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

Happy Birthday to me!

Yep, I turned 33 on the 9th of August :) This birthday is the best ever: I'm happily married and pregnant with our first child, baby boy! It's pretty much the best gift you can expect from life and from the above. I'm very thankful for everything I have today: loving family, the best and the greatest husband and my pregnancy. It's awesome!

Today has already been a great day even though it's only 10 a.m. We woke up early, 6 a.m. :), so we could have a nice and relaxing morning with coffee and small breakfast in bed. I opened all my cards, I got 9!!! and all my gifts. We live far away from my family and from Chris' family, yet they are amazing and very thoughtful. They sent nice cards and gifts for me, even from the states. I'm always touched by their love and care. My husband gave me a wonderful gift - a beautiful bracelet with my birthstone (light green) that has a dragonfly (purple stone) that "sits" on the bracelet. I absolutely LOVE it!!! What a great day already!

It was great to talk to my parents, my brother, grandmothers and aunt in the morning. It's kind of a tradition in our family to call/congratulate on a birthday in the morning so you can feel special on your special day.

We don't have big plans this year because of the combination of crazy heat and smoke in Moscow, plus my pregnancy. But I'm very excited about the dinner tonight. We are going out to one of the best restaurants in Moscow- Cafe Pushkin. And I'm looking forward to my birthday glass of champagne! I hope our little boy will forgive me and won't mind :)
I just hope that the smoke in Moscow won't be that bad today so we can walk to and from the restaurant without any problems.
I'm 33 today, wow!

25 weeks!

wow! At this point I'm definitely pregnant :) What I mean is that I cannot hide my belly any more even if I want to sometimes. It's great! One of the big changes this week is that I started walking like a pregnant woman. Yep, it happened! I never liked it and I thought that all pregnant women do that just to be noticed. I was wrong. I noticed it about myself two days ago when I went to a store and it seemed funny to me. Oh, well! What you gonna do? :)

Another great thing that happened this week was that Chris felt our boy's kicks for the first time. It was very exciting!

Another change I noticed is that I get hungry more often now. At the beginning of this week I was hungry one hour later I ate, so I had lots of snacks between main meals. Yesterday and today I'm back to normal. I'm going with my hunger. If I'm hungry I eat, if not I try not to snack. I'm still wearing my normal clothes except for I cannot zip my pants, so I just wear them with my belly bands.

So far I gained 13.9 lbs. I think that it's not bad and is considered normal. I lost 5.5 lbs before I got pregnant. My weight was 123.2 lbs. It was the result of our healthy eating or new approach. It was Chris' idea to start eating healthier which I supported. In January we decided to make/eat soup on Mondays, chicken with vegetables, rice or buckwheat on Tuesdays, seafood on Wed, vegetable meals on Thursdays, turkey on Fridays, chicken or turkey on Sat, Sunday was a treat day. It worked pretty well as by March I lost those 5.5 lbs and Chris has lost about 16 lbs. Of course, we also worked out. I stopped working out after I got pregnant as my placenta was low until week 23. Now it looks fine.

We still continue eating sort of healthy which is definitely good for the baby.

Here is me at 25 weeks :)

Oh, Greece!

It's very hot in Moscow these days and it makes me think about our trips to Greece in 2007 and 2008. I also secretly hope to go there again some time in the future. I really miss our lovely Greek place that we found by accident in 2007. It was our first beach vacation together. Both of us were a little nervous about it, I don't even know why, maybe it was just me :)


Chris is a great planner and he always plans our vacations. I also like to plan trips, events etc. and used to do that when I was single. Now Chris and I make a pretty good team when it comes down to such things. So Chris chose the place and booked our flights and the hotel. We went to Corfu. He found out that the beach there was really nice, sandy beach, and it was not very crowded in September.

We arrived in the evening and by the time we got to the hotel it got very dark. The hotel was located right on the beach facing the sea.
We were tired but happy. Our excitement started to wear off after we talked to the receptionist who was not nice. For some reason she kept insisting that we go downstairs and have our dinner as it's included even after we told her that we were not hungry. She was weird and kind of annoying. So we got our keys and went to the room. It was not what we expected. It was located on the first floor which was actually below the ground level. Our attempt to change the room failed as they did not have anything available for the next two weeks. It was a very disappointing start of our vacation. This is the "seaview" from our "balcony" that we discovered the next morning.

In the morning we had their horrible breakfast with 100 other people in a very noisy room. We were seriously thinking about leaving or finding another place to stay. We walked along the beach and looked for "to let" or "vacancies" signs. We could not even expect to get so lucky to find a beautiful and PERFECT place right next door to this horrible hotel! I remember seeing it in the morning from our balcony and thinking: "these people must be so lucky to stay/live there!"
We could not believe our luck when we found out that it was a private hotel and they had two rooms available and it was waaaaaay cheaper than the stupid hotel. We actually had a choice of rooms! This is what we saw when we entered:


I was so excited that I couldn't believe it! We went back to our room, packed our suitcases and returned the keys to the receptionist saying that we're leaving, in spite that we paid three nights deposit. All we heard on the way out is her stupid cry: "Why???"
So our vacation started. The place was awesome! It's a family business. They also had a restaurant downstairs where sometimes we had lunches and dinners. These people are great and very friendly.

Our days started with breakfast on the balcony, then we went to the beach for a few hours, then Chris made his sandwiches for lunch, naps or more sun/sea, dinner at local places on the beach or going up the hill to the village. It was great times!!!

Our happy hour :)

We like to be independent and buy food for breakfast/snacks in local stores.

It was funny that we still could see "the Nazi" hotel from our balcony and watch their life from the other side of the fence.
Those poor people! When the sun went down there were no lights in the territory, the fence to the beach was locked. Occasionally we heard sounds of entertainment they provided for their guests followed by applauses that went on for two to three hours. It was definitely not for us! We were happy in our one bedroom apartment on the top floor looking over the sea and having dinners on our balcony.
In Corfu town:
In the village (up the hill), our favorite local place. The local wine is served cold. We loved it!
In our local restaurant/cafe:

It was one of the best times we have ever had! And we were in our best shape that year. We worked out 4 times a week and ate lots of vegetables and chicken fillet for 7-8 months before the trip.

We were happy to get that horrible room in the hotel so we could find this beautiful place that we fell in love with. Actually we came back there in September 2008, just a few months before our wedding :)

My Husband is Back Home!!! :)

Today is the day I was looking forward to for almost two weeks.
My husband is back from his visa renewal/vacation!! I'm so happy to see him.

And he got me this nice "I'm glad to see you" gift:

I absolutely love it. Of course, I was very touched by the engraving. I'll definitely wear the ring all the time. He also brought home a huge box with the swing we bought and a wall sticker I picked for the nursery.

And he got a great book for himself. It's called something like Be Prepared, guidelines for Dads. It's awesome. I already looked through it and it seems like he will be giving me advice and teaching me how to do certain things for the kid. I'm so happy that he is very excited about our baby boy!

I'm glad that Chris is safe and home. I'm so lucky to have such a great husband as he is!