Last Thursday was our first childbirth education class at Clarian West, the hospital where Katie will give birth. I didn't have real high expectations for the first class, and I wasn't blown away. I'm certainly no expert on pregnancy and childbirth, but pretty much everything we covered I've already seen in what I've read on the topic so far. Katie, who has read probably 15 times as much as me on all of it, must have been bored to death. I think the value in this will come later on when we get to practice some of the relaxation and pain relief techniques as well as developing our birth plan. We voted to cancel class this coming Thursday due to the holiday, so instead of attending that we'll be going over to my co-worker's homebrew fireworks display in Fishers.
Friday was a half-day at work for me under my new (temporary) flex schedule. I kind of just vegged in the afternoon, but then in the evening I did some prep work in the nursery - checking all my measurements, marking off studs in the walls and taping some areas - to make the trim and remaining painting easier to do. I like to think that my obsessive compulsive tendencies with this room have helped it all come together nicely.
Tom and Sara came over with the girls early Saturday afternoon, and after they got Josie and Tessa down for a nap (which is a little easier said than done), Tom and I got to work on cutting the trim and assembling the toy box. See below for a photo that's typical of the vigor with which Tom attacks a project; dual-wielding tools and ready to wreak some havoc. Josie and Tessa were eager to help us interpret IKEA's heiroglyphic instructions. Not pictured: Tom and me drinking beer while operating a miter saw.
The miter saw mentioned above was an enormous help. When I put up the trim in the guest room, all I had was a little plastic miter box and a hand saw. It seemed like it took forever to get all of that trim cut and hauled upstairs one-by-one. With a power saw and confidence in all of my measurements we knocked it out real quick.
After we took a break to play some cornhole (not pictured: me cutting a 5'x40' playing field into the yard with the lawnmower because the grass was too high), Katie and Sara took the girls to Target when they woke up. This afforded Tom and me the opportunity we needed to get to hammerin' the trim into the walls in the nursery, which is next door to where they were sleeping. With all but the smallest pieces of trim pre-cut to length and Tom putting up the chair rail while I put up the crown, it all came together very quickly. We only had one cut that had to be done over, and then the return pieces for the edge of the closet opening and two small pieces of chair rail for beside the door. I wish I'd gotten some work-in-progress shots of this, but Tom and I were both working away and it didn't cross my mind.
The only other work we accomplished on Saturday was caulking the edges of the trim and filling in the nail holes with wood putty. The evening was devoted to hand-crafting our own pizzas, killing a case of beer and rocking out to Guitar Hero III. Good times.
Tom and I got up early Sunday and played 18 holes of golf. After we got back and Tom & Sara took off, I tried to take a nap while Katie went about assembling the small chest w/ 2 drawers. My nap may have gone better if not for the 30 nails she was pounding into the thing a room away. I took the hint and joined her in continuing the work.
We set about finishing up the painting in the nursery by touching up all the vertical stripes to get back the straight lines across the bottom that were made jagged and fuzzy by the painter's caulk. We also touched up all the trim and got it looking nice and white. I could probably go in that room every day for the rest of my life and find some little area of paint that needed redone or touched up, but we finally had enough and put the paint away for good (I hope). Here's a nice shot of the finished walls with the trim in, without the furniture. Even if you think the colors are stupid or that our whole design was dumb, Katie and I are both really happy with how it turned out and really proud of ourselves for getting it all done.
All that we had left was to assemble the rest of the furniture. We got the crib all the way put together and the big dresser all framed up before Mike and Erica stopped in for a quick visit on their way home from Chicago. By the time they left, Katie and I both agreed that the dresser could wait until Monday, and we promptly went to bed and collapsed.
So today after work we finished assembling the drawers for the dresser and tentatively set up the room the way we think we want to try it. Some pictures below, with the relevant comments beneath each...
And since we haven't had a good picture of Bew up for a while, here's the cute one I took tonight. I have a hunch that we'll find him sleeping under Clark's crib a lot in the not-too-distant future. In this picture he just seems to be patiently waiting for the little guy to get here, preparing to guard his room.
Katie mentioned posting another picture update of how she's grown in her last entry, so I'll take the liberty of doing that for her here. Week 7 on the left, week 28 on the right.
That's it for now. I guess I didn't post as many pictures as I thought I would. As always, you should be able to look at any of our public photo albums on picasaweb when you click on any of the images above.
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