Alyson's Wonderland

So one of the most common reasons people say they find out about the sex of their child is so they can "plan" better. I know there are other good reasons to find out, but that's the response I got most often when I told people that I was not. "I could never wait that long," they'd say, "I have to know so I can plan for it." Well, if there is one person I know who loves to plan, it's me. Seriously, it took a huge effort for me not to find out whether I was carrying a boy or girl for 9 months, but the moment she was born it was all worth it. And here's a shocker: I was still able to plan! What, you ask? How ever did I set up the nursery without knowing the sex of my baby? That's just crazy! Oh and it must look boyish because all the neutral colors are more boyish than girlish. Well, for starters, we knew we were gonna put the baby in the smallest room as an attempt to keep a decent-sized guest room for as long as possible. We had just...

If you don't already know, Ainsley is my little owl baby. It all started when I decided that owls would be the theme of the nursery and thus the theme of my shower. I wanted to paint a tree in the nursery, so what better animal to go in the tree than an owl? It was a fun gender neutral theme since we didn't know whoooooo baby Ulstad was going to be. (I'll do another post on the nursery in the future). I also didn't know to what extent people were going to carry out the owl theme. My mom and sister made everything from the diaper cakes to cupcakes into owls and almost every gift Ainsley received before and after she was born had an owl somewhere on it. Sure it helps that owls are ubber trendy these days, but still, the amount of owl paraphernalia we received was outrageous. Here are some pictures of the cute owl shower stuff: And so with October 31st being just a few days short of Ainsley turning 4 months old, I just HAD to have her be an owl...