the m spot

Nursery Plans

lmasland — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 15:03:33 +0000

First, let me say that I tried to fix the links to the ultrasound pics– let me know if they still aren’t working. Second, the big ultrasound is on Tuesday, so no, we still don’t know the baby’s sex. What we do know, though, is that the nursery is coming together a lot faster than I anticipated. To make room for this little kid-let, we had to do some major shifting around in the front 2 rooms of our house. What was previously Caleb’s office (that he never actually used–he prefers to work at the dining table) will now be the kid’s room. My office stays my office, but it now has to hold to furniture from Caleb’s office, plus a new sleeper sofa. So far, we’ve gotten my office painted (pics to come in a separate post, probably), and all of the furniture (desk, 2 bookcases, and sleeper sofa) in there. It looks great because all of the furniture actually matches now (less like a college dorm room) and the color scheme feels much more coherent. The remaining thing to do in the office is to install shelves above my desk and in the closet (surprise, surprise, I have a LOT of craft stuff) and the create the artwork, sofa pillows, and other “accents” for the room.

As for the nursery– it is currently a dumping ground for stuff we are thinking about getting rid of (through eBay, Freecycle, Church yard sale, etc). There’s a futon, a papasan, and an entertainment center we no longer need and piles and piles of books and things we’ve moved with us from place to place without actually going through any of it. So, that is obviously the next task, and we can’t get to it fast enough, because we got a call last night that the crib and glider we ordered from Babies R Us has already arrived! We went with BRU because they ship to the store for free, which results in a $200 savings in shipping costs, compared to going with stuff from Target or other stores. But, a crib and glider simply won’t fit in there right now, so we have to get moving. Here is the crib we are doing:

It’s actually a little darker in person than in this picture, I think, but you definitely wouldn’t mistake it for black. The glider we got is this one:

That picture is not in our house–the picture is from the Babies R Us website–someone uploaded it. I can’t tell if this is the exact color upholstery we got or not– either way, the wood on ours will be espresso and the fabric is brown. The remaining items in the room will come from IKEA’s line of black/brown furniture. For the dresser/changing table, we are getting this:

And the bookcase is this one:

We’re not sure if the crib/glider wood color matches the bookcase/dresser color exactly yet. All I know is that the wood at Babies R Us looked darker than the pictures and the wood at IKEA looked lighter (in full light, which we have a lot of in our house). And I’m OK if it’s not perfect, because it is totally worth it to save $150+ by getting furniture at IKEA that is the same quality as the stuff in baby stores (seriously–it’s quite surprising).

As for color scheme . . that was dictated by the bedding set, which we found at Wal-mart online. Now, it was certainly not my intention by stuff for the baby from Wal-Mart, but it was the only place with modern, green bedding that didn’t cost a fortune (I don’t get the point of spending $200 on a bedding set, half of which could potentially be a safety hazard). As per the green– we are doing green because we like green. There’s no reason to assume that boy babies only like blue and girl babies only like pink, even though that’s what the rest of the world will try to tell you. All we know is that we like green, and so that’s what the baby will get! (Although, I have to admit that if it’s a boy, we will use blue accents and pink for a girl, cause those colors go with green). Here’s the bedding:

After Tuesday, we’ll be able to report back on whether the accent colors will be pink or blue!

Update!

lmasland — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 22:22:25 +0000

We had our monthly appointment today. This was the first time that we didn’t come home with a new picture for our fridge. But, if everything is on track, there’s no reason to go poking around at it! Today was also the first time that they used the Doppler to check the heart rate (previously, they did it through ultrasound). At first, the nurse could only find the pulse in the umbilical cord, which she said was nearly identical to the heartbeat, but she wanted to find the actual heartbeat to show us. Every time she thought she was coming up on it, the little thing would flip over or swim to the other side. It was so funny– you could hear the loud splashes every time it did that. The nurse said something like ”Once you can feel this thing, you’re going to be amazed at how wiggly it is.” Everything was on track and our blood test results came back negative for abnormalities. The best part of the appointment, though, was at the end, when we set the appointment for the BIG ultrasound. So, if the baby cooperates, we should know the gender at 9:30 am on January 27th! (Happy birthday, Mom– we kinda did that on purpose! )

Welcome to The M Spot!

lmasland — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 13:29:48 +0000

You have happened upon our new family blog . . . yes, Caleb and I already maintain multiple blogs of our own (there’s the academia blog, which I may be abandoning, the food blog, the running blog, and the tech blog), but we realized we needed a family one, especially now that we have a family to write about! Of course, we’ve always had Quimby and Scout, but we currently have a a human addition to the family in the works. That’s right, in case you didn’t know, Caleb and I are expecting our first child on June 26th, 2009!

We got our first glimpse of it back in November, and it looked like a blob. In fact, when we showed the ultrasound pic to people they kinda laughed because it was straight up blob. Then, when we went back on December 1st, it looked much more human-like. Admittedly, somewhat alien, but also human-like.

We had another on December 12th to check for a few abnormalities (none of which the baby had), and we got another picture. For some reason, the tech did not flip to the fun 4D pics for this ultrasound, but even with the basic 2D picture, it definitely looks like a baby.

Stay tuned for further updates!