First big purchase for baby M

A jogging stroller! Many friends of ours that have kids advised us a must-have baby item is a jogging stroller. Unfortunately, a jogging stroller is not one of the items we inherited. So we knew we needed to get one. This was probably one of the items that John is most looking forward to. Anything with wheels… leave it to the men.

Fortunately though, we have the cash from my generous co-workers, which helped pay for our stroller with some to spare. =) Surprisingly, we didn’t invest much time in doing research on strollers. This was probably due to the limited budget we want to spend on a stroller leaving us with not many options anyway. I saw this stroller on sale at Babies “R” Us. They are discontinuing the model that’s why it’s on sale and they no longer carry it in the store. So, yes. Without testing out the stroller, we went for it and purchased it online. We figured if we don’t like it, we can always return it back to the store. Returning stuff is nothing unusual for me anyway. ;P All the positive reviews outweighed the bad – so we took the chance. Plus,you can’t beat the price tag. I have a 20% coupon which I am going to try to bring it to the store to have them reduce the price for me further.

The stroller arrived fairly quickly. We ordered it on Saturday and received it on Tuesday. As soon as the package arrived at the door, John put it together and tested it out. The assembling part was fairly easy.

He has been playing around with it all night. Pushing it back and forth around the house. Having so much fun with it. :) Let’s just hope he will be jogging with it when baby M arrives.

  

The wheels can come off for easy storage. It has a little window where you can see the baby when pushing the stroller. So far, we are liking it. Of course, we won’t know for sure until we actually use it. This type of stroller is recommended for baby 6 months and above. I guess we won’t be using it for a while.

Remember I said we painted the nursery so early in the game so we can put all our baby stuff that we inherited from John’s family in there? We literally did dump every single baby item in there!

 

We got ALL these hand me downs from John’s sister and mom. Although if given a choice, I would have picked a different style of crib, changing table, bedding set, high chair, swing set, pack and play, bassinet, and etc. But who am I kidding here….? This stuff literally saved us hundreds of dollars or maybe thousands. Baby is not going to know if these are new or used. Yes, we are practical people here. :-) Or cheap you may call it! I know we still have plenty more items to purchase. So whatever hand me downs we can get, we’ll take it!

The only furniture in there that we bought is the white Ikea expedit bookcase, which I snagged it off craigslist. Yes, another used item. :)

Bad luck!

My phone got stolen while hosting a garage sale over at Jocelyn’s 2 weekends ago! Sucks… and now I am stuck with a miserable looking motorola flip loaner phone until my phone contract is up! Oh … my blackberry curve! How I miss you much…

 

Image source here

Oh well, who am I to blame. I was too careless. :(

A baby shower at work

I had a baby shower at work a few weeks ago. There are several people expecting babies around the same time, so my co workers decided to throw one shower for all 3 of us.

It was a nice shower. They had food catered in and cupcakes for everyone! Didn’t get that many pictures unfortunately. I received diapers, wet wipes and sheets. My best gift was the cash that everyone chipped in! =)

I was really grateful for the kindness and generosity of everyone at work.

Picture to the right is my diaper cake! Isn’t that adorable?

Here’s all of our diaper cakes. Matt is expecting twins, a boy and a girl! That’s why he gets a pink and blue elephant on top of his diaper cake. :o) And can you guess what Lisa is having? Yep, another baby boy! :-)

Nursery- painted

We’ve always planned to have one of the bedrooms as the nursery, but just didn’t think the day would come so soon. :) We are lucky to receive lots of hand me downs from John’s sister & mom. They gifted us lots of big stuff that has saved us lots of money purchasing new. The stuff was laying around in the garage, so we figured we would hurry and paint the nursery. At least we can start dumping baby stuff in there.

I had the privilege of picking out the paint color of course. I picked out a nice bright blue, what else right? It’s a baby boy after all, but I guess I could have picked green or tan color, something more gender neutral. The decision of blue wall color was easy because we inherited a snoopy bedding set, which has blue in it. So I got a bright blue paint to match our bedding set. I forgot the paint name. It was from the Olympic paint chip, which we took it to Dunn Edwards for paint match.

Again, like the rest of the house, John sanded the oak baseboards and painted them white before we begin painting the walls. Then we had to prime the wall. The original wall color had dark green hint in it. 

And then the blue begins….

John very hard at work….

 

And finally it was done!

The nursery was painted months ago, sometime in August or September. Didn’t get a chance to blog about it until now. =)

3D/ 4D Ultrasound at 18 weeks

A co worker of mine, whose sister is in training at the 3D/4D ultrasound center asked if I would like to go for a free session, since she is in training. Of course I jumped at the offer. I was contemplating whether to get one or not since it could cost anywhere from $99 to $200/ session depending on the package you get.

I was only at 18 weeks at that time. They said the best time to get the 3D ultrasound is between 28 to 33 weeks. I couldn’t risk waiting for another 10 weeks. She might be fully trained by then. So we made an appt and went anyway.

Here’s the best picture we could get of him. He was curled up the whole time with occasional kicking here and there. As you can see, he is still very skeleton-y. John swear at one point, he was flipping us off! :o)

Labor day weekend- Las Vegas

We had a nice short getaway last month. We snagged a deal from MGM for about $80/ night which included 2 free passes to the Wet Republic pool and 2 free cocktails. We only spent a night there because that’s all we are willing to spend. =)

It was nice to get away even though it is only for a night. We spent the first day lounging by the kiddie pool because all the other pools were jam packed with hot, young sexy people. I find myself hard to fit in with my big belly waddling around drinking only H2O. So we left the hot scene and hung out by the kiddie pool, where we will soon belong. :P

We watched La Reve, which is awesome by the way. My first cirque de soleil show. I was never willing to pay the high price tag for those tickets, but let myself splurge this time, afraid that this could be my last chance for many years to come.

The next day, we stopped by The Wynn again for their famous brunch buffet before we headed home. I swear I gained 5 pounds just from the buffet. Food deserved 2 thumbs up!

 

New Malaysian Restaurant found

We discovered a new Malaysian restaurant in Rosemead a couple weeks ago. Food is not too bad. A co worker of mine who lives in Monterey Park mentioned the curry laksa of this restaurant (Rubens Kitchen) that I should try. One weekend while running errands down the area with Jocelyn, we stopped by the restaurant for breakfast/ lunch. I had curry laksa and Jocelyn had seafood laksa, I think? We also shared a roti canai. I will definitely re-visit the restaurant next time when I crave for some Malaysian food.

Glad we discovered another Malaysian restaurant in MP besides Yazmin. Yazmin is good but it’s nice to know there’s another malaysian restaurant in the area. We also appreciate the fact that the owner is Malaysian :) He was especially friendly with us after finding out we are Malaysians too from our accents.

24 weeks update

I decided to throw my pride out the window and show you guys my belly pic.

 

Here’s a little rundown of my pregnancy status:

WEEK: 24

MONTH: 5

TRIMESTER: 2

GENDER: boy

WEIGHT GAIN: Over eighteen pounds.

SYMPTOMS: Serious heartburn, acid reflux and constipation :(

BELLY BUTTON STATUS: Still an innie! It’s almost flat, so I am guessing it will be an outie pretty soon. I miss my old belly button.

CURRENT FAVOURITE FOOD OR CRAVING: Any noodle soup, french fries, spicy food and fruits.

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According to thebump.com

BABY’S SIZE:

Your Baby: Month 5

Watch what you say -- baby is now able to hear outside noise from down in the womb. Studies show that baby finds gentle music and your own voice most soothing. Nipples are starting to sprout, and that little face is fully formed. And, baby's starting to settle into sleep cycles, snoozing about 12 to 14 hours a day. It shouldn't be hard to figure out when -- just pay attention to those kicks as they start and stop.

This weather kills…

Misty and cloudy in Southern Cali. Although it is a nice change after a miserable heat wave last week.

Still can’t help but feel a little blue with this kind of weather on a Monday! Pregnancy hormones probably don’t help the case either. Not a glimpse of sunshine all day.