20 weeks

i know i took about a million belly photos with sam, so i thought it was about time to take one of the girl (if only so she won't feel like she missed the spotlight—so focus on the bump, and not the craziness that is my hair.) here we are, 20 weeks big and halfway there. woot.

ps—here's sam at 20 weeks

switch swatch

one of the dilemmas currently on our to-do list is figuring out how to get sam happily moved into the spare room (the bigger bedroom) and sam's old room ready for the little sister. ideally, we'd like to have sam moved into his room at least one month before the girl arrives on the scene, and the first step in that process is getting the room repainted.

sam's current room is a denim-y blue that (after the room had been fully painted), i really decided was way too dark for my liking. so this time around, i picked out some much lighter blues, and we're going to let sam have a say in what the final choice is. i narrowed it down to four choices that i can totally live with, no matter what sam picks, but i'm still a little bit worried he's going to feel displaced (despite the fact that he's really getting an upgrade here). we shall see how it all works out, i suppose.

for the little girl's room, i picked out a bunch of grey/tan swatches, with the intention that the wall colors should be neutral, and as she gets bigger (grows out of all sam's baby hand-me-down stuff), we can re-decorate with color accents and accessories that are more girlie. mike and i both seem to have agreed on the most neutral grey, and i think it will be fine.

there will surely be updates as the rooms progress, but for now, we are (as usual) setting a leisurely pace.

making—wrapping paper

last month mike rescued a huge stack of ginormous paper from the recycling bins at work. since then we've been making giant pictures (mostly of trucks and rocketships), big paintings, robots to sword fight with (because chopping mama up while she's doing dishes is NOT recommended), and truck stop signs.

this week we made some personalized wrapping paper for the cousins having birthdays in march. i drew some basic birthday-type stuff (balloons, streamers, confetti, party hats, and candles) with a sharpie, and then sam and i colored them in with crayons like a giant coloring book page. it was sam's idea to add the truck, which i turned into a cake truck (because that seemed more birthday-like than a garbage truck—his original request).

i do believe that we're going to be rather sad when the giant paper runs out. however, in the meantime, we're having a blast.

oh joy!

we found out today at our ultrasound that it's a 99% certainty that we're having a girl.

i have to admit that i'm a little disappointed that we're not going to get extra mileage out of some of sam's newborn clothes (though, i can probably get away with blue onsies with little footballs on them in the privacy of our own house, right? right? i mean, they're so cute.) but i'm also thinking that little dresses can be just as much fun as truck shirts, tea parties can be as much fun as rocketships, and that it's okay to mix pink legos in with fire engine legos (all kids like legos—at least, they should). i also hear tell that potty training a girl is a lot easier (which i'm hoping is true), and that they're not as rowdy as boys (though having seen my nieces, i'm not sure i believe this one). in any case, even another boy would be a different story than sam, and it will be a whole new adventure finding out what "not sam" is like.

(let's not think about the teenage years yet though. i know what my teenage years were like, and i am not looking forward to it.)