Dear Baby: Ready When You Are

Dear Baby,

We've passed the 37 week milestone! It's official - we are full-term, we've made it! As of today, we are eligible to labor at home when you decide to come (as long as you decide to come before 42 weeks - please decide to come before 42 weeks!).

I know that you will come when you are ready and well cooked but Mama and Daddy want you to know that we are ready when you are.

The clothes are ready to dress you.

The diapers and wipes are ready to clean you.

The blankets are ready to wrap you.

The bassinet is ready to hold you.

The chair is ready to rock you.

The slings are ready to wear you.

The stroller is ready to push you.

The car seat is ready to drive you.

Our family is ready to welcome you.

Our lips are ready to kiss you.

Our arms are ready to hold you.

And most importantly, our hearts are ready to love you.

Ready when you are!

Love,

Mama

Becoming Monkey-Ville: Part Two

Yesterday I shared a bit about the process of transforming the nursery from being an office/spare room/craft room/everything room to being a cozy place for our Little Monkey to rest his/her head. Today you get the real good stuff and get to see what it looks like now that the transformation is complete.

By now, you all know that I love all things monkey for my Little Monkey. I am so happy with the way that the room turned out. Please keep in mind that I'm not much of a photographer and the shape, angles and lighting of the room made this a little difficult but I did my best!

Looking into the room (the room has double doors that still need to be put back on since FD replaced the carpet. The crib will be tucked behind one door which won't open and the other door will open into the room.

The Crib. Originally, this crib was dark brown but was painted white to match the rest of the furniture. The wall decal was ordered from Etsy and was not nearly as easy to put on the wall as it was made out to be. Thankfully, I have a patient, wonderful husband. Bless his heart.

The Changing Area. Remember that old crappy table that I showed you yesterday? Yes - this change table is one and the same. We've got the diaper stacker on the left, the hamper on the right, a bin for toys underneath, and a set of plastic drawers that will house all of my cloth diapering supplies.

The Armoire. The Dude did a fantastic job transforming the top section of the armoire from drawers into a makeshift "closet". He also replaced the base of it and put new hardware on to make it look just like new. The top of it is decorated with a Monkey basket full of books, a maternity photo (which will be switched for a newborn photo once he/she arrives) and a lamp. I also have a super cute pair of cowboy books that belonged to the dude when he was a wee one that are sitting in the basket that need to be incorporated somehow. Just not sure how. Inside the drawers of the armoire you will find all sorts of teeny tiny onesies, sleepers, socks, hats and bibs, just waiting for baby.

The Nursing Nook. If you remember, yesterday I mentioned that we had to get rid of my black chair and find something else a little smaller. I am so happy with our find! This chair is very comfortable and fits in well. The Dude said that during the winter he's going to try to find some time to paint the frame of both the chair and the ottoman white because not only do they not match the other furniture in the room, but they also don't match each other. But, for now ... they work just great! The cute Monkey sitting on the chair was a gift from the Baby's Auntie Katie (formerly known as the BFF) and came straight from FAO Schwarz in NYC. I'd still like to get a little side table to set beside the chair for the phone, my drink, or whatever I need if I'm using the chair to nurse (perhaps a good place to display the cowboy boots as well?) but for now, it's good the way it is.

Above the chair, there is a little display of wall hangings that I made with cheap Wal-mart frames and coordinating scrapbook paper. They look kind of funny and off balance right now but the space in the middle was left there on purpose and will be filled with a wooden letter once the baby is born and has a name. Both of the letters (baby girl's first initial and baby boy's first initial) are painted and waiting so the appropriate one will just need to be hung once he/she arrives.

The last thing to show in the room is a sweet little wall hanging that was made for Baby by a very special woman. In the first photo, you may be able to see that there is a door between the crib and the armoire. This door leads to the "cool room" where we have all of the Dude's tools and our canning shelves and so on. I decided to hang the wall hanging on that door. It's super duper special because there is a similar plaque that hangs in the Dude's room at his parents house that says "Evan's Pad" with a frog on it that was painted by this same woman when he was a wee lad.

Every so often, I find myself wandering into the room, sitting down on the chair, rocking a bit and daydreaming about the child that this room will belong to. I am anxiously anticipating the day that I get to meet him/her and I am so excited that we have a room that is ready for his/her arrival!

Becoming Monkey-Ville: Part One

I didn't originally intend on sharing the nursery reveal in two separate posts, but once I got started I realized there is just too much for one. So today I will share all the work that we the Fabulous Dude did to get the room prepared for baby and then you can come back tomorrow to see the Big Reveal!

I just realized that I do not have any great "before" photos. The photos all seem to start at the "during" stage.

The room that we are using for the Little Monkey's nursery used to be our spare room/office/ scrap booking room/place where we stash everything that doesn't have a home room. As you can well imagine, finding new places for all of these things proved to be quite a challenge. Thankfully, with my completely grad school a few months ago, we were able to significantly minimize the amount of "office" space we need.

Here is a little peek at what the room looked like before (the last three are more "during" photos as I took them once I had already started pulling stuff out to condense and get rid of):

Once I emptied the room of all of my office supplies and other junk, I moved on to the scrapbooking cabinet. You may remember that this was a job I was not pumped about. But I got it done!

After that was done, the next step was tearing out the old carpet. The Dude took care of this job one weekend early in July while I took care of finding a home for the last few items that were hanging around the room.

We were lucky to be able to keep the paint colour in the room the same because it matches perfectly with the decor I chose. There were a few nicks and holes that needed to be repaired, and the Dude decided to repaint one of the walls because it wasn't in great shape. I even helped with some of these tasks.

My parent's own a flooring business, so we are lucky to have the hook ups for flooring products and expertise. My Mom and Dad headed down to our place for dinner one night after my first shower to bring all of the baby's goodies and so that my Dad could lend the Dude a hand and help him learn how to lay carpet.

After the carpet was done, we were ready to start bringing in and arranging the furniture. Speaking of furniture, I just realized I have never posted about what we did about furniture. We were blessed to be given a crib by a lady at our church, and the Dude transformed two other pieces of furniture that we scored for free; one to be a change table and one as an armoire. Although I'm not showing you the finished product today, I will show you what he used to make the change table out of and the way the armoire looked before so you know where it came from when I post the final product tomorrow.

This became the change table:

And this is the armoire:

We had all three pieces painted white by my Dad's painters and they look like they are brand new!

The Dude set up the crib and brought everything in and we discovered that there was just too much for the tiny room.

With the scrapbook cabinet, armoire, change table, crib, and black leather chair the room was just too crowded. Thankfully we were able to solve this by moving the scrapbooking cabinet out to the laundry room (I found a new home for my completed scrapbooks on the shelf above my closet in my bedroom so that the humidity and moisture in the laundry room doesn't ruin them). Now, it's housing our board games and a bunch of baby stuff that we won't need until a few months down the line.

Sadly, we realized that there was just no way we could arrange the room in a way that didn't look completely jam packed and keep my black leather chair in there. It's part of our living room set, but we've never really been able to use it because the way our living room is laid out, there is no room in there for it either. We debated what to do about the issue, whether we should sell the chair or not. We both decided we didn't want to sell it because, likely, someday, we'll have a home where we can use it and we both love it. So, we decided to put it in storage for now and found a different, much smaller, chair and ottoman for $40 on kijiji to put in the baby's room (which you'll get to see tomorrow).

Even after we got the black chair and scrapbook cabinet out and the new chair in, it took me quite a while to find the perfect arrangement for the furniture to maximize our space and have the room look the nicest possible. Thankfully, my SIL Logi has the magic touch and found the perfect arrangement. She even helped me move everything around while the boy's were out getting ice cream! And when they arrived home, they didn't even notice.

After everything was in its proper place, the real fun started and we got to work on putting away his/her things and Monkifying (that's a word, promise) the space.

Come on back tomorrow to see how it all turned out!

Baby Shower

This past Sunday my Mom, Sister, and Sister in Law threw me the most wonderful baby shower!

I felt so blessed to be surrounded by family and friends who love our baby so much already. I will let the pictures do most of the talking.

Yay for a bouncy seat.

The baby also got the bedding and a ton of accessories for the nursery. We've got the lamp, mobile, diaper stacker, hamper, change pad cover, crib sheets, baskets, and a whole slew of other items!

I also got diapers, money for our cloth diapers, gift cards, a play pen, blankets, feeding supplies, toys, bath tub and bath stuff, a super cute shopping card cover, and a bunch of other great baby items! I can't even believe how generous everyone was - my baby is all set. One of the games at the shower was BINGO where each guest had to fill out a blank bingo card with ideas of what I would get for gifts. So at the end of opening all the gifts when I thanked everyone and said "I think my baby has everything he/she needs", people started telling me all the things my baby does not have according to what was still left on their bingo cards. :)

MIL, BFF, and Baby Mama...

My mom wrote a very sweet poem on her card to me and I ended up having to stop reading it and get Kate to finish it because I got myself a wee tad bit choked up. Pregnancy will do that to you!

One of the other games that we played was super fun. Each person got a recipe card with a question about parenting on it. We were asked to read our question, think of our answer in our head, then turn the card around and pass it to the person to our left. We then wrote the answer to our original question on the back of that card and then went around the room to share what we had written. So, our answers did not correspond to the question that we had. Make sense? I was lucky to get some excellent parenting advice from this game. Some of them were super funny. Here are some of the best ones:

Q: What do you do if your baby is choking?
A: Give him a reward such as a piece of candy.

Q: How do you stop a baby from crying?
A: Call my husband while attempting the Heimlich.

Q: What can you do if your baby has jaundice?
A: Google it.

Q: How do you know if your baby is gaining enough weight?
A: Call your mom for help.

Q: How do you bath a baby?
A: Upside down.

Q: How do you know if your baby is latched properly?
A: They start giving it to the dog or throwing it on the floor.

I am definitely keeping these cards around so that I can refer back to this excellent advice in the future. If you are looking for a fun, totally not lame shower game, this is definitely one to try!

After the gifts and games, we enjoyed some delicious food. Of course, my mom and SIL chose and made all of my very favorites! Bacon and cream cheese dip, bacon wrapped scallops, taco dip, meatballs, shrimp, fruit, veggies and dip, and black forest cake!

And the cutest ever baby feet cookies.

I was surrounded by great friends!

My mom's dear friend Penny surprised us both by making an appearance. It was really special to have her there with us.

My mom, MIL and myself (and baby A).

C Biscuit, myself, and Bwebb.
Caley, me and Em!

My grandma and I.

Four of my 7 nieces and nephews were at the shower and these two (who aren't cousins - H is my side of the family, O is FD's side of the family - had a great time playing together and helping me take care of Nika).

Of course, since I don't know if I am getting a He child or a She child, I just HAD to have two cookies :)

Me and my sistas! Thanks so much girls for such a lovely day.

I know I've already said it, but I will say it again - I just feel so blessed to have such a wonderful support system around me as I enter into motherhood. My mom(s), my sisters, my cousins, my friends - everyone! The Little Monkey is so blessed to have all of these people who already love him/her so much!