The Waiting Game

This weekend was a busy one here at the Beer household. Our parents made a joint road-trip from MN to CO together with a truck full of baby supplies. Joe's parents had our car seats and stroller, and my parents had the crib and other furniture for the baby's room. And of course, they brought their work clothes as well, because this was no leisure trip! They arrived just a bit after 7am on Friday morning after driving through the night, and we put them to work immediately. The lesson to be learned here: be careful what you volunteer for.

Joe and I had spent the last week getting projects ready for our weekend work crew. We'd picked out and purchased paint for the baby's room, and I'd washed all the baby clothes and bedding so it would be ready put away once we had the room assembled. We'd also tried to pick out paint for the kitchen, but after no less than six different colors and multiple evenings of repainting the same wall several times, we gave up on having paint selected and just distributed 35 different paint sample cards around the room.

The difficulty selecting colors and determining just which walls should be painted had led to some rather heated marital debates and the first accusation about "my crazy hormones" during this pregnancy. I suppose I should be glad that I made it 35 weeks out of 40 without having something blamed on my hormones, but I of course maintain that hormones had nothing to do my instance that painting all of our walls a near neon green was a terrible idea. I'm pretty sure that had more to do with Joe's desire for a "cheerful" kitchen outstretching his decorating know-how. But I digress.

The men went to work in the baby's room and the women sorted through the color options in the kitchen and had a plan within 15 minutes. Consent from the men was (reluctantly) received, paint was purchased, walls were painted, (a few were painted twice,) and ta-da: the place looks fantastic. The quirky layout of the kitchen and eating area means that there are still a few "walls of contention" about which Joe and I cannot agree whether they should be Nantucket White or Pinedale Shores, but for the most part we're finished and the room looks great.

Of course no weekend of home improvement projects is complete without several trips to the hardware store, and the moms and I even had time for a run to the fantastically overwhelming world of Babys R Us. The men took down our shower stall and put new faucets in the guest bathroom, built shelves in the garage, drained and cleaned our pond in the backyard and built a shelf for our bedroom, while the ladies made sure Baby Beer will have ample items to cover herself, from the practical (diapers and butt paste) to the cute (sleepers with lady bug booties). We got all the clothes and diapers put away in the bedroom furniture my parents brought (the stuff I had when I was a kid!) and the nursery is now ready to be used! Click here to see photos of the projects.

This was all done in just the nick of time, because during all the commotion on Friday I went for a routine doctor's visit and discovered that I've already started to dilate. I'm officially 36 weeks today, and the doctor wasn't concerned about things starting to happen a bit early at this point. I've been experiencing pre-labor symptoms throughout the weekend, and on Sunday the baby dropped so that my belly looks a bit more like a pot-belly than a basketball now. So far I haven't had any serious continued contractions, and of course we might continue in this limbo-land for weeks, but things are definitely starting to change! It's exciting and scary, but thank goodness we at least have a car seat to bring her home in and a place to put her to sleep now!

I'll keep you posted!