Today we’re excited to share an interview with soon-to-be mommy and friend of Graco, Jessica. You can definitely feel the genuine excitement in all of her answers, though I might be hard-pressed to find a new mom that wasn’t thrilled. Here is Jessica’s story:

Jessica at 26 and 30 Weeks

How far along are you and what are you having?
In my 28th week and having a baby boy!

What is the most exciting part about being pregnant?
Everything!

Did you take a babymoon? If so, was it all that you expected?
We were lucky enough to extend a work trip to Hawaii and stay in Maui for a few nights as our babymoon.  It was AMAZING and everything we wanted it to be and more!  We concentrated on relaxing and enjoying the time together.

What is the most surprising thing about being pregnant?
The effect of the baby weight on my everyday activities.  I knew things would change, but I legitimately feel like I’m carrying around a few dumbells every day. I know its only going to get heavier and I’ll probably be more exhausted at the end of each day

How is your husband handling the pregnancy?
Wonderfully!  He has been amazing through the whole thing and very supportive.  I tend to stress out about everything – so he is focusing on keeping me calm and taking care of as much as he can for me.

What is the craziest advice you’ve received so far?
I was pretty sick for the first 20 weeks and heard all kinds of advice around what to eat to make me feel better…everything from crackers to raw ginger!

Has anyone approached you and touched your belly that you don’t know?
Nope, not yet!

Other than you and your husband, who is most exciting about the arrival of your little one?
Our parents are ecstatic!  This is my parents first grandchild, so they are over the moon and keep calling him “our baby”…as in the whole family’s expecting!

Thanks Jess for sharing your story!

Now it’s your turn. What was the most surprising part of your pregnancy?

It was actually a little ironic that the same day that I was asked to write a blog post on this topic, I received two very lovely invitations in the mail. One was for a baby shower on March 24th at 2pm and the other was for a 1st birthday party on March 24th at 2pm. I think this is a perfect example of how babies have changed my life as a non-parent… while I’m still juggling hanging out with other non-parent friends at hot spots on Friday nights, and trying to fit in the oh-so-fun bachelorette/bridal shower/engagement parties, I’m now also double booked on Saturday afternoons where the highlight of the party is cake smashing and diaper cakes. And it’s great! I get to experience totally new things and learn what is working for my friends. (Secretly, I am mainly watching out who for who has the most laid-back kid, and I intend to fully emulate what those parents do.) So I have to be honest and share that although I haven’t gone down this path yet, it is **amazing** to be part of my friends’ journeys into parenthood – it has been downright inspiring to see how much they love their baby(s) from the first pregnancy test.

One thing has happened that I did not predict when many of our close friends starting having children. I assumed that we would just be hanging out with the kids all the time, which is true to an extent, but many of our friends still want adult nights out. So depending on whether or not they can lock down the elusive neighborhood babysitter, we get to see our friends and go do those things, like Anne mentioned, that are better suited for a group sans kids.

I feel that not being a parent in the midst of babies and baby bumps allows me to get all the benefits of playing with cute babies and buying tiny adorable onesies, while still being able to sleep through the night. And this is something I hear does not happen very often after becoming a parent.

Our little family already consists of two dogs and two cats, all of which we love dearly without judgment, but (who are we kidding) sometimes participate in less-than-desirable activities. (I fully blame their owners). So to get the whole family ready for our new addition, it was time to tackle part one in our six part plan:

Vet Checkup and Supply Stock Up (or How to Quickly Empty Your Wallet in 24 Hours).

This step was a no-brainer for us in our plan. I’m not even going to pretend I will be coherent enough to remember my own name, much less take anyone to the vet, when the baby comes and I’m running on zero sleep for who knows how long. Better to get all the annual vet visits out of the way ahead of time, Before-Baby (BB). So off to the vet we went for annual checkups (and by “off to the vet,” I mean “used cheese to lure them all into getting into the car and dragged them into the vet”).

So sad: “This is NOT what I had in mind when you said let’s go for a Car Ride.”

After everyone received a (relatively) clean bill of health, I booted up the trusty ol’ interweb and filled a shopping cart full of all the awesome stuff pet ownership entails – flea/tick prevention, heartworm prevention, and “I’m-getting-old-and-creaky”-type pills and supplements that these four take on a daily basis. Getting old isn’t pretty for this group.

Then I got a great tip from a dog trainer friend of mine.

She advised us to think about what we will do when we are both too tired and/or overwhelmed to properly exercise our dogs. Simon and Daisy (bless their little hearts and pea brains) need a good bit of exercise every day, both physically and mentally, to keep themselves sane. We’ve found out the hard way that if they have too much spare energy, they apply it in less-than-awesome ways (like chewing the wall).

Exercise for them doesn’t mean letting them out in the yard and hope they run it all out. Nope, true to form, they like structured walks, every day, to their favorite destination – Piedmont Park in Atlanta. So for the days where we can’t muster the energy (or find clean pants) to walk over there and we have two sad faces sitting near their leashes, we decided to stock up on some special toys and chews for them to work on.

My friend recommended getting a puzzle feeder like this one that makes the dog complete a puzzle to get their food out, to help drain mental energy and stress. I have to admit, I have visions of Simon loving the puzzle aspect and Daisy just starving to death next to it (or just eating the whole thing), but we’re game to try anything. So long story long, I added those to my shopping cart along with some bully sticks and checked out.

I did have a near-meltdown later, when we realized the total from all this shopping, but at least we are stocked for the next 12 months and won’t have to buy anything for a while, and at the end of the day we know everyone has a clean bill of health.

Plus I quickly distracted myself with planning for Step 2 – Basic Obedience Skills Prioritization & Review. More details and progress to come soon!

How are you getting your pets ready for a little one?

The short answer is: we don’t have the slightest clue.

But we are about to find out. Our first baby is due this summer and we’ve spent a considerable amount of time worrying about planning for how we would all learn to be a happy family together.

Our little family already consists of two dogs and two cats, all of which we love dearly without judgment, but (who are we kidding) sometimes participate in less-than-desirable activities. (I fully blame their owners. ) Hey, if we wanted perfect pets, we would have gotten stuffed animals, right?

We reminded ourselves that we as humans have all this time to mentally prepare for the baby’s arrival and know what is coming. While the four little troublemakers probably know *something* is up (as in, “why is there less room in mom’s lap for me?”), they probably don’t have a good grasp on the chaos that is about to explode into all our lives.

So we’ve tasked ourselves to create a little “Adventures in Baby-Proofing: Pet Edition” plan to help prepare them before baby comes so the transition is a little easier on everyone.

Yes, we’re dorky, and no, we’re not afraid to admit it.

How did we come up with our plan of action? Well, we turned to the one thing that has the answer to every question that matters: Google (haha). After going through approximately 4,324,876 websites and blogs about how to prepare dogs and cats for babies, we were completely shocked at the sheer number and variety of information out there.

We quickly decided that we just needed to formulate specific steps that we:
1. Felt comfortable with
2. Knew we had the skills and time to implement
3. Thought would be best-suited for our pets’ particular mix of personalities and behaviors.

Each family has to decide what is best for them and their pets. So with that in mind, we came up with the five steps to try as an experiment, based on the advice of a couple favorite websites (like Dog Gone Safe and Dogs and Storks) that seemed very pragmatic and matched our overall philosophy and style. We’ll blog about each step and our progress right here, so we can report on how everyone is doing and (let’s face it) beg you all for advice!

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Tune in next week for Step #1, which Liz affectionately calls, “Vet Checkup and Supply Stock Up (or How to Quickly Empty Your Wallet in 24 Hours).”

In the meantime – tell us: how have you prepared your pets for kids?

Lots to choose from!

Here at Graco, I am on the fashion design team and as such, my mind is often full of  creative and unique ideas for our nursery.   We don’t have a theme, but we definitely want a colorful, fun space that feels both graphic and vintage at the same time.   Andrew and I decided not to find out the gender, so we are also sticking to a somewhat neutral color palette (which is fine because green is both of our favorite color!)  We are not planning on painting the room, we will bring in color through furniture and fabrics  (hoping it all works together in the end!) Using furniture and accessories we already own has helped to create a look that works with the overall look of our home. This doesn’t mean we didn’t bring in some newness, we had to (we didn’t already own a crib).

Along with furniture and decor, there is the problem of  where to put baby.  We are turning the room that used to be my art space / guest room into our special nursery, but we still need to be able to store and access all my art supplies, etc.   While the room is fairly large, finding a way to hide floor-to-ceiling shelving in order to make the room baby friendly was a challenge. Being creative and working through the challenges has been a lot of fun for Andrew and me.  The amount of time and love that has gone into this room is a gift not only for our new baby, but for each other.

Isn't it cozy?

Our little one is due in 4 weeks (eek!) and our nursery is not quite ready yet.  This weekend we hung curtains and shelving for books, but the furniture still needs tweaking and we have yet to buy bedding.  Here is a sneak peek of one corner of the room, but we are still deciding what to do with that little table – paint it, cover it or use something else?  And of course accessories have to be added (oh the decisions to be made).  Stay tuned in the next few weeks for the big reveal!

Do any of you have any advice for must haves in the nursery?  Things we should leave out?  How about your favorite Graco products to include in the space?  We would love any ideas you have on ways to finish our look!

I asked PP if I could interview her and her first question was, “what’s an interview?” I told her an interview is where I ask you questions and you get to answer them. Surprisingly, she was excited to take part, so I seized the moment:

1. What’s your favorite food? (I didn’t want her to lose interest so I decided to start simple and ease her into the interview…)

“Chocolate.” (I guess we need to work on the food groups a little more..)

2. What’s your favorite thing to do?

“Watch TV (hence my reason for doing this) and draw pictures.” (at one point, PP’s room was covered wall to ceiling with her artwork.)

3. What’s your favorite thing to do with Mommy?

“Hug her.” (Isn’t she sweet?)

4. What’s your favorite thing to do with Daddy?

“Read stories.”

5. What’s your favorite color?

“Pink” (No surprise there, but thought she would say pink and purple–that’s usually one color for her.)

6. What do you want to be when you grow up?

“Unicorn flyer.” (Hhmm…not sure if that is a high demand career.)

7. What is your favorite word?

“Annalise.” (Is currently one of her best friends.)

8. What is your favorite thing to do at school?

“Play outside.” (Glad to know I am paying for a quality education and ” playground” is her favorite subject.)

9. If you could do something all day long, what would it be?

“Roller-skate with Daddy and ride my bike.”

10. If you could have anything in the world, what would you want?

“A unicorn.”

11. What is your favorite movie?

“Chihuahua.” (Beverly Hills Chihuahua 2)

12. If you could go anywhere, where would you go?

“Disney World, so I can watch all of the Disney movies.”

13. Who is your best friend?

“All the girls in my Pre-K 2 class.” (Nice to know she is so inclusive!)

14. What is your favorite TV show?

“Bubble Guppies.”

15. Who is your favorite Princess?

“Ariel.”

16. What is your favorite thing about yourself?

“My feet.” (Random)

17. What is your favorite game?

“Pinkalicious Cupcake Game.” (Best $15 that I have spent!)

18. What is your favorite thing about Mommy?

“She hugs me a lot.”

19. What is your favorite thing about Daddy?

“His strong bones because he picks me up and does strong things.”

20. What is your favorite animal?

“A giraffe, no a dog, yeah a dog!”

I thought it was so fun to see what my child’s “favorite” things are as well as spend time together outside of Television. Ask your little one what their “favorites” are and let us know what they say!

What are your baby’s favorite foods? What can you not get him or her to eat no matter how hard you try?

The weather in Atlanta has got us here, at Graco, ready to dance and celebrate the coming spring. We hope this video makes you laugh, makes you dance and brings a smile to your face this Friday.

Number 1: I cannot get anything done! She wants me to carry her around all day, every day.
Around the house, she wants to be carried, at the grocery store, she wants out of the cart to be carried, at the mall, she wriggles in her stroller so I can carry her.
My arms are building up some muscle carting around my 22 pounder!

When I am not around, my husband says she is so good. She will play independently or with her sister and most importantly, she doesn’t whine to be picked up. I guess I am just a sucker and she knows she can get her way with me.

Number 2: Since I am always picking Pinkie Pie up and carrying her everywhere, it’s less time that I get to spend with PP. PP even says, “Mommy, she wants you to pick her up, so pick her up so she stops crying.” Followed by, “You always pick her up.”
Now, if PP trys to hug me, Pinkie Pie goes nuts! She holds her arms up with huge tears streaming down her face while her cheeks turn beet red with sadness.
So, I try to pick them both up (remember my reference to huge biceps??) then Pinkie Pie starts to hit PP so she can get even closer to me (basically, turns into Wrestlemania).

Either way, I feel like I upset one of my daughters and more likely than not, I give in to Pinkie Pie since she is younger (and louder!)

Help!!!  Does anyone have any advice for me?

I have a baby to introduce you to today that’s very close to my heart: my cousin Hillary’s daughter, Miss Brooks! Miss Brooks was a preemie; she was born at only 30 weeks with the slight weight of 2lbs 15oz and spent 8 weeks in the NICU. It’s hard to believe when you see her adorable 15lb rolling body today!

In honor of Hillary & Miss Brooks, I’m going to be walking in my local ‘March for Babies’ this spring.

Maybe you can consider joining the over 7 million walkers out there by finding a March of Dimes ‘March for Babies’ event in your community.

The first photo you see (above) is of Miss Brooks wearing her daddy’s wedding ring as a bracelet; can you imagine an arm that tiny???

The second photo (below) is of the beautiful Miss Brooks today.