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.