Life after Pink!

When I tell women that I am having a girl, almost all of them respond at some point with "Oh you will have so much fun dressing her up". I smile and nod in agreeance but I know for a fact this may be a challenge. Everywhere I go, I usually peek in the girls section and am disappointed by all the powder pink and "too cutesy" stuff. So I have been scouring the net for some inspiration on how I am going to try to dress this little one. To my surprise I have found quite a bit of relatively affordable and absolutely adorable stuff. All the stuff above I found at the Gap. I just love the dark blues and oranges. So Cute! Target has some great stuff too, I think chocolate brown and animal/nature prints are a good way to go too. So maybe this wont be so hard after all, I already want to start buying some dresses now, although I think it is a bit early. I am also considering trying to actually sew something. They have some awesome fabrics available, check out these cute things that those crafty people on etsy.com made, if only I was that crafty:

Life after Pink?

This week Daniel and I went in for our 20 week ultrasound. We found out we are having a baby girl!!
It was a bit of a surprise for the both us, me probably more than Daniel. When I heard the news, I almost fell off the table. From the get go, I thought for sure I was having a boy, even kept calling the baby a he, we had a boys name all picked out, and I guess I have always seen myself raising boys. They seem less complicated and even a bit more rational. Girls are more sensitive and emotional and I am speaking from experience, my sister and I were both basket cases growing up. So on the drive home from the doctors, my mind was racing. I thought about every mistake I ever made in life, and every instance that molded me in a negative way and I thought how in the world am I going to raise this baby girl to prevent her from all of that. I also thought of pink frilly dresses, Barbies and Baby dolls. Yuck! Even before I was pregnant, Daniel and would go to the toy section of Target and play with all the "boys" toys and when it came to the "girl" toys we would just pass over the pink isles of creepy big eyed baby dolls staring back at us. Besides all that, I guess I have been imagining for the past 20 weeks a little Daniel running around the house rough housing with Cooper, with Daniels brown curls, blue eyes and freckles.
Now that the idea of having a girl has really sunk in, and I am over the initial shock, I am super excited. I think about all the things I can teach her, such as painting, photography, sewing, knitting, baking(all of these things i need to get better at and quick so I can teach it to her). I can see her helping me plant flowers in the yard and watering them and I can teach her all about different animals and plants and show her that worms arent scary. And we can take her camping and fishing and do all the "boy" stuff too, like Karate if she wants. And when she grows up a bit, I would love to buy her a horse like my parents did and teach her how to ride(she will have to share the horse with me of course). I realized its not about Cinderella and Bratz dolls and Coach purses and pretty little dresses, those are just marketing ploys by companies that just want to keep girls, young and old, dreaming about materialistic things. Its about the time that Daniel and I spend with her and instilling in her the things that really matter. Yes I still worry about the emotional teen years and her twenties, but I got through them and turned out just fine. Actually make that better than fine, I have never been happier in my life than right now at this moment.
Now as for wanting a little Daniel running around rough-housing with Cooper, I realized that most likely that is exactly what I am going to get, just in girl form. I pray that she has Daniel's curls and is not cursed with my straight hair (which she should because supposedly curly hair is dominant) and she should have both of our blue eyes and freckles.
So, I guess I am not going to worry about preconcieved notions of how girls should act and dress and the negativity that says that teenage girls are the worst. I am not going to worry about the future, instead Daniel and I are going to take a little bit of how I was raised, a little bit of the how he was raised and little bit of what we have learned on our own and do the best possible job we can do.
So here is our beautiful baby girl, who we just cant wait to share our lives with:

Getting a whole lot of nothing done

Well I was hoping that this next post would be all about how Daniel and I worked really hard on the nursery and we have it absolutely perfect and I then would include awesome "before and after photos", but the truth is we havent done a thing! Two weekends ago we picked out two cans of paint but thats it. Oh well, I am only 20 weeks pregnant, that leaves exactly 20 weeks to go, so we have some time. I do want to get as much done this trimester as possible because I have a feeling that when the heat of August sets in and I look like an overfilled water balloon, I am probably not going to want to do much. Anyway, in the meantime I will post a few pics from the Pungo Strawberry festival that Daniel and I attended a few weeks ago. It was a fun little local festival held in the last little bit of undeveloped countryside of Virginia Beach. I was hoping to pick a few strawberries while we were there but unfortunately the fields had been over picked by the time we got there.

Here I am standing in the middle of the strawberry patch. I was about 16 weeks pregnant but definitely looking more overweight than pregnant.

We got to park in a field that is owned by the Virginia Beach Polo Horse Farm. I made Daniel take a picture of this lovely guy. We tried all we could to make him come to the fence so we could pet him but he was too smart to fall for our tricks.

Well, its not the grey Mini Cooper that I wanted but its still cute. Our Tiguan yeah I know what a wierd name, but it sure beats driving my sister's mini-van.


And last but not least, I had to get a picture of the strawberries.