Showing posts with label Basement remodel. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Basement remodel. Show all posts

Monday, November 28, 2011

Monday already?

Our Thanksgiving weekend was awesome, in the "now we're lame because we have a baby" way. Four days off of work for R meant that we made a LOT of progress on our basement, and R and J got to spend a lot of quality time together.

We had Thanksgiving dinner with R's family, which was lovely as always. They do such a nice job that I kind of forget that I'm not spending the holiday with my family. One of these years I'm going to make it back to P-town for a Thanksgiving. (Of course I'm envisioning what it used to be like - sleeping in, the parade and dog show on tv, shelling chestnuts all day for stuffing, and pulling out all the good china to eat in the dining room. I think any new reality would be significantly different.)

The basement is really coming along, which is super-exciting. R finished the ceiling last week so this past weekend we mopped the floors, rolled out the rugs and rug pads, put together five different pieces of furniture and storage, did some touch-up painting, and generally cleaned up and started to organize J's toys down there. We also bought new furniture for our family room, since the family room furniture is moving to the basement. This was our only in-person foray into the post-Thanksgiving shopping, and it wasn't too bad - I guess people aren't busting down the doors to buy furniture on Black Friday, but I think we still got a decent deal. On the to-do list this week is: move furniture (we HAVE to do this because new stuff is coming on Thursday), finish touch-up painting, and do another round of cleaning and organizing. And, the biggie - moving stuff back OUT of the garage and into the storage cabinets we put up. The temperatures are really starting to drop here, so I know Robert will be pretty thrilled to get his garage space back. I'm just excited to have another functional room. Progress pics are boring so I'll just take some "after" pics this week or next and do a final basement wrap-up.

Julia is doing well too. I think it was really nice for her and R to get to hang out as much as they did. She laughs and plays with him in a way that she doesn't for me, and it's really cute to watch. I've been her favorite person for so long that it kind of makes me sad to see her getting so attached to someone else, but I'm more happy for R that he finally gets to see that he has a special place in her life too. Plus, she's getting MUCH better about me leaving her to go run an errand or something, so that's kind of a relief too.

The bad news on the Julia front is twofold, though. First, I think she's having a reaction to the one-year immunizations that she got last week. Poor dear was warm all day and this evening she had a temp of 103. She's largely acting fine - a little cranky but not bad - but sleeping and eating poorly. She's never had that high of a fever before so it really freaked me out when I saw the thermometer reading. (Also, I've never done a rectal temp before either, which I felt compelled to do tonight to make sure I was getting an accurate reading. That also freaked me out a little.) Fortunately I put two and two together and figured it was a vac reaction. So we'll call the ped in the morning to let them know, but it's likely we're going to get through this just fine with some Tylenol.

Her diaper rash is also persisting, to the point where the ped is sending us to a dermatologist sometime this week. It's been almost four months of off-and-on rash, mostly on. The ped gave us nystatin last Monday and said to call if it doesn't clear up in a week, and it hasn't. I feel like I must be doing something wrong for her to have this rash for as long as she has, but I'm clueless. It's not bad, really, just persistent, so a derm seems a little like overkill. But, I'm desperate to get it cleared up once and freaking for all. Not to mention, I'm sick of doing diaper-free time in our house. Babies wear diapers for a reason.

Some non-diaper-free time this past weekend:

My mom recently mentioned to me that I ought to start pouring my sodas into a cup
instead of drinking them out of a can so Julia doesn't start to covet them....

I didn't disagree with Mom at all.

But did I *actually* do anything?

Obviously not.

Thursday, November 3, 2011

Thursday

What happened today:

We got carpet installed on our basement stairs, and the basement rugs delivered. Haven't set up the rugs yet but the stairs look really nice. Ironically, when they pulled up the icky old carpet that was there, they exposed these really lovely dark wood steps. We have a baby so I think we need carpet on our stairs regardless, but they would have looked just beautiful if we repainted them. Anyways, the stairs are now new and soft and fluffy and smell like new carpet which is kind of nice.

The carpet installer guys left our back gate open (the one that I always always always keep shut so I never even thought about it being open after they left) and Scrappy took a little walk today by herself. Thank goodness we have lovely neighbors with whom we're on great terms (and whose dogs fascinate Scrappy), because she went right over to their house. Our neighbor saw her and brought her back in the rain. Whew. Also made me glad that we have a "collar ALWAYS on except when she's in her crate" policy with Scrappy. At least she had her tags with our phone numbers. No one's going to approach a German Shepherd-looking dog without a collar on but a kind soul might scoop up one with tags. Put tags on your dogs, people! You never expect them to get loose!

We had put Julia to bed tonight, and about 45 minutes later she starts wailing. We're listening to the monitor to see if she calms down, and I'm heading out of the room to go re-settle her when R hears her go, "Ahhhhh" and get quiet. I guess she lost her blanket or her bunny, and all was well once she found them. It was cute.

Update on prepping for my friends this weekend: I did about 1/3 of my To-Do list so I have quite a bit more to do. But, I made plans and reservations for Saturday, so at least we'll have something to do. And I can get them out of the house so they're not appalled at how messy everything is all the time. I swear, every time Julia goes down for a nap, the place looks like a tornado hit it, and I do damage control and maybe one other thing and she's up again.

Here are some pics from this past weekend, of her on our deck playing with this big purple ball we have.They're all I've got at the moment.

"Can't. Quite. Get. A. Grip. On. This. Thing."
 


Yes, that's her dad throwing the ball at her/me. Yes, it hit both of us.

She knows that on the back of my camera there are buttons you can push and a screen to look at.

So now I get fewer backwards shots and more shots like this.

Monday, October 31, 2011

Only Monday?

I keep thinking today is Tuesday...


1. Basement progress is slow. It's taken us forever to deal with the baseboards, but I think we're finally ready to paint them. Fingers crossed we get this done before Thursday. I also bought new ceiling tiles today, so we're pretty committed to redoing the ceiling too. I'm hoping it's not going to be a big deal like I think it's not, but who would have thought we'd spend three nights on baseboards? This has been a frustrating project because we've done SO much work on it so far, but there's still so much to still be done. 

2. After another good night from Julia Saturday night, we had a TERRIBLE one last night. Up every hour, terrible naps today. I was sure to put her down by 7:30 today so hopefully things turn around. Or go back to normal. Or whatever. Just hoping we have a good night. I could use a few hours in a row. I think R and I are going to start sleeping in the guest room in shifts again. 

3. Julia now sleeps with a stuffed bunny and her soft blanket. When we go in to get her in the mornings or after a nap, she hands us the bunny, then the blanket, then she lifts her arms up to get picked up herself. It's adorable.

4. I have friends coming in to visit this weekend and I'm really excited! I need to plan some stuff for us to do. I think I'm not even sure what grown-ups do anymore because the first things that come to mind are visiting the zoo or a pumpkin patch. 

Antics from Julia this past weekend:


Inside the dog bed.

Dog Bed Skateboarding.

What's the plan here, dear?

Out of the dog bed and onto the fireplace. That makes Mommy feel good.

Oh... INTO the fireplace. Even better. Why don't you just chew on one of those wires while you're in there?

Oh, no. We have another plan.

"Ah! Your flash! You're illuminating my secret evil plan!"

"Bye Mom."

Dog bed in the bedroom, Julia looking for Daddy in the bathroom. THIS was the plan. Duh.