No traveling for me for a while

One of the things I miss being pregnant is being able to travel. As I mentioned before my husband gets visa renewal trips combined with vacation every three months that's why we used to travel a lot either to the states to see the family or to Europe. One of our favorite destinations is Corfu in Greece where we went twice and want go back again some time in the future. Ireland and Northern California were our best trips we've ever taken. We are so happy that we had such opportunities in life and came up with these ideas for our trips.

I know that I can travel when I'm pregnant but traveling overseas and flying for 9 hours excluding waiting time and other flights is a totally different story. In fact, it takes up to 24 hrs from the time you get up in Moscow and arrive to Florida. It was very tiring to me when I wasn't pregnant, closer to the end you feel like a zombie. So I did not go with Chris in July for these reasons and I'm not going now. He is leaving in a few days and I'm going to miss him a lot. There is no way around this trip and he is taking it earlier this time so he comes back 4 weeks before my due date. Thank God for Skype as we'll talk every day and it won't seem that he is really away. On a good side he will see his family and hang out with his cousin. I'm very happy that he will get to spend some time with guys, watch Football Sunday and have a normal American life for two weeks :)

I'm also excited for his return as he will bring all the baby clothes we bought in the states and the car seat! So the wheels are in motion and we are very excited and a little freaked out realizing that I have only 6 weeks left! I plan on going to more classes in my perinatal clinic. I chose First Days of Newborn, Breast Feeding, Postpartum Period, Baby from 0 to 1. I have already started a list of things to do while Chris is away. One of the things is Christmas gift shopping :) It sounds ridiculous but I don't think that I'll get to that after the baby is born. I'd rather take care of it now. I'll try to make myself busy so that time flies and I don't feel lonely without my husband. Of course, I'll talk to my parents and my best friend on skype. I hope that everything will be fine and Chris will enjoy his trip to the states and will safely come back home to us.

Chris has assembled the cradle and the swing.
On a bad note, the swing motor is messed up and makes noise when you turn it on. No way we're taking it back to the states and exchanging it but we hope that they can send us a new motor. Too bad that it happened, we were very excited about the swing. It looks great though.

I MISS OUR BEACH IN FLORIDA!!!!!!!!! :)

Crib Bedding

I've got the bedding and I absolutely love it! I was obsessed with bear theme for the bedding and I'm glad that the one I found has two cute bears on it. :)

32 Week Updates

I haven't updated my blog for a month as I've been busy with planning, cleaning, researching and shopping. C. will be going on his usual visa renewal in a couple of weeks so I want to have everything done and purchased before he leaves. I'll be 34 weeks when he leaves and 36 weeks when he comes back. I think that from that point the time will fly so fast that it's better to have everything ready now.
First of all, we've bought a VERY nice crib which was a gift from my parents. C. put it together and now requests to address him as The Hero!

The crib looks nice in the nursery. It's also HUGE! I've already ordered the bedding which should be delivered today. We also want to buy a cradle to put in our bedroom for the first few months. Hopefully I'll buy it on Monday. I saw one in the same store where we bought the crib and really liked it.

We have ordered the car seat and we have LOTS of clothes for our baby boy. Chris will bring the car seat and all the clothes from the states when he comes back from his visa trip. I cannot wait to see and organize all the tiny clothes MIL bought using my list.

At the beginning things were very frustrating and confusing as far as what to buy, how much/many, when, where etc. Now I feel much better when everything started coming together. Such a relief!
I went to two Labor&Delivery classes. It was very interesting and informative. We learned how to breathe during contractions and learned about different stages of labor. In my opinion the most important thing is to be a good team with your OB/GYN, listen and do everything she says. I hope that I'll be able to do it.
Tomorrow C. and I going to our practice class where we'll learn how to bathe a baby, wrap him, change diapers etc. It's very exciting.
I'm still working on my knitting project - baby blanket. I'm afraid I won't finish it in time as I'm also cross-stitching two decorations for the nursery and if I'm doing one the other falls behind the schedule :(
Our last ultrasound was great though we couldn't make our baby boy help us with the 3D u/s. We could see his face for less than a second. He looked SO cute and was sucking his thumb!!!! It was very sweet and touching! He was sleeping :) My next u/s will be this coming Tuesday, hopefully the kid will cooperate this time and we'll see him in 3D.
So I guess it's a good summary. Here are some pictures:

31.5 Weeks

30 Weeks

27 Weeks