Gender Reveal Party for #2

I took the address off the bottom to post the invite, that's why it looks blank at the bottom.

When Ty and I learned we were pregnant with Baby #2 we knew we wanted to do a gender reveal just like we had with Carter.  We also knew we wanted to do it in a different way than we had with Carter.  For Carter's reveal we cut into a cake revealing blue cake underneath the frosting because Carter was a boy!  I wanted to somehow involve Carter in the reveal and kept mulling over the idea of him opening something.  I finally decided he should open a stuffed animal revealing a boy or girl stuffed animal.  My plan was to send someone armed with the doctor's note to Build a Bear to make either a boy or girl stuffed animal.  But then as the time approached I didn't like the idea of using Build a Bear anymore.  Whoever agreed to be our secret keeper would have to trek out to Build a Bear and spend a decent amount of time creating the stuffed animal.  Then it would come down to their personal interpretation of what a boy or girl stuffed animal would be.  I also hated to spend all the money.  I found myself wishing we could just use something we already had.  Then it dawned on me.  When they had the Little Critter books and stuffed animals at Kohl's for Kohl's Cares for Kids I bought the Little Critter doll along with his little sister to give Carter for Christmas.  I decided we would use those stuffed animals.  Our theme then became blue, pink, and Little Critter.  The theme for Carter's reveal party was pink, blue, and footprints.  It was nice just changing out one thing because I was able to re-use most of the decorations.  Read about Carter's gender reveal party here.

The Little Critter and sister dolls from Kohl's.

To prepare for the party I pulled out decorations we used for Carter's reveal party.  Ty made a box out of leftover cardboard from turning the stroller into a train for Halloween.  Then he covered the box with white paper.  I wrote "It's a..." on the top of the box and "Boy or Girl?" on the other side.  Then I gave Carter pink and blue markers and had him color the box.  We worked on the box a little bit at a time because he would lose interest in coloring after a while.  He had a lot of fun coloring it and it turned out looking awesome!

Decorating the box for the reveal.

 

 

The weekend of the reveal we already had plans to visit my hometown for the baby shower of one of my best friends and a race in the evening.  My mom graciously offered to host the party at her house and since she was hosting did a lot of the decorating ahead of time which was so nice!  When we arrived Friday evening we just hung the chalkboards and set out a few decorations.  I wrote my answers to a few old wives tales on one chalkboard and used the other chalkboard for guests to record their guesses.  My mom ordered a cake and had fruit and veggie trays.  She also bought pink and blue candy and used them in vases to decorate.  Another decoration was a vase filled with girl clothes and a vase filled with boy clothes.  Ty's mom brought pink and blue Sixlets in baby bottles and cookies made with pink and blue M&M's.  It was all so cute!

The vases filled with girl and boy clothes.

The adorable cake my mom ordered.  This time it was just white inside!

We scheduled the party for 2:00 thinking Carter could go down around noon for an early nap and should wake up just in time for the party.  Things didn't quite go as planned as Carter ended up going down for a nap at 11:30 while I was still at the shower.  Then he took a shorter nap than usual, waking up at 1:00.  Ty's parents and grandparents had just arrived so we were only waiting on my best friend, Erin, and her son, Hayden, who planned to arrive at 2:00.  It was a long hour waiting to find out if we were having a boy or girl.  Carter and I went outside at 2:00 and watched as Hayden and Erin arrived.  Carter was so excited to see Hayden and wanted to play with him so much that he wasn't too interested in opening the box.

Carter opening the box he decorated.

It's a girl!

After discovering we were having a girl my mom had us go through and look at the girl clothes in the vase she'd used to decorate.  Ty's parents gave us a present to open with a couple of adorable girl outfits Leina found at a garage sale in perfect condition.  Ty's grandparents also had presents for us.  It was so much fun to open the presents and to have a few girl clothes!  After the party Hayden and Carter had a blast playing together and everyone else talked about how excited and surprised they were to be having a girl join the family!

One of the adorable onesies from Rocky and Leina.

Carter and Hayden enjoying some cake.

Of course I couldn't get them both to look at the same time!

Week 17 Bumpdate

This week was the most exciting week since finding out we were pregnant because we got to find out the sex of our baby!  We are having a baby girl!  For some reason I've thought all along we were having a girl and would accidentally say things like, "She's kicking again."  Part of me thought I had that feeling because I kind of wanted it to be a girl.  But my momma's intuition was right again!

 

October 28, 2014

Baby's Size: Baby is the size of an onion and should measure about 5 inches long.  She can move her joints and is developing sweat glands. 

Weight Gain: When I weighed in this morning to see I'm up 4 pounds, meaning I gained a pound this week, I immediately felt stressed out.  I thought to myself, it's too early to be gaining a pound a week!  Ah, I'm going to gain so much weight.  But then I stopped to think about it and I have 23 weeks left to go.  If I gain a pound every week from here on out that's a total weight gain of 27 pounds.  I'm totally okay with that.  I gained 25 pounds with Carter and he was born 4 weeks early, so I'm sure if I'd gone the full 40 weeks I would've been closer to 30 pounds.  It is exciting to be gaining more weight in the sense that my belly is really starting to pop!  Unlike with Carter, this time I've been getting comments on my cute little bump.  With Carter at this point people were still telling me I didn't look pregnant!

Maternity Clothes: One of Ty's co-workers gave him a bag full of maternity clothes for me and my mom bought a huge bag of clothes from a garage sale.  It was so exciting to hang them in the closet and take down some of the tight fitting shirts that make me look pudgy.  I'm still wearing my jeans unbuttoned and not zipped up.  My maternity jeans are a little big because I read online to get a size up from what you normally wear so they never fit when I was pregnant with Carter, they would slide down in the back.  I might replace them this time, but I have a feeling I'll just deal with the frustration again.

Sleep: I was so exhausted this week.  I couldn't get enough sleep and kept missing out on naps which was a rough combination!  Sleeping with the body pillow has been nice and is really the only way I can keep from rolling over onto my stomach.

Symptoms: Still having dry heaves most days in the morning but have even had them a few evenings as well.  The exhaustion has been serious!  I would almost say worse than my 1st trimester exhaustion, but I have a feeling my memory of how tired I was then has just faded a little bit.  I've also had hives off and on for 2 weeks.  They are mostly just on my legs.  Talking about it with a few people I've decided they are most likely psychosomatic and are due to stress.  I've also had headaches and even had a 2-day long migraine this week.  Back pain kicked in on Sunday evening and I was bummed out.  It seemed so early to be having back pain, but then I thought about when I first started having back pain with Carter and remembered it was around 12 or 13 weeks.  So actually my back held out for longer this time around!  I finally started a consistent schedule with my planks and I think that will help with the back pain.  Strengthening my core really helped me when I was pregnant with Carter.

Running: This week was tough and running was no different.  I took Monday off because I was exhausted and then ended up taking Wednesday and Thursday off because of my migraine.  I ran again on Friday and it was terrible.  Then Saturday we ran a 5k race which went better than expected after my abysmal week of training.  I was able to run a 24:03 and place 2nd in my age group which I considered a win, especially because I was dry heaving during my warm-up.  It was actually pretty funny because I was warming up with Jeremy and said, "Being pregnant is..." and started dry heaving.  He thought I was saying being pregnant is pukey and was making a point by making throw up sounds, but I really was dry heaving.  I had planned to run an easy run Sunday, but was exhausted and ended up just walking some.  So my weekly mileage was a piddly 10 miles. 

Food Cravings: Dairy is still the main one.  I am always wanting cheese and milk.  I've been enjoying hot chocolate with whipped cream as a sweet treat or dessert rather than something with more sugar.

Food Aversions: Still barbeque and smoked meat, yuck!

Movement: I am loving how mobile our sweet, little girl is!  She is constantly on the move and anytime I sit down I feel her just moving away!  Ty hasn't tried feeling her in a few days and I don't think it will be much longer before he can put his hand on my stomach and feel her.  She has such strong movements compared to what I felt with Carter in the very beginning!

Best Moment of the Week: Finding out the sex of our baby!  It really does make everything more real to be able to picture a boy or girl.  I was trying to convince Ty that we should wait until birth to find out the sex if we have a 3rd baby, but now I'm not so sure I would want to wait.  It is so much fun to picture the baby and start preparing everything!

Currently Loving: Starting some very small steps toward moving Carter over to his big boy room and getting the nursery ready.  I moved Carter's clothes that are too big for him into the closet in his big boy room and pulled out the size markers, newborn through 6 months, that I'd put away and hung them back up in the nursery closet.  I also moved over the small pink hangers a co-worker gave me when I was pregnant with Carter in case we had a girl (and we used until we acquired enough gender neutral hangers to switch him over from pink).  I have already washed a few newborn clothes I bought at a garage sale and hung them on the pink hangers.  Then I went through Carter's newborn, 0-3 month, 3 month, and 6 month clothes.  I pulled out all the gender neutral clothes and the pieces I felt like we could get by with on a girl and washed them.  I know it's really early to do that, but I was just so excited!!! 

All the newborn through 6 month gender neutral/I don't care it looks boyish clothes along with a couple girl outfits we were given at the reveal party.

Miss Anything: I missed feeling rested this week.  I think next week will be better!

What Big Brother is Up to This Week: Carter got to open the box at the gender reveal.  It was so much fun to find out he's having a baby sister!  He still likes to point at the ultrasound pictures and say baby.  He also still points to his own belly when we ask him where the baby is.  Soon enough he'll notice my growing belly!  He had so much fun playing with Hayden at the gender reveal.  They are so cute together!  He also won the group costume contest with Ty at a 5k this weekend when he dressed as an engineer and rode in his stroller made up to look like a train.  This week during our photo session Carter decided he wanted to erase the chalkboard with his foot, lol!  My Week 17 Bumpdate with Carter.

 

 

 

We're Having a...

Megan's Gender Reveal

Ty's cousin, Megan, and her husband, Scott, are expecting their first baby in April.  They had an ultrasound which revealed their sweet baby's gender the Monday before our trip.  Knowing everyone would be getting together since Paul and Amanda were visiting, Ty's mom started dreaming up ideas for a gender reveal party.  She came up with an awesome and original idea.  Their family loves to make homemade ice cream so we would make homemade ice cream and then Megan and Scott would sneak in and dye the ice cream blue for a boy or pink for a girl.  Scott and Megan along with their parents found out baby's gender at their doctor's appointment and revealed the gender to everyone else during the party.

They made cute little pins for us to wear based on our guesses.  We also guessed the baby's birthday and weight.  Ty made them a calendar for everyone to stamp their birthday guesses just like the one he made Carter.  The whole thing made me so nostalgic and happy thinking back to the day we found out we were having Carter and not Emma.

Ty and Paul both guessed girl.

Carter guessed boy.

It was so much fun all gathering around to have the gender revealed.  They had a towel on top of the ice cream machine and pulled it off to reveal blue ice cream! 

As I was enjoying my ice cream, I looked at Carter and suddenly had the urge to treat him to some ice cream.  I'm normally very careful about following the 3-4 day wait rule after introducing new foods and he had just had parsnips for the first time that morning.  I told myself parsnips are basically just carrots and I would just give him a tiny bite.  Initially he wasn't too sure as the spoon touched his lips.  I think it had to do with how cold the ice cream was.  After the next bite he kept leaning forward for another bite.  It was hard to stop giving him bites so we switched over to yogurt.

Carter's first bite of ice cream!

 

Love his face here!

Carter got lots of attention at the party.  I loved walking out to see this happening!

Gender Reveal Party

Upon finding out we were pregnant Ty and I discussed finding out baby’s gender ahead of time or waiting until delivery day.  We agreed to find out before birth if baby was a boy or girl.  I knew I wanted the discovery to be more exciting than just looking at an ultrasound screen sitting in the doctor's office.  I also wanted to somehow include our families on the surprise.  One day as I was reading a magazine, I saw the idea of a gender reveal party.  We knew that’s what we wanted to do, but how?  We decided on a cake.  Not a surprise to anyone who knows my love of most things sweet! 
 

At our 16 week appointment our plan was put into place.  Our doctor wrote down baby’s gender on a piece of paper and sealed it in an envelope.  Ty took the envelope to work and gave it to a very trustworthy co-worker.  His co-worker called the bakery and informed them of baby’s gender.  My mom had already talked to the baker, we decided on the baker who made our wedding cake, and explained what we wanted. 

Family and a few friends would join us for a gender reveal party.  At the party we would cut the cake to discover the cake died blue for a boy or pink for a girl.  The best part was that Ty and I would find out along with everyone else.  The hard part was our doctor’s appointment was on Wednesday and the party was scheduled for Saturday.  We had to wait 3 days to find out! 

I had so much fun deciding on food, decorations, and guessing games.  I decided to use gray, pink, and blue as the colors for the party and baby footprints for decoration.  My parents surprised us with footprint cookies and Ty’s parents surprised us by making the cutest fruit tray!

Guessing:

To share our gender guesses we had a chalkboard divided in half.  Guests drew a tally to indicate whether they thought baby was a boy or girl.  My favorite was a calendar for guessing baby's birthday.  Guests used a footprint stamp to mark baby's predicted birthday and then wrote their name next to the footprint with either pink or blue pen.  For guessing length and weight we just used a plain, old Excel print out.  

Themed Food:

Cake (died blue for boy or pink for girl)

Footprint cookies (a surprise)

Fruit tray (a surprise)

Pink and blue cake batter balls (recipe here, I just died them)

Kit Kats (the projected size of baby at 16 weeks)

Hershey bars (“He” colored blue on some, “she” colored pink on others)

Pretzels dipped in white almond bark and sprinkled with blue and pink sprinkles

Pink Lemonade

Mixed Berry Kool Aid

We had other snacks available such as veggie tray, cheese tray, and dips that did not go with the theme.

Decorations:

Tissue paper flowers made from pink and blue tissue paper

Pink and blue streamers

Ultrasound pictures

Chalkboard with Old Wives Tales

Signs with blue and pink polka dots

It's A...

Boy!!! 

The ultrasound that shows we're having a boy!

Our gender reveal party was July 28th.  We had so much fun with our family and friends and I was not surprised at all to find out we were having a boy!  From the moment I found out we were pregnant I wanted to find out if Baby Cox was a boy or girl.  Then for some reason, the night before the big reveal I didn't want to know anymore.  It was so weird, but I'm really glad we found out.  It will make it easier to shop for baby clothes and supplies.