Good Karma with the Alley Gods

Remember how jealous you were when I told you my apartment had a sweet view of a cinder block wall with peeling paint?

Well, apparently the gods of the alleyway read my blog and a few days after I wrote that, they sent out two painters to repaint the wall. (I think the alley gods want to help spruce things up for the baby.)

And just like magic, now I have a view of an alley with a cinder block wall, instead of an alley with a cinder block wall with peeling paint. Fancy! I'm really moving up in the world.

Sewing A Changing Pad Cover

I found it shocking to learn that changing pad covers cost more than the actual changing pad for a changing table. As usual, I decided to tackle the project myself to save a little money. I had no idea how to do it, but it wasn't too hard to figure out a "good enough" way.

I simply sewed a hem around the edges of the fabric, then laid the fabric upside down on the changing pad and pinned just the corners, taking up the excess fabric at the corners (like you would when wrapping a present.) Then I sewed a straight line down where I had pinned to form a corner and repeated for all four corners. I turned it right side out and slipped it over the changing pad for a semi-fitted cover. The professional covers have elastic around the bottom (like a fitted sheet) but I find it looks exactly the same if I just tuck the ends under the pad. I was able to make three covers for less than the cost of buying one.

Celebrating My Third Wedding Anniversary

Today is my third wedding anniversary. I really love being married. It is still the best decision I ever made in my life, hands down. While I don't think you have to be married to be happy (I never imagined I'd get married), for me, it has added so much joy to my life.

Because Chuk had to work today and has class tonight, we began our anniversary celebrations over the weekend. Saturday morning, we went out to brunch and had full Irish breakfasts. We had planned to do it for St. Patrick's Day, but I was too sick then, so we postponed a week and it was even better. We celebrated our first wedding anniversary with a second honeymoon (our first honeymoon was a bit of a train wreck) in Ireland, so the brunch brought back a bunch of wonderful memories.

After brunch, we took a one-hour cherry blossom cruise around the Potomac and Anacostia rivers. It was a Groupon deal I bought a while back and didn't go exactly according to plan. It was cold, overcast and rainy, and because the weather has been so weird, the blooms had already started to fade. We were able to ignore all that though and just make the best out of being on a romantic boat ride.

After the cruise, we drove around the Tidal Basin for a quick look at the remaining cherry blossoms. I love how the petals look like pink and white confetti all over the ground. So pretty!

We got out of the car for about two minutes to take some quick pictures. (It was still raining.) I still can't get over how big I am. I think this baby is going to be a giant.

On Sunday, we decided to use up a coffee gift card Chuk had. I hadn't been to Starbucks in eleven months and I had forgotten how much I liked it. (The last time I went to Starbucks was when we were in Seattle for our second anniversary on our way to our Alaskan cruise.) We drank our iced coffees in the car on the way to a play. We saw a matinee of The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. Neither of us had seen it before and we both liked it. During intermission, we got chocolate cupcakes, which added to the experience.

And now that it's our actual anniversary, we're going to go out to a little creperie we've never tried before for dinner once Chuk gets out of class.

I'm so thankful we get to spend this much quality time together before the baby comes. I know we celebrate our anniversary more elaborately than a lot of other couples, but to me, it's an investment in our relationship, so it's worth it. These are the memories we talk about again and again.

Due Dates Annoy Me

Bear with me while I go on a crabby rampage, OK? Pretty much everyone's favorite question to ask me is when my due date is. It's understandable in some respects: I've been pregnant for the better part of a year and it looks like I'm smuggling a very large watermelon under my clothes. However, it irritates me when people don't accept my answer or continuously ask me the question again and again as if my answer is magically going to change.

Here's the thing about due dates that people fail to recognize: They're really called ESTIMATED due dates. No one knows when a baby is going to come. No one. Even if you're being induced, you don't know that the baby isn't going to come early.

Generally, estimated due dates (EDD) are calculated by adding 40 weeks to the first day of your last period. What this fails to take into account though is that all women and all babies are different. If your menstrual cycle is longer or shorter than 28 days, the 40 weeks is already off.

Secondly, even though ultrasounds seem like they're super accurate because you're told you're "X weeks and # days", after the 12 week of pregnancy ultrasounds aren't very accurate at dating pregnancies because fetuses develop at different rates after that point. (Think about how some babies walk at 10 months and others walk at 13 months. It's the same type of thing when they're still in the uterus.) The EDD from ultrasounds also seem to be a moving target since almost everyone I know who has had more than one ultrasound has had her due date changed, which is always funny to me since the conception date didn't change.

In addition to your cycle and your baby's development, the 40 weeks is just an average too. A baby is considered full term if it comes anytime between 37 and 42 weeks. So basically, your baby is normal if it comes anytime within a one month time frame. My birth instructor told us that on average, first babies come ten days after the EDD and one of the books I'm reading says that the chance of a woman delivering on her "due date" is only around 5%.

So when people ask me when I'm due, I tell them "in April", which is about as accurate as I can be. I'm not a psychic. These nosy parkers never accept that answer though. More than one person, most often a Facebook "friend" I haven't seen in 10+ years, has gone on to insist, "No, when is your exact due date? I want to write it in my calendar." Hell no. If you found out about my pregnancy on Facebook, you can find out when I have my baby on Facebook. I don't need you emailing me to ask if I've "popped" yet. (Incidentally, this is my least favorite phrase ever. Do they think the imagery of popping or exploding is pleasant to a woman facing imminent labor? Really? Think before you speak, Dummy.) Multiply the same mildly annoying question by every single person I know and some random strangers who decide they have a right to be up in my business and you get one irritated mama-to-be.

The icing on the cake of irritation is my father-in-law who asks weekly if we have a more precise due date yet. We have explained to him numerous times all the above information about how EDD are just guesses and there is no way anyone could be certain, but he refuses to accept it and just keeps asking. It's enough to make me want to bang my head (or his?) against the wall.

Now, when Chuk or I get an insistent due date questioner, we quip, "It's a baby, not a library book." If we can get a giggle, usually it's enough time for us to change the subject. Phew.

Since you readers are all nice and I have gotten one respectful question about this issue, I will tell you I have two EDDs. I was told by one midwife that I'm due April 8, which was simply based on 40 weeks after the first day of my last period. My current midwife has my EDD as April 20, which she calculated according to my freakishly long menstrual cycle.

Personally, I'm really hoping to either have the baby April 18 because 18 is a special number to me (I think this baby was conceived on July 18; Chuk proposed on August 18; my dad's birthday was September 18; and my birthday is October 18) or April 25 because that was my grandma's birthday. (I've written about her here, here, and here.) I would also be happy with April 8 because Easter is my favorite holiday.

The absolute worst day for me to have this baby is April 15 because Chuk has a second round Jeopardy audition that day, which cannot be rescheduled. Because I want him to fulfill his life dreams, I've told him he's going to the audition no matter what, but he insists he wouldn't go if I was in labor. Obviously, this means I'm going to have the baby on April 15 or 16 because that's just how the universe works. I would appreciate it if you kept your fingers crossed that I'm not in labor April 14-16 anyway though. (And although it's secondary to a healthy baby, if you want, you can also keep your fingers crossed that he makes it onto the show because that would be so fun and make him so happy.)

Curtains in the Nursery

We're still plugging away at getting this baby's room ready for it. In a closet I had a pair of curtains from the room I rented when I moved to DC eight years ago. They're just cheap-y white cotton curtains from Ikea, but I have always liked the texture of them; they look and feel like linen.

They were an awkward length for the window, neither floor length nor cafe length. Though I generally prefer floor length curtains, I think shorter curtains are safer in a baby's room (so they can't be tugged on.) I sewed a big hem on the both panels and then added some ball fringe to the bottom to make them a little more fun. I love the way the ball fringe looks with the Jenny Lind crib we have.

I had the curtain rods and finials from that same Ikea shopping trip eight years ago. Chuk kindly hung them so I wouldn't have to stand on a chair with my big belly.

Other than the cost of four yards of ball fringe, which I think cost around $13 (and I still have some left over) the curtain project was free. It only took an afternoon and turned out better than I imagined it.

P.S. Try not to be too jealous that four out of the five windows in our apartment look out onto an alley with a cinder block wall adorned with peeling paint.

Lighting the Nursery

Apparently, the nesting instinct skipped our house. So when it finally dawned on us "This baby is coming soon" we decided we needed to kick it into high gear and get our former office/guest room ready to become a nursery. We had sort of been working on it for months, but our efforts were more along the lines of brainstorming ideas and decluttering and rehoming nearly everything that had been in that room. It was a big job in and of itself, but it has left little time for the fun, "prettifying" part of it.

While "prettification" is all well and good, we're still working with a budget which is best described as "the closer to zero the better". I had the lamp pictured above for at least seven years. No joke, I have a thing for acrylic furniture and accessories and it matched my feminine, single girl bedroom back in the day. It does not match our gender-neutral nursery though.

With no overhead lighting in that room and no desire to buy a new lamp when I already had a functional one, a lamp makeover was in order.

Two quick coats of silver spray paint and a new lampshade later, it looks like a new lamp. We already had the lamp and spray paint, so I'm counting those costs as $0. The lampshade was $7.99. Less than $10 for a "new" lamp, nice.

Linking to 320 Sycamore.

Restaurant Sweet Tea

It's been 80 degrees in DC all this week. Considering I'm a northern California native (anything over 65 is hot to me), I'm pregnant, and the heat is still on in my building, we're sweltering. We've been mainlining iced tea at our place.

A lot of times when I have others' homemade iced tea it's either too sweet or too bitter or (when my husband makes it) it just tastes like sweet water. Yuck. Here's how I make restaurant quality iced tea. (Taught to me by my mom who grew up in southern Louisiana, where they know their sweet tea.)

Steep six tea bags in four cups of recently boiled water for at least twenty minutes. (You can heat your water in the microwave if it's too hot to turn the stove on for the kettle.) The longer you steep the tea, the better. I think most people don't steep their tea long enough. Pour the four cups of tea into a pitcher with 1/2 cup of sugar (or Splenda, as we've been doing recently) and stir vigorously until sweetener is completely dissolved. Add enough ice to make 2 quarts. Refrigerate and enjoy.

Now, if you're like me, you'll be tempted to use the cheapest store brand tea, but don't do it. Tea quality makes a big difference to your final outcome. My preferred brands are Community (which is hard to find outside of the South), Luzianne, and good ol' Lipton. (Sadly, no one paid me to write my opinion on any of those.)

We've been going through tea so quickly that as soon as I get a pitcher made, I start steeping tea for the next batch, or as in the picture above, the next two batches.