22 Weeks - First Outside Kicks!

22 weeks and on Friday 1/15 I saw my very first "outside kicks"!  Movement has still been very hit or miss - but I at least feel a few "somethings" every day now - mostly after eating I can count on it.  Most are little movements - presumably buffeted by the anterior placenta, and when I feel things it's off to the sides or top/bottom of the belly, but I definitely saw my shirt jump twice with two little kicks that day for the very first time!!  That was so fun.  It's happened a couple times since then when I've been watching and sitting quietly at work - I love it!  Poor Jeff still hasn't been able to feel her since we're both working and so there aren't a ton of chances for him and as it is, the movements you can feel from the outside are definitely fewer than the movements that I can feel from the inside still.  But hopefully soon!

We also spent the long weekend making massive (in my opinion!) progress on nursery/baby decisions!  We made our first significant baby-related purchase - our glider!  It's cherry stained wood with 'fern' microfiber cushions.  Personally I think they look more tan than fern but I'll let them have it.  It's a Shermag locking glider so you can lock it from moving - which is a safety feature for curious toddler hands later on - but it will also lock in a variety of the gliding positions most notably the 'way back' glide so while it doesn't "recline" per se, it comes acceptably close.  We also got the glider/ottoman as a set that was on sale plus an extra MLK day sale, plus we had a 20% one item coupon that we used and returned the extra Snoogle that mom got me for Christmas with the cover so had $70 of store credit to use and in the end only had to spend $109 of our own money on the $300 glider.  Woohoo!!  Saving money is awesome.  :-)

While we were there, we also decided on what crib and dresser we are going to get and confirmed with my mom, who has said she'd buy our nursery furniture, that it was in her budget as it was a bit more expensive than some others.  But it's sooooo beautiful and will make an awesome full sized bed when the time comes.

Also, over the weekend, we finally picked a decorating style for the nursery and even purchased paint so there's no going back now!  This is a rough markup just using MS Paint to give the idea of our plan - so be kind!  The horizontal white line will be a white chair rail.  I think we're going to measure so that the green stripe is equal to the width of the light and dark purples together.  Or maybe the green with the white stripes is equal to the two purples..not sure yet..we haven't done our measuring and marking yet.  But we have oak stained woodwork in that room for baseboard trim, windows, and doors (of which there are FIVE!!) so while I hated the idea of a stained wood colored chair rail, I didn't think I could get away with doing a white one if I didn't add white into the paint scheme somehow.  Hence the white with our stripes.  Fingers crossed it comes out as nice as it looks in my head.  :-)

We also *finally* started registries.  They are nowhere near finished though.  We opened a universal registry on Amazon which is great because they have a lot more things that we want than Babies R Us does, and most times you can get free shipping over $25, plus you can add things from other websites that aren't even sold by Amazon which is a cool feature.  With the added bonus that many things available at both BRU and Amazon are significantly cheaper at Amazon, and I'm sold.  But I understand that people like to shop "in-store" for things so still have things on the BRU registry, and we plan to put more little things on that one once we get back to the store and walk around with the registry gun.  My mom booked our shower for March 14th at the Summit View Banquet House so we realized it was definitely time to start getting our registry together.

All-in-all it was definitely a week of progress!