Progress Report

The nursery is painted! The crib is put together! The rickety old black bookcase is now a nice jade green! This was the week for projects, and they continue on. There are pictures to be hung, thrift stores and fabric stores to be scavenged (for frames, fabric for curtains, etc), crib mattresses to be bought, and so it continues.

Project evidence:

Testing the grays....

Two coats of primer and two coats of paint later....a nice soothing, light gray.

The crib! Note the cats' stuffed bunny underneath...

Battered black bookcase becomes...

Pretty green bookcase!

Ugly $2.50 Goodwill elephant....

Nice new elephant:

Check out the Baby Bjorn we picked up at Boomerang Children's Consignment for $30! J is all ready to wear baby around :).

Other than projects I've been barrelling through John Steinbeck's East of Eden, which J has had on his nightstand for approximately eight months with the intention of reading. He says that if he can "get through that, I can get through anything." Sort of like a confidence boosting read. To me that's like saying, "Oh, I'm just going to run this marathon and then I'll train for the 10k." So I moved the book to my side of the bed and have had trouble putting it down ever since. I read it aloud to baby when J's not home, I'd cried by page 32, I constantly rave about it to J (who then told me he was taking it back - I figure my finishing it first is the best way to motivate him to read it). I love Michael Crichton, but reading two M.C. books in a row and then switching to Steinbeck was a huge reminder of how powerful and heartbreakingly beautiful great literature can be...a healthy dose is needed every now and then.

Weekend Update

So the nursery still looks like this:

Because I was a bit busy looking at/floating in this all weekend:

And watching these dive for fish:



It's a hard life here in Florida. 

29 Weeks

I'm going to try and post more often; I know how frustrating it is when blogs aren't frequently updated. I will not make any promises though, because more frustrating than infrequent posting is promises that aren't kept. So I'll try.

In my defense, I was in Pompano off and on for a week with my wonderful Virginia and North Carolina family (and Miami and Naples family!) and then J was home and I really try to limit how much time I spend on the computer when he's here.

Today I (finally) finished priming the nursery/guest room in the hopes that this weekend we can (finally) get it painted and start arranging things (namely, put the crib together - exciting!). J made a little bit of progress organizing his boxes of misc. stuff, but as you will see in this picture there is still some work to be done there. Progress is being made, though, I promise! Get ready for picture overload:

View of nursery from the closets:

Nursery from the doorway:

 Nursery from the corner (hi, Lucy!):

Today (Thursday) also marks my 29th week of pregnancy. Because we are the worst prospective parents photojournalists ever this pregnancy has been woefully undocumented...but I'm hoping to change that now. It's never too late to start, right? Plus, I know when you have babies you're supposed to take tons of pictures of them so I need to get in the habit of seeing the world through that little black device. I truly believe that some people are born to document our lives through pictures and that some of us can forget that cameras exist, even when they're hanging from our wrist. Or maybe I've just been lucky enough to be related to/friends with the first kind of people so I've just gotten away with being photo lazy. That's probably it. Anyway, I give you 29 weeks:

Yes, I am huge. Yesterday I was writing a note and the baby actually kicked so hard he messed up my writing! Because of course the belly is now a tray table. Yikes.

Old Cake

Today I ate the last piece of our wedding cake. When J and I cut into the top layer of our cake last week, which had been sitting frozen for the past year in my in-law's freezer and then hauled through three airports and two flights from Virginia, we were hesitant, to say the least. J even said, "I don't think this is supposed to be good. I think you just sort of suffer through a bit and then toss it." Two pieces of cake (for him) later, we were singing the praises of the ladies who worked so hard to create a carrot cake that tastes like it was made yesterday...over a year ago. It even lasted a week in the fridge! I can honestly say that I did not eat the whole thing - the cake consuming was split pretty much 50/50, no small feat for my husband who said the other day, "Is this brown rice? You eat rice with potatoes??" :). Yes, J. Welcome to my world of carbs.

Thanks again to everyone who worked so hard to make our wedding amazing. It occurred to me today that even the baby got to have some of the wedding cake, in utero though it may be. Nifty.

I love lists

Favorite things...

J being home. Even the kitties seem happier when he's here.

Afternoon thunderstorms. South Florida has been in an extreme drought since long before we moved here but the past few days have seen good, drenching rains. For the first time the pond in our community has water! The cranes, egrets and cormorants are out as soon as the rains stop, happily picking their way along the edges of the waterways*. I'm just waiting for the day it gets all Discovery Channel off my back patio and one of these poor birds gets snapped by an alligator in the canal...it's coming, mark my words. Yikes.

(*Thanks, Mom, without you I wouldn't know the difference between a crane and egret, much less that there are such things as cormorants.)

Taking care of business. It feels good to put your affairs in order, yes? Even if it means saying bye bye to the monies. Such is life.

Our midwife. She is one of the most peaceful persons I've ever met...there's no other way to describe her.

Baby is due on Rosh Hashana! How appropriate considering we're naming him Judah Adlai Mateo Abraham Harper Kahlil. At least half of those names are Hebrew in origin.

Mangoes. Strawberries. Spinach. Butternut squash. Yum. Yesterday, as I was cooking dinner, I was hit with the worst hunger pains. It was so crazy. One second it was, "La dee da, cooking dinner," the next my body was like, "FOOD FEED FOOD TO ME NOOOWWW." After I was all, "What the...what is this feeling...what...oh my GOD!" I literally grabbed for the nearest foodstuff that wasn't boiling or didn't involve peeling...thank God for saltine crackers. I nearly died, people.

The Perfect Pregnancy Workout DVD. I fell off this wagon for a good, oh, two months, but we are back on it! And feeling better and stronger than ever.

Pinterest, my ongoing obsession. If you're a member, you know what I'm talking about. If you don't, please join so I can follow you and together we can pin to our hearts' content. Amen.

My first post would be about my cat

I have a little shadow that goes in and out with me,
And what can be the use of him is more than I can see.
He is very, very like me from the heels up to the head;
And I see him jump before me, when I jump into my bed... When I was little one of my favorite books was Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child's Garden of Verses, sweet, imaginative poems for children. It didn't hurt that my copy was beautifully illustrated...I can still see those soft, pastel images in my mind. Anyway, this poem, "My Shadow," was one of my favorites and has popped into my mind at least once a day over the past week as I've discovered that I do indeed have a little shadow...one evil kitty named Silas: (No red eye removal needed...that's just his true nature showing) I spend a great deal of time at home. Mostly because I don't have a job (soul-searching continues), it's a billion degrees and humid here in Florida, and well, I love our home and have a list of projects I'm working on to get it ready for baby/make it ours. You would think the cats would get bored with me but it seems Silas has made it his mission to be at my side at all hours of the day. This is sweet, most of the time, but often leads to mischief and mayhem when I'm doing things I'd rather he not be around for. These include: sweeping (piles of dirt! Fun!), using the bathroom (fascinating, apparently, invasion of privacy, definitely), watering houseplants (we're already down one potted bamboo - it tasted too good and was too much fun to knock over onto the ceramic tile and shatter into a billion pieces), and eating (cat has NO table manners...what's mine is his, so he thinks). Justin asked me the other day if I talk to the baby when he's not around. I said, "Well, I yell at Silas." Uh. Not good. All this baby hears half the week is me yelling at the cat? So in an effort to be kinder to the cat, and therefore the baby, I've been trying to speak more words of affirmation...ok, so I'm just talking to the cat, but...I think it's working. I feel like as a whole we (Silas, Lucy, baby and me) are happier and less destruction is being wrought on the house. Of course, I haven't replaced the bamboo plant. When it comes to this bad kitty, live plants seem to be the ultimate test of good behavior.