Montessori Video

Having never really heard about the Montessori Method, until about a month ago when Aaron mentioned it to me, I was overwhelmed in the different parenting style we would have to adopt once Penelope is born. Its not what we are used to seeing on TV or in movies, and its not how most parents raise their child. I believe mostly because its not discussed in a wide arena, otherwise more people would adopt it. Now I haven't done as much research as Aaron on this topic, but soon I will get the ball rolling. But from what I have read and heard 2 key aspects of the Method are facilitating independence, and not over stimulating. I recently found this video and it describes the infant/toddler years from a Montessori perspective, its really short (only 10 mins) and very informative. If your at all interested please watch it:

21 Week Belly

As of today, when I stand up straight and look down I can no longer see my toes, its all belly. The ever growing belly. I wake up every morning startled at what I see in the mirror, not because I don't love it but because I'm still getting used to it. A belly of this size takes some getting used to, I can only imagine what my 9 month mark will feel like. I think it grows a little bigger everyday. Everyday things get a little tighter and a little more uncomfortable. That explains my recent discovery and implementation of the "sweats and tank top strip down" the very minute I walk in the door. Sometimes even the greeting animals are ignored, just to feel that moment of comfort one minute sooner. It usually ends with a big SIGH, ahhh, much better.

The belly, more recently, has become a spill magnet. I can eat an entire meal without dribbling or spilling on myself and yet when I finish my shirt tells a different story. The story of a girl who cant keep anything in her mouth. It seems to be a random occurrence. When did I eat chocolate? When did that happen? How long have I been walking around looking like a sloppy pregger?

While the belly may cause some discomfort and embarrassingly large stains, its the best thing to ever happen to me (after meeting Aaron of course, because of which this would not have been possible).  Every morning, after adjusting my eyes and getting used to the belly once again, I say to myself and then to Aaron "I love my belly," to which he replies "I love it even more."

Things no one told me...

I will be 27 when our little Penelope is born, and while I don't consider that to be a young mom, I am the first out of my close friends to get pregnant. Its like I'm blazing the trail or paving the path. I am really excited about this opportunity, however, I do wish I had someone who could tell me all the things about pregnancy that no one seems to talk about, or least I never knew. Since I'm blazing the prego trail I thought I would share a few things that no one told me about and I wish someone had:

• Fuzzy Wuzzy Belly- Yup, that's right, I said it. My growing belly has fuzz all over it, while Aaron thinks its adorable I think its animal-like (once we hit swimsuit weather I'm getting that shit waxed!).
• Side Sleeping- After reading What to Expect when your Expecting, the pregnancy Bible, I found out that after a certain period of time I am supposed to sleep on my sides. Say wha? I have slept on my back for years! Upon reading this I ordered a Pregnancy Pillow (click on the link for a visual). When it came I was so excited because I could not keep myself from rolling on my back in the middle of the night. I was pretty disappointed at first, it took up 3/4 of our queen sized bed (but poor Aaron is used to only having his "sliver" of the bed, a girl needs her space) and some nights it made me so claustrophobic I screamed. "Get this *explicative* thing off me! Now! Take it away!" But as time progressed Ive gotten used to this enormous pillow and it makes side-sleeping a lot more comfortable. I think Tilly (one of our cats) likes it more than I do.
• "I'm SO uncomfortable!"- I cant tell you how many times I have said this exact thing during the past 3+ months.  Around 12-14 weeks, when the belly first made its tiny appearance, I could not for the life of me get comfortable, not sitting, not lying, not anything. I was not used to having a belly, and it changed everything, from how I maneuvered my way out of bed to my frustrations getting dressed every morning. Since then Ive gotten more comfortable about being uncomfortable, if that makes any sense.
• No Focus- This one applies to Aaron as well as myself, finally he has to deal with some of this! Since we are both in school and working we have very limited time to get homework and studying done. That little amount of time is now spent researching baby products, reading about the Montessori education, and daydreaming about holding our little monster.  Focusing on school is next to impossible when your life is changing forever, in a good way.
• Cravings- While I haven't been dunking pickles in vanilla ice cream, yet, I craved something I hadn't had in 4 years...meat. At first I wanted to maintain my vegetarian diet while pregnant and carry that through for our child. But soon the meat cravings set in. That coupled with results from my midwife saying I need more protein and calories in general, my old vegetarian ways were gone that same day.

So far pregnancy has been everything I had expected and everything I hadn't.

Ultrasound

Today we had our 20 week anatomical sonogram. Last night I hardly slept I was so anxious, I wanted to find out the baby was healthy and also what the sex was. Of course Aaron slept like a baby. How is he always able to sleep right before (or during) life changing moments? Aaron and I both thought we were having a boy, although we have no valid reasoning. I think its because we were more drawn to baby boy clothes than those horrible pink fluffy girl clothes.

When the ultrasound started we immediately saw our little monster on a large TV screen in front of us, Ive never seen an ultrasound in real life and it was pretty cool. The technician took a bunch of measurements and showed us the head, spine, arms, hands, legs, feet, etc. And everything measured healthy and normal. YAY! Then she asked if we wanted to know the sex...umm, YES!! Our monster was swimming around so much it took a while to finally get a decent shot of it the genitals. Also, every time we got close to seeing the goods the baby would put its hands between its legs, like it was saying "Hey! Whatcha looking at? Go away!" But we finally got a good angle and BAM its a girl! Our little girl:

Presenting

Penelope Juanita

Yup, she is sucking her thumb! 

Here is the 3D version, you can see her little eyes, nose, and mouth.

Another 3D angle.

We are so thrilled to be having a girl! We originally wanted a boy but now that we have a girl we couldn't give you one good reason why we wanted a boy.

Just for fun

I found this website Morphthing a few days and couldn't help myself. You upload pictures of yourself and pinpoint different features on your face so they can map it out correctly and then they map it with a celebrity or in my case I uploaded a picture of Aaron and morphed our faces together. It gives you 3 children options, here are our babies:

Boy

 Girl

 Baby

They are all so cute!! I was getting teary-eyed just looking at them, damn pregnancy hormones.

I tried this before a few days ago but I didn't have great pictures to upload so the baby and little girl pictures turned out weird but the little boy really looks like a lighter skinned version of Aaron and I am so obsessed. Even though I know its completely unrealistic, sometimes I look at this picture and it makes me smile so big:

Awww!!!

Montessori Nursery vs. Traditional Nursery

I have been using all my mental and physical energy on being pregnant and just getting through the day.  While most days I feel completely normal, days like yesterday simply kick my ass and remind me of my limitations.  This is why I have elected Aaron to plan for our child's future education, mostly there was no electing however, he finds this extremely interesting while I find eating healthy and sleeping to be my main focuses.  Education is Aaron's main focus when it comes to our little nugget, and since it should begin at dayone, I am thrilled he has taken it upon himself to research, and research and research.  How does this relate to our future nursery you might ask? Well, apparently, to my surprise it completely changes it. 

The Montessori education has become Aaron's education of choice, he reads books, and summarizes them for me, otherwise I'd probably just fall asleep.  When he explained to me how a "Montessori" nursery looks I gave him the most disgusted look, you want our baby to sleep on a mattress on the floor? All I could picture was those extreme poverty photos we see on National Geographic, with dirty mattress placed on mud floors.  (Side Note: When the baby is an infant it sleeps in a Moses basket on the mattress, after a few months it sleeps on the bed by itself, the bed isnt that high off the ground so if they roll off they wont get hurt but will learn the boundaries of their own bed.  Also, we've seen a lot of nurseries with rugs under the bed to cushion the fall which is probably what we will end up doing.  End Side Note.) But once I got a more modern visual approach I thought it was the cutest thing ever. Here is a little comparison of the 2 types of nurseries in debate:  

 

I didn't give much thought to the nursery before because I had a traditional nursery pictured in my mind with a crib, changing table, dresser and glider (I didn't know other options existed).  So when I saw the other option I was completely thrown off, even after thoughts of dirty mattresses left my mind.  I am not going to lie it took some time to come around to the idea of the Montessori nursery.  Its just so different.  But now the traditional nursery seems more aesthetically pleasing to an adult but as a child I would totally want to explore and play in the Montessori room.  And who are we really making this room for? Here are a couple of pictures from Sew Liberated a blog I have recently started to follow, she is a Montessori teacher, and gave a tour of her nursery with great explanations as to why things are placed the way they are placed and so forth.

I am so in love with this room (except the potty area, which we will be omitting from our nursery).  Its so clean and simple yet looks like a lot of fun for our baby.  I am really interested to hear what others think of this nursery! Have you ever seen this before? Do you know someone who is raising their children in this manner? Dont you just want to crawl around and explore?!

The Bigger the Better

I havent been one of those who takes a million pictures of my belly, not that I dont want to but simply...I forget, pregnancy brain.Ugh. But I have managed to take a few.
The belly first appeared while we were visiting Aaron's family in El Paso at around 12 weeks, I half blame the mexican food ;) I definetly didnt look pregnant, but more like I ate an entire box of donuts or drank a six-pack of beer. Here are some pictures to keep everyone up to date on my ever-growing belly:

13 weeks

My first belly picture, I thought I was huge!

16 weeks

18 weeks

Really excited I no longer look like I've eaten Aaron's meal as well as my own and more like a pregger.

18 weeks

My very first expectant mom parking space, I was so excited I made Aaron repark the car 2 spots down so I could have my moment.

 19 weeks

Taken last night for Valentine's Day

The belly has come a long way and I have a feeling it still has a looong way to go.  Every single Friday morning I swear I wake up and my belly has literally drastically grown overnight.  I keep saying Im going to measure myself the night before and compare it to the morning, but once again, pregnancy brain, I keep forgetting.  No matter how uncomfortable I may be, I absoluetly love my belly.



All Natural

If you would have told me a year ago I would be pregnant and opting for a natural childbirth I would have told you that you were out of your mind! But here we are...

I am not seeing a typical Ob-Gyn during my pregnancy, I am seeing a group of midwives at Austin Area Birthing Center.  I am only having 1 ultrasound, for the anatomical scan (exactly 1 week from today!), and we decided against any and all tests available.  I will be going through labor and the birthing process in a birthing suite, not a hospital room. I will not be receiving drugs of any kind.

When I tell people this, they think I am crazy and tell me to reconsider but this is something Aaron and I feel very passionately about.  Ironically 3 months before finding out we were pregnant we watched The Business of Being Born (you can stream it on Netflix), what makes it even more amazing is Ricki Lake! I had never considered a natural birth before watching this documentary, I thought they were for weirdo's and hippies with long flowy hair who didn't shave their legs.  Even though I couldn't physically relate to the documentary at that time it struck a chord within me.  Fast forward a few months and suddenly I can relate (funny how things like that happen).  Also if your interested, check out Pregnant in America (free on Hulu), its basically the same thing but formatted in a different style, filmed by a man and his wife as they become first time parents (no Ricki Lake in this one though, sad).

Call me the crazy hippie lady (at least I shave...sometimes) but this is something I have to experience for myself.

It's Official

On November 15, 2010, our lives changed in an instant, well "at least 2 minutes" as instructed by the direction manual.

Half asleep I couldn't believe my eyes, I figured since the horizontal line was so dark and the vertical line was so faint it must have meant "negative."  Aaron was still asleep, so I ran over to wake him up, to get his opinion.  His response, "Yup, your pregnant, I told you" and rolled back over into dreamland. How was he so sure of those weird lines, and I could barely make them out? How could he just go back to sleep after finding out such life altering news? So I sat there in a dark, dumbfounded, and then the anxiety of it all started to hit me.  It wasn't like the movies, joyous cheering, hugging, and sappy girlie shit.  It was as much nerve-rackingly overwhelming as it was exciting and thrilling.

Later that afternoon I went to Planned Parenthood (Stand with Planned Parenthood!), thinking that their industrial strength pregnancy tests might turn out a different result.  Once again I was wrong and I walked out with a very official looking piece of paper titled "Report of Pregnancy."  Yup, that's right I was officially pregnant, or as I like to say "with-child."

As our lives are drastically changing on a daily basis (diapers and cribs oh my!), I decided to start this blog as a way to get my ideas out of my head and onto paper (so to speak).  Also, its a great way to keep my friends and family, who aren't near, updated with pictures and my ramblings.