Nursery planning, plus cleaning and craziness
June 29th, 2009 by Ascelyn
Welcome to 26 weeks.
I think I was 25 weeks last week, but I was too exhausted to know anything about it. I worked something like 55 hours, including my supposed day off on Friday, then went home every night to rearrange furniture and thoroughly scour the house. Not a particularly good idea, sure, but what else was I supposed to do? J’s grandparents were coming for a visit Saturday and would be seeing the house for the first time, so it could no longer remain the neglected mess that it has been since I got pregnant. (Okay, and honestly, since long before that. But if I have to deal with the sickness and tiredness and general unpleasantness of pregnancy, I think I should get to use it as an excuse once in a while.)
End result: Clean house, lasagna prepped for dinner, complete failure at a thermal profiling run at work, and pain. Lots and lots of pain from lifting heavy things and sitting and kneeling in positions my pregnant hips don’t much like. Also, utter exhaustion and the ensuing migraine.
They liked the house, which was good and appropriate since we have a pretty awesome house. They only stayed for about two hours, and instead of eating the meal I’d prepared for them, decided that they really wanted to take us out to dinner at the restaurant at their hotel. Gehauf’s isn’t bad, but it’s not great, either–just basic home-style food. I’d already make home-style food. At home. It was assembled and just needed thrown in the oven for an hour. The range of things I’m able to cook is rather small, but I tend to be fairly capable at what I do make (lasagna, soup, baked goods, etc.). Still, they didn’t want to eat it. Whatever. We met them for dinner and then went home. All that insane work for two hours, most of which was spent sitting on the couch listening to them bicker about the grandfather’s old jobs. Fun times.
I fell asleep on the couch around seven o’clock and was only revived by the idea of making chocolate peanut butter brownies. From a box, because there was no way I was going to mix and boil things on the stove before baking after all the dishes I’d done over the last day.
Sunday was the redeeming day of the week. I nixed the idea of driving up to Monroeville to get the crib, storage set, and maternity swim suit top because it would require too much walking at IKEA, and I was refusing to put any more strain on my poor abused legs than necessary until they had a chance to heal a little. I woke up around 9:00 because I just couldn’t sleep any more, ate mac & cheese for breakfast, and went back to bed until two. The rest of the afternoon was spent buying and potting plants for the porch (which I’d meant to have done before the big grandparental visit) and taking cuttings from my herb bed for two coworkers. J’s parents came over to help us make a dent into the lasagna that evening and see the upgrades we’ve made to the house, and the visit was quite pleasant. Then I started measuring the spare room/nursery, which gets me to the non-whining point of all this.
We had four pieces of furniture in mind that we really, really wanted to buy for the nursery: a crib, some sort of chair that rocks/glides, a dresser decent enough to follow him throughout the years instead of just during babyhood,, and a low bookcase so that the kid can reach his own books when he wants to look at them. The twin bed that was previously in the music room has been moved there and will stay, and I have my old toy box (also my mom’s old toy box, maybe a little girly but handpainted by my great-grandfather) for the room. My mom says a changing table is an absolute necessity, though I never used one when babysitting and wasn’t too keen on the idea of wasting money on a piece of furniture that has only a single purpose.
Enter IKEA. I started looking there for the bookcase and dresser, and instead fell in love with the Trofast system. After some scheming and measuring, I think our set-up will end up fairly similar to to this combination with a slightly different arrangement of drawers, shelves, and bins. We’ll add on the changing table top and be able to remove it later. I’m a little hesitant about pine furniture in a house built inside and out of pine logs and boards, but if it’s too bad, we can try to paint it. I’m excited and can’t wait to go get it so that we can start having a place to store things. Once the child outgrows it and is hopefully out of the furniture destruction stage, we can get him a real grown-up dresser. I love that the whole system can be rearranged to accomodate changing needs for shelves and the like.
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