24 Weeks: V is for VIABILITY!

24 weeks = "V-day" in the pregnancy world.  And that's a whole different V-day than most people think of.  We're not talking Valentine's Day people, we're talking viability!  At 24 weeks baby has a greater than 50/50 shot if she were born early and chances just get better from here.  It's a really good spot to get to for a mama.  :-)

Movement has also kicked up a notch - I still can't tell hands from feet from general moving around, but Jeff did finally feel his first kick on the 28th!  I finally made him sit down with his hand on my belly until he felt her - there's no way for me to know when she'll move and she doesn't always KEEP moving after the first bump so it was hard to otherwise make sure he was there at the right time.  Way cute - I had to tell  him when she kicked because he couldn't believe what he felt wasn't just my tummy in normal status.  hahaha..

We've also begun work on the nursery - all the previous 'spare bedroom' furniture is gone and we started painting.  Here is a photo timeline of what we have so far starting with the 'before'  picture.  We did the top half of the wall first, then started working on the stripes.  Because of how the stripes are laid out we were able to tape and paint two of the four colors of stripes at once which was nice.

I also got the call from Babies R Us that our dresser has arrived and is ready for pickup.  Thankfully we have 15 days to get it so can wait a week to go pick it up.  I'm hopeful the shape of the box will allow us to get it INSIDE my SUV - the crib was a no-go in that department and we had to ride it on my roof rack tied down.  That was...not the plan at the get-go.  I mean everything always fits in my truck!  But no - not the box for this crib.  Ah well.

I also ordered our crib bedding because the site was showing it as suddenly discontinued and since we spent such a long time deliberating on the 'right' set to get, I definitely wanted to be sure that we were able to get that one!  Particularly as I based my paint color choices off of it - so it was important that our decor actually match the paint job we're spending so much time in creating here!

Ignore my super cool 'painting' outfit here.  One thing I've learned about maternity wear is that it definitely puts you in a sticky situation when it comes to 'crap clothes' for things like painting.  So I have a pair of maternity pj pants and one of Jeff's too-small t-shirts on.  they did the job and I only caused minimal damage to them, so that's all that matters right?  lol..  Cuteness was definitely not a factor here.

In the end, we found we did have some trouble with the paint bleeding under our tape in some places.  This may be a problem where it happened on stripes that are going to be painted white in the next stage, but the other stripe color is dark purple so that should cover anything - the white is the only issue.  I've gotten some tips since discovering our problem as well on 'burnishing' the tape with a credit card or something to ensure full contact with the wall all the way down, and we also plan to pay close attention to the amount of paint we're using towards the tape to hopefully prevent bleeding again.

And last but not least, is a pic of the bedding we're getting.  We're mixing and matching from this set (Kids Line: Lilac Garden) and the Carter's: Garden Party set.  The bedding is all Lilac Garden but we're taking some of the ancillary pieces of the Garden Party set and using them instead because there are some things I just liked better and most of their stuff will match the Lilac Garden stuff anyway.  I can't wait to get the crib built and the bedding all set up!  All we need now is to build the crib and get the mattress!