do babies come with user manuals? i think not...

The past seven weeks have been... happy, sad, exciting, worrisome, busy, stressful, tiring, joyful, fun, hectic, exhausting, the list just keeps going. I knew what we were getting ourselves into, I mean, all I've done my whole life is babysit and take care of other peoples' babies. But even with all of the experience, all of the know-how, and all of the advice, one can never fully prepare themselves to bring their newborn home and just "be" a parent. It's hard. And between trying to get the hang of nursing and sleep deprivation, throw some major holidays into the mix and you have a recipe for gut-wrenching, hair-pulling, tear-inducing stress. But in the midst of all of this stress, there is a beautiful, tiny little life that is relying on you to be strong and get through the hard times. And that's just what we're doing, one day at a time.

The first three weeks, we had a really really hard time with the whole nursing thing. I developed a new found respect for all women who nurse their babies, yet I also understand why so many mommies find formula feeding so attractive. I wanted to switch to formula so badly that second week, but I told myself I would try my hardest to get through the first six weeks, which everyone says are the hardest. Mason's little mouth just wouldn't open up wide enough, at first, so after using a nipple shield for a week or so, we finally got our latch fixed and we've been nursing champs ever since.

This baby definitely lives up to his in-utero behavior of constantly kicking and moving around; Mason loves to be awake! And boy oh boy, he knows how to kick those feet! He is such an observer. Since day one, he has loved nothing more that to look at you and study your face and just listen to you talk to him. We got our first "gas smile" at four days old but he really started smiling at about three or four weeks old, and now at seven weeks he smiles all the time. He talks (coos) like crazy now, and if your really lucky he'll give you a little laugh.

He has been growing like a weed, too. Mason weighed 7 lbs 12 oz, 20" long when he was born, and was 7 lbs 3 oz when we left the hospital that Friday. The lactation nurses asked that we come back the following Monday to get his weight checked to make sure he was gaining a little and when we went back in, he was already back up to 7 lbs 11 oz! He weighed in at 8 lbs 3 oz at his two week check up, and grew a half an inch! And at his last appointment, his one month check up, he weighed 9 lbs 12 oz and grew to 21 3/4 inches! But all of that growing didn't come easily. The first four weeks of nursing were rough (even after we got the latch right) with lots of painful gas and spitting up most of what he ate. He never actually lost any weight, so he was never diagnosed with reflux, but I self-diagnosed a problem with lactose, and ever since I've cut out most dairy from my diet and switched to lactose-free milk, the spit up has been practically eliminated! The gas is still a terrible problem; sometimes he wakes up screaming because it hurts him so bad. The gas drops that we were giving him with simethicone in them are made to help stomach gas, and he has trouble with intestinal gas, so they weren't effective most of the time. I don't really like giving him any sort of medicine that could have harmful side effects, and since most gripe waters having things like baking soda in them, which aren't regulated by the FDA and can lead to side effects. Thank goodness we found Colic Calm (and no, I'm not paid to say that; we just tried the product and it truly works for us!) It's a homeopathic gripe water consisting of nothing more than all natural products like aloe, vegetable charcoal, chamomile, peppermint, and ginger, which means that you can't overdose; the body just absorbs what it needs and dispels the rest... and the product is regulated by the FDA, all of which makes this momma very happy.

All in all, we have an incredibly well mannered baby, he is so good. But I have really been struggling with his sleeping habits. I mean, don't get me wrong, I realize that newborns and babies younger than three months don't really have a set "schedule" quite yet, but this child is such a picky sleeper. Which has led to mommy sleeping on the couch for the last seven weeks. He absolutely HATES sleeping in his crib; the longest he has ever slept in his crib was about 10 minutes. He won't even sleep in the crib if I swaddle him. We have one of those Fisher Price "Rock'N'Sleep" bassinets, but with all of his tummy troubles, he doesn't like to be quite as "squished" as that. So we've had to lay a pillow in the bassinet before putting him, which seems to be just the right mixture of laying flat but being slightly elevated. I know every parent and doctor and child safety advocate is shaking their head at me right now, but it gets him to sleep. Now that he's seven weeks old though, I think it's about time to start sleep training and trying to get him to sleep in his crib. I'm not ready to make him cry it out yet, but we're going to try to implement a bedtime routine for the next several weeks, and maybe start crying it out for naptime when he's about three or four months. Although we've got some time to get all that worked out, I'm definitely looking forward to remembering what it's like to sleep in my own bed, so stay tuned to see how that all works out.

And we've already experienced two major "firsts"... holidays! Mason was two weeks old for his first Thanksgiving, and we just celebrated his first Christmas. Obviously, they weren't very eventful; Thanksgiving was mostly just time for family members to meet baby boy for the first time and me and Hubs didn't even "get" any presents for Mason for his first Christmas (no worries, everyone else spoiled him rotten this year!). Next year he will be one and walking and talking (hopefully) and the holidays will be so much more fun with him being able to tear into presents and what not.

So that's what we've been up to lately. This momma has lost her sanity and regained it, and doesn't remember what it's like to sleep in my own bed anymore, but baby boy is growing so much each and every day, and we love him so much. We may not be doing everything according to the books or what doctors say, but we're figuring this whole mommy and daddy thing out. Who actually reads a user manual anyways... don't most people just try to figure it out as they go? Isn't that what parenting is? =] As I was typing this, looking back on the last seven weeks, I can't believe that we've already gone from a newborn to a baby who's almost two months old!

two weeks

three weeks

four weeks

five weeks

six weeks

seven weeks

the birth of mason alexander...

So I suppose that it's been seven weeks since having a baby, and I should probably start making time to get this blog updated. And what better way to start that than with our sweet baby boy, and the intense (and terrifying) story of his birthday.

And I'll warn you, I talk about peeing and sitting on the toilet and other fun stuff, like birth (duh) so if you don't wanna hear it, I wouldn't suggest continuing on with this post.

I had my 39 week OB appointment on Monday, November 7th, and we were still only about 50% effaced and dilated to about 1 1/2 cm, so I spent the day finishing up the painting in the kitchen - we got the walls painted that Saturday, and I got the outside framing of the pantry cabinets painted Sunday, so I got the actual pantry  drawers painted on Monday. And Tuesday was supposed to be my day to make arrangements with a new pediatrician (since I had really procrastinated getting that figured out and taken care of before I was 39 weeks pregnant) and get all the baseboards painted. Well... that's where our plans veered off track. After going to bed, exhausted, on Monday night, I woke up around 6 am on Tuesday morning having to pee (for the seventh time that night) and I felt something wet "down there". I sat up, thinking to myself, "Self, did you just pee your pants?!" I jumped out of bed and ran to the bathroom, only to realize "Holy shit! My water just broke!", and then to realize that my underwear and pajama pants were soaked, so my plan to put on a pad and go wake up Hubs was shot. So here I am, sitting on the toilet, leaking amniotic fluid, yelling as loud as I can "GREG! GREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEG!!!!" And let me tell you, he must have taken his sleeping pill that night, cause he didn't hear me at all. So I let 10 or 15 minutes pass by, trying to decide what to do; every time I went to get up off the toilet, more fluid came out... I felt trapped, but I needed to get some new undies and pants, and I needed to tell Hubs that the baby was on his way! So I grabbed a few pads and a towel, fashioned a big ole diaper of sorts and waddled my way into our bedroom to wake him up, much to his surprise. Now, my OB's office doesn't open until 8 am, and it was only about 7 am, so after cleaning myself up (as best as one can when they are leaking amniotic fluid everywhere and about to have a baby) and getting some pants back on, Hubs needed to get a few things done for work really quick (good thing the plant he was going to is only about 7 minutes from our house), so I put some towels down on the bed, just in case, and tried to lay down and get some rest before we called the doc to let them know my water broke and that I needed to come in to get checked out. It was about this time that I actually started to feel some contractions - the real, this-kind-of-hurts contractions... and it was two seconds later that I realized my whole entire kitchen was torn apart and that I needed to get it back together ASAP (cause I'm crazy OCD and I didn't really want anyone else trying to put my stuff away, it needed to go a certain way). I couldn't sleep anyways, my  mind was going a million miles an hour, worrying about said messy kitchen, and if we got everything ready for the baby, and if I was forgetting anything, and that I needed to call my mom, and worrying that maybe we should have just gone straight to the hospital, and oh my gosh, what if the baby comes crazy fast and I become that lady who sat down on the toilet to pee and the baby fell out, worst of all while Hubs was gone?! You get the idea... So I got back out of bed and tried to get the kitchen cleaned up before 8 o'clock rolled around. Hubs got home a few minutes later, we got our bags and stuff packed and then I called the doctor. And whadya know, the nurse said "You should just go straight to the hospital. I'll call Dr. Marshall and let her know what's going on, and I'll call the hospital and let them know that you're on your way up." So that's just what we did. We got the car packed up, car seat and all, grabbed some Gatorade, and headed to the hospital!

Ready to have a baby!

Hubs took a picture of his phone, so we would know exactly when we left!

Beautiful day to have a baby!

We got to the hospital a little before 9:00 am, got all signed in and hooked up, and they started me on a bag of antibiotics, since my water broke before we got to the hospital. The nurse checked us out, we were still only about 1 1/2 cm dilated, so I called my mom and told her that she could come up whenever, but that we weren't progressing very quickly, and it was just a waiting game, now.

Talking to the registration nurse and getting my IV hooked up

Mommy and baby are all hooked up now!

Baby's heart beat up on top, Mommy's contractions down on bottom.

Ready to get this baby boy here, finally!

An hour or so goes by and we still hadn't really progressed very much, except for my contractions getting a little bit stronger. The nurse called Dr. Marshall to see what she wanted to do, and they started me on a Pitocin drip to help speed things along. Hubs' mom got here first (they only live about 10 minutes away from the hospital), his dad would be there later, and my mom said she was on her way, and my dad had to work, so he would be there as soon as he could get someone else there to cover for him (my parents live about 40 minutes away).

Our last picture together as just "the two of us".

By the time my mom got to the hospital, my contractions were starting to get pretty intense, so I asked for some Nubain to try and relieve some of the pain, before jumping straight into an epidural. An hour went by and the Nubain had no effect, and the contractions were getting a lot stronger, so the nurse checked me, we were at about 4 cm dilated, and Nancy, my anesthesiologist came in and I got my epidural. (Which ended up being a blessing in disguise, as you'll see later) And this is where the craziness began. My original plan was to take a nice little nap after getting my epidural, and getting some rest before having to push later; the Nubain had made me really drowsy, so I wanted to sleep, but with all the excitement, I only slept for a few minutes. About an hour after getting the epidural, the nurse came in to check me again, and we had jumped to about 8 cm dilated, almost 100% effaced - which meant that it was almost time to start pushing! Our nurse called Dr. Marshall and told her how close we were and that she should come over (she was at the office, right behind the hospital) We started to get excited and were trying to make sure that certain people - namely, our dads - were all going to be there in time. Several minutes went by, and Whitney (our awesome nurse at the time) came back in to check on us and told us that they wanted to keep an eye on the baby because his heart rate was starting to drop after each contraction; they weren't too concerned, because his heart rate would bounce right back after the contraction, but they wanted to keep an eye on him, just to be safe. The nurses kept coming in and out, messing around with the fetal monitor on my belly, trying to get it in the right spot, and after a while, Whitney came back in because the baby's heart rate was starting to not come back up as fast as it should after each contraction. She checked me again and we were fully dilated, and started asking where Dr. Marshall was. This is where everything kind of started to blur all together, because things were escalating, nurses were rushing in and out, and you could feel the sense of urgency in everyone. The baby's heart rate started to drop really low, down to the 80s and 90s (it should have been up in the 140s, which was normal for Mason) They put me on oxygen, to help the baby, and Whitney was checking me out, trying to feel how the baby was positioned and what was causing the drop in heart rate. [[About this time, Hubs' dad was on his way, and my dad was about 5 minutes away]] A few minutes went by (Hubs and our moms in the corner of the room, presumably freaking out) and Dr. Marshall came wooshing into our room and jumped on my bed and starting checking me out, and at this point the baby's heart rate kept dropping - he was now down into the 60s and 70s. And that was it. Dr. Marshall jumped up and said "We need to get this baby out now. Call surgery and let them know we're on our way" (Lucky for us, the OR and staff were in-between scheduled deliveries, so it was ready and waiting for us) As Dr. Marshall and Whitney went rushing out, a whirlwind of other nurses came rushing in, started disconnecting the fetal monitors and my IV, covered my bottom half back up, and quickly told Hubs and our moms that we needed to do an emergency c-section and that our moms needed to go to the waiting room and Hubs needed to come down to the OR with me. As we were getting rolled down to the OR, Hubs' dad had just gotten there, our moms met him in the waiting room and told him that they just rushed us down to the OR, and my mom called my dad (who hadn't gotten there yet, he got stopped by a train) at let him know. We were whisked into the OR, Hubs went one way to get suited up, I went the other to get rolled onto the OR table, numbed up, and cut open. It seriously went that fast... Four minutes. And it's a good thing, too, cause when we got into the OR, the baby's heart rate was down into the 50s. Nancy came in and pushed more drugs into my epidural to completely numb me, and two seconds later, Dr. Marshall was slicing and dicing. Four minutes from the time we got on the table (4:30 pm) to the time Mason was delivered (4:34 pm). And get this... Hubs wasn't even in the room as they pulled Mason out!!! They forgot about him being back there until it was almost too late! He walked in right as the nurse was taking the baby over to the warmer; Hubs started walking towards me, and the baby was getting walked the other way! And let me tell you, this baby was so "pale" that he was blue. Come to find out, when we quickly progressed from 8 to 10 cm in a matter of minutes, the baby dropped down quickly and his cord got caught between his head and his way out, which kinked like a hose and cut off most of his oxygen supply; it actually left a big, long, red indention in the side of his face and head, in the exact shape of his cord - Dr. Marshall took a picture of it on her iPhone to show me (and she actually still had the picture on her phone when we went in for my 6 week postpartum check up). But all 7 pounds, 12 ounces of his 20 inch long self started crying right away - after they sucked all the goop out - and they put him on oxygen to help get his counts up where they should have been.

Here's our sweet baby boy!
You can see the mark his cord left on his head.

Hubs and baby were only in the OR for a few minutes, they brought him over for me to kiss on real quick, then they wheeled him back down to the room because they were still a little worried about him and wanted to check him out completely. So now they started stitching me up (Dr. Marshall actually glued my incision shut, so it just looks like a paper cut; no staples, yay!) and I took my opportunity to catch a few zzzz's. (Little did I know, I actually stayed in the OR for about 3 hours - it was about 7:45 pm when I got back to the room - so I got some sleep while they were working on me) One of the nurses came back in and told me Mason was doing great, and was really starting to pink up, and another one came in after they got me all closed up to take an x-ray (just to make sure they didn't leave any instruments in there). It was about this time that I started to shake really bad; the nurses finally realized that they were in such a rush to cut me open and get the baby out safely, that no one covered me with any warm blankets (and let me tell you, that OR is freezing!) Between the hormones after delivering a baby and the extreme cold, I was full-body, practically convulsing kind of shaking. Nancy (one of my favorite nurses of our stay, besides Whitney, from that night, and Karen, from a couple days later) got me loads of warm blankets and started trying to warm me up. After we got the okay from the x-ray guys, I finally got to return to our room and hold my sweet baby boy for the first time.

He finally pinked up, and after taking a couple different blood tests and what not, the doc said he was a-okay, perfectly healthy. He scored an 8 on his Apgar test, the two points were taken off only for how extremely pale he was when born. And that's all folks, that's the crazy, exciting, terrifying, wonderful birth story of Mason Alexander; born Tuesday, November 8, 2011 at 4:34 pm, weighing in at 7 pounds, 12 ounces, and 20 inches long. He's got blonde hair, blue eyes, his daddy's nose, momma's mouth, and let's face it, he's a little mini-me of Hubs, so everything else comes from him. And I'm perfectly okay with that.

I'll get you caught up on the last seven weeks of our lives tomorrow... and maybe friday, too; a lot has happened in the last seven weeks, I'm not sure if I can cover it all in one post. =]

ta da...

Have I ever told you how much I love Adobe and all of their products; like Photoshop and Acrobat Pro? Just in case I haven't told you, I freaking love them! After a couple of weeks of brainstorming and "un-rusting" myself in Photoshop, I finally have the baby book done, and it's even compiled into a PDF book. Awesome. Now, let me preface all of this by saying that this book is no original idea... I compiled all of the pages and prompts with the help of a couple of pre-made baby books and with some Googling of what other people have done. But I will say all of the pages were originally created by me... and many, many, MANY hours went into creating all 65 of those pages. But it's finally finished. Here's the Baby Book (all 65 individual pages) in a Picasa album; to save loading time, I decided to save each photo in very low quality, since it's not going to stay a digital album and I'll post more progress pictures as I actually get the pages printed and in the scrapbook. But just for your viewing pleasure, here are a few goodies for ya...

 

I'm so excited to start getting these pages printed, filled out, in the scrapbook, embellished... there's so much to keep me busy, YAY!

baby book...

I've started a new project: baby book. I originally bought this really, really cute Carter's baby book, but as I've been flipping through it, looking at what all is in it, I'm seeing that pre-printed books like this are nice for the convenience factor, but let's face it, I like to get my hand dirty and do things like this myself. Hence my growing scrapbooking and card making obsession?? So that's what I decided to do. I already know that this baby is going to have one stellar scrapbook, I've even been thinking about starting on it now, just so I would have something to keep my hands busy for a while, since I can't really get down on the floor anymore, which leads me to postpone the painting of the paneling in the family room. Anyways, I digress. I figured that if the Bug is already going to have a scrapbook which sort of catalogs all the "big" happenings in his little baby life, why not just sort of combine his scrapbook and baby book all into one giant thing? Yes. That's the winner right there! And that's exactly what I've been working on the past couple of nights. I'm just sort of playing around with it for now, trying to feel out the best way to go about this. I've googled it and read other peoples' blogs about it, and most just print pages of text out in Word or something of that nature, and just paste on/in their scrapbook pages... I think I'm going to take a similar route, but I'm using Photoshop instead, and I may end up just printing the pages onto my actual scrapbook paper - like, feed my 12x12s through the printer so the text looks like it was pre-printed! Good idea, eh? I think so.

So for now, things are looking kind of like this:

 Which, even though it's just blah, unfinished, white space right now, will eventually look something like this:

except with more text (I didn't feel like copying all of the stuff on the page) and not with a busy paper like that (it was just the first digital paper I clicked on in the folder). I'm thinking the pages with text like this will either have to be solid-ish papers (so that the ones with pictures and stuff can be fun and patterend and embellished), or maybe a patterned one like this, but tweaked so the pattern doesn't seem so "bold" and distract you from the words you actually want to read. Needless to say, it's definitely a work-in-progress... but a fun one, at that.

time to hang it up...

Despite feeling like I've been hit by a semi, I finished the mobile today, and it looks fantastic! After hours of cutting out circles, a few more hours of using a straight pin to poke tiny little holes in said circles, and more hours of trial-and-error guessing at how far apart the circles should be on each strand, I finally nailed it. And then after many more hours of lazily laying in bed, drinking hot tea for my throat, and listening to the sound of chainsaws and falling tree branches (don't worry, we had some guys out today to cut down some trees), every single dot was strung and all 9 strands were on the top piece.

Baby's view from below

Obviously, as he gets bigger I'll raise it up higher - the string that suspends it from the ceiling is pretty long right now. And of course, the balloons from the baby shower won't be there either.

But for something that I threw together after seeing a couple pictures of something similar, I think it turned out waaayyyy better than I expected. Looking back at the whole process, once I finally figured out the best way to string and knot each circle, it was actually a pretty quick process. Most of my wasted time was spent cutting out far too many circles; I was originally going to mix the solids and the patterns that I used in the name letters, but after seeing a test string of those, it just didn't look right. So now that I know just about how many each strand needs and how far apart to knot them (two finger widths, by the way) I could probably crank another one out in a couple hours.

I hope the Bug loves to look at it as much as I do, it kind of wiggles if a breeze hits it... it's kind of cute.

glide away with me...

Shut the front door. I am trying really hard not to scream right now because.... THE GLIDER IS HERE!! AND THE OTTOMAN!! AND THEY ARE OFFICIALLY AT HOME IN THE NURSERY!! Okay, I'm screaming now! And happy dancing! I'm so freaking excited because this means that the baby's room is almost done! Okay, enough screaming-dancing-freaking-out-exclamation-usage.

Don't mind the weird look to the fabric, this was before I got the vacuum out and cleaned it up a bit.

And just for hilarity, yes, I did capture Bibbs in mid-leap up to check out the new glider. =]

The little "mommy nook" next to the crib... I have a feeling I'm going to be spending a lot of time here.

The view from the glider; I finally got a changing pad up on the changing table and found some cute little baskets and a matching hamper.

Now the question is, where are we going to put the Bug when he gets here? =D

So. It's officially official. The Bug's room is almost finished. We've got all the big stuff done and out of the way; the painting, the crib, the combo unit, the glider, that's all finished. Now it's on to the little details, such as the mobile, the bookshelves, the toy storage, the wall art. Well, I've already started on the mobile... last night (and the night before, who am I kidding?) I sat in front of the television with my momma's Cricut machine and cut out a billion about 300 two-inch circles for my mobile. And then tonight I parked in front of the TV, yet again, and worked on the top piece, which consists of a paper-covered 9" chipboard circle. Truthfully, I've been kind of winging it with this whole mobile project, so I haven't been very good about taking pictures as I go. But here are my "in-between" pictures, one of my top piece with some of the fishing line run through, and the other of my ginormous stacks o' circles:

Here's the top piece with the "leveling" lines run through and knotted together; the "hanging" line (to suspend it from the ceiling) will be attached last...  I think.

My billions tons of circles - solids on the left, patterns on the right

Obviously, my 9 inch top piece is not going to have room for all of those circles, both solid and patterned, but it gives me lots of room to play and experiment with how I want them arranged. At first I was just going to use solid colors, but the more I looked at my scrap pile from making his name banner and pennant, the more I realized it would be more fun to incorporate the patterns I've already used elsewhere in the room. Pretty smart thinking, eh?

As you may have noticed in some of the pictures above, the crib is currently stuffed full of blankets and baskets of toys and books and other stuff and junk. But now that the futon is outta there and we have the glider in place, I can see where I want my bookshelves, and now it's just a matter of making it all happen! I originally saw these bright green boxes that I love, but I had trouble finding a tutorial on how to actually make them. Until I remembered that the Petersiks over at Young House Love built some for their daughter's nursery. And then I showed the Hubs, and he liked 'em, so he's going to build them!

aforementioned bright green shelves

aforementioned Petersik shelves

I suppose once we get bookshelves made and up on the wall, that will free up some baskets and tubs to put the Bug's toys in. Or maybe I'll look for some sort of stack of drawers, maybe with canvas bins or something of the sort. Who knows. All I know for sure as of now is that my little "mommy nook" looks fantastic and now I need to buy/find/make some sort of side table thing for my "mommy nook" so I have somewhere to put a book or glass of water during all those late night feedings. And now it's time for bed.

let there be light...

I was really hoping to have more things done in the nursery by today, but we decided to just chill this weekend. But the Hubs was productive! We ran out to Lowes yesterday and picked up the semi-mount pendant light that I've been eyeballing for the Bug's room. I love love LOVE all of the Allen + Roth lighting at Lowes and this baby was only 59 bucks, and came with the CFL bulb, too. Even though I really wish I had gotten more done in the room this weekend, I keep turning on the light and staring at it every time I walk by. So maybe I'll get more accomplished this week, or maybe I'll paint the paneling in the family room. Or maybe I just won't do anything... we'll just have to wait and see, won't we?

guinea pigs and busy bees...

I've been a slow-moving, but fairly busy bee lately. Obviously, I still haven't gotten very good at updating the blog like I should, but I've just been getting little tiny things accomplished, so I figured I would save them for a big update... like this one, duh. So here goes.

The baby's room is where the most progress has been made. In fact, I think it's safe to say that I'm almost finished in there. Of course, the Hubs still has lots of work to do in there, like putting up a new ceiling light fixture, putting a dimmer switch on said fixture, building custom bookshelves, and maybe a few little things, but we're nearing the end of projects in the Bug's room. (But of course, I'll be all, "On to the next one! Which room is next?!" when the Bug's room is finished) Let's just take a look at what we've gotten accomplished so far and what we have left to do:

• Paint walls
• Paint ceiling
• Paint trim
• Paint door and closet door
• Buy crib
• Buy dresser/changing table
• Buy glider and ottoman
• Find large area rug
• Make/buy mobile
• Make/buy "Mason"
• Make/buy wall art < more details to come about this soon... hint: tissue paper art
• Construct book shelves < more details about this soon, too
• Find cute organizing baskets
• Find hamper
• Make liner for hamper? < decided we didn't really one
• Buy/make curtains
• Line dresser drawers
• Refinish floors?
• Find new light fixture < found one tonight, now it's just a matter of running to Lowes and getting it
• Install dimmer on light switch < and we'll pick this up when we get the light
• Paint inside closet?
• Organize closet
• Find end table/nightstand for glider

As I mentioned earlier, I painted the trim and the doors white (you can see it in the pictures above), to match the white paneling out in the hallway and kitchen, and we simply love it! If you look at the "before" pictures of when the nursery was the office, it looks so much cleaner and brighter now with the lighter walls and that wonderful pop of crisp semi-gloss white on everything else. We went to Target last night and got a rug, and I must say, not only do that cats love it's shagginess, I love it too! Even though it's still a little stiff - it is brand new, by the way - it's a more plush kind of rug than the Flor tiles I was originally looking at; and I think it "warms up" the room a little bit, while still showing off our beautiful hardwood floors and being easy to vacuum. Oh! and we finally bought ordered a glider and ottoman to put in the corner; I cannot wait until it gets here! I sat in every single one on display on the sales floor at BRU and I did not want to get out of this one, made by Newco; it's the "Serenity" glider in "chocolate chenille"... and it's a little slice of Heaven on Earth, in my opinion. So whilst looking at the slew of photos above, just use your imagination and picture this delightfully cushy piece of furniture in lieu of the giant black futon.

The closet is still kind of a work in progress. I had my baby shower for the Hubs' side of the family two weeks ago, and the shower for my side of the family last week, so after finally getting just about everything put away, the closet looks like this, and we still have quite a bit more stuff we need to buy and store:

Also keep in mind that when - yes when, not if - WHEN I get back into my pre-preggo clothes (which I am dying to do, I really really miss my jeans. And I must get back into them, because I added it up and I own over 1200 dollars worth of American Eagle jeans and pants, but I digress) those two buckets of clothes on the floor to the left will no longer be there, which will make room for more storage solutions as he gets older and his collection of toys grows exponentially. And I'm thinking about rearranging some things and putting his convertible car seat on the top shelf, or maybe we'll just put it in the Hubs' car, since it fits newborns all the way to toddlers, we'll see. I decided to hang some of his clothes like nice button down shirts, overalls, and all of his sweaters and jackets; my OCD self  even got some cute little closet divider tabs to separate the different sizes of clothes. Once those buckets of my pre-preggo clothes are outta there, that will give me room to add a closet extender to get a second hanging bar. Instead of trying to screw a whole second rod into the wall itself, I figure adding one that hangs from the existing pole would make it easier to work around the hanging shelves on the right, without bunching them up and losing the bottom shelves. Said hanging organizer on the right holds all of his extra crib sheets, extra changing pad covers, multi-use pads (like sheet savers), flannel receiving blankets, burp cloths, and bibs. And for about 14 bucks from BRU, that was quite a steal for that much storage space. I'm still trying to work out where I want to keep his bath stuff... I'm thinking I might just clear off a spot on one of the towel shelves under the bathroom sink to put the Bug's towels and washcloths; I mean, he doesn't really have that many, and they don't take up that much room. The Petersik's over at Young House Love painted the inside of their daughter's closet and it was amazing how such a small little detail can totally change a room; I'm still toying with the idea of painting the inside of the closet, only because it means I would have to pull every single thing out of it, after spending weeks trying to figure out how to organize/fit all of it in there. So anyways, the closet is still a little bit of a question mark. I'm not sure if I am totally happy with it yet, because we still have so many little necessary things left to buy and things are going to be unpredictably different once the Bug actually gets here. Cause that's just how life goes with a newborn baby.

If you can remember far back enough to my little "sneak peek" at the end of my last post, I also got the paneling in the hallway painted. And might I add, it looks just fantastic! After seeing the white paneling continue so smoothly into the hallway was all it took for me to take a stab at repainting all of the trim in the house white... starting with baby's room. Yes, I used my unborn child's nursery as the guinea pig for this slightly intimidating project, but it totally paid off. The crisp white trim around the windows and doors, the baseboards, and the room and closet door all look wonderful. Like they were meant to be white from the beginning. The Hubs was a little leery of my taking on of this project, actually, I'm pretty sure he thought I was crazy for wanting to do what would turn into quite a hefty load of work, but he even admitted that it looked awesome. In fact, he said just the other night that he couldn't wait for me to get the paneling in the family room painted because it made everything look so clean and fresh. And it really does; the areas that now have white in lieu of oak wood trim, etc look so much lighter and airier, it brightens up the whole entire area. So even though I have the daunting task of repainting the trim in the rest of the house, I am thoroughly pleased with the results and cannot wait to see how it all looks when it's finished. But enough chit chat, here are the goods (I'll upload more pictures tomorrow when I can take them in better light, it's too dark to do it tonight... but for now, here's another "sneak peek" shot, please don't be mad at me)
 
Tomorrow I'm hoping to make progress with making some wall art out of tissue paper (God knows I've got plenty of extra tissue paper laying around, especially now after all these baby shower gifts) and maybe even getting somewhere with making a mobile to hang above the crib. And who knows, maybe I'll even surprise you with the book shelf plans... shoot, it's not really a surprise anymore, is it?

woot woot...

 That's right kids... my combo unit is in the house! (I realize that sounded way lame, but I just couldn't help myself). After a frustrating two weeks of thinking that it hasn't come in yet, I called today to be told that my order was canceled due to "lack of payment". Well, you little poop heads, I'm sitting here looking at the receipt, so I find that a little hard to believe. Then they go looking for it only to discover that not only has it been sitting back there for two weeks with my freaking name on it, they apparently have a second crib back there for me. I suppose if I were having twins that would help me out but there's definitely just one bug in there. So. Hubs picked it up today and we got it in the room. And yes, it's full of clothes already (a big thanks to our awesome family and friends who have given us hand me downs and "couldn't resist buying its")

And I finally got the pennant done with his middle name on there. I originally was going to embellish each of the letters (aside from the cute border stickers that are already on there) but after looking at them the past couple days, I think I like them just the way they are. Fun and bright and full of texture and pattern, but not too busy. I loves it.

what's in a name...

I'm back, after a spell of the "feeling crummies", and the new semester starting, I finally got the time and energy to work on something. I actually started painting the paneling in the hallway, and I'll give you a sneak peek:

How awesome is that hallway looking now?! But more on that later; on to more important things...

Like I was saying, I finally got the energy to work on the nursery some more (even though I am STILL waiting on my combo unit from BRU, don't even get me started, grrrr.....) and I think it has turned out pretty marvelous so far! I finally told my wacky indecisive brain to just shut up and decided on the colors and patterns for the bug's Name Project and got the "MASON" done last night. Well, not done done, there is still a lot of embellishment work that needs to go on those letters, but then I got another idea, so I got sidetracked. Here's the Mason, and I'm sorry they are crooked, I haven't actually finished tying them yet, they're just sort of loosely hung up there (though they do look kind of cute all skewed like that, I mean, they are in a little boy's room) Don't mind the cute little animal decals either, those are getting moved over by the crib for reasons you will discover later:

And then I got to thinking, I really really wanted to do some kind of pennant, whether it be fabric or paper, but I couldn't really pin down anything that I was totally in love with. That's when it came to me. His middle name. See, at first, before I got the idea of making his Name Project, I was just going to buy a custom vinyl lettering and the company I was eyeballing included both the first name AND the middle name. But then after changing my mind (for the umpteenth time) I figured "Alexander" was too many letters to have each one on a 12x12 chipboard and fit it on the wall, and I nixed the "Alexander" thing. But anyways, back to when it hit me. If I had enough twine left over after hanging his first name, I could make an adorable little pennant garland and put his middle name on that! Fabulous idea! So once I pinned down how big they should be, I made a little stencil of sorts and cut some triangles out of some white paper I had laying around, just to play with first, before I started cutting into my cute scrapbook paper... and here's how it looks so far:

And yes, I realize that's not the world's best picture and you can't really see the pennants, I took that one at about 11 pm, I don't have the best lighting in that room right now, since it's still pretty much empty, and the little animal decals completely throw off the balance of his first name and middle name. But after I took this picture, I started working on the colors and patterns for the pennants and boy, do they look so cute! Especially after moving the decals and just having the pennants hanging against the white of the wall... it's pretty awesome, if I do say so myself. I don't have the letters glued down to the pennants yet, so stay tuned for another update when I get those finished.

And next up on the nursery to do list? I need to start looking for curtains (or make them, who knows at this point) and I need to make a mobile. I was going to just buy the cute little turtle one that matches his bedding, but it's like 40 dollars and from what I hear (and can see from pictures of it) once the bug is in his crib, he will only be able to see the underside of the turtle. And if I'm going to have to take the time to deconstruct and reconstruct a mobile just to give the bug some visual stimulation, I might as well just make exactly what I want. And I'm also thinking of making a little something that will hang over his changing table to keep him sort of distracted... that's a good game plan, no? So here's my ideas so far, all courtesy of Pinterest:

This one is actually this etsy listing. How cute are those stars...

...and this cute little circle one...

...and oh my, how easy it would be to make one of these with little turtles instead on owls!

So needless to say, stay tuned... I've got a lot of little projects up my sleeve, and after realizing that I'm already at the beginning of my 8th month of pregnancy, I feel like I'm running out of time!