Paint!

Today was a big day...paint day!  I hired a painter to come in and paint the baby's room.  Back in our old house, Jacob's room was white...all white.  It was plain and simple, but it worked.  I felt a little bad that we didn't do anything cool for his room, but neither of us are that handy and there just wasn't much we felt like doing (read: spending money on).  But it was a simple, cute room and it got the job done.  I liked hanging out in there.  As a reminder, here are a couple pictures...

I only included this one because it includes my crafty solution of hanging the original crib bumper on the wall like a border/chair rail.

When we moved, the natural "baby's room" was the one painted purple.  The bigger bedroom fit two guest beds better, and the purple in the smaller bedroom matched the baby stuff.  It made sense to put Jacob in there for now, and move him out once I was pregnant again.  I figured we could do a fun room for him then, and if we had a girl, we could leave the room purple.  In the meantime, the purple matched the baby stuff and we chalked it up to being a Knighthawks color.  Here's how the room looked right after we moved in...

We took down the border pretty quickly (stick-on, thank goodness), and put the bumper back up to the left of the closet door.  I put up the blue curtains back in our old house too, once daylight started waking Jacob up far too early.

Of course, it took me longer than we'd hoped to get pregnant.  For most of that time it never occurred to me to move Jacob into the other room.  I didn't really want to get ahead of ourselves or lose our guest room, and I had this terrible fear I'd end up pregnant with twins and we'd need to move the baby stuff in there instead.  So, he stayed in a babyish, purple room much longer than anticipated.  And once we found out this baby was a boy, we knew we'd finally have to paint it.  Today was that day.

The thought of painting over that purple trim made me crazy, particularly while pregnant, so it made sense to hire someone.  I got a good recommendation via Facebook, and the guy was great.  I'm not going to say it was cheap--between zero-VOC, low odor paint and the labor--but it was worth every penny considering our situation.  And now, it's like a whole new room.

I'll post pictures of both the baby's room and Jacob's new room soon, but for now, here's a sneak peek.  In this picture there was still purple on the door, but that's now blue, too.  The white trim alone made a huge difference!

It looks so nice in there now, and I finished it off with cleaning the carpet tonight.  I hadn't done it at all since I got the carpet cleaner, mostly because Jacob slept on the floor and it was too hard to coordinate.  But with the room mostly empty, this was my chance.  I can't say it's an ideal activity for a nearly eight-month-pregnant woman, but it's done.  I can't wait to start moving things back in and start getting things settled!  

Because of the painter I was home all day today.  I tried to find a good balance between productivity and relaxation, mostly because my body won't let me do too much without expressing its displeasure, but my brain brain really wanted me to get things done, too.  I brought up two laundry baskets worth of clean baby stuff to fold and organize a bit, plus Jacob's weekly laundry.  I put the pack-n-play back together in the living room, and brought a couple more things out of the crawl space.  I put away most of the winter decor and brought out the handful of Valentine's Day decorations I have.  I took lots of breaks and watched mindless TV.  I saw a handful of episodes of "A Baby Story" and simultaneously freaked myself out watching labor and got extra excited about meeting this little baby who currently enjoys nudging my arm off my belly when it's resting there.  

I finished off the day with Jacob's parent-teacher conference.  It was about what I expected--he's extra smart but he doesn't follow directions and can be a little aggressive around his friends.  That pretty much sums up how he is at home, too, and reflects what we see on his daily sheets.  Even his teachers chalked it up (at least in part) to the fact that he's in a room with mostly boys, and they tend to play differently.  Everything's a gun, everything's confrontational, everything's a battle.  Other than continuing what we've been doing, I'm not sure what else we can do.  I don't think he's too much different than average, but I know it would behoove him to learn to listen and chill out a bit before he heads off to Kindergarten.  Incidentally, while we know we will be sending him in the fall, we're still trying to figure out our options--public vs. private vs. possibly a public school of choice.  That's a whole other discussion/blog post.

Anyway, it was a productive day despite copious amounts of couch time.  Now if I can just be productive this week and make it through Craig's double roadtrip this weekend, I'll be much more ready for this baby to make his appearance.  If you can ever be ready for labor, anyway.  I had a couple rapid fire spurts tonight (still the mucus plug issue) and freaked out a little that it might be the beginning of something...but obviously that doesn't appear to be case yet, thank goodness.  So, as much as every little bit of progress makes me feel that much more ready, reality bears out a little differently. :)

Still, I am so happy to have blue paint on the walls and excited to give this baby a proper nursery.  Let's hope he gives me enough time to pull it off!