Weekend of Labor

No. I was not in labor, nor was I in the hospital for anything preterm labor related. But it was Labor Day weekend and all, and although I had Monday off from my job, the work was never ending.

My very pregnant self (T minus 9 weeks!) and D worked around the house ALL WEEKEND. No rest for the weary. We made at least two trips to the local home improvement store (because we can never get everything we need all at once) and then went out to dinner twice. The rest of the weekend was spent indoors slaving away on self-imposed projects. And oh, it would have been a beautiful weekend to have been outside.

Anyway...we were quite successful in completing our project lists and although I am still freaking out about everything we have left to do before we bring a baby home, we are both happy with the progress we made. AND we didn't kill each other! We worked at home together, on home improvement projects no less, and we didn't kill each other or file for divorce! We have truly matured.

Here are the things we have checked off our project list:

• Paint nursery - CHECK
• Pull carpet up in family room - CHECK
• Lay tile in basement - CHECK
• Clean laundry room - half check: all the laundry is done (except for the clothes and bath towels from the weekend) but I haven't organized the boxes yet and the tile for the foyer still lives in there
• Fold and put away all clean laundry - CHECK All eight (8) baskets full of clothes
• Organize closets - CHECK

We still have a lot left to do, but once the carpeting is installed (we should hear from them sometime this week) the rest of the list isn't urgent. At least I don't think it's urgent right now--I might feel differently tomorrow, or in 15 minutes.

And as I mentioned above, we also went out to dinner twice (one involving the most delectable of all desserts), both times with my parents. It was their 35th anniversary yesterday and we tried to take them out for dinner on Sunday, but they insisted on paying and then invited us out to dinner again last night and insisted on paying again. We obviously need to sharpen up on our 'grab the check' skills; but they did tell us to put that money towards baby items, so I guess it all works out. (?)

Oh, and D also made me scrambled eggs with ham and cheese on both Sunday and Monday. Love.

I hope you all had lovely weekends and found time to RELAX!

Nesting And Such

I'm just over 28 weeks pregnant (less than 12 weeks to go!)--seems like the perfect time to rip our house apart, doesn't it?

We've known for a long time that once we were expecting we would need to re-carpet the (former wedding room turned dog kennel) nursery and decided it would be the perfect time to also re-carpet our bedroom. We also knew that with two large dogs and a muddy/sandy backyard, the longer we waited the cleaner the carpet would ultimately be for BP08's homecoming.

Well, now it's time. We picked out carpeting for our bedroom and Audrey's room last week. After much conversation and budget review (and finding AWESOME top of the line carpeting at a great price) we decided to also re-carpet the family room in the basement. But along with that project comes other projects.

We always wanted to tile the 'entry' to the family room as it is directly off the stairs from our foyer and we traipse up and down those stairs and in and out of the bowling closet and laundry room with our shoes on most of the time. We would like to have an easy clean surface because of this. We decided long ago that we would tile that area at the same time we re-carpeted the family room. Awesome--that time is NOW. Plus, we already have tile in the foyer and we want the tile to match. (The existing foyer tile is UG-LY.) OK, add that to the list. And we want heated tile. I mean, if we're going to tile in this day and age, it might as well make use of current technology/modern conveniences, right? (Oh, and D can get the heating elements at discount.) Besides, we're already ripping up the carpeting and existing tile, so putting down the heat coils won't be that much more work when laying tile. Add that to the list too.

But what about the other projects that (kind of) need to get done before all of this carpeting and tile laying and oh yeah, BRINGING HOME THE BABY happens? The walls in the once dog kennel room need to be repainted. (We picked out Behr Song of Summer.) They also need to be patched as apparently the dogs thought they could dig out and had they been successful it would have been bad since the room is on the second floor. I also started painting our nasty dark baseboards on the first floor and need to finish that up in nursery and in our bedroom (once the carpeting is removed).

Over the weekend we washed walls in the nursery, hallways and basement. That is actually quite a work out! I also worked on clearing out the laundry room to make way for our line-drying set up for clothing and cloth diapers. D cleaned out the garage and filled up our huge garbage can with crap and dumped another load off at BIL's house. He also started pulling up carpeting in the basement as we will add that to our trash for weeks to come.

My mom asked what she could do to be helpful as we work on the house and prepare for the baby and I think my answer kind of shocked her. I asked if she could come over to deep clean our bathroom and kitchen since the strong cleaners make me sick (I've been keeping up with soap & water and Method on occasion, but I'd love to have the surfaces bleached and scrubbed). I also requested that she and my dad pull the refrigerator and oven away from the wall to clean behind them and around them as things seem to spill between the countertops and appliances. They are planning to come over a Saturday in September when I have to work to get this done. Is it weird that I'm excited about it?

Oh, and more exciting than cleaning and ordering carpet and painting and buying tile for a DIY job--we FINALLY ordered our bed frame that my parents bought us for Christmas. The delivery time should be perfect as we'll only need to take apart our Sleep Number once for both the carpeting and bed frame set up.

I think we have our work cut out for us over the next 12 weeks. And after that (or maybe before that) we'll have a BABY! Even with all of this housework, we ain't seen nothing yet when it comes to the work involved for the rest of our lives!