Late Night and Early Wake Up Call

Last night Joe and I met a friend of his from college and his wife for a double date. We had a nice dinner at Outback catching up (we hadn't seen them since New Year's Eve a few years ago) and then went and saw the movie Avatar in 3D. Angie (the other wife) and I weren't terribly excited about seeing the movie but went along with the boys. Although it's really long (3 hours), I was pleasantly surprised. It was a better story line than I expected, and the imagery was really good. I'm sure I enjoyed it more because I wasn't expecting much, and honestly just hoped to stay awake through the whole thing (I have a tendency to fall asleep at movies that I'm not interested in). Joe, on the other hand, had higher expectations, and in his mind the movie didn't quite live up to them. To each his own!

Because of the length of the movie, we ended up getting home around midnight. After attending to the dogs and settling down, it was closer to 1am by the time we fell asleep. I haven't been sleeping too well lately - it's getting harder to get and stay comfortable. Early in the morning I woke up, unaware at first of why. Then I realized Lucy was standing at the end of the bed, moaning to go out. She's usually good about staying quiet until we're awake unless she really needs to go out, and since I was awake, I got up to let her and Molly out.

It's practice for what's to come in just a few weeks, right? Not exactly.

Turns out Lucy did need to go out, and did her business rather quickly. Molly, however, had other plans. I guess she hadn't met her quota for eating wild animals in 2009, and had to get one more in... It took Joe getting out of bed and going outside to bring her back in, as once she catches and starts eating the poor animal, she doesn't stop until forced to by one of us. As long as my early morning wake up calls with 7 don't involve wiping blood off his chin and checking for rabbit fur in his mouth, I'll take those over these mornings with the dogs any day!

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

We haven't made much progress on the nursery this week, due to being at my parents' house for Christmas. It was nice to be back in St. Louis and visit with my college friends, relax at home for a few days and not do much! We came back to Kansas City on Saturday to discover that while St. Louis received a dusting of snow on Christmas, KC received about 6 inches, with some snow drifts over a foot deep! Luckily, our neighbor's boyfriend decided to spread Christmas cheer and clear our driveway and sidewalk with his snowblower! It continued to snow on Saturday, so when we pulled in, we only had to shovel an inch or two.

Sunday we spent the day taking advantage of after Christmas sales and buying supplies for the baby's room. Since every place had their Christmas decorations at least 50% off, we stocked up on wrapping supplies and outdoor decorations. We probably spent too much, but it's all stuff Joe had been wanting to add to the display, so I'm happy to get it half off! Then Sunday afternoon we went to our favorite Mexican restaurant, Ponak's, to see Kyle and Kenny, who moved to North Carolina early in 2009. They were in town for Christmas as both of their families still live here, and so it was time to hang out and have some fun.

Yesterday was my 33-34 week appointment, where I discovered I'd only gained a pound over the Christmas holidays - not too bad when you consider how many cookies I'd baked and the lack of physical activity during Christmas week! The baby is measuring right on track, and it's really hard to believe I'll be full term in just 3 weeks!

As soon as we get the house cleaned up and the nursery finished (we're shooting for this week) I'll be sure to post more pictures.

Oooh, it's getting exciting!

Don't you want to know how great the nursery looks? You should! :) We are at the 90% finished spot, with just a little more outlining to do on the characters on the southwest corner of the room, a few touch-ups with paint, install window treatments, find a light fixture and figure out what we're going to do with pictures hanging on the wall above the crib. Here's a teaser picture that still needs a few spots touched up, but it'll give you an idea of how great the room is turning out....

Isn't Joe's artistic ability amazing? This is one part of our "one fish, two fish" and "green eggs and ham" scene on the south wall. I think it's both of our favorite parts so far.

Last night we stayed up late and put the crib together, after Joe finished the north wall and part of the west wall so we could move the dresser into its spot. Joe had asked me to bake "a million" cookies for him to take to hearings and give out as gifts today, so I spent the evening baking about 13 dozen pumpkin cookies and peanut butter kisses. He continued to work on the room, so we got to putting the crib together around 10:30. Luckily, it went together really fast, despite horrible directions.

And here's the finished product! The bedding is in the wash as I type, and I can't wait to get it all put together. We even brought the glider chair, ottoman, and the cute lamp that started this whole project into the room... it's really coming together! Our (ok, my) initial goal was to have the room finished by Christmas. Looks like that's not going to happen, but if little Joe shows up early he certainly has a room that is almost ready to go - just needs the finishing touches!

Dr. Seuss Murals in the Making

As promised, here's the nursery in progress. We started with tracing the images from photoshop onto the walls, using a data project. Joe did all of the tracing (Joe's done most of the work in the room, and is doing a fantastic job. He says he'd rather focus on the nursery while I continue to buy the necessary baby stuff, which works out well for the both of us!)

If you look closely, you'll see the north wall image as a pencil drawing in this picture...

And here's the first coat of paint - the sky color. We painted sky first, then water, then grass. Now we're onto the detailed colors, and we'll finish by outlining everything in black Sharpie to get it all to pop and look very Dr. Seuss.

It's starting to come to life! Although we've gotten further than this point, we've got to keep some secrets about how it looks, right? The flash makes the colors look a little lighter than they appear in the room, but it's still not crazy bright, which is what we were trying to avoid. So far, we're really happy with the way it's turning out!

T Minus Two Months!

It's crazy that we're at less than two months to the baby's due date now! This week has been a solid push to getting the nursery finished so that we can make our "done by Christmas" deadline. After re-examining the various mural images and starting to trace them on the walls on Wednesday, we (ok, I) decided I wasn't thrilled with the way one section was looking, and neither of us were happy with the north wall (the scene from The Lorax), so we (ok, Joe) spent another day redesigning the parts we weren't too happy about. I think in the end, we're both much happier with the newest designs, which seem to flow much better than the last set did.

Saturday, I did some work for the store while Joe finished tracing all of the images onto the walls. We had already bought the paint for the background sections of sky, grass and water, so Saturday night we stayed up getting all of that painted. It really didn't take as long as I thought it might, and the paint we bought must have been a really good quality paint (whatever Sherwin-Williams recommended for kids rooms) because we really only needed one coat.

Sunday was the beginning of the detail work, painting each of the characters. We're using craft acrylic paint for that, which is thinner than wall paint. It's taking longer than Joe though b/c of the trade off between more thin coats, or one-two heavy coats of paint. I got a little frustrated with the painting, and since this is Joe's project, left him to continue the detail work Sunday night while I made cookies for a cookie exchange at my friend's office and a couple more diapers. Turns out, I'm getting pretty decent at making diapers now! Maybe next week I'll venture into new sewing territory, like baby pants! :)

Pictures are coming.... I promise!

Adventures in Cloth Diaper Making, Part I

After deciding to cloth diaper and seeing just how expensive some of the newer styles of diapers are, I decided that making some diapers would be a good way for me to save some money and learn how to sew at the same time. Finding materials around the house (old stained towels, tshirts, flannel sheets, etc) has been quite easy, as is taking Joe to the fabric stores and picking out cute materials for the diapers. I decided to try making fitted diapers (100% cotton with the absorbancy sewn into the diaper) and pockets (an open pocket in the back allows for a variety of soakers to be stuffed into the diaper, adding more flexibility to how dry the baby will stay before needing a change). I started with a free pocket diaper pattern that many people have used with success online, and then grabbed my McCall's diaper cover pattern to adapt into a fitted. Although most people say these take about 30 minutes-1 hr to make per diaper, I'm still quite the newbie and it definitely takes me at least twice that long!

Here are the first two I've made so far - the fitted is on the left and the pocket is on the right...


The fitted is a flannel outside and inside, and I sewed an old kitchen towel folded over a few times into the inside layer. The pocket is also flannel outside and inside, and has space to stuff microfiber inserts that I made from car detailing towels from Walmart. They both could close with pins, but I'll probably try to use velcro on the fitted... This picture doesn't do the size difference justice, but the navy blue one is designed to be one sized, where you can fold the back down to fit smaller babies. I don't know that I totally believe that it'll fit before he's 12ish pounds, but we'll see!




I had to compare the fitted that I made in the newborn size pattern with the small sized BumGenius diaper we bought at the cloth diaper store in St. Louis. I've obviously got a lot of work to do before mine look that nice, but not too shabby, for my first time! I think I may try to shorten the wing length and width if I do decide to use velcro, as they appear to overlap quite a bit. My elastic sewing skills are quite rough, but this attempt was much better than the diaper cover I made this past summer!

Here's the picture we took of me with the fetus that was approximately baby Joe's developmental age at the "You! The Experience" exhibit in Chicago. It's crazy how much it looks just like a newborn, just smaller! Only a few more weeks before we meet the little guy, and I get to see who's been kicking me in the ribs all this time!

Thanksgiving Fun

Joe and I decided to spread out our Thanksgiving trip to his dad's house in Detroit over a full week this year. I wasn't certain how comfortable I'd be with the 13+ hour road trip, so on the way to Detroit, we stopped in St. Louis for a night, spend a day in Chicago, and then headed on to Michigan.

We had a fun day in Chicago, stopping by the Crate and Barrell and Land of Nod outlets, IKEA, visiting the Museum of Science and Industry, and eating lunch/dinner at Lou Malnati's for some great deep dish pizza before leaving. The Museum was fun and had a variety of interesting exhibits, including the "You! The Experience," which had about 3 dozen fetuses that had been donated, which show exactly how a fetus grows and develops while in utero. I'd see the display before, but being pregnant gave it a whole different feel, particularly the fetus that was within a day of two of my pregnancy - it was unbelievable to see how the baby just looked like a slightly smaller than average little baby!

Joe's dad had graciously offered to buy the dresser for the nursery, which we had decided to get at IKEA. On Wednesday, our first full day in Detroit, Joe, his dad and I went to the IKEA there on our way to pick up Mike, Linda and Ethan from the airport. We had scoped out what we wanted while in Chicago, which was a good thing because delays on the highway cut our shopping time down to about 20 minutes! (Of course, we still didn't get it done that fast, but it was the fastest trip to IKEA we've ever had!) We ended up with not only a dresser, but a nightstand for next to the glider, some picture frames for the nursery and a few other odds and ends. In Chicago we found this mobile that is goofy but looks like Dr. Suess with a "red fish, blue fish" theme, too.

Joe started putting the dresser together a few nights ago, but we haven't completed it yet. Now we pretty much have all of the components for the nursery, save for a diaper bin and window treatments. This room is starting to come together!

We had a great time with everyone, with delicious food, wonderful hospitality, a hopefully new turkey day tradition of competing in the Detroit Turkey Trot (Joe, Lisa and Linda ran the 10K race, Dan ran the 5K, and I walked the 5K - next year, we'll get everyone else out there!), bowling fun with babies and James, and even a baby shower! Lisa and Linda threw a great party (and saved us from having to watch Star Trek with the guys) complete with freezer paper stenciling baby clothes, which may be my new favorite, super easy craft project! (Definitely easier than making diapers, but more on that in the next post :) ).

Saturday we had to pack up and drive home after some morning golfing for the guys, as we decided we'd try to drive the whole 13 hours in one day. The trip wasn't really all that bad, as we got mobile updates on the MU/kU game (hooray for the good guys pulling out the last minute win!) and picked up a few redbox movies to watch/listen to once it got dark out and really boring. We arrived home a little after midnight, and were quite happy we decided to leave Saturday, as we needed Sunday to recooperate, sleep in and rest a bit, particularly after realizing that we both had picked up a cold while in Detroit. We finished the holiday weekend with Jill and Gary, who accompanied us to a boy scout Christmas tree lot where we picked our tree and had it decorated by Sunday evening.