The Nursery

When we bought our house in 2006 there was a room that the previous owners were using as a nursery, it had golden yellow walls, blue ceiling and clouds, they painted clouds all over the ceiling. At the time Kids of my own were not in my thoughts as I cursed the previous owners for doing the clouds as I knew for sure Amanda would want them painted over. Well luckily for me I procrastinated long enough on repainting that room that the blue cloudy ceiling is a perfect match for the paint scheme Amanda and I picked out for the nursery. Because we are being surprised on whether its a boy or girl we choose a gender neutral paint scheme as well as a gender neutral bedding set. Now we've had the bedding set since early February when we found it at Buy Buy Baby, usually one would register for the bedding set to receive it as a shower gift, well to risk the set being discontinued between Feb. and the 1st shower in June we had to buy everything in the set just in case... Here is the bedding we picked, its called "Snug as a Bug"

After the bedding we decided on a paint scheme, we picked out two colors from the bedding to use them for wall colors. We chose to do a light yellow for the top half and a light green for the bottom half separated by a wall paper boarder that is part of the bedding set. Here are the 2 colors we chose as well as a section of the wall paper taped into place to see how it would look. Now initially for the Nursery all that was required was painting the walls, adding the wall paper boarder, and moving in the furniture, simple... Well that plan changed to also include repainting the base molding in the room, OK simple enough. To prep the room for painting I removed the outlet covers, taped around the door and window moldings and tried to take the base molding off to make it easier to repaint. Now when I say tried, I mean destroyed, apparently base molding from the 40's don't like to come off, instead they like to splinter into a bunch of pieces, crap. Now I need to buy new and figure out the compound miter cuts required to fit the new pieces back in the room. No longer simple, but not too hard. With Amanda's help I picked out new base moldings, by help I mean she picked what she wanted. I learned early on not to argue with a pregnant wife! I took two days off work and got busy painting the room and cutting the base molding to fit, the molding also had to be painted as it came from the store with just a coat of primer on them. So with 2 coats of paint and the proper cuts the molding was ready to be installed. Here's where the work load got much bigger.... Now with the new molding and its bright new paint job the rest of the molding in the room doesn't look right, it looks dirty and old, so now we are going to replace the door moldings and window moldings with new, and while we haev the molding off around the windows we decided to replace the windows as well. So now the room is still as pictured above and my list of things to do in the room is as follows: *Take off old door and window molding *Touch up paint where the molding removal will sure mess up. *Buy new molding *Paint new molding *Cut new molding to fit *While old molding is off replace old windows with new windows (My cousin is doing this) *Strip down air vent covers and re-paint white so they too are bright white and new looking (even though they will most likely be covered by furniture might as well have everything looking new) *Nail in place the base molding *Nail in place the door molding *Replace the old wood colored doors with new White wood doors (this is my want and not Amanda's) *Add new door hardware *Nail in place the window molding *Install wall paper boarder *Move in the babies furniture And somehow get that all done before the baby arrives! In the end it will have all been worth it! I will post pictures once its finally finished, hopefully before the baby starts College!

Im Going to be a Dad!?!?!?

My name is Brian, and I am going to be a Dad soon. I thought it would be fun to blog about my new journey through Fatherhood. I can't guarantee I will update this often as this is new to me, but I am giving it a shot.

Currently my wife (Amanda) is 33 weeks along. It seems like just yesterday Amanda and I were on our way to the gun range for an afternoon of shooting handguns, half way there Amanda looks at me and says "I have something to tell you, but I don't want you to be mad at me." After I had to pinkie swear that I wouldn't be mad at the thing she had to tell me about, she says "I think I'm pregnant!" How could I be mad at that? I was so happy I wanted to call everyone I knew, but we decided to hold off until the doctor confirmed it.

SO now with only 6weeks to go until the due date, I am wondering where all the time has gone. There is still so much to do! The babies room is only 1/2 way done (that's another blog in itself), numerous gifts from the showers need to be assembled, I need to build up a bank of sleep ( I hear I wont get much), and several other projects around the house that have been started need to be finished. Why didn't I do all this while unemployed?

Yesterday we got to see our baby in 3D! It was so cool, even if Baby Lang didn't want to cooperate for the camera. I end my 1st blog with some pictures from the 3D Ultrasound.