29 weeks

Only one more week and we'll be 3/4 of the way through! Baby G is doing great, moving and putting on weight. We did some math the other day: Baby G weighs about 3 pounds at 30wks but the average baby now is around 8 pounds at birth. That means baby G should gain about 5 pounds in 10wks. Folks, that is 1/2 a pound a week from here on out. I guess that means if the belly looks like it's exploding then I'm doing my job ;)



Your baby now weighs about 2 1/2 pounds (like a butternut squash) and is a tad over 15 inches long from head to heel. His muscles and lungs are continuing to mature, and his head is growing bigger to make room for his developing brain. To meet his increasing nutritional demands, you'll need plenty of protein, vitamins C, folic acid, and iron. And because his bones are soaking up lots of calcium, be sure to drink your milk (or find another good source of calcium, such as cheese, yogurt, or enriched orange juice). This trimester, about 250 milligrams of calcium are deposited in your baby's hardening skeleton each day.

Now everyone's favorite part, the belly shots:

I sorta like the last one best, not only do those shorts fit better now then when we painted the outside of the house but it looks like I have consealed a ball under that shirt.

I guess this gives you a hint as to how the nursery is coming along...we bought the Elfa system on Friday so we could get the closet in order. Once I had that system in my hot little hands I simply couldn't wait to get it in. I had the closet cleared out before Dominic even swapped the SUV for a car, about 15min. We filled holes and primed the whole thing that evening and the following morning when Dominic worked I painted the final coat (it's the same as both bedrooms in our house, imperfect pearl). The system is pretty easy to install and since we've done one before we made quick work of this one. I have a few of our dressier things and some clothes that are too big for us in there now but I'm going to do a little more purging before it all goes back in. Overall I'm thrilled with the results. Oh and the baskets at the bottom are holding toys and blankets and I intend to use them mainly for toy storage since they're at a great level for baby to reach! Total for the closet system, baskets and paint $400.

The walls were filthy

And the new tele came in handy!

Painted and ready to install the new system

team work :)

It's not all back in yet but not everything is going back in so I'm only putting those things that are CERTAINLY staying back for now.

a lazy weekend, with some work of course

It's been a rather slow weekend, with my being on call and all, but we did manage to get a few things done. The weather on Saturday was beatiful, mid 70's, and we spent a great part of the day just lounging out in the back yard in our new chairs. We purchased a stand for the umbrella I got on clearance at Pottery Barn last year and it's up and providing plenty of shade! We are still planning on making it out to another restoration hardware sale to look for the ottomans that match our chairs because we just love them so much.

The one project we tackled this weekend was a small one in the garage. We purchased more of the ELFA system and got to work fixing up this corner which houses the garden tools we use most often. They were just resting on the floor and fell over so often that it was a huge pain. I forgot to get a before of them in their precarious state but I'm sure you can imagine.

While we had the cars out we threw out a few things from recent projects that we weren't sure we could part with at the time. Not that wire shelving though, I'm still considering rearranging the office closet when we are expecting.

Here's the amazing after. The handles are just pushed into the holders and the ladder is hung on a special bracket secured in the stud. Dominic is really getting the hang of that cordless drill if I do say so myself. We have more for the long wall over by where Dominic parks but that will have to wait another day, by this point we earned a bit of relaxation.

For the record, I despise that Hitachi box in front of the door but we don't have any other safe place for the compound miter saw and with the new set up it's easily pushed over by the tools when we need the access to the back yard.

A European weekend

It all began with some empty space in my new office. Blanca and I needed a place to showcase our wonderful babies and shove those to-dos. A bulletin board was just too drab and Irene decided to turn the 2 we had, one large and one small, into FRENCH bulletin boards. I'm sure they're not really french, but that's the name some marketer gave them and it stuck. I happened to have several unused bulletin boards of my own under the bed stowed away for safe keeping. After a quick trip to Joanne's I put together our new boards...just lovely I think! Then, Saturday night we had an improptu dinner, our tour of ITALY. The idea for cheese, crackers, grapes and wine came after we went to O'Brien's looking for Tahini sauce. They have such a great selection of the above that we simply couldn't resist. Check out that dinner. It might not look like much but we were stuffed.

The following morning we were back in France and having crepes. Back when I was a kid we always had big pancakes, which really are slightly thick crepes. I had been craving them and Dominic had yet to perfect the recipe so we decided to just wing it with a crepe recipe....absolutely delish!

While awaiting the crepes Dominic took this trio of portraits of me and eclair

It seems like Eclair might not have had as good of a time with the portrait session as I did ;)

We did manage to get a bit of work done during our tour. The trim around the fireplace is afixed

The trim got nailed up.

I got flowers :)

Our wedding picture was hungbut we still cannot find the trim for this section....HELP!

The Valentines decor was brought out. This one is big folks, I haven't been able to decorate since Thanksgiving thanks to all the construction at our place.

And the laundry got done of course. This was Eclair's hang out Sunday and today as she is forbidden from being on the bed at this point in time. Why do you ask? Her less than mature behavior of course.

Thanks to our new floors, we have a compound miter saw

Here's the guest/office/my dressing room in progress and pretty close to done. We decided just before we started to just bite the bullet and take out the trim...now I cannot justify putting it back without painting it, eh why do we do this to ourselves?

This is how you get under those door frames At that point we were so close we could taste it...only we weren't, it took quite a bit of time to get that closet and all its cuts worked out.

We LOVE the final results...and that's even without the trim...Oh, the bets part of the floors is all the new toys we got, a compound miter saw and a jig saw being our favorites. We may end up with a neumatic nailer before we're done as well, something about the prospect of reinstalling all that trim ;)

ambitious renovations

Why do I do this to myself? It is so much easier to paint a room when there is nothing in it and no floor to worry about messing up with paint drops...soooooo I decided that now was a great time to paint the office. The color in there was fine but it was pretty dark and I have always intended to paint it the same color as our bedroom, a very soft butter color. My half day at work today made it possible to get in 2 full coat! Some shots so you can see the progress...First is Dominic last night getting those tack strips up...nails in concrete is a tough job (please notice the old paint color)

Primer always goes fast because it doesn't need to be perfect, can you see the room is already lighter?

the other side of the room

Once Dominic got home and saw my technique he was laughing...I make a mess when I paint and this technique allows for the easiest clean up.

Here is the finished color...hard to tell it's not white because it's so dark outside

It's a bit easier to see it with the white closet doors.My wonderful hubby cleaning up the paintbrushes.

Whew..thank goodness that's done! Well really I need one more quick coat tomorrow or friday but I'm on call tomorrow and inductions make for unpredictability, as does this change in weather that's coming...uhhh what have I started??