I know it’s April, but here’s a nursery update from last month, which I think was March. I’m getting grief for not posting lately, but listen, people, I’m 4 weeks away from my due date, and a little more focused on growing a human! Seriously! Give me a break!

But overall, time is flying by in the domino world of Pam and Robert and future baby. The countdown is on to the big day, and we can’t wait.

Meanwhile, we’re hard at work on the nursery. Well, when I say “we”, I mean “Robert” because the only thing I can do at this point is point.

Robert installed the nursery closet – we went with an IKEA closet – the Stolmen. It was super-easy to install, and it is modular, so we can add to it as the baby grows into a kid into a teenager.

Here’s a lovely photo:

The closet turned out great, and so did the bright green carpet.

Here’s a photo that shows the wall and trim colors, along with the carpet. This is a photo of the baby’s room corner – “nobody puts Baby in the corner.”

Overall, the nursery is coming along very nicely. We now have a crib, so the baby will have a place to lay its little head, and we have diapers, so we can change the baby, and a car seat, so we can bring the baby home. Now all we need is the baby!

The baby’s room ceiling is finished!

Here’s a series of pictures of the progress Robert made in undertaking this giant task:

First, the demolition:

Robert ripped out the ceiling over two days, and discovered the insulation was old and bunched up, and some of it was moldy. Gross. He also discovered that the ceiling fan in the room wasn’t actually attached to anything (not to the studs up above) and was just hanging from the drywall. Fixed that problem too. Good thing, because that would have been right above the crib – not so good for a baby if a ceiling fan falls on it.

Second, the new insulation was put into the ceiling so the baby can be nice and warm during the frigid Chicago winters:

You can see the giant drywall sheets stacked against the wall.

And last, the completed, beautiful, finished ceiling!

It’s now been primed and painted, and the walls are now painted white. I can’t wait until the nursery is close to being finished and the baby arrives! More pictures to come – it’s going to be beautiful!

Hi Internet.

I’m so proud of my husband, dear Robert. The baby’s nursery room ceiling is almost finished!

If you’ll recall, over the summer, we had a leaking roof in our library, which has now been specified for the baby’s room.

The roof leaked, the water dripping ensued, and the drywall turned into a moldy mess, along with the insulation above the drywall.

Robert undertook the endeavor of ripping out the ceiling, pitching the drywall, and installing new insulation. Our very good friend Wes came over last week and they put up the new drywall. I’m currently in Philadelphia on a show, and when I come home, Robert says the drywall will be finished and ready to paint!

So the dominoes are getting knocked down one by one. We’re two weeks away from the third trimester, so the countdown is on! I can’t wait to share with you the photos of the finished nursery in hopefully a month or so – it’s going to be beautiful. Hooray Robert!

Now that we have a deadline – officially set by the coming, future baby – we’re beginning to be more ambitious with our house projects.

Currently, the house projects are stacked up like a line of dominoes…each project hinging upon another project. For example, we want to work on the baby’s nursery, but we can’t start the nursery until we move my giant book collection to the basement, and we can’t move the books to the basement until we finish the basement floorboards, and we can’t finish the basement floorboards until we have time enough in the day to do it. It’s a house of cards, stacked up. Ok, maybe not a house of cards, but a complicated, interconnected puzzle with multiple, tiny, perplexing pieces, some of which have been lost or are stuck to the bottom of someone’s shoe.

I’m feeling a little holiday stress, can you tell?

After the basement re-do, we decided it was Dumpster Time.

We called a local company who was able to drop off the dumpster that same day in our driveway.

It became the neighborhood conversation piece. Strangers were coming up, asking us what we were doing with a dumpster, and could they put something in it. Neighbor friends were curious too.

It was very convenient to toss the things we couldn’t throw in the garbage, like this:

This was an old, non-working, ugly, spider-infested electric fireplace that has been an eyesore in the basement since we moved in. I’m so glad it’s gone!

We also were able to toss things like the old, rotten, carpenter-ant-infested wood from around one of our trees, the moldy, flooded carpet, and scary garage items from the deep recesses of the garage.

I know a dumpster is not very environmentally friendly, but we tried to be eco-conscious, and not throw away toxic things like paint.

I wish we could have a dumpster in our driveway all the time.

The first weekend of December was another very productive weekend at the new house. We like to alternate between being really lazy and taking a lot of naps and being almost manically productive, and this weekend was a super-productive one.

We finished the basement floor! Finally, just three months after the little flood. This was the biggest project we’ve undertaken as new homeowners, besides the stellar painting we did before we moved in.

We started with cleaning out our basement storage room and totally reorganizing everything in it, down to putting labels on the walls for where stuff goes. It felt good to be organized in there.

Next, we tackled the main room of the basement – the Rompus Room. Or the Rec Room. If you’ll recall, we had to rip out the carpet because the house let some water in the basement during a huge rainstorm. Ok, I can finally admit it; it flooded.

We ordered Flor carpet tiles – because if it ever floods again (which it WILL NOT if I have anything to say about it) then the tiles will be easy to replace should we ever be that unlucky.

Here’s a picture of the beginning of the installation:

You can see to the right of the picture the cleaned, sealed concrete floor with the glue from the previous hideous tiles. Also notice the strange column in the middle of the room. We don’t know why it’s there.

And here’s an image of the finished, beautiful basement floor:

We chose the four colors because they match our giant cozy couch, and our floor pillows:

We’re really happy with the way it turned out, and proud of the hard work we put into it. It’s a perfect room for relaxing together and entertaining, and game playing, and quilting, and crafting, and wrapping presents, and folding laundry, and reading. And now I can stop pretending that we don’t have a basement. The next thing to tackle will be painting the yellow walls to a warmer color to match the floor and the couch. But one thing at a time. Maybe after the holidays.

I recommend the Flor tiles – they were very easy to install and fun to make patterns. I’d put Flor carpet in every room of my house if I could, and in my office at work, and on my sidewalk, that’s how much I love it. They have a lot of other amazing colors and patterns to choose from, too. Give it a whirl!

Here’s a little skunk that we’ve placed in our downstairs bathroom – for those unavoidable times when it’s stinky.

With regards to Nablopomo, this is called phoning it in.

Is it wrong that we’ve lived in the new suburban house for 6 months and still don’t have window treatments in either of our offices?

We’re using some opaque paper with stylish blue tape to block the neighbors’ views. I wouldn’t care, really, except one of the windows is facing the street, so our refusal to buy window treatments is visible to the entire block.

We’re paralyzed by the decision-making, measuring, shopping, purchasing, and installing. Paralyzed to the point of not doing anything, except complain about it. There’s just too many choices – do we go with fabric? wood blinds? roman shades? vertical blinds? mini-blinds? chiffon?

Why does the window need a treatment? When did they stop being curtains?

Back to the Licorice Allsorts office, we’ve installed some shelves above my desk that hold my co-workers:

They are a good reminder to have fun while working. Yay working at home!

At the front door of our house, we have a guard bear.

This is a little something we picked up on a trip to Canada – and it’s funny. I’m proudly half-Canadian, as my mother is a full-Canadian until 2001 when she became an American citizen. So Canada we love, and people from Canada we love, and bears who live in Canada, we love too.

I don’t know if you can tell from the picture, but ’tis a mounted bear that is a stuffed animal bear. Not a real bear. No need to be alarmed.

This stuffed-bear-head greets anyone who comes to our door. I hope it says a little something about us to our visitors – like we love bears AND we have a sense of humor.