Progress!

I think it's safe to say that we're as done as we can be with what we already have.  That is to say, everything "baby" that had already been purchased or given to us has been given a home in the new bedroom.  There are some minor details that will need to be taken care of eventually, but as of today, we're done.  D-U-N!  Done!  :D

Whew!  I feel like we've worked our rear ends off for the last two weeks, but it was so totally worth it!  I love London's room!  Both Pern and I find ourselves walking in and just sitting, looking around, at random times of the day.  We know it's corny, but we are just so happy with how it turned out.  Take a look:

We're still waiting on the bed frame from my dad.  I heard it's near completion!  Can't wait to see it!

We put the lamp up nice and high and secured the cord.  When London starts crawling and this chair is removed, we'll probably add a low mirror to the wall, but we haven't decided yet.  Still time for that...

The closet door is gone and has been replaced with a curtain.

This quilt is one of my favorite things about the room.  It was an end-of-the-year gift from one of the families in my classroom whose daughter was going on to first grade after three years with us.  It's a "Virtues Quilt."  Here's a close-up:

At our school we follow a program called "The Virtues Project."  Essentially, we are teaching the children to identify the virtues that are in us all, know when they are using them, know when they need to practice them, and identify the missing virtue when they find themselves in conflict with someone else.

For example, instead of just saying thank you for cleaning up, we would acknowledge their "cleanliness and orderliness."  If they're struggling with completing an activity and want to give up, we would encourage them to practice "perseverance and determination."  And if they are fighting about something we'll ask them to have some "patience, flexibility, or kindness" with each other.  Each day we do a "virtue pick" where we pull a card from the stack and discuss that virtue, what it means, and how to recognize it in yourself or others.  It has made a huge difference in our school!  The children now talk about orderliness, patience, creativity, peacefulness, and respect like it's the most natural thing in the world!

Anyway - I love this quilt!  All 52 virtues are listed (I counted!) and it's beautiful!  I can't wait to start introducing these concepts to London.  Thanks, Carla!  We love it!

But I digress...

These animal prints were the first decorative items we bought for the room.  They're so cute - we love them!  We knew we wanted to do a subtle animal theme (I'm not into over the top themey-themey rooms) and these were too cute to pass up.  We're going to add some pictures of real animals (photographs not cartoons - it's a Montessori thing), but we haven't bought the frames yet.  OK... so we're not done.  Le sigh...  

We bought these animal decals from a seller on Etsy.com.  They are parading along the baseboard on the orange section of the striped walls, at the perfect eye level for a crawling baby.  There are elephants, giraffes, bears, ducks, rhinos, deer, and more.  Once the chair is removed, they'll be more obvious.  For now, they're subtle.  And yes, I love them!

I made this pillow case (used a pillow form from Michael's) ...

... and also made the curtains.  I love them, too.  They were a pain in the you know what to make (the curtains, not the pillowcase) but that was just because I didn't measure properly and after I washed, and subsequently shrunk, the fabric, I had to be sooooo precise so as not to mess it up.  Me and precision sewing don't exactly mix.  There was also a lot of swearing at my sewing machine that happened yesterday.  Why is it that sewing machines always seem to act up right at the end of the project?  Am I the only one who has this problem?

The closet needs a little work.  We need to add a shelf so that we're not wasting so much space and I plan to hijack the label maker from work to replace the bright pink tags.  A few more baskets and it'll be finished.  The clothes we have have all been washed and sorted.  Never in my life have I had to remove so many little plastic tags!  You know, the ones that attach the price tags to the clothes?  Baby clothes are FULL OF THEM!!!  Every little sock (so cute!), every hat, every everything is attached to everything else with a little plastic tag!  Pern did the bulk of them and I still spent 45 minutes de-tagging the things he missed.  When the laundry was done there were still two hats attached to each other and a three socks hooked together as well!

We bought a large, sturdy basket for blankets and placed it next to the chair.  I made the one on the right a few years ago and had been holding on to it for that "some day" and my friend, Claudia, made the green one.  I got that one this past weekend - love it, Claudia - Thanks!

This corner is missing something, we're just not sure what it is.  Any ideas?

Last night I also put the stroller together.  We bought it on the recommendation of my sister, who like me, is tall.  She test drove all the strollers when she was pregnant with my niece and decided that this one suites us tall girls just right - nice high handle bar and no cross bar between the wheels to bang our feet on.  Thanks for doing the legwork, Dale!  Pun fully intended.

It's a Quinny Buzz and it handles beautifully!  I wheeled it around and around the island in the kitchen and didn't bang into the cabinets or the fridge or have to stop and adjust it or anything!  That's right:  I love it!!  

And Pooh Bear loves it, too!  :D

Paint, paint, and more paint.

The big move is almost complete and London's room is painted.  I'd put exclamation points after that, but frankly, I'm too tired.  So... after the garage got cleaned out, we moved my school stuff out of the spare room (sorry - no "before pictures" - this isn't the best-documented "before and after" post of all time) and moved the guest room in.  So now the guest room is in the smaller bedroom and looks like this:

We're calling it the crabby guest room.  Not because our guests are typically crabby, but because you have to do a bit of a crab walk to get around the bed.  Ha ha.  It's tight, but manageable.

So after the guest room moved out of the bigger bedroom, we played around with some furniture layouts before clearing the room to start painting.  Ignore the locations of the shelves, etc... they will probably change.  For those of you that don't already know, we're designing London's room with several Montessori principles in mind.  There will be more "Montessori for Babies 101" lessons to follow, but I'll be brief and say that we're not buying big, bulky, adult-sized furniture (changing table, dresser, glider, bookshelves) or even a crib.  

Gasp!

He'll sleep on a floor bed (my dad is building a bed frame to hold the crib mattress and make it look a little less like a mattress on the floor and a little more like a bed with no legs) and the furnishings in his room will be (and some have already been) chosen with him in mind.  For example, the low shelf that you see will hold several small toys, we'll hang a low bar in his closet for his hanging clothes, and will put folded clothes in easy-to-use drawers.  We took the closet door off it's track, the bedroom door will be kept open with a latch (don't want little fingers getting pinched), and there'll be a baby gate at the door.  Plugs will be closed up, the cords for the blinds will be wrapped up out of reach, a lamp will be out of reach and secured, and there won't be anything in his room that he can't touch, play with, explore, and enjoy as he gets older.   Anyway... that wasn't too brief.  Sorry.  More later.  So here are the before pictures:

And here are the after pictures:  Note the adult-sized chair.  That is a temporary addition to the room.  Once London starts crawling and pulling up, the chair will be removed for safety.  We don't want him climbing up and falling off,  but we do want a comfortable chair for feedings during the first few months.

We love it!!  (That gets two exclamation points!)  I'm really happy with the colors and the lines came out great!  Can't wait to finish it off.

We're not quite done with the walls yet.  We have wild animal decals to stick on the bottom of the orange section, along the baseboards, that are the same color as the darker blue.  Then it's just a matter of hanging some pictures, making a curtain for the window and one for the closet (fabric is bought - sewing commences tomorrow!), buying some baskets, and filling the bookstand, drawers, baskets, and every other corner of our house with baby stuff!  

And, last but not least, here's my latest picture - taken earlier today at 26 weeks 2 days.

Boat Cruises are Dandy!

Had a fun afternoon today!  Linnea, Claudia, and I got together at Claudia's apartment for "girls' weekend #3" last night.  It turned into more of a "girls' 21 hour getaway" because Linnea had some work obligations to get home for, but it was still fun!  :D  

C made a yummy dinner for us on Friday (Mom!  She's learned how to cook!) and we chatted and caught up until the wee hours of the morning.... OK... it was 1:30.  But that's pretty "wee" for us these days!

Then, this morning, we got dolled up and headed to Alexandria for a lunch cruise aboard "Nina's Dandy," one of a fairly well-known pair of lunch/dinner cruise boats that takes guests up the Potomac and on a tour of the Alexandria and D.C. waterfronts.  C and L treated me in a "Yeah, you're having a baby and we're excited for you!" kind of way, which was really nice.  

Lunch was yummy, the company was good, and we even got to the dance the "Cha Cha Slide" on our way back to the dock!  Fun times!  Thanks, ladies!  I'm looking forward to our December get-together... and so is London.  :)

Total Garage Makeover!

Anyone who knows us, knows that we (well - mostly Pern) have stuff.  

A lot of stuff.  

No, seriously... too much stuff!

And that up until now a lot of that stuff had to stay in our garage.  And it multiplied.  And some of it got Ebayed and some of it got thrown away and the rest of it multiplied.  And boxes came to live in our garage and unused furniture, too.  And then they multiplied.  And all of my school materials (hmm... OK... I guess I do have stuff of my own) had to leave the garage to make way for more stuff.  

And eventually (Karen hangs head in shame) our garage looked like this:

But amazing things happen when you find out you're having a baby!  You realize that with babies, comes stuff.  More stuff.  And you realize that you need a place to put all that stuff.  And a place to put the baby.  Preferably a bedroom.  But in order to make that happen, you need to move your school stuff out of the spare room and back into the garage to make space for the guest room so that the guest room can become the baby's room.  But that means you need to make space in the garage, which up until now has been full of stuff.  

So you sort, you clean, you toss, you Ebay, you rearrange, reorganize, and revamp.  And then your garage looks like this:

And your school materials look like this:

And you have this thing called "open floor" that you never had before:

And you're so proud of yourselves.  And you still have a lot to do - because all that "stuff to Ebay" had to go back into the garage (it's only temporary!!) but you know that it will be gone soon.  And your school stuff is ACCESSIBLE!!!  Because that's the one request you made when you started this process.  And your wonderful husband (who did 99% of the lifting, hauling, moving, tossing, and rearranging without a word of complaint) has promised you that it will stay that way.

And now you have an empty bedroom that will become a guest room.  And a guest room that will become a baby's room.  And a little extra space in your garage for more stuff.  :D

New look!

Like the new blog header?  We'll see how accurate it turns out to be.  I'm due on October 30.  If London (yes, that's his name! :) comes early, we'll have a tiny trick-or-treater in the house by Halloween.  If he's one day late, he'll have a very cool birthday and we'll never have to think too hard for a birthday party theme.  If he's a few days late, he and I could quite possibly share a birthday!  Either way, we're looking forward to the big day!

24 Weeks!

I'll be 24 weeks pregnant tomorrow.  It's a big milestone... babies born prematurely have a greater chance of survival if they're born after 24 weeks.  Whew!  Not that we're ready to see him just yet... he needs to keep cooking for another 16 weeks or so.  I'm just sayin' "Yeah for viability!"  Now go knock on some wood, please... I hope I didn't just jinx the little guy.  Seriously... go knock.  Now!

And in other "holy cow!" news: according to one website, the average 24 week pregnant uterus is the size of a soccer ball.  Holy cow!!

So that's what's hiding under my shirt!

Unfried, Green Tomatoes!

The buckets and buckets of rain we had in May and June had both a positive and negative effect on my garden.  On one hand:

Some flowers did pretty well.  While:

Some have dried up since the rain stopped.

What about the cucumbers, you ask?

They're pathetic:

I planted the cucumbers too late (too many rainy weekends), but the green beans...

... are doing great!

And the tomatoes...

Don't be jealous, I'm just as surprised as you are!

So on one hand - the garden's doing great!

But this view tells a different story:

Carrots, lettuce?  All washed away.  And by the time I realized what had happened it was too late to plant.  If I get a decent cucumber out of those two plants, I'll be surprised.  Now tomatoes... those are a different story!  Anyone have a good tomato sauce recipe?  :D

Fireworks on the Fourth!

We had a fun evening with Joe, Renee, and their kids today!  They came over for dinner (chicken legs/breasts and hot dogs, mac 'n cheese, green salad, corn salad, and fruit salad and a cream cheesy/cherries and berries dessert that Renee brought) and then we loaded into their mini-van to drive into Leesburg.  In all the years that Pern and I have lived here, we had yet to experience the big 4th of July bash that the Town of Leesburg puts on at Ida Lee Park every year.  

Wow.  Talk about a lot of people!!  We had to park WAAAAAYYY in the back of the park, but as we were getting out of the car we noticed a small number of people camped out on a nearby hill, away from the huge crowds and live music.  We asked if this was a good spot to see the fireworks and some folks told us yes, so we laid out the blankets and settled in to wait... away from the (literally) thousands of people, the Jimmy Buffett cover band, and the long lines waiting for funnel cakes and soft serve.  

It turned out to be the perfect spot!  The kids were able to run their little hearts out until it got dark, we had a perfect view, there weren't a whole lot of people breathing down our necks, and the fireworks were close enough to enjoy, but far away enough to not be super loud or have debris falling on us.  The only downside was the 45 minutes it took us to get home afterwards (we live about 5 minutes away).  Oh well... that's what you get for arriving late and being told to park WAAAAAYYY in the back of the park.  

Settling in to wait for dark.

The kids are always prepared for fireworks with ear-protection.

Pern wanted to take my 4th of July belly shot... Renee made me do the cheesy hands-making-a-heart-on-my-unborn-child pose.  So I made it extra-cheesy.

She thought that was funny.

Joe was too busy watching the kids run away to notice.

Fun with glow sticks!

Pern had fun, too.

And he loves me.

Wheeeee!

What follows are a bazillion pictures of fireworks.  I took more.  These were the best.  I read up on how to photograph fireworks before we left.  I turned the camera to "bulb" mode, where the shutter stays open as long as you press the shutter release down.  That way you can control the amount of exposure and can time the release of the shutter to the explosion of the fireworks.  It was pretty cool.  I thought these came out really well for my first attempt at fireworks!  Enjoy!

These two (above and below) are my favorites.

I also love the last one and the way you can see the trees in the shot.  It was a perfect evening for this little experiment:  the temperature was cool (low 70s), the air was clear, not muggy, and the wind moved the smoke away from us, so the pictures didn't get hazy as the show went on.  All in all, a good day!