Little Boy Blue

So despite what 4-5 out of 9 stupid online quizzes had to say, Baker Baby #2 is apparently a little brother!

All the appropriate body parts accounted for, no visible abnormalities, healthy squirmy kiddo all the way around. Long legs that he likes to put over his head. 🙂

Both times, with Henry and now with “Gotham”, I’ve come away with a lot of different thoughts and feelings. One that struck me this time was that I wondered what our OB* thought of our reactions. Logically, I suppose he probably doesn’t care one way or another — I imagine people have a wide range of emotions in those moments. But I can’t help but wonder if we are reacting in a….. normal way? I have heard many stories of exaltation, tears, etc. — of big emotional reactions as the machine reveals whether the family in question will be welcoming a little boy or a little girl. And we don’t outwardly do that. I know we are feeling big emotions, but something about that environment and that moment brings out the quiet “huh!” in me. Like, “huh! that’s interesting”… I just find myself without anything to say to this guy who is basically a stranger as he prods my belly and tries to get me to decipher the between-the-legs shot for myself.

Oh, and so with Henry, it was so incredibly obvious exactly what flavor of child he was. The very first shot was right between the legs. And with “Gotham” the OB kept trying to get us say what the gender was, and we were both just like, “um, could you just say a pronoun now?” We couldn’t tell at all! So for the first day or two I think I was telling everyone “Well, according to the doctor, it’s a boy……” I never did really see it with my own eyes!

Anyway, so it turns out that “Gotham” is a boy. According to the doctor.

And I honestly thought that I had been telling people the truth when I said that I didn’t have a preference for a boy or a girl, so I was pretty surprised when I realized that that wasn’t actually the case. I had a little bit of a rough 24 hours there, and if you’ve ever had the dubious pleasure of experiencing pregnancy hormones you can just imagine what that might have looked like. The worst of it was feeling like absolute scum for feeling any sort of sadness over being pregnant with a beautiful, healthy baby of any gender — after all of the months and years of fearing I’d never have my babies, while knowing all of these people who haven’t yet, or won’t ever, have theirs.

And then I got over it and now I’m unambiguously happy and excited.

I mean, I felt a bit of a pang when I walked into the Old Navy baby section and saw clothes in the most seriously adorable pink buffalo plaid, because COME ON, pink buffalo plaid? Is there anything more amazing? Why isn’t this in my size?

But it’s okay, because they had the exact same adorable little suit in a blue buffalo plaid, and it came home with me.

This is Gotham’s second little warm thing for when he arrives in January. The first came from his Grandmommy, who knows exactly what a little Gotham needs:

I am wishing that I could find the “big brother” correspondent to this cute pair of navy-and-orange jammies:

We don’t need a ton of clothes for Gotham, since he has a very fashionable big brother, but Henry was tiny in fairly warm months and Gotham will be tiny in January/February — which is bitterly cold around here — so I’ll enjoy collecting a few little warm fuzzies for him. I do the vast majority of my baby/toddler shopping at consignment shops but couldn’t resist hitting a few Labor Day sales this weekend!

Sidenote: Now that the gender is known, people are very interested in what name(s) we might be considering. I would like to direct those folks to some of our previous thoughts. 🙂

* I am seeing a fantastic certified nurse midwife, but she shares a practice with an obstetrician who is very talented with the ultrasound machine, so he runs that aspect of things.

 

More Consignment Clothes

Kate the consignment shopper strikes again!

First, if you remember, last time I was making fun of the crazy expensive baby pants people buy — well, I found myself a pair for $3!

These pants, or similar ones of the same brand, are selling for $45 new, and this particular pair looks like it’s been worn about twice… goodness.

Here are some more:

adorable lined moose overalls

gray fleece jacket

shearling lined flannel shirt

Children’s Place dress shirt

heavy orange sweater

striped zip-up sweater

argyle cardigan

red hoodie with helpful kitty

turquoise hoodie (I know it doesn’t look like it)

orange REI fleece vest (pre-laundering)

black velvet dress vest

d’Artagnan likes the monster booties

Two kitties

 

There’s a cute dragon sweatshirt, too. I don’t have a clear idea of what H is going to be for Halloween, but we’ve got a couple of cute things to play with, anyway. 🙂 He makes a very cute black kitty cat!

Dressing my Little Dude

So, I guess there must be people out there who can pay $155 for a pair of pants that their infant son will outgrow in a matter of months, but I kind of hope I don’t know them, because seriously. Heck; I’m not going to spend $20 — or $12, on sale — for a baby sweater, not unless it’s a special occasion.

Fortunately, there are plenty of people out there who can and do buy more expensive clothes for their kids, because thanks to the magic of our throwaway society, those clothes end up in like-new condition at thrift stores and consignment shops, just waiting for people like me to come along and give them a second round of play.

Here are the highlights from today’s treasure hunt:

fleece lined orange flannel

blue & green flannel

blue and green sweater

zip-up fall sweater

moosic maker shirt

fleece sweatshirt — new with tags

a bevy of sweater vests

dragon play suit

 

All of these were $2-$5 each. Can’t wait for the weather to cool down so we can break out the cute warm clothes!

That’s One Spoiled Baby

I am finally getting around to posting about baby showers… good grief, me! This is going to be a photo-heavy post, so I’m going to utilize the gallery feature in WordPress to cut down on space — but you should be able to click on the thumbnails to see larger images.

Ryan’s cousin Krista is due the same week as we are, so she, her sister Kara, and her mom Celia drove up from Salt Lake City in February for a lunch/double shower/get-together. It was a quick trip, but it was so nice to get to see everyone! We met in the back room at Bardenay along with many people from that side of Ryan’s family.

Then, on March 15, my friends from the English department threw me a fantastic Dr. Seuss-themed baby shower. Several of my friends from work were able to come out and eat green eggs and ham and Seussical cupcakes, see whose baby-ice cube water would break fastest, and play history/nursery rhyme trivia games.

I just love the awful facial expressions in that last picture, don’t you?

Presents from the second shower:

I had to take two pictures to show off all of the goodies, plus a separate one for the overflowing Rubbermaid bins of cute little boy clothes, plus another separate one for the “treasure chest” of pirate-themed baby things Mom collected and made! (I like pirate stuff a lot — long story, much history — and Mom knew that Kermie was going to need to get his sea legs early!)

(BTW — Paisley didn’t try to get into the glider all day when I was working in the nursery… until I put that pirate quilt in the seat. I guess she knows when something was made with love!)

My friends from my book club weren’t able to make it to that shower, but we were meeting the following night, so I had an encore shower before we started talking about books! I didn’t take any pictures that night, but I did want to memorialize those presents as well… goodness gracious but this kid is spoiled!

Finally, I had another chair full of cute things from Ryan’s folks:

That’s not even all of the things — I’m overwhelmed with all the generosity, not to mention with figuring out where to put everything! 🙂 Now that everything more or less has a place to be, I just need to write some thank you notes and do some preliminary baby laundry before the little one shows up and starts making use of all his wonderful presents. He is a very lucky little boy!

Nursery and Layette

We finally found our chair for the nursery! Hooray for Craigslist and nice people who move and want to unload their unneeded baby things. 🙂 These guys cost about $350 new, and we got it for $100. It’s in pretty much new condition and is wonderful.

Did I ever get a clear picture of the bassinet up here?

I also wanted to post (for my reference, not because I necessarily think you all want to see all of this) pics of the clothes we’ve acquired thus far. Because I love them and they make me happy. 🙂 A lot of them have been early gifts, and some have been things we’ve found at sales and consignment shops…

Separated out by size so that I know what we’ve got:

Newborn to 3 Months

Three to Six Months

Six to Nine Months

Nine Months

Accessories

Baby Things and Helpful Pets

Today, we didn’t find The Perfect Chair on Craigslist (we found the perfect chair a few days ago, but someone bought it from under us) so instead we wandered around town in the fog and sleet looking for inspiration. Honestly, it was rather nice just driving around town listening to the rain on the windshield and the music on the radio.

I had half-promised myself that we wouldn’t do anything baby-related today, but then I remembered that Other Mothers (one of the local consignment shops) was having their monthly Quarter Sale. We drove down but got there too late for the sale, but since it was so gross out and we’d driven down, we went in anyway. We’d been in a couple of times before (that’s where our dinosaur and bassinet came from) but until now had refrained from buying any clothes… but I’d been eying a fleecey ducky sleep sack for a while, and it was there for $3, and, well, one thing led to another.

We also went by Ross, in a moment of weakness, and found a couple of things there too. Kermie got a little bit spoiled today!

Pardon the bad photo quality; I took it in poor light on my iPhone, and I’m pretty sure I need to clean the lens. At the top is a painting that we just love for the nursery (I’ll post a better picture of it below). Then, from left to right, top row first: green gingham summer suit with giraffe, orange polo-shirt onesie, green “Snuggle Saurus” onesie, froggy onesie with pants and hat, tie-wearing teddy bear onesie with pants, two fleecey ducky sleep sacks, orange-and-blue stegosaur shirt, monster onesie, “smile” sleep-and-play for ironic squalling baby photos, a two-pack of baby mittens, tiny maroon corduroy overalls that stole Ryan’s heart, and a diaper bag that matches the stroller we registered for. The frog suit, bear suit, striped shirt, and mittens all still had new tags. They’re a variety of sizes from 0-9 months.

Here’s a better shot of the picture:

Again, not great photo quality — doesn’t really show the colors to their best advantage. It looks really cute with the other things we have, and we love that it isn’t all dinosaurs; we didn’t want a mono-themed nursery, necessarily.

I suspect that in some ways it’s pretty silly to be buying baby clothes three months before Kermie is scheduled to make his appearance, especially given that babies tend to get a lot of wardrobe gifts and hand-me-downs, but it’s just very difficult to resist adorable little onesies and whatnot on a dreary January afternoon! (I’m seriously contemplating braving the Nampa store’s Quarter Sale, which is supposed to start next Friday afternoon, even though I’ve heard it can be a bit cutthroat. I’m a big fan of garage sale/thrift store/etc. “treasure hunting” and I’d love to see what one of these sales looks like, and a month is a long time to wait for the Boise one.) (Back-to-back parenthetical comments! I’m also looking forward to the Moppet Togs sale in March — looks a little crazy, with the lines and all, but I’m promised that it’s amazing!)

The critters were, as usual, very helpful when it came to things related to their little brother. Paisley added her own contribution to the clothing lineup, and d’Artagnan pointed out that C was really for Cat, not Crocodile:

(Every time I turned around, that spider was in the middle of my shot again… Paisley is very helpful.)

Maybe the neatest thing about our unintended baby expedition was that we ran into someone we knew from Blue Thunder, who was at Other Mothers with her week-old baby boy. We talked for some time and I just soaked in that little guy — got to watch him have a diaper change and have a bottle. So little! I really wanted to hold him, but wasn’t bold enough to ask. I’ve been wishing that I could spend some time around little new babies — just to feel a little bit more prepared, you know? And this was amazing. I wonder if Kermie will be that size when he arrives!

(And man, if anyone was wondering if maternal instincts are hardwired — they are. It took an enormous effort of will not to swoop in when he started crying… like, it almost caused a physical feeling of pain to stand back! And Ryan felt it too… Goodness gracious, but we’re programmed creatures, aren’t we.)

The other VERY fun thing that happened today was that we got Meredith’s wedding pictures, and they’re extraordinary. I can’t wait to share some of them with you, but I think that will have to wait until tomorrow because it is going to be torturous to narrow down the photographs to a blog-sized sampling! Until then… good night!