An Apartment Tour (Come Visit!)

It only took two and a half months to get all of the furniture that we think we are going to need in our apartment, which isn't bad given that we arrived with almost none. Now that everything is in place and mostly clean, it seemed like a good time to document the state of the apartment. Let's take a look!

This is the front door, with convenient key hangers and shoe bench.

A view from the kitchen to the front door, overlooking the dining "room." The table is still our favorite piece in the apartment. 

That same view, but the opposite direction into the kitchen.

And slightly to the left so you can see the rest of the kitchen.

After walking in, to your right you will find our guest bedroom/nursery/office.

Just inside the door of the office. Will probably have to relocate the Twilight Zone Kanamit before this becomes Ava's room. Elvis and the lamb can stay.

Ava's side of the room. We won a free accent wall a few weeks ago so this is what we did with it.

The whole room.

The guest bed, which comes with reading light, alarm clock, Amazon Echo, and message board.

Okay, that's enough of the guest room/office/nursery.

A view of the living room. Kitchen is to the left and guest room is to the right.

View from the living room through our balcony to the pool. When it is not 100 degrees and humid at all times, we plan to use this balcony furniture.

And another turn to the right in the living room to see our sofa.

And finally, our bedroom!

Wide angle view.

And that's it! No more furniture until we move again in two to three years.

2nd Trimester Recap

It's hard to believe we're already into the 3rd trimester! I'll be 30 weeks tomorrow, but before I go crazy and say anything like "wow the time has just flown by!", I'm going to check myself and recap the 2nd (and longest) trimester.

Different people will count the 2nd trimester as different weeks, but I considered is to be weeks 14-28 (so it really is the longest trimester). When we got to TX, I was 20 weeks along, so we've been in Texas about 2 and a half months, and I've spent most of my 2nd trimester here. And, here, in no particular order, are the things that happened during that time!

• Baby Kicks started 
• I could start to feel baby kicks around week 20, although my doctor thought it was too early. They felt more like involuntary muscle twitches (like when you have an eye twitch or muscle spasm), but I knew they were her. Since then, she's gone through different types of kicks. I used to only feel her in my lower stomach, but since my uterus has grown, I feel her more on my side now when I'm laying on my side. She's also started wriggling and rearranging herself more!

• Cravings/favorite snacks
• Not really anything unusual...I still love spaghetti with meat sauce (but I do half zucchini noodles and half wheat noodles), peanut butter and jelly toast, and probably still craving dairy more than normal. I've been doing pretty good about not eating *too much sugar*

• Gestational Diabetes test
• I've been trying to watch my sugar intake a lot because of this test, but I still didn't pass the first one! I did end up passing the 2nd one which is good because I don't have to meet with a special doctor, but I'm going to try to not let that be an excuse to slack on my nutrition. We may have celebrated passing my test with getting some ice cream and now I'm reminded why I can never have ice cream in the house:) P.S. vanilla ice cream with peanut butter is still my favorite.

• Birth class
• Mike and I started a Bradley Method birth class 2 weeks ago (our friend, Kay, recommended Bradley to us), and it has been amazing! So, there is only one Bradley teacher in Corpus Christi AND we might be the only couple attending right now, but the small fee is completely worth it for 12 weeks of classes (2 hours each week) where we focus on the pregnancy and try to prepare for labor. I think the most valuable thing about it for me has been the intentional time that is set aside for Mike and me to reflect together on the experience. So much of pregnancy has felt like it's just happening to me (because it is), but the classes make me feel like I can actually SHARE what I'm going through with someone (which you all know is important to me). The Bradley Method emphasizes the role of coach for the husband/father/whoever, and Mike is shaping up to be a great coach!

• Body stuff/Symptoms
• Besides the obvious popping of my stomach during the 2nd trimester, I haven't had too many crazy symptoms yet. Oh wait, I've had 2 crazy leg cramps the mornings after days where I didn't drink enough water. I realized I need to immediately flex my foot or it's worse. After the first one, my calf hurt for like a week after! I've also had some acid reflux, haven't been sleeping super well, and I really like water. So nothing too bad. I know as my belly continues to grow, more things will pop up.

No shame in stealing Mike's shorts

Wondering if I'm going to outgrow this shirt!

• Baby things
• We have been extremely blessed with people gifting us baby things (new and old and to borrow). Mike's coworker who recently had a baby loaned us some bouncer chair type things which will come in very handy if needed! My stepsister (who has 3 girls) offered to send me a box of things, including a set of cloth diapers, which we are going to try because we can always switch if it doesn't work out! We also got some of our first baby gifts in the mail, and it's starting to feel real!

We registered for mostly gender neutral stuff, but I couldn't resist these! (Thanks, Jim!)

His name is Elvis:) (thanks, Aunt Linda!)

Also, I got some good advice from one of my former coworkers (who gave birth a few weeks ago!) about not putting off things until the last minute, so here are some things we'd still like to get done in the next 2 months!

• Read book on childbirth
• Read book on breastfeeding (and attend a La Leche group here in Corpus to get some info beforehand)
• Mike and I are signed up for the hospital's classes on: infant CPR, hospital tour, newborn care, etc. (I figure if we have the time, let's just do them all:))
• Install our car seat and get it inspected
• Find a pediatrician

Unfortunately, it doesn't look like Mike and I are going to make it to the East Coast for this holiday season. We will likely still be in the throws of early parenthood and want to make sure Ava has her vaccinations before we fly with her (especially during a busy season). FORTUNATELY, we are planning a trip to the East Coast in the Spring and, until then, we very nearly have our guest room finalized, complete with its own bathroom, walk-in closet, Echo dot, and view of the pool! In the next blog post, Mike is going to take you on a walk through of our place:)

Adventuring Again

As we get a little bit more comfortable in our surroundings, we have ventured out for more outings and adventures in Corpus Christi. We also got paid by the Navy for our move and added some of that money to our 'date night fund' so that we can take advantage of time exploring before Ava gets here.

Tesla Auto Show

This was a free event that I found online and knew Mike would love. Tesla brought some cars down to showcase and offer test drives at a beach club in Port Aransas, TX (north of Padre island near Corpus Christi). The Tesla we got a test drive in (from one of their staff members) was the one with the white seats and it went 0-60 in like 3 seconds! Being pregnant, I let Mike experience that without me, but it was really weird for me to watch a car accelerate without making a sound (due to it being electric). It is beautiful out there, and I've heard we should go back and check out the downtown area of Port Aransas.

View of the beach from the golf club where the event was held

Side view of the 3 models Tesla brought

Interior view of my private car...the white seats were so cool!

Picture of Mike in the driver's seat (although we didn't drive on ourselves)

Full car view

Me in the back seat!

Annual Wimbledon Feast

Mike and I were able to partake in our annual Breakfast at Wimbledon tradition thanks to Mike finagling a way to watch the finals live on our Apple TV! I thanked him by making tomato sandwiches, cucumber sandwiches, strawberries & whipped cream (made in out KitchenAid), and a cheese plate. Perfect way to celebrate a Roger Federer win!

We used our nice china and Game of Thrones-themed cutting board since the season premiere was later that night!

Movies & Shows

We saw this movie in the Alamo Drafthouse in Corpus Christi (you can get food brought to you during the movie) and it was amazing! I found it super funny and also heartwarming. We've since also seen Spiderman which was also good.

We saw the local community theater's production of "Beauty and the Beast" which was really well done! They were mostly a young cast, but Belle sounded exactly like Belle from the movie. There is one other community theater in Corpus (besides the universities) that we are also planning to check out this weekend!

Recent Eats

Shrimp salad (marinated shrimp in lime/garlic/cumin then had avocado and tahini dressing)

I don't always eat this healthy, but we had leftovers so that helped:)

Other Projects

In addition to volunteering at a local career resource center one day a week, I began training last week to become a CASA (which is why I've been busier than usual). I will basically serve as a voice in court for the interest of the child in cases of abuse. It's a really great program and I'm glad I have time to get involved now, although I may still want to work in the future.

We bought some herbs for our balcony! Mike has kept them watered and so far none of them have died, so maybe soon we will use some of our basil, mint, and rosemary!

We finally finished our baby registry! You can search for us on Amazon or this link should also take you straight there. We tried to keep it minimal, but it was still an overwhelming process with so many options for everything out there these days (and also not having done the parenting thing yet).

In the long saga that has been our moving claims process, there is some light at the end of the tunnel. We are going to get almost $700 for missing items. Unfortunately, this is like 2 months after we moved and we got tired of having a desk with no legs siting on our floor, so Mike (being incredibly resourceful and motivated to not want to haul a desk body to a landfill or Goodwill) decided to make some! Even though they are slightly different color than the rest of the desk, it is going to save us money AND give us a working desk!!

Bump Pics

I think this was like 27 weeks?

I think this was around 27 weeks as well

Sitting in the doctor's office at 28 weeks

View from the top!

Bump pic at 27 and a half weeks

So that's it for right now, but I will be posting a recap on the 2nd trimester soon, now that I officially entered the 3rd trimester at 28 weeks!

-Kelsey

Exploring Corpus Christi

Oh my goodness! I completely forgot that I hadn't posted this blog and these pictures! Things have been a little crazy around here (as you'll see in our next blog with more recent pictures:)), but the pictures below are from some of our first ventures out into Corpus Christi trying to get to know the community, which included a trip to a Hooks game, the Art Museum of South Texas. We also acquired a few more pieces of furniture for our apartment!

The Corpus Christi Hooks play regular games over the summer and Mike and I decided to go to "military night". Even though neither of us is super into baseball, Mike is into Dippin Dots ice cream (of which there was plenty there) and I like leaving peanut shells on the floor:)

Note to self for next time: getting shady seats is worth it. The TX sun can be brutal even after 6pm!

I know this doesn't look like much, but I was really proud of myself for making a pizza crust out of sweet potatoes, and I actually really liked it! 

This is a view from the cafe at the Art Museum of South Texas that (L to R) shows the edge of the Texas State Aquarium, the USS Lexington, and a boat coming in.

A reminder to go to the pool more because it is glorious for pregnancy!

Wonder Woman shirt gift from my person, Kelly:) A book that I recently finished from the library (got a library card!) and a postcard from friends in Colorado.

He loves being an only child for now haha.

Another picture of Rupert enjoying all of the extra room.

We got new bookcases and Rupert somehow managed to scale them, of course. This was the first bookcase, but now we have TWO of these! We love books:)

And you can see where this is going to go.....

YEP

I hope you can tell how crazy proud he is of himself in this picture.

I have been pretty good about working out thanks to a plan for prenatal workouts I got online that helps keep me accountable and safe:)

Beautiful sunset

New shoe rack and keyholder for our entryway!

You were not allowed to take pictures of Art at the Art Museum of South Texas (so you all will just have to come visit!), but Mike did take a picture of me trying out this collage art simulation:)

Get excited for another post soon (hopefully today!)!