Summer must be coming

I spent yesterday afternoon doing what I like to call de-furring. And by de-furring, I mean vacuuming, Swiffering, and wiping down all the furniture with a lint brush to rid my home of hair. I am pretty sure that I collected a full pound of it from my house. It appears that my animals are shedding their winter coats.

Don't get me wrong, I have three cats and a dog. Controlling that hair on a regular week can be time consuming. But this is just down right ridiculous. It is so bad that Travis was complaining about the cat hair on top of the bed and the dog hair all along the edges of the bed. I'm the one usually complaining about that. You know it's bad if Travis is verbalizing it.

We are definitely getting Bella sheared right before this baby comes.

Talking with Sagira

Another lazy Saturday night...

Travis got up between DVR shows and went to say hi to Sagira. I like to call her our TV ornament because she always sits on the back of it to stay warm. Occasionally she'll stand up and all we see is her little head sticking over the top. When she saw Travis, they started having a conversation.

Talking with Sagira from Nicolette Ward on Vimeo.

***** Stupid videos won't load properly on my blog. Click on the title of the video underneath and it will take you to the Vimeo website where the video will work better. *****

Videos of the Birthday Party

Just a couple videos from Wednesday's birthday party:

Good times, eating tissue paper.

Wednesday: Opening gifts from Nicolette Ward on Vimeo.

Chocolate cake is easier to see than white cake. =D

Wednesday Having Her Cake from Nicolette Ward on Vimeo.

New Addition to the Nursery

Sunday night Travis and I finally moved the old dresser out of the nursery and put together the new one from IKEA. The new dresser was entirely an aesthetic purchase. Although, it has given me a chance to give the room a nice, complete cleaning before Lil' Wodie's arrival. Moving the furniture out of the room has revealed patches of floor that most likely have not been vacuumed since we moved in to the house. I am yet to tackle the underside of the bed, but I'll get to that whenever we buy the crib.

The old dresser (that Travis has had since he was in elementary school)

The new dresser

You can sort of see what we are doing for a diaper changing station. We are just going to put the changing pad on the top of the dresser. Travis is going to paint some trim black and use the trim gun to put it at the edge of the dresser on either side of the pad to prevent slippage.

I put the Diaper Genie II in the back corner of the room, leaving it hidden behind the dresser. I was delighted to order it using points from my credit card. It really is nice to get a little something back from all that debt Travis and I racked up during college.

Zombie Belly

I was checking the tummy out in the bathroom mirror this evening and what do I see? The freakin Mississippi River running down my side. I had to take the contrast to the extremes to get this anomaly to show up in a photo, so please excuse the zombie-esque qualities. I swear I still have a heartbeat, and no virus, and no need to attack my fellow humans. Except for maybe Travis when he won't pass the ice cream spoon fast enough.

Woh.

Registry Complete

Phew! Registering for baby stuff was TOUGH. I was really looking forward to it, but also dreading the day. I was super excited to pick out everything we want for our baby. In the same breath, I knew we would both be cranky after a full day of choosing EVERYTHING we need to care for an infant. To top it all off, it totally slipped my mind to bring along snacks, which meant I was eating Belly Bars directly off the shelf at Babies R Us.

I think we got everything though. Yesterday I went through the registry online to read the customer reviews and see what I could find on Consumer Reports. Shannon pointed out that the stroller we chose had some really bad reviews. I would like to go back and pick out a different stroller because of this. I don't want to make the same mistake with anything else.

Yes, yes. I know we registered early. But my baby book recommended that we do so in the second trimester so I won't be completely exhausted by the end of it. I still got exhausted, which makes me glad we didn't wait to do it when I am gigantic. I was just SO excited to pick out everything for the impending arrival of our infant!

I am following a recommendation of a friend and putting links to our registries (Target and Babies R Us) on the side bar for quick access. =D

The one thing we didn't finalize is the color of the walls for the nursery. I wasn't planning to paint Lil' Wodie's room - one, since I should really be around the fumes of paint; two, because we want to sell our house within the next few years and I like the neutral pallet of the house. But Dad-To-Be really wants to do this and I'm not going to deny him. We are leaning towards a shade of blue that is closest to what I would call cornflower. I tend to like darker shades of blue, but I don't want to go too dark in fear of making the room seem smaller. I'm going to run by Home Depot and pick up a few swatches so we can compare them in the room.

After we pick out the color of the walls we are going to buy curtains and blinds. There were no window treatments in that room when we moved in, and we have since put up curtains. I'm planning to move those curtains into our bedroom and buy new stuff for the baby's room. It shouldn't be too costly since the windows in there are not full length.

Prego Nikki has been doing pretty good lately. I did forget to eat my morning snack on Saturday morning and very much regretted it. I started to feel horribly nauseous and Travis wasn't there to grab me some food. I was sure that if I bent forward even the slightest, my stomach would spill out onto the floor. I moved very slowly around the kitchen, trying to pull out the most bland food item I could find. I ended up with graham crackers and cream cheese icing. After I finished off the graham crackers, I went back to the kitchen to heat up some pasta with butter. It took approximately the length of Designed to Sell for the pukey-feeling to go away, but it did disappear.

I haven't felt anymore kicking/fluttering, which has been disappointing. I think I might have felt it again yesterday while we were at Babies R Us, but I was walking and not sure if it was baby or my tummy grumbling for food. ???

Wasabi Wednesday...

on a Friday. When Travis and I used to live above a bar in downtown Galveston, we used to do this thing we called Wasabi Wednesday. Every Wednesday, we would meet Ariel and a group of friends (whoever was up for it that week) for sushi happy hour a couple blocks from our apartment. It was cheap and entertaining. Since it was on a Wednesday, we could never get to crazy, unless we were willing to endure a day of work with a hangover (we only had to walk home). But that usually helped keep the spending to a minimum.

When we bought our house and moved off the island, Wasabi Wednesday sadly came to an end. We had to stop all our frivolous spending, not to mention that we had a drive to make if we wanted to go to the bars. We have been back for sushi happy hour on random occasions, since the restaurant celebrates these lovely four hours five days a week. I would say I can count the times we've been there in the past year on one hand. Things are looking like that might change. Although it won't be every week, sushi "happy hour" is coming back... to our house!!

Robert gave it a try.


Travis made what I like to call Sushi Supreme - everything was in it.


The set-up: Miso soup, crab ragoon, egg rolls and sushi rolls.


Closer shot of the homemade sushi rolls.