BabyAlbum4

Welcome to the FINAL STRETCH!!!
Wow...what a long, strange journey it has been, and continues to be. So far, the 3rd Trimester has been
FULL of "extreme nesting", lightning fast preparations, an amazing shower, lots of baby shopping, and of
course, god-awful mood swings (big surprise)!

Stay Tuned for our next (and most exciting) Chapter...when our Little Girl makes her entrance
into the world!!!!! As you can imagine - since we have 5 professional photographers in the
family....there will be TONS of photographs to look forward to. But, please be patient and check
back OFTEN because Tina is the "Webmaster" of the family, and has not taught Mark how to
update or add things to the website yet...so it might take a little while for Tina to feel up to
web-building, or, finally teaching Mark how to do it!!

Remember a couple of pages ago when I mentioned
that I thought the Nursery was almost done and ready
for baby. Brian & Betsy gave us our crib back in
November and it was all set up and ready to go. Tina
got the walls painted and the major design work done.
All that was left was for Mark to maybe sand &
refinish the lovely hardwood floors. THAT was right
about the time Mark came home from work one day
and announced that he would like to CARPET the
nursery and build his daughter a custom designed
closet. This was in late January...just 2 months away
from our due date, and just 3 weeks away from our
Baby Shower when we would have a house full of out
of town guests stopping by to see our beautiful
nursery that I told them all about!!

So, as you can see above, started Mark's (read: "our")
Two-week whirlwind Nursery re-decorating project!!!
Sigh...I started by cleaning out all of the baby stuff
already in the room. Moving out the crib, and the bed,
and the changing table. Book shelves full of books, and
all of the stuff that was already in the closet...including
the existing closet system! (Which we relocated to our
own closet in the midst of all of this nursery thing!)
Then, Mark had to rip out the old closet rack supports
which left Tina to re-paint the whole closet after Mark
patched and sanded all of the gaping holes left behind.
The above photo was how the room looked after we got
the crib out, but while we were waiting the week for the
carpet we ordered to be delivered!!! The photo below is
one of the closet in the midst of the rip-out portion of
the project!

Here is a photo of the room AFTER Mark got the carpet down.
I wish we had taken a picture of the 12 foot long roll of
carpet that completely enveloped our entry way and blocked
our front door for 2 days because after the two of us carried
it from the car to the house...that is where we dropped it and
could not figure out how to get it around the corners of the
halls and into the room to be unrolled. We could not figure
out why it was so heavy and why the roll was so HUGE...at
least not until we got it into the room (which, this is the
process that necessitated Tina repainting the hallways in the
house if you will remember from earlier.) Once we got the roll
into the nursery and started to unroll it...we realized that even
though we had only ordered (and paid for) 13 feet of carpet,
the store had given us 23 feet of carpet. So...here we were
wrestling with almost twice as much carpet as we needed.
Sigh...but, Mark did an amazing job and when I left for work
that afternoon there was still a big roll of carpet laying in the
middle of the room...and when I returned home that night, the
room looked like this. He had even taken the time to vacuum!!
(So now, the next step was for me to re-paint all of the
scratches and nicks that happened on the walls while he was
'carpet-wrestling")

So...while Mark worked on his closet project...I
worked on getting some of the furniture back in
there and vacuuming up the sawdust after Mark.
We both worked very hard to get the room back in
tip-top shape before the shower and the visit from
all of our guests. Believe it or not...we actually did
it!! We were still putting the finishing touches on it
the morning Brian & Betsy came into town, but we
did it...from start to finish it only took us 2 weeks!!!

Then, after the shower, I was able to just enjoy
unpacking our gifts, washing all of the beautiful new
baby clothes and blankets, and filling up the
gorgeous new closet Mark built from scratch for his
daughter!!! It was fun to just relax in the beautiful
room and know that all of the work was worth it and
what an amazing job Mark had done in such a short
amount of time!!

Mark really did do an unbelievable job planning every
aspect of his project. There were sheets and sheets
of graph paper laying around the house where he was
sketching out different closet configurations and
playing with measurements and different woods. It
was really fun for me to watch him and realize how
he works and what he goes through for a new
project. I must admit, I was skeptical in the
beginning about him being able to get everything done
and I was not sure carpet would make a huge
difference in the room. That, of course, was before
I saw how gorgeous the new carpet was, and how
warm and quiet it made the room. It turned our
nursery from a room into a sanctuary. As usual, Mark
was right on target with his wishes!!!

This is our GREAT Cherry-Wood Pottery Barn
changing table that Tina found on Craigslist for a
STEAL!!! It is such a fabulous piece of furniture.
We loved it so much we chose to decorate the
nursery in Cherry Woods it just looked so wonderful
in the room. Mark originally envisioned the nursery
in Oak woods until he saw how lovely the dark cherry
looked in the room!!!

So..finally...almost everything is ready for our
baby girl's arrival!!! Our gorgeous crib is in place,
the bedding is made. All of her clothes are
washed and in the closet, and the changing table
is well stocked with supplies!!!
Our bags are packed for the hospital and the car
seat is firmly placed in the van!! Now all we need
to do is stop at the police station and have it
inspected. (A wonderful law we have in Ohio says
that the baby is not allowed to come home from
the hospital if the car seat installation has not
been previously inspected by a specially trained
police officer or fireman.)
Now....let's see if Tina can make it through Labor
& Delivery unscathed.

All we have left to do is purchase our rocking chair
for the nursery. We are not quite sure where it is
going to go in there....but Mark is a master at
figuring that kind of stuff out. We really wanted to
leave this single bed in there for the first month or
so in case one of us wants to crash in there with the
baby. So hopefully, after we take that bed out...we
can put the glider in its place and the room will be
not quite as crowded!!