A Break from the Gender Neutral

Since we don't know whether Monkey will be boy flavored or girl flavored, there's a whole lot of green, yellow, and orange floating around our house these days. All three are great colors, and will make things easier when Monkey has to share his/her stuff with a sibling or two, but sometimes it is really fun to shop for a specific gender.

So with that in mind, we decided to purchase a boy outfit and a girl outfit to bring to the hospital for Monkey to come home in. Obviously only one of those outfits will get put to use in our family, but since we know SO many other mamas to be, someone else will happily take the unused outfit off our hands!

You know the package will be filled with goodness when it comes wrapped like this. Janie and Jack is normally out of our price range for baby clothes, but avid web stalkers can sometimes find a great deal. And really, you only get *one* going home outfit, so it's okay to splurge a little!

Here are the two options hanging side by side on Monkey's dresser. Which outfit will you wear little one??
A boy flavored Monkey will come home in this! Love the stripes and the little polo shirt collar...and the easy diaper change access snaps on the legs! But my favorite part is this...
There's a little frog prince! For those that don't remember, Karl proposed to me while I was wearing frog prince flannel pajamas.
And here's the girl flavored option, in a shade of my favorite color green.
And a closer look reveals another little frog prince in the girl pattern! Maybe we should be calling Monkey "Frogger" instead. :)

Showered

I'll admit it. It's currently Wednesday evening and my living room looks like this...

Behold, the aftermath of shower weekend. And that isn't even all of it! We've continued to receive presents all week from folks who weren't able to make it to the shower on Saturday. Karl and I are amazed by the generosity (and in some cases sneakiness) of our friends and family.

For those who couldn't be with us, here's a pictorial recap of Monkey's shower...

Truth: I have the most creative friends. Trish made everyone these adorable place cards featuring my signature lime green, and the cutest little monkeys!

And because the place cards apparently weren't crafty enough, Trish also made these BANANA flavored monkey cupcakes. Almost too cute to eat!

Barb stumped the guests with a hardcore baby shower game. See those bags? Each one contained a baby item starting with the letters that spell out Monkey. I think the most anyone got right was 3. As for the mom to be, well we're trying not to read too much into the fact that I only guessed ONE of the bags correctly.

After the games were over, I was given a huge and emotional surprise. My friends from WBIR in Knoxville put together a video for me since they couldn't come to the shower. I wish I could share the video here, but apparently I am not tech savvy enough to learn the uploading process. Hopefully I'll rectify that before Monkey gets here. But suffice it to say, the tears started almost instantly. Even though it's been nearly 5 years since I left my Knoxville home, I still consider those people some of my closest friends. I can't wait to introduce Monkey to everyone in November when we make a pit stop enroute to the farm for Thanksgiving.

Now, while there are no pictures of the video from the CH 10 folks, you will notice something in the following pictures. I am NOT a pretty crier. For the rest of the evening my face was blotchy and my eyes were bloodshot. Such is life for the fair skinned blue eyed girl.

Who knew I would come dressed to match our new travel system from my dad and Adele? Monkey is going to learn to love lime green too!

In addition to the amazing gifts they brought, the guests also made onesies and bibs for Monkey. I have such crafty friends!


Here I am with the girls who made the whole evening possible. I am so thankful for their friendship and support. I may not have sisters, but I know Monkey will have some pretty amazing aunties!

Karl avoided the shower mayhem until the end of the evening when he was called in to help haul the gifts home. We had too much for just my Escape.
We also had help in the gift hauling from Karl's mom. We were so lucky she was able to spend the weekend with us, even if most of the weekend involved me propping my feet up to get rid of my horrible cankles.

So here we are 4 days later and our living room looks like baby central. My goal is to have everything put away before Karl returns from trip #356 to Minneapolis tomorrow evening. But for now I'm enjoying admiring all of the neat little things we have for our baby....

including beautiful handmade blankets from Angie's mom (green quilt) and my Aunt Lorri (white blanket with matching hat and mittens)

THE coolest print for Monkey's room from my friend Emily, who couldn't join us because she was busy taking care of her brand new baby (and Monkey's future BFF) Mirielle
and Karl's favorite three gifts...the "manly" diaper bag from Trish and the gang, the super cool baby playmat from the Channel 10 folks (I think he wants one in grown up size), and the crib soother that plays nature sounds and has swinging monkeys.

So that wraps up the big shower recap. It's hard to believe that I'll be 30 weeks tomorrow. Since we're pretty sure the gestational diabetes will mean Monkey makes an early appearance, that means we could be showing him/her all of this cool stuff in just 2 months!