I thought waiting for Christmas or your birthday was bad - it's NOTHING in comparison to waiting to meet your little one! Matt made the comment the other day that it's like we're living in Christmas Eve every day. We are so excited and anxious for Siena to come...and we wait each day, only to wake up the next day and do it all over again! We are trying to be patient and wait for exactly when she wants to come...but boy, is it hard. :)
The past few weeks, Matt and I have worked really hard to get everything done and ready for her arrival. We have cleaned the house, washed all of Siena's clothes (well, at least the ones she'll be wearing in the next few months), packed our hospital bags, and taken care of lots of little odds and ends things that we didn't want to have to deal with once she arrived. The main project we finished was...her room. Many of you may have heard the "horror stories" of her room, but I'm proud to say that's it's officially done and looks beautiful! But that did not come without a price!
All summer, her room has been "in the works". I had picked out fabrics for her bedding back in March and my step-mom graciously offered to make her bedding. As she worked on that, we found that it just isn't as easy as you ever want it to be. Complications came with that, as some of the material was hard to find, mislabeled, discontinued...you name it, it happened. In late June, the first round of bedding came in. It looked great!! I was waiting for the bedding to come in before I started painting the room. So, when that came, I gave the green light to start on the painting. We wanted to do something fun, yet warm. We started by painting the top 1/3 of the room grey and the bottom 2/3 of the walls orange. The grey turned out real nice...the orange, on the other hand, was quite in your face, to say the least. It was a pretty color, but it took over the room. So...Matt got the job of repainting the bottom orange part with a mustard yellow color - one that was going to accent the colors in her bedding. Before he painted, I did a whole bunch of taping to create a fun couple of lines that went around the room and kept a little bit of the orange and then transitioned into the yellow. Matt painted one wall with the yellow. We woke up the next morning and immediately thought, "Absolutely not!" It was an awful color! It looked nothing like the swatch and it looked more like split pea soup splattered on the wall than the sweet yellow we were hoping for. On top of that, the orange stripe around the wall looked awful. At that point, we were both beyond frustrated and I ended up closing the door to her room and didn't go in there for 3 days. My dad and Joyce came into town in mid-July with the next round of bedding. There were a few tweaks here and there and again, it looked great, but there were a few things that had to be adjusted. We worked on that all weekend, including the third round of paint. We finally landed on a sweet, soft, fun yellow color that looks great with the grey and the bedding! However, due to the amount of layers that were put on before it, we were getting a ledge around the room where the stripe was and so it had to be sanded down and repainted. By the end of the weekend, most of the bedding was done, and the paint was done, but there were many things still needing to come together. Within the next week, the rest of the bedding and fabric was sent to the house - and finally, it was perfect! All the bedding came together and it looks absolutely adorable! During that same week, I hand-painted some little dots on the wall to accent the fabrics and give a little color in the room. They turned out really good too. Matt hung up a bunch of things that I had gathered along the way, and I can officially say...her room is now perfect. It looks just darling! And yet, here it sits, unoccupied...so it won't be complete without little Siena in it!! I also must make the point that I have the best husband in the world - he had to put up with my crazy pregnant brain and my indecisiveness during the entire creation of Siena's room. He was a champ and I owe him one (or ten) for all the things he had to do.
So now, here Matt and I sit. He has off of football this week, so he's home all week. Everything is done around the house...so now we're just trying to find things to keep us occupied while we wait for Siena's arrival. We went to the doctor yesterday and she said everything looks great! Her head is pretty low but not much dialation. In other words, we just get to sit here and wait. We're really hoping she decides to make an appearance this week, as this is the calm before Matt's storm. Football practice starts Monday morning and school meetings start next week too. In other words, craziness begins next week. It would be so nice to have a few days with her before that all starts up, but hey, what do you do? When she comes, we'll adjust and make whatever work!
I am feeling great, by the way. I have been so blessed this entire pregnancy. She seems to have plenty of room because she hasn't made it up into my ribs at all. I've been walking 2 miles every morning with no problem, and basically doing whatever I need/want while I wait. My ankles haven't swelled and I don't have the "I'm going to explode" feeling as I'm in my 39th week. It has been such a wonderful experience and I can't complain one bit. I've been swimming in the pool a lot, and that has been nice too. It's kind of fun to not feel pregnant for a couple hours while I bob up and down in the water. :)
Bottom line - we are so anxious and excited to meet our little angel. We have been waiting to see and know her for so long. She has been such a fighter this entire 9 months and we just want to hold her precious little body in our arms. We can't wait to see what she looks like (and how much hair she'll have)! We are thankful that she is healthy and strong (her legs must be as much as she kicks me) and we will be patiently waiting to meet her for as long as she wants to wait us out. But Siena, don't make us wait any longer!!! :)
