Kaniz & Abbas +2

So lots of friends and family that live in the US and abroad have asked to see preggo pics of me. So for all of you that have asked, I'm flattered that you want to see how far I've progressed (yes, that's sarcasm). This picture is in the nursery - the color on the wall is much more lime than the photo suggests...and you can see our new shutters.

Kaniz keeps telling me that our baby blog doesn't have enough pictures, so we decided to take a few pictures in the unfurnished nursery. So here's a photo of yours truly before heading out to do some +1 shopping - the 'after' photo doesn't look as good. :) The picture at the top is of the baby gifts we've gotten so far. We got a really nice package from Aunty Pratiksha and Uncle Rahul, and a fun ducky (named Danny) from Aunty Livia and Uncle Mike. Thanks everybody!

I think we've finally decided on a crib. Well, at least we've narrowed it down to 2. I know it sounds silly but there are literally 100s of cribs out there and the prices range from really cheap (~$100) to really expensive (~$1000). Also there are a lot of issues like safety, usability, longevity, etc to consider. Anyhow, here are the 2 in the running. We need to measure them out in our room to see which fits better (the nursery is the smallest room in our house - 13x9.5) and then decide which one goes better with the Luca. I love them both though.

Today I made Abbas drive me around to a bunch of stores that we had already been to so we could decide where to register. Also, I found that the first time we went to the stores, I was so overwhelmed, I didn't really pay much attention to the specifics. Today I was able to look for items and brands I knew I wanted, and do some price comparisons. We decided to register at BabiesRUs and either Moms to Be or Nibblets. Dearborn does have some good deals, but the staff really isn't very good as Abbas mentioned, and since that is such an important thing for us we crossed it off the list.

Aside from painting the walls and clearing out the room, we haven't really done anything with the nursery just yet, but we keep surfing the web for ideas for +1's room. In our e-travels, we happened across a site that I thought I'd share with you: Ohdeedoh.com . This blog-style site used to be part of apartmenttherapy.com but got its own domain recently. Anyway, our favourite part of the site is the nursery tours. They're a little hard to find initially, but here's a link that should take you to all the posts tagged with 'nursery tour'. The nursery on the left isn't ours, by the way. Just an image taken from ohdeedoh. Enjoy!

So in preparing for the +1, Kaniz and I have been schlepping around the GTA to visit some of the more popular baby stores.. and I thought my impression of the stores I've been to might help a few expectant 416/905 parents out (Thanks for Nishat for supplying a lot of the actual info): Moms To Be & More 1644/42 Bayview Avenue, Toronto 416-489-3838 Hours: ? This is my current favourite baby store in the city. The staff are very knowledgeable and always very nice. The store is much larger than it looks from the outside and has a great selection of strollers, cribs and rockers/gliders. We saw the Monte Luca Glider at a lot of the other stores, but we ended up ordering it from here because they were the nicest to us. Dear-Born Baby 72 Doncaster Ave. (N of Yonge/Steeles), Thornhill 905-881-3334 Hours: M–Tu 10–7, W–F 10–9, Sa 10–6, Su 11-6 If you're having a baby in the GTA, chances are you will end up at Dear-Born at least once. It's kinda in the middle of nowhere (or at leas...

Well, I guess I better start blogging...the baby will think Abbas is the only techie in the house. We've made some progress on the +1 front, although I look at where other people are and I still feel very behind! So, the nusery is painted (thanks nanabapa!), the stroller is bought (thanks cragislist!) and Abbas has moved his office out of the room that has now become the nursery (thanks Daddy!). Tomorrow, Boxing Day, we may venture out to a baby store to look at cribs and dressers. The thought of dealing with boxing day goers is quite scary, but shopping in the name of the baby should get us through it ;-)

Happy Holidays everyone! I hope that everyone was able to get together with loved ones to celebrate and give thanks for all the blessings in our lives.

Well, I know these are old, but I thought it would still be fun to post them: The picture above was from our second ultrasound at 12 weeks back on October 9. You can't really see much, but I'm pretty sure that the +1's head is on the left side and s/he is sticking out his/her tongue! Now this one is from November 20, 2007 (20 weeks) and much, much clearer. Hard to believe that the baby already looks so much like, well, a baby.

Who needs a Bee, a Frog, or a Chameleon, when you can have a Bebecar!? Kaniz and I opted out of the Bugaboo lifestyle and bought the +1 a Bebecar Icon stroller (or 'pushchair' as they call it in the UK) that we found on craigslist (ours is burgundy in colour). We went for used because after all, 'reusing' is one of the three R's and we all need to do our part.. plus we figure our +1 will grow up to be a vegetarian, tree hugging environmentalist and we don't want him/her resenting us for contributing to the landfill on his/her behalf. Having said that, we did buy a brand new chocolate brown Monte Designs Luca glider from Moms To Be & More - in our defense, we couldn't find a used one online. So with the stroller/pushchair and the glider, we're up to a grand total of 2 baby-related purchases.. 158 more to go. Wish us luck!

Today is the start of our third trimester! Yep, it took us this long to get a blog going.. so watch this space!