Nursery Progress & News

Generally the news at this point is that I am slow.  I'm slow walking to the bus stop, slow in updating my blog, slow in moving my derriere off the couch.  Aches and pains are frequent companions, particularly if I've walked or stood up too long.  My big problem is that I've yet to define what exactly is 'too long'.

Anyway, I'm not going to moan today, life is good.  I'm finishing up at the office on Tuesday and will work from home until the 15th of June.  I'll save two hours a day in travel and I won't have to get up and down the multiple flights of stairs at the office.  Yipee!  It does mean a bit of very repetitive data entry for a whole 8 days but I can do that and drink tea and listen to some tunes with my feet up so it's all good.

The big news for today is that the nursery is pretty much finished!  I still have to get some little wicker baskets for storage on the shelves and I have to make the curtains to keep the dust off the hanging clothes but those can be jobs for the maternity leave.  The weather was great last weekend so I got all the baby linen, nappies and clothes washed and packed away.  It was mighty strange watching MC hang his 6ft 3'' person clothes up on the washing line next to diddy little booties and newborn baby vests.  Very cute and heart warming, just totally hilarious too.

So here's some pics of the nursery:

A huge thank you to MC's Dad who gifted us a joiner to come take out the existing built in wardrobe and build this more child friendly space.  I may have mentioned before (on just a few occasions) that the previous occupant of this house was a bit of a DIY Cowboy and doing anything requires a lot of ripping out and starting from scratch.  When we peeled the wallpaper in this room we discovered at some point there'd been a leak which had never been allowed to dry before they papered over the top of the mould.  Nice.  Some bleach, an open window and a plaster later you'd never know where the holes, the mould or the dado rail had been!

For the sake of good economy (post plasterer's bill) we decided to use up the hoard of white paint left to us by the Cowboy.  MC decided I wasn't allowed to help paint because of the fumes so it's taken a while for him to put the obligatory 3 coats of paint on the new plaster and the MDF that the shelving in the wardrobe is made out of.  It's been frustrating for me not to be able to just dive in and help get the job done.  Those that know me know patience for an upside down house is not a strong point.

I couldn't have been more delighted on Friday when I came home to find all the painting paraphernalia removed from Munchkin's room.  Unfortunately for MC I probably did not express this very well given I'd gone from work to a leaving do and consequently got home at 10pm and fell straight into bed.  Honest, my wonderful husband, I was gleeful, just too pooped to express this adequately. To break up the somewhat clinical whiteness of the room we broke up the shelved section by using up some light green paint within the frame in contrast to the white shelves and bought bright stickers to put on the walls.

The stickers I could do!  That's what I thought anyway.  Turns out they weren't cut very well and so on several occasions they tore in multiple places making them very difficult to apply to the wall without the joins being very obvious.  The only major casualty was Tigger in the first photo of the wall stickers.  He came off the sheet in FOUR pieces, the worst of the joins cleverly disguised by randomly positioned leaves and a honeypot.  Well, you do what you can says I.  By the time Munchkin is old enough to care she'll probably have decided that she's too grown up for Winnie the Pooh and friends anyway. 

Freddie moves into his new home and is joined by... 

The Hedgehog of Love.  Bought by me some moons ago for a special person who was having a nasty time of things.  He worked his magic and his previous carer, now happy and in love, has sent him back to me to bring Munchkin some luck and happiness.







In the gap under the bookshelves in the built in space we're going to put a toybox (currently buried under mountains of boxes in my Mum's storage unit) with a padded cushion on top so it doubles as a wee person seat.  We haven't built the baby's furniture yet because my Mum's coming to stay in a couple of weeks so the lodger's old double bed is making its way from our bedroom back into the nursery temporarily, courtesy of some Canadian muscles.  If we go into labour at any point during her visit - well, I figure you're supposed to labour like 8-12 hours at home with your first child - lots of time for 3 people to build a cotbed, a changing unit and the rocker for a moses basket!

A few further thank yous going out over the pond - to MC's Mum and Stepdad for our nursing chair for the baby's room.  We've been holding out on ordering until I'm due to be home during the day to receive it but we have seen the very one we'd like (at our friends' house - copying is a very great form of flattery guys!).  We received some mystery bibs from the Netherlands during the week which were actually from MC's Mum too.  She's uber creative and has many talented friends, one of which made these two lovely strawberry patterned handmade bibs.  MC's stepsister, Munchkin's Aunty V, has been busy with the knitting needles and produced a lovely lemon yellow cardie with matching hat, each sporting a cheerie royal blue flower, as well as some pretty purple mitts.  Thank you for the presents and the card peeps and fret not, Munchkin may not have to wait till the Fall to wear them - this is Scotland after all and we seem to have had our week of good weather!  

It has been some time since the last belly shot.  Here it is...

I am a house.  More specifically I am a slow moving studio apartment with one long half Canadian resident.  However, this doesn't phase me quite so much, not now that I know our actual house is ready and equipped to be the Munchkin's home too.

A Minor Loss and a Major Gain...

It was shiny and sleek and it saved my bacon many a morning when my otherwise feckless source of transport - the number 33 bus - would turn up late, early or not at all.  Oh how I miss the number 48 and it's express counterpart.  I used to have a choice of buses to come home on but now I must stand around for up to 20 minutes at a time waiting for the next overcrowded 33.  On top of this ridiculous reduction in the availability of bus services in my area, coupled with the fact that the whole of Princes Street remains closed along with now the East and West Ends of town meaning I require an hour to travel the 4 miles to and from work, is the hugely aggravating fact that they have dared to raise the cost of the monthly pass!

This loss pains me so much more at present given that I'm not able to choose to walk to work (a feat which used to take just fifteen minutes more than my current bus journey) or to cycle, which used to take half an hour.  Both options FREE!  With the City Centre road closures you really would need to be confident dicing with death to get amid the buses on 2 wheels without crash bars.  

MC doesn't feel my pain.  He works about a mile from our house and he doesn't drive.  He has never owned a car.  I beg and plead to be allowed to buy four wheeled transport and he makes sensible noises about the price of petrol, insurance and road tax.  I kick and scream and he points out that even if we had a car, I can't take it to my work and so I'd still have to pay the exorbitant rates for a Lothian Bus pass and put up with the miseries of the daily commute on the number 33.  We'd be poorer.  Even hormonal and irrational I have to see the logic in his arguments.  I don't have to like it.

Everyone who commutes rants about public transport.  It didn't used to get to me so much, honest, but I'm very frustrated at the moment by my general lack of mobility.  I need the buses, depend on them because I can't just take off walking if I don't want to wait.  I have now gained over a stone in this pregnancy.  It's all within the healthy boundaries for someone my height who is after all about six months pregnant but added to the evil entity relaxin I've got some hypermobile joints that are misbehaving.  The pelvic joint at the base of my spine that I'm not even going to try to spell is literally chewing up my tailbone and the surrounding ligaments.  Nice.  As is the fashionable brace belty thing that I have to strap my bones together with in order to walk anywhere.

The upshot of the post I guess is that I'm a cranky round pregnant waddler who thinks that Lothian Buses are pants and that they should bring back the (X)48 immediately or reduce my monthly pass accordingly - half the available buses should mean half the price right?!

My ups and downs have all largely come in pairs since my last post.  At our twenty week scan appointment we were delighted to learn that we are having a girl.  We got to spend a good 40 mins gazing adoringly at her little form while the sonographer tried to encourage her to stop being obstreperous and get her head up out of my pelvis so that she could measure it.  Finally she tilted the table so my feet were above my head to have gravity help out but I ended up a little woozy on coming back to rights.  I went to the doctor this week and he gave me Nasonex and eye drops to combat the hayfever that's been rattling my brain loose one sneeze at a time which was lovely but he also asked me with a perfectly straight face if they'd ruled out twins because in his opinion the bump is quite pronounced for just shy of 24 weeks.  They really should keep obese balding middle aged male doctors away from hormonal teary women.  Grateful as I am for the sneeze banishing solution I did not need it affirmed that in his professional opinion I look like a Weeble.

MC's been great.  Not only did he tell me (post run in with the doctor who has never known a gym in his existence) that he thinks I look great (and hey, I can live with the lie so long as it's kindly meant!) but he's been busy in the nursery.  We finally found a joiner and have a new, fifty-year-old-carpet-free, built in wardrobe.  Our garden looks like the MDF rejects yard but we are finally able to crack on with feathering the nest in white emulsion.  The fresh plaster is taking a couple of coats to cover up but it's looking so much more like someone might be able to live in that room again!  Wall stickers have arrived and I will do a nursery progress post as soon as I can take pictures.  MC has banned me from the wood painting because even though we have non-toxic non-gloss almost solvent free stuff it still smells pretty pongy.  So, I'm going to be busy making some funky bright curtains to cover up the hanging sections and he's going to turn some boring MDF into something pretty.

The only other major goal of the weekend is to do slightly less than I did last weekend.  I seem to perpetually suffer on a Monday the backlash from my weekends.  To that end, I bid one and all (except the powers that be within Lothian Buses) a happy weekend as I take my twin-proportioned belly off to bed to dream of the bygone days of better public transport for the peoples of the Inch.  

Landlord-free Zone

MC and I have moved into our new home.  Hence the lack of recent writing.  Hence the lack of pretty much everything in life with the exception of work and oven cookable dinners.  I'm sitting in the new house alone for the first time since we got the keys a week past Friday.  Contrary to MC's fears the previous owners did not decide at the 11th hour to refuse to part with their home, nor the bank fail to release our mortgage funds, or the lawyers come up with some other calamity effectively making us homeless.

It was all decidedly civilised and not hugely stressful.  We had lots of help with the move in the form of one of MC's brothers, one of mine and a friend.  Unfortunately I had the world's worst cold and wheeze thing going on so I was restricted to being the van driver for four days.  And I didn't crash or bump it.  Go Mrs P.

Sadly the previous owner appears to have been a bit of a DIY cowboy and in the space of a few short days MC's brother has re-hung the front door so the locks actually lock, I've re-sealed the bathroom and kitchen that were otherwise sealed to the tiles with cracked grout and grime, and nearly everyone in the house has had a go at trying to make the kitchen floor look clean.  It's never ever been cleaned and the damage is irreparable.  GHANTO!!!  New flooring (and kickboards) will be required as soon as we can save up the pennies.  My personal bonkerdom manifests as mild OCD so I find other's people mingingness unbearable.  Thankfully I'm feeling more sedate now I'm psychologically secure in the knowledge that although the kitchen floor may look diabolical, it has been bleached to within an inch of its life, many times over.   

Other excitement: the electrician has declared us safe despite the DIY nobrainers of the previous occupant, Papa Johns delivers (yee-ha!) and we are now the proud owners of some furniture.  All praise Ikea.  My comfy chair is my especial favourite article of furniture so far (although our new bed is pretty awesome) and I'm looking forward to life settling down so I can sit in it with a trashy novel, a cuppa tea and Papa's Pepperoni Plus. 

Bonkerdom prevails.  There's a few more people living here at present than had been planned on.  But that's life.  MC's brother has been a furniture building superstar and my brother has been mocking me less relentlessly than usual while helping me with sanding and polyfilla-ing the very many nooks, chips and great gaping chasms of this house.  It's a good thing it's a spacious house.  Our official lodger moves in month end and I have many projects lined up for the interim period and beyond. 

We are home owners now.  Officially.  It's nice to be fixing up the cracks in our home rather than ignoring those in a landlord's for forever.  A few thank yous in no particular order; to our families in general for foregoing your Christmas presents with good cheer, to the Scottish Ministers for approving us for the LIFT scheme which allowed us an affordable mortgage and minimal deposit, to MC's Mum & Stepdad for helping out with said deposit, to MC's Dad & Stepmum-to-be for flying his brother over to help us out, to said brother for his insane skills with a screwdriver (this trip must equate to possibly the worst vacation EVER!), to my brother for being an unexpected but handy box-lugging floor cleaning house guest, and MC's good friend (you know who you are) for lifting, carrying and spectating the pandemonium that ensued when our sofa proved too large for our living room doorway.  Fun times had by all, and we couldn't have done it without every one of you.  

Good bye magnolia, hello cacophony of colour.