Creating a Nursery Episode I : The Red Scare

Prologue:
I have decided to document the creation of the baby nursery in a riveting mini-series for your reading enjoyment. As the Mr. or Mrs. (or even Ms.) Blog Reader, you will have the good fortune to see second-hand some amazing, artistic feats that you will most definitely not want to try on your own home. This awesome demonstration of nursery creation is not for the weak of heart. If it becomes too much to handle, just click the little 'X' at the top right corner of your browser. I'll understand. For effect, I will be referring to myself in the third person throughout the mini-series. Without further ado...

Episode I: The Red Scare

01.13.2008 1300 Albuquerque, NM
The Connors Residence

Scott just finished posting a blog that says he will be posting nursery pictures on said blog in the upcoming weeks. He begins to sweat a little as this means he will actually have to work on the nursery in the upcoming weeks. Crystal has carefully chosen the nursery bedding to have many colors to choose from, so this leaves Scott with endless possibilities for the nursery design. Lazy Scott is thinking he can just paint it some light shade of blue, leave the closet untouched, hang a few pictures and voila! Nursery! Unfortunately Ambitious Scott is already convincing Crystal to go with this cool, complicated tri-color design with accent molding, changing the existing trim, fixing the closet shelves, putting in a ceiling fan, and even possibly painting some neato trains on the wall. Now he's opening Microsoft Paint and and giving her a color demonstration (see picture). Now he's at Lowe's buying paint, primer, and painting supplies. There is no turning back now. The Super Nursery is on the way!


01.19.2008 1230 Albuquerque, NM
Back at Lowe's

Scott requested another trip to his favorite hardware store to buy a laser level. He is asking himself why he chose a project that would require such a device, but dutifully chooses the cheapest one and calls it good. He has spent the last few days worried about his design and if he can actually pull it off by himself. You see, Crystal gets an automatic free pass on creating the nursery because paint fumes are not good for moms-to-be, which leaves Scott flying solo on this mission.

01.19.2008 1330 Albuquerque, NM
The Connors Residence

The time has come! Scott whips out his newly acquired laser level and begins taping off a section of the wall where the accent molding will go. He manages not to shoot any living persons or dogs in the ojos with the laser device and the cheap model works like a champ. The iPod stereo is plugged in and the tunes are blaring. Things are looking up. However, it isn't until after a grueling three more hours of taping everything in the room except for Snoopee before it's finally painting time. At this point it is important to understand that painting is a form of torture for Scott. It isn't a stretch to say that he is a bit of a perfectionist and painting is far from a perfect science. Any uncovered white spots or paint streaks are like nails on a chalkboard to his fragile psyche. Scott must really be excited about this little guy to paint a room by himself on a fine Saturday afternoon.

01.19.2008 1730 Albuquerque, NM
In the Nursery

Of course, if it were just painting that would be one thing. The color that best matches the bedding set (Radiant Red) happens to require that a tintable primer be applied to the wall prior to actually painting it with said color. This is unfortunate for Scott because it increases the painting workload by 25%, which is really a tragedy. Fortunately, Scott loves his wife and unborn child so much that he presses on despite the primer problem. In a mere 6 hours, Scott is able to transform the completely white room into a completely white room with a radiant red trim on the bottom of the walls. For those of you counting at home, in 6 hours he has applied a single coat of tintable primer and not 1, but 2 coats of Radiant Red paint to approximately 37.5% of the surface area of the wall. He even had time to feed the dog during those 6 hours. I'm fairly certain this is close to the record for fastest room painting in history. At this rate the nursery might even be complete by the boy's 2nd birthday party. Fortunately for Scott, Crystal comes home and is ecstatic about the progress of the room and loves the color.

Now before you see these initial pictures, remember that this is just the beginning. Scott has many more features up his sleeve that will turn the Red Scare into the Super Nursery. However, for now it is just the Red Scare.




The End!

T is for Train

We haven't posted a baby update since the ultrasound pictures from a few months ago. The reason for this is that the little guy is not doing much bloggable stuff right now. All of our checkups have gone really well and his heartbeat is great. Our midwife, Dympna, always says "Good baby! That's a good baby!" when she listens to his heart. We like it when she does that.

He has been growing steadily, as evidenced by Crystal's expanding mid-section, and kicking her sporadically throughout the day. Crystal is 26 weeks along today, which marks the beginning of the 3rd trimester. The books say the baby is a little over 2 pounds already and is entering a time of rapid growth. We are both getting anxious for him to come live with us outside of Crystal's belly. Unfortunately we have not decided on a name yet, but thank you all for your suggestions.

We have been hard at work the past few months preparing for our little boy's arrival. This hard work has mostly involved many hours of shopping for baby essentials. Crystal's main focus has been on picking the right bedding and crib for the nursery. I am happy to report that we have decided on the T is for Train theme. A picture of the blanket is shown here for your viewing pleasure. Crystal picked it primarily because it had a lot of bright colors for coordinating and because there are many different textures on the quilt itself. I like it because it has some trains, which are cool. We are attempting to find the T is for Train night light at our local Babies R' Us, but they don't carry it. So, if you happen to be at a Babies R' Us in a different city, we would love it if you could check on the night light for us.

The big news from this last week is that we have purchased the crib. Crystal read that it could take up to 4 months to get a crib in if you have to order it and that most places don't keep them in stock. So after our Christmas vacation it was imperative that we find the crib of our dreams as soon as possible. We spent a day going around to the different stores (there aren't many) and found the one you see on the left. It is the "Vicki" crib made by C T and is highly rated by the cool "Baby Bargains" book that we were given. Fortunately for Crystal, it was in stock and we were able to take it home right away. Unfortunately for me, it was in stock and we were able to take it home right away. She has been asking that I build it ever since we bought it, but I'm still holding out. There are a lot of nursery things I need to do before I can put a crib in there. For now it is just taking up the majority of the free space in our garage. An unexpected bonus to this crib is that it converts into a nice looking bed later on, but we are not sure we're going to do that, as we would like to have a couple more little ones after this guy comes along.

We'll keep you posted on any new developments in the coming weeks. Hopefully there will be some pictures of the nursery in the not-too-distant future. Bye for now.