The Lion, The Wardrobe (no Witch)

December 9. Winter's definitely descended upon Dallas. Normally at this time of year it is still light-jacket weather (50s), but this morning it was mid-20s with a windchill of 11 degrees! This must sound ridiculously cold to you, seeing as how you're used to a cozy 98.7 around-the-clock.


But with winter weather, comes the winter wardrobe. Unfortunately, though, your Mom's winter pea coat, which usually envelops her, and could do so twice over, hardly buttons around her belly. It is dangerously close to what your Pops coined as the forced-casual look.

In fact, over the weekend your Mother postulated that she might have one more week before the jacket simply would not close around her. At that point, though, I will donate my jacket to the cause. By the time she outgrows that, we hope it will be Spring though.

But not to worry, we'll keep the bump (that's you) nice and warm and cozy.

You'll also be warm and cozy in your nursery too. And now that the basics of the nursery are down, we're talking decorations.

Your Mom wants to decorate your nursery (or at least one wall of it ) with illustrations of animals from Classic children's books.


As part of our continuing effort to pre-natally communicate with you daily, we were reading Shel Silverstein's "Lafcadio: The Lion Who Shot Back" out loud to you last night. It was a good book. When you understand English we'll read it to you again.

But, due to this reading, Lafcadio made the list of creatures in your nursery!

After we read, we brainstormed about other characters for your nursery, and here's who else you may be seeing:

George, Curious.Lion, Cowardly.Manic Depressive Donkey

Crocodile, Lyle, Lyle

Caterpillar, Hungry, Hungry

Brown Bear, Brown BearBabarSylvester (of the Magic Pebble Situation)And the Petit Prince's Fox

...but that's just to name a few.

How is this all going to work together in a cohesive design? I have no idea. That's not my department. But I do know that you're going to love your nursery (or at least we will), and that you'll be sound and snug in your new home. In fact, I'm going to go ahead and promise you that you'll be even more snug than your mother's winter jacket!

Making Room

Seeing as we're 19 weeks along (which means you're about 21 weeks away from coming out here to meet everyone), we've seriously been making room for you! But getting all the pieces to fall into place has been pretty tricky!

And the ground-breaking ceremony all relied on us finding a new home for one piece of furniture.

You see, the dining room is going to be your nursery, so we needed to clear out the dining room closet to make room for storing your belongings. But, my bass lived in there, so we needed to find a new place for that. The only spot it would fit was the front hall coat closet, but then we needed a coat closet. So, we decided to convert the decorative under-the-stairs nook into a coat closet. But the piece of furniture that lived in that nook needed to go before any of this could happen! Finally, the keystone was removed (we gave it to BJ and Kari to decorate their guest bedroom), and the nursery project could begin!

This is what I look like when I do house repair. Except I have bigger muscles and greener overalls.

So, here's a sample of the fun we've been having over the past week:

• Coat closet converted into bass closet
• Nook converted into coat closet

It may look like I'm playing with Toby, but who plays with a dog with a drill in their other hand?

• Doors mounted on coat closet (thanks to a lot of help from expert carpenter, Nannah Joon)

Take that, Nook! You're a closet now!

• Decorative Bass moved from entry way
• Buffet (and record player stand) moved from kitchen area to entry way
• Decorative Bass moved to bedroom
• Dining table moved to kitchen area
• Book shelves constructed
  

And, blammo- you've got yourself room for a baby! We're well on the way to an awesome nursery!

Uncle Joe, Nannah Joon and your cousins Devon and Jeanessa playing Uno in your nursery when it was a dining room


And now look at it! It's really starting to look like your nursery in there!

The hardest part about creating all this new storage space is to not fill it up immediately. Even though you're just gonna be a teeny tiny baby, you come with a lot of hardware; so we're gonna need a lot of space to store it!

And even though we've always had emotional room for you, now we have physical room for you too! And you even have your own physical room!

Speaking of making room, your Mom is certainly doing a lot of room making too. Her belly continues to grow and grow! In fact, her belly is growing so much that she's out of pants again (it's too cold to wear her maternity capri pants). So, on Sunday we went off to Target to buy her new pants. Instead of the more expensive maternity wear, she decided to try and buy a regular pair of jeans, just a few sizes up. Dejected, she walked out of the dressing room: they did not fit! The ones that fit her waist are too long or too big for the legs, the ones that fit her height are far too small for her belly! And the sundress she tried on looked like a Muumuu. That probably didn't help matters much.

Seriously, who invented these?

But, ever resourceful, your Mom decided to make her own drawstring pants.

Pants or no, though, your Mom continues to make room for you! Last night alone she had a bowl of broccoli cheese soup, a bowl of ice cream, (Moolenium Crunch again), two pieces of buttered toast and...right before bed, she hit the fridge again for some dried fruit!

At this rate, there's going to be plenty of room for you!