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!

Wife Cold

As of today you are 17 weeks and 3 days old! That means you are now at least the size of an onion! It's fitting that your week as an onion should have begun with such stinky circumstances, since, well, onions stink.

This weekend, your Mother got a cold, and that stunk for everyone (almost as much as a giant onion).

On Friday afternoon she wasn't looking too good and by Friday night she took a turn for the worse.

Despite drinking lots of tea and put Mentholatum on her feet, your Mom woke up Saturday morning (actually, it was closer to afternoon) with a full blown cold:

Drainage, Sore Throat, Achy Ears, M's turning into B's (you know like saying "Bobby" instead of "Mommy"), Exhausted, Miserable, Stuffed Up Nose, Headache and a wonderful Cough!

The only problem is, when you're pregnant you can't take the same medicines you'd usually use to kick a cold's butt. After a call to the doctor, we started your Mom on a healthy diet of Mucinex and Acetemeniphen. (NO Ibuprofen for preggo-ladies!)

But, medicine alone can't cure a cold. So, your Dad played nurse all day Saturday and took a wholistic approach to making your Mom feel better.

By the end of Sunday afternoon, you and your Mom had:

• spent over 36 uniterrupted hours indoors


• eaten approximately 64 ounces of Egg Drop soup


• drank 3 bottles of Gatorade (blue, yellow and orange!)


• used 80 tissues (an entire box)


• drank 7 cups of decaffeinated tea and four cups of warm apple juice


• Used at least 3 Breath-right strips


• Put 10 olive-oil soaked cotton balls in her ears (backwoods medicine)


• Breathed in 3 full containers of Humidified Air Water

I also have to tell you that you suffered a significant exposure to a film genre called "Chick Flicks" on Saturday.

Back-to-Back-to-Back, your Mom watched her favorite movies, and you had a front-row seat some of the best make-Holly-feel-better movies out there:

"Ever After," "The Princess Bride" and "Shakespeare in Love"

Your First Chick Flick Marathon. Hopefully your last? (Note: I approve of most of these movies for repeated viewing...just not one that rhymes with "shmever shmafter")

The good news is that in a genre that contains some of the worst movies of all time, you managed to have a mother who likes some of the best of them. That is to say, I mostly approve of the movies you watched, despite them definitely being "Chick Flicks." But Drew Barrymore still kind of talks funny (you'll see what I mean).

But, the good news is that you and your Mother survived! By Sunday morning your Mom was feeling markedly better. See, all that medicine and loving care and MSG worked! Either that or it was a 48-hour bug and our actions had no effect, and you suffered through 7 hours of Chick flick for nothing.

Even though our weekend was ostensibly stinky as an onion, your Mom and you and I did get to spend a lot of time together and talk about you and your nursery and your name and registering for all the things you'll need. So, all in all, despite the living room turning into a makeshift sick ward, it wound up being a pretty nice weekend: unless you were once a tree that was turned into tissues. In that case, this weekend blew.