyhow, I just wanted to show off all the great gifts that Alf was getting and brag a little bit for her. I've officially entered the third trimester as of yesterday, so there really isn't that much time left till she makes her appearance. I was joking with Al, how the one year Cal has a great chance of either going to the Rose Bowl or NC (although we have a long road ahead of us), it is the one year we really can't go. Alf's due date is January 5th, so there really is a big chance that her birthday might coincide with one of the two BCS bowls. Oh well. If anything, perhaps she'll be a good luck charm?