30 Weeks and First Baby Shower!

Okay so I don't have any superb pictures from our baby shower yet because pregnancy brain caused me to forget to take my own camera out of its case, but I'm hoping to get some soon.  The shower went really well though was utterly exhausting to me.  The food was great, we got some great presents, and mom got us a fantastic cake that we've been eating leftovers from ever since.  If you ever need a cake in Western Mass, Cerratto's Pastry Shop is absolutely fabulous!

Also, on the drive to the venue there was like *the* most amazing rainbow ever.  So bright and clear - you could see all the colors all the way down to purple clear as day.  My brain WAS functioning at that oment and we attempted to get a picture of it, but I swear it was the most camera-shy rainbow ever and as soon as we stopped the car to take a picture it immediately started to fade so you can only barely see it in this picture here.  But I promise you it was absolutely phenomenal at its prime!!  There's nothing more

promising to me before a 'thing' than to have a rainbow pop up.  It's like a great big smile from Mother Nature.  :-)  Anyway - if you squint reeeeally hard you can see the hint of rainbow left about the tree-line in the middle of the picture.  No I'm not crazy, I promise it's there.  lol.

We also made washcloth duckies for the tables as our shower favors.  We'd seen this done at our friend Arwen's shower a few years back and I knew when I saw it that I so wanted to do that for my shower when it was our turn.  Thankfully she still had the directions and it wound up being way easy to do - the worst

 part was seriously having to buy 80+ washcloths in our preferred color scheme!!  We wound up with a few shades of purple, pink, and green, and then a couple yellow, white, or cream ones.  We got them from Ocean State Job Lot where we were able to get a deal - but the quality was less than stellar.  I figure people can still take them apart, pull the eyes off (they're just white glued on) and use them as kitchen rags rather than for washing babies or faces or whatever.  That's what I'm planning to use our extras for anyway!  Call it my way of slipping some eco-friendliness into the shower without people knowing.  Bwahahaha!  :-)

We have a busy couple of weeks ahead of us though.  This coming week will be my last of working at Timberland - official last day is 3/26.  My next midwife appointment is April 1st because I'm up to appts every 2 weeks now (!!) and then on the 3rd we have our maternity photo session booked and Easter is the 4th.  Then our next shower is the following weekend on the 11th with Jeff's family, and the week after that I'lll have another midwife appt scheduled at some point and then that weekend is Erin's wedding shower on the 17th!  Total craziness!

My last appointment was on Wednesday 3/17, and I'd gained 3 pounds from my visit 3 weeks ago - so I've apparently hit the 'pound a week' segment of pregnancy!  But they're happy, and my blood pressure is still wicked good (108/60!) which is good to know because I've started getting some swelling off and on in my ankles and my fingers so was starting to wonder.  But that's all good.  Baby girl's heartbeat sounded great - holding steady at 140bpm most of the time now and I'm still measuring right on track.  Oh - and belly button still inside!  Woohoo!