Baby C.'s Nursery

I know a few of you have not gotten to see how we have set up Baby C.'s Nursery. It is not 100% done, but close enough for me to share with all of you what it looks like now. We just need a few more decor items for the walls, and I got some wood letters that spell out his name that will go over the changing table after he is here (still trying to keep his name a surprise). I am working on some cross-stitch needlework that will go up once it is done, but since it will also have his name, and birthday on it, it won't be ready to be hung up till he arrives either. The glider rocker is also still in the living room since we both love sitting in it so much, so that will also move into his room once he gets here. A lot of work when into transforming this room, and we are so happy with the results! Below I am going to post the evolution of this room since we have moved in, and then two videos, the before (empty room), and after (what is looks like today).

Here we are standing in the kitchen looking at the landing to the 3rd floor (door and stairs leading up are on the left), and you will note there is no door to the guest room/Jill's office, that is why there is a curtain there, so when guest came they could close it for some privacy. It was painted yellow when we moved in.

This is looking in the room from the entryway, the closet is on the left, as is the nice built in book shelf, and my old small desk.

The guest bed is in the only corner of the room that does not have door, etc.

In February 2008 I had enough of the yellow, it was too bright, so I painted the room blue, changed the position of the bed, and got a new and bigger desk. I put an Ikea dresser that was in the attic in the room for storage of craft type things.

Now to see the room cleaned out an empty! I had a lot of stuff in the large closet, it took a lot of work to clean out this room and find a new home for everything. The bed went to my parents house, the rest went up to the now shared office space on the 3rd floor, that also went though a lot of redecorating. I did a post a while back when the new carpet went in, I will have to do a tour of that space as soon at it is finished, which it almost is, just a few more details and it will be wrapped up.

Now finally what you have been waiting for the video tour of the room as it is today! I forgot to point out in my video the great carpet squares we bought, it looks almost like wall to wall carpet, but you can just pick up the 20"x 20" carpet square if something gets spilled on them and bring it right to the sink to clean, then let it dry and use a few new sticker dots to put it back in place! We ordered them from Flor, we picked out "sweet dreams" in carmel.

Weeks 23-26 Baby Update

I had our monthly prenatal apt this morning at exactly 26 weeks. As usual all is well! I have gained a total of 10.5 lbs so far, which is great: not to much and not to little either. My blood presure was 118/72, and all the other quick tests were normal as well. I have to take the glocuse test some time in the next two weeks, I hope I pass the one hour test and don't have to go back for the 3 hour test!

I finally feel like it is now quite obvious to all that I pregnant! The belly is now easy to spot, and I know since most days when I get on the subway and woman (I just think this is because woman are more in tuned to pregnancy then men) will offer me her seat if there are no open seats. Although I still don’t feel right taking someone seat, which may change soon depending on my size and how crowed the train is.

Again this month my only complaint is the nagging back pain. I know I should spend more time at the gym working out my back mussels to make them stronger, but I am finding it too hard to drag myself out of bed in the morning, and I am to tired when I get home from work at night. So I will quit complaining since I could be doing more to keep from being so annoying.

We have gotten a lot done around the house this past month too. The hallway between the bedrooms is now almost complete (well we still have work to do on the stair case side, but hey that can wait for now). I painted the whole thing top to bottom once Greg was done with the drywall. All the trim got a fresh coat of white paint, and the walls are a nice light gray/blue (same paint we used to re-do the 3^rd floor office), and even the ceiling needed some touching up. The new door to the baby’s room now has painted trim all around it. Before the trim went up I fixed up the paint where it got messed up due to construction, and I also painted the walls on the other side of the door where the landing is to the 3^rd floor stairs. It was blue like the baby’s room before, but once the door went in and you could no longer see into the bedroom it looked weird, so I painted it the same green as the kitchen so the space would “flow”.

The 3^rd floor got carpeted this past week (it looks great), so as soon as we have the time we will be setting it up with both Greg and my desks and it will be our shared office space. To show you all how far this space has come check out these before and after shots.

Before - this is what the room looked liked when we moved in in November 2006:

After with the new half wall & carpet:

The guest bed will be relocating to my parents house, and once we get the carpet tiles in (still trying to decide on the right color, going to order from FLOR.com, I think is a cool product) for the large area rug that will be in the baby’s room, then we will be ready to start setting it up as a nursery! Greg had a lot of Amazon.com gift cards as incentive bonuses from work, so we ordered and have since received the crib matters, a gliding chair and ottoman (can’t wait to put it together and give it a spin), and a baby carrier (called a Ergo baby, nifty contraception click here to see what it is).

Here are our weekly bump watch photos for the past month:

23 Weeks

24 Weeks

25 Weeks

26 Weeks

Weeks 21-22 Baby Update

We had our monthly prenatal doctor visit yesterday, and once again it was all good news. These visits are quick, just a check of my weight, blood pressure, and the baby’s heart beat. I have gained some weight for the first time, I am sure all that cruise food helped, it was a little less that what I was guessing, and right on track. The results from our quick follow-up ultrasound at week 20 said all is well with Baby C.’s heart. The nurse always gives me a thumps up when she takes my blood pressure. They must love me, I am an easy customer, never have had to call with a question or concern and everything is always in normal ranges.

The one thing I could do without is BACK PAIN! All I have to is sit the wrong way in my office chair (a very nice high back chair, and I have a foot rest, so it’s not the chairs fault) and that is it, my back hurts the rest of the day. I stretch, I massage, etc. and nothing will stop the pain once it starts. Anyone have a good recommendation for one of those heating pads you warm up in the microwave?

Here are some bump watch photos:

18 Weeks

20 Weeks

21 Weeks

22 Weeks

We have also gotten started on getting the baby’s room ready. Greg and his Dad installed a door to the baby’s room leading from the kitchen and the landing to the stairs that go to the 3rd floor (yes there was no door there before), and installed a wall and door in the staircase hallway that is located between the two bedrooms so we can quickly get from our room to the baby’s room (before we never used this space since the stairwell just had a railing at the top of the stairs that was open to the landing below where the “front” door to the house is). Need a visual? Click here to see this blog post that has a rendition of our home’s layout.

Here are some photos of their hard work! And I mean hard work, our house is OLD = nothing is level!

From inside the baby’s room:
From the kitchen/landing to 3rd floor: New wall, door and sheet rock on the inside of the wall looking up from the stair case:
Here is the hallway looking from the baby’s room to our bedroom:

We also picked out and ordered the bedding for the baby’s room! I found it on the JCPenny’s web site, and it is made by Carter’s (they make great baby’s cloths, so I hope the bedding is of the same top quality). Greg is a dog lover, and since they really don’t make boy bedding with kitties on it (guess it is more a girly thing), it was easy for us to both love this set. We ordered the matching mobile and valances as well. I think the colors will look good with the blue that the baby’s room is already painted.

Even better all the items are on sale, and even better than that it is easy to find coupon codes (I use this site: http://www.retailmenot.com/) for JCP.com. I had to order the valances & mobile separate from the bedding due to low stock/back order issues, I used a code and got free shipping on that order, then when I ordered the bedding last night I found a 15% off the whole order coupon. I love the feeling of getting a bargain.

I love to decorate the house for the Christmas!

Happy Holidays Everyone! I love decorating for Christmas, it is the only holiday that gets me in this mood (maybe because you can leave the decorations out for a month or two and no one things you are weird or lazy). So I am taking this opportunity to show off my décor with you all and show off my new china cabinet that I love so much!

You will note there is no tree... with the limited space and two crazy cats, and the husband that won't let me get a fake tree (and yes I would much rather a live one myself) we are going to have to go without this year (I can't deal with the mess, the one that the cats would made dragging needles to every corner of the house, and Maverick most likely thinking it was something to clime up rather than to sleep under like good cats do).

Floorplanner.com

A few weeks ago Greg, Andy and I were talking about how we would expand our home to give us all more space as well as increase the resale value of our home. Greg and I would love to get more space as that would make our current home a place we could stay for a long time, which would be great. We love the area our home is in, we have a nice big lot, and sharing a two family home with Andy is great and easy really. The only negative beside our portion of the home being on the smaller side is the main street our home is on, street traffic can get loud with our home almost sitting right on the street with only the sidewalk separating us. Well I digress.... after kicking around some ideas, I found this great website though a blog I read call floorplanner.com where you can design your own floor plans. I had some measurements of our house already from a class I took this past summer and from the plans that were made when we ordered the new kitchen cabinets and created our existing floor plan of our apartment on the 2nd floor (Andy's layout is very similar on the first floor). Then from there I came up with a floor plan with the addition we talked about. Here are the results of my hard work...

Current Floor Plan

Possiable Addition Floor Plan
Click on the photos to make them larger, use the back button to get back.