dressed for success

the wife and i were recently in meijers getting a few things and, as has been happening more and more recently, diana just 'happened' to find herself in the baby clothes section! 'what? how did we get here? oh well, guess we better check it out...' its her new favorite pastime! she mostly goes around and giggles at all the tiny shoes and socks... usually i humor her and let her get one item, but this time i spotted something that i knew our little boy needed. check it out here!

down to the last sock

its never a fun job, but somebody has to do it! we had worked our way down to the bottom of the drawers and now the last of our clothes were worn and dirty! we held out for as long as we could, but it was finally time: its laundry day. i packed up the four or five clothes baskets, changed the sheets, grabbed the towels, and headed off to the laundry mat for a much needed washing. i dont know why we wait so long- it just makes it more annoying. i think i did about eight loads (a new record for our household!). diana came over when she got out of work but i was already hip-deep in washing, so she headed back to the house and took the dog for his daily walk. one nice part about doing laundry is that i get a chance to just sit and read my book for a while. well, at least until the crazies at the laundry mat decide that they are your new best friend and want to talk your ear off about nothing! diana is always pestered by people there, i think she just looks like she wants to chat (which she doesnt), but for the most part they tend to leave me alone, thankfully!

kitchen handled

it took a while, but the kitchen cabinets are finally done! while diana was away recently i repainted the cabinets so that they all matched. the problem now was that the hinges and handles didn't match. i had gotten a bunch of them when i got the paint, but soon realized that the hinges were not going to fit the holes and the handles didn't match. oops. well, diana and i finally got around to picking up the right ones we needed and the handles that she liked. now, once and for all, our little kitchen looks pretty good! no more mix and match hodgepodge for us- now we're fancy!

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lion art

as diana and i wandered through the framed artwork at old time pottery, we came across this little gem. it left me speechless. i knew i couldn't keep this wonder all to myself, so here it is for your enjoyment. you're welcome.

shelf the idea

there is a lot involved in turning an office into a nursery! first, i had to get rid of all the extra stuff (or as diana thinks of it: junk) out of there. goodbye shelves full of movies! goodbye transformers! goodbye random knicknacks i've accumulated over the years! its hard to pack up all that stuff or throw it out, but there's a pretty big change happening soon, so i had to make peace with it. i got some cd boxes and sleeves for all the movies and packed up all the dvd cases, sending them to the shed. one of the requirements i made diana agree to before i packed up the movie collection was that one day, when we get a real sized house, she would allow me to bring them back inside and put them back on shelves. reluctantly she agreed (thankfully!). as we were looking around the newly empty room we realized that we would not have enough shelf space for all the things that a child requires! so, i got to work and came up with this solution: five adjustable shelves on the wall, with room for more if necessary. perfect! except now diana thinks that we need to have a bunch of matching baskets to fill them all up. yeesh!

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crib in pieces

a year or two ago, my sister and brother in law gave us their old crib. the last of their three kids had outgrown it and they didn't really want to throw it out! well, we were more than happy- incredibly thankful even- to take their old cast-offs! the problem though, was that over the past two years i had misplaced the nuts and bolts that came with it. oops! now that diana and i are going to need the crib, i had to try and fix that problem. i thought for sure i would come across the bag of hardware when i cleaned up the office or when i cleaned up the shed, but unfortunately they never showed up. time for plan B: i packed up a couple of pieces of the crib and headed on over to home depot! i scavenged through the bolts and washers and nuts and screws for hours finding just the right ones to fit. it took forever to find the bits that fix just right, like a puzzle with missing pieces! i cracked the code when i realized that the parts needed were metric, not standard. i got all the parts i needed and diana and i spent the night assembling the crib (which is not very easy when you don't have any directions...). now that its all put together, the room is really starting to look like a nursery!

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broken smiles

dang, that's two cameras in less than one year! it turns out that the camera that had been acting funny this summer finally called it quits. that camera, though not a top of the line model by any means, was a good replacement for the one that had been broken this past spring. i'm almost hesitant to get another one- who knows how long that would last! i'm sure i could just use the camera on my phone instead, its handier than lugging around an extra camera anyway. but with a baby coming i'm sure we should have a real camera so we can take good quality photos and videos, right? maybe that's something that will have to go on the baby registry...

my desk experiment

in the process of cleaning out the office we realized that we had a computer desk that we no longer needed- it was just in the way! but then the question arose: how do we get rid of it? i had an interesting idea. in the past, when we wanted to get rid of something we would simply put it by the curb and before we knew it it would be gone. i was always curious how long the different items lasted before they were taken away. with my little experiment, this time i was going to find out! so i carried the cheap bulsa wood desk out to the curb and put a 'free' sign on it. i took a look at the clock: 1:18pm. and then i waited... i peered out there every five to ten minutes to see if it had gone yet. i had high hopes that it would be gone quickly, but i also feared that there wasnt much traffic on our road and so my little experiment might not yield that impressive of results. well, it didnt take long, by 2:01pm it was gone! unfortunately no matter how hard i tried, i was not able to see the mysterious stranger who is now one desk richer. oh well, i was still pretty impressed with how fast it was gone, and happy to know that someone was going to get some use out of it!

a welcoming B

pretty inviting, huh? the wife and i recently wandered around old time pottery for a couple hours and found some fun little house things. (she is definitely in her 'nesting' stage...) she was looking for anything she could find for the baby's room, and i was busy checking out everything at the store. i came across this little gem: a doormat with our initial on it! i haven't had a door mat around here for years, but i thought it was pretty cool and cheap, so we now have a new welcoming mat at our front door. guests welcome!

she's back

finally, after all those days of boredom, my lovely bride returned to me! she had gone on a surprise visit to florida with a few friends. miranda's mom had planned to take her to go to florida and she secretly invited diana, barbara, and lissa as a surprise! all went well and miranda was totally amazed that they all got to come. the plan was to visit the harry potter amusement park, but due to the weather, diana and the girls werent able to go during their short visit. fortunately miranda and her mom, who were staying longer than the girls, were able to go the next day. good for them, but diana was a little disappointed. anyway, i was thrilled to finally have my beautiful wife back! i tell you what, five days alone gets pretty lonely without her around. and that dog of ours is not much fun when he's missing his mommy! like a good husband i welcomed her back with flowers, a cleaned up extra bedroom, and painted cabinets. she was very pleased, mostly by the flowers...

seven year repaint

another project i had planned to do while the wife was away was the cabinets. years ago, when i first bought this place, i had big plans to repaint everything and make it look really nice. well, i did repaint a lot of things: the living room, the kitchen, the bathroom. i even painted the cabinets. the only problem was that i painted the top cabinets and never quite got around to painting the bottom cabinets. oops. so for the past six or seven years i have had one set of cabinets that were white, and another set that were some sort of gross faded yellowy kind of color. over time i just got used to it and hardly noticed anymore! turns out, its been bugging diana ever since we got married! we picked up some paint and stuff to fix it a month or so ago, but then realized that we really shouldnt have paint fumes around a pregnant person! so i figured i would take care of it while she was away and that way the fumes would be gone by the time she got back. it worked pretty well, got the bottom cabinets looking the proper color, put a fresh coat on the top ones too. i guess i didnt plan it out very well because i realized that i didnt have the correct hardware (hinges and handles and stuff), so i wasnt able to put the cabinet doors back on before she got home. even with out the doors thought, it still looked a ton better than it had!

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office no more

with diana going to florida with a couple girlfriends for the long weekend, i knew i needed to make some progress on house work while she was gone. the biggest project i had while she was gone was to clean up the office. the whole room needed to be gutted and transformed. it was no longer going to be an office- now its going to be a nursery! that takes a lot of work though, especially considering what shape the place was currently in... well, i gathered up some empty boxes and got to work. i knew everything needed to be put out in the shed, almost nothing that is in there gets to stay! it took a couple of busy afternoons and a whole lot of trips back and forth to the shed, but the room really started to take shape! the real bother was that i needed to clean out the shed even before i got to work on the office. with all the new junk getting thrown in there i needed to play box tetris to find some room for all of it out there. the time went pretty quickly because i listened to a bunch of podcasts (yes, i am that nerdy) on my mp3 player while i worked. i think the wife will be quite pleased when she gets home and sees the huge transformation from hoarder to clean!

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boy, what a meal!

after we finished with the ultrasound, i still couldnt wipe the huge grin off my face!  we were both really hungry, so we decided to go out for dinner.  diana suggested that we go eat at leona's restaurant.  i had taken her there once before while we were dating and she always remembered it as being so romantic.  in honor of the day's exciting events, we headed over there.  i dont know if it was because of our thrilled mood or what, but that may have been the best food i've eaten in years!  we got some calamari, bread, salad, and lasagna.  we were so busy eating and talking about our future and the excitement of the baby news that we didn't even realize that we had been there for over two hours!  finally we wrapped it up- not because we were done talking, but because we wanted to get home and start dreaming up plans for the nursery!

barky

before going to the ultrasound place, Diana and i checked out their website.  one of the things that they offer there is a stuffed animal with a recording of your baby's heart.  what?!?  that is just too awesome to pass up!  i got really excited about it and stated that we definitely needed to get one.  i reasoned that we needed it to be able to share the heartbeat with our parents since they live so far away and wouldn't be able to come for an ultrasound, but in reality- i just think its really cool!  of the animal selection they had there, we both decided that we liked the husky dog.  ever since then i have been squeezing him to hear our little guy's heartbeat several times a day- i am one proud daddy!  as someone who needs to name everything, i tried to find the perfect name for this stuffed animal and decided on calling him 'barky'.  the name makes sense since its a dog, but i gave him that name because, knowing our baby is going to be a boy, called this little animal 'baby marky'- or barky!  i know, i know, Diana rolled her eyes at that one too...
(hear barky's recording of the heartbeat here!)

its (going to be) a boy!

recently diana and i went in to the doctor to hear the heartbeat of our little baby. while there we asked how long it would be till we got to have an ultrasound and find out the gender of our baby. not until 22 weeks, she said. we were only fifteen weeks along by then. she did tell us about a place called goldenview where we could go and get an early ultrasound for pretty inexpensive and find out now. not being the patient type, we opted for that. within days we had an appointment! we drove up to goldenview (its in north chicago, so it was about an hour long trip) and eagerly awaited our appointment time. the whole way up we talked about baby stuff- what we would do if it was a boy or a girl, narrowed down some names, and were just generally giddy to find out what lay ahead for us! we got there and got diana ready for the ultrasound.  the nurse put that cold goop on her belly and within about half a second of putting the machine on her she asked 'so, do you want to know what you are having?'  hmm, it she knew that quickly then there is only one option:  we are having a boy!!!  immediately i became super giddy- diana started laughing because i was grinning ear to ear!  i would have been super excited either way, i think just knowing the gender finally made it real- we are actually going to have a baby!
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almost done

it was back to south bend with me for another round of finishing touches at the rental property that diana's mom and david have been fixing up. now with all the amazing cabinetry in the kitchen, david and i installed the microwave and got it working just right. we build some edging around the master shower, and i even installed a toilet! this place is certainly looking good. i'm sure david will have it done and rented in no time! its been fun to work on it over the summer and turn this old house into a beautiful new home!

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