22 weeks

Hey everyone, happy 22 weeks to Baby Viv! Sorry I'm a couple days late, this whole "week change on the Friday" thing is tough! This week has been really crazy.

Here is a 22 week pic, I feel huge but don't look huge in pictures. I really think it's an optical illusion, because I promise my belly is definitely poking out. I was talking to Allyssa, she feels the exact same was as me. Bigger in our minds than in pics. 

I haven't really been emotional or anything since I have been pregnant, which is crazy because usually I'm as emotional as the next girl, so I thought I'd be a mess while pregnant. Nope. That is until this week. I cried almost every day, and usually it was over nothing. Some days, I'd just come home from work, let out a big cry to release the stress of the day, then I'd be fine until the next day...poor Chris haha! I've also been feeling more angry/frustrated lately, which is also an emotion that I hear is quite common. I don't like this one, I don't want to be mad. Sometimes with my job, it's hard to stay calm between customers.

Here is another 22 weeker, don't mind the blinky eyes, just focus on the soccer ball baby!

My friend Megan, announced that she is pregnant this week! That is 3 people out of like 15 day-shifters! I'm so happy that Vivien will have all these friends! Tina finds out way soon if she's having a boy or a girl. Megan isn't very far along, maybe 6 weeks. She just couldn't hold her secret in, and I totally understand how hard it is!

The best (and hardest/most frustrating) part about this week, is that we started and finished painting Viv's nursery. I know I said that I wanted to keep everything a secret and then surprise everyone with pictures when everything is totally finished....no, not happening, I'm too excited to share our hard work!

So, the colors we have chosen are different shades of purple, black, and white. 

Here are some pics of our painting process:

Here's my ma, prepping the room in heels and fancy pants.

Good ole mom, always fashionable!

The room BEFORE.

I HATED the prep work, I taped all the base boards, it's a really big room so it took me about an hour and a half. Once I was finished, I went around to look at my work, and a ton of the tape was peeling up. WHAT?! So I had to start over! Goodbye 3 hours of my day. Do you see why I was frustrated/crying this week?

First coat of light purple

We spent a very long time picking out the perfect colors, after plenty of time at Home Depot, we went with this cute light purple as the base coat. My dad even likes this color, which means it's good! This took a few hours, we did 2 coats. 

Prep taping for stripes.

Yes, we decided to go with a striped room! This was, BY FAR, the longest process right here. We decided to go with 14 inch stripes. We found the dead-center of the main wall and went from there. I would measure 14 inches over, and make a mark at the bottom, take a handy-dandy level and measure about 10 inches up, make a mark, measure 10 inches up, make a mark, all the way up to the ceiling. Then, Chris would, ever-so-carefully, take the Frog Tape (I highly recommend it for stripes) and connect my dots from top to bottom. REPEAT...over and over and over. This took us about 4 hours. It got old after a while but it was nice to do such a big project with Chris.

Then, we painted the dark purple, I'm so mad at myself that I didn't get a picture of us painting this part.  We thought this would be very quick, ohhh no, of course not. I think it took us about 3 hours. We had to be super careful because the Frog Tape is pretty thin, so we didn't want to bump and get the dark paint on the light paint. WOW it was a long process. 

The more we painted, the more nervous I became, I was worried that the tape was going to leak, either on the ceiling, base, OR the stripes. So, when the dark was finally dry, Chris and I each pulled a strip of tape at the same time. AMAZING!!! I literally almost started crying because it looked SO GOOD!

My parents came down and helped us peel off all the tape. They LOVE it, they said we did an amazing job, especially for paint rookies! My dad was really skeptical about doing stripes but totally proved him wrong, he said, "Usually stripes look good in pictures but not in person. THIS looks better than even the pictures, you need to put it on Pinterest!" PHEW, his compliment always is a stamp of approval! Now... here are a couple pics of the finished product!

AH! I just love it! We finished around 10 pm on Friday night, Chris and I just sat in the room for an hour just picturing our sweet little baby girl in the room we worked so hard on! I'm SO happy with the way it turned out. I had never painted a room in my life, so I didn't understand how much time and work went into it.

Here is our crib, you wouldn't believe how hard it is to find a nice black crib. GEEZE! I'm so excited to see it in real life! We just ordered it online from some random crib website, but it has good reviews and we love the look of it! Chris's parents are nice and bought it for us, they have bought each of their kids their first baby's crib. So, we're really grateful for that!

This is our chair. It doesn't look like it, but it's a glider/rocking chair! It has really good reviews online, comfy and high quality material. We LOVE it, Chris is actually the one who picked it out, I'm impressed with his style! I was really stressing over picking the perfect chair, I knew I'd be spending a lot of late night hours in the nursery chair, so I wanted something comfy AND good looking. We went to a ton of furniture stores and searched online for ever, but this was our favorite. 

Anyway, we are SO excited for everything to start coming together! The dresser is in there already, the crib will be up tomorrow, then the chair will be here soon. It's all just making it so real for us, we can't wait to put our sweet Viv in her room!

Speaking of Viv, she has been going crazy lately! She just kicks and kicks all day long, I love it! Chris can easily feel her when he has his hand on my belly, it's such a special thing for him to be able to feel her kicking away. 

I have had to pee a TON the last few days, like probably once an hour! Such a hassle haha! Also, I have been feeling some Braxton Hick's contractions. I checked online, they are totally normal, they actually start at 6 weeks but you usually don't start feeling them until the 2nd trimester. It's the weirdest feeling, my belly just tightens up like crazy for a minute and then goes back to normal. 

WOW LONG POST! That's about it for this week! Wednesday is our 1st anniversary ALREADY so we are going to get massages, I'm doing a prenatal massage, and I really can't wait, my body (mostly my back) is so tired from all the bending/up and downs of painting. I love Chris, I can't believe that it's already been a YEAR! Best year of my life! We can't wait to meet our Vivien, we already love her SO much!