I didn’t feel so great today so Matthew took over all baby duties (besides feeding) while I tried to sleep off the pounding sinus headache I woke up with. He also did laundry, took Asher on a walk to the supermarket, and made us a pot of minestrone soup for dinner.
Then served it with the best rated baguette in NYC.
I should take a sick day more often.
2 comments November 15th, 2009
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2 comments October 3rd, 2009
Last Christmas morning Matthew surprised me with a new laptop.
(pardon the dark purple nail polish. I have no idea what that’s about)
It really was a huge surprise. I even whined that my present was too “heavy” and I didn’t want anything heavy before I opened it. Seriously! Welcome to life with me.
It then spent 3 months in the box because I was traveling and too busy to move everything over. Once I booted this bad boy up I could not believe I had waited so long. It’s about 7 billion times better and faster and prettier than my old laptop. I lurve it.
Sunday night I was reaching for the baby monitor and I knocked an entire glass of seltzer into my laptop keyboard. My virtually 6 month old computer.
The one with 1,174 pictures taken since July 22, 2009
OF MY BRAND NEW BABY
We quickly shut it down and removed the hard drive and battery. Then Matthew put it in a box layered with paper towels and lots and lots of rice.
He took the box, taped it up and put it in the kitchen to dry for 3 entire days.
Meanwhile my brain went through plans A-D
a) buy a new computer and transfer the drive (sounds expensive)
b) buy a bigger hard drive for my old computer and transfer the drive (cheaper)
c) buy Matthew a new computer, buy a new drive for his old computer and transfer the drive (more expensive but inevitable)
d) WE HAVE NO MONEY FOR ANY OF THESE THINGS, YOU ARE SCREWED YOU CLUMSY MORON (truth!)
We opened the box Wednesday night and started it up
AAAANNNNND it works. So far. Enough that I backed up all my pictures. It seems totally fine. So far. Shocked that the keyboard works but it does (so far)
UM…
Let’s keep our fingers crossed huh. Let’s also keep our photos backed up.
2 comments September 14th, 2009
um…can you pet me?
Can you pet me?
Wait, I’ll get closer.
Can you pet me?
Your head smells really good
Can you pet me?
It’s ok, I know you’d pet me if you could
We’re going to be best friends
3 comments September 8th, 2009
We are pretty much unpacked and settling in at the new place. Since we ended up with a bit more time on our hands than we thought we’d have we started looking for ways to make this tiny apartment more functional and efficient. (AHEM, busy work)
We previously had 2 huge bins of guest blankets and pillows that took up a large amount of room in my closet so I decided to buy one of those spacebags for $20 to try it out. Wouldn’t you know, OMFG they work. Not only do they work, they are awesome and took about 2 minutes to use from opening the package until we had the stuff stored again.
Before:
With Matthew’s head for scale purposes.
During:
After!
The new storage system takes up about 1/3 of the old one. We bought a 2nd spacebag for the rest of it and now all of it sits in a spot smaller than one of the bins. A-MA-ZING. Highly recommend this product. A+++
I bought mine on amazon but I think they sell them everywhere. I think we will invest in more to store baby stuff…and maybe my winter clothes…and who knows what else.
Add comment July 18th, 2009
I really, really, really, really, really, really, really want this headboard
and there are DIY instructions here.
{via d*s}
1 comment June 24th, 2009
#1-Boxes are free
Start searching craigslist a month before for free boxes and you won’t have to pay for any. People are very generous.
Don’t write on the boxes so when you pass them on they are clean and pretty. Use different color paper to make notes on what is in the box, to help with actual move day by tell the movers what goes where. Also helps with unpacking. Then make sure you have enough of each color.
Me ”Blue is the small bedroom, purple is our room, green is the living room and yellow is the kitchen”
Mover: “Ok I have a white label where does it go”
Me: “uh…that is Living room too”
Did I bother counting the sheets I had before assigning the largest room? No. But you should!
#2-Moving while 8 mos pregnant sucks.
It is not easy for many reasons. When you cant lift or bend packing is hard, and unpacking is harder. On top of that Matthew does not remember anything he packed.
Location: Our new Living Room
Time: Mid-Afternoon, day after we moved in
Scene: MP: “Have you seen where the black power strip from our room went”
Me: The one you packed 3 days ago? no.”
#3 -Moving is the perfect time to declutter.
We seriously downsized for this move. We turned our office/catch all into a room for the baby so we needed to get rid of a ton of stuff to make it all fit.
While packing, always have a box open to collect things to get rid of. We still have ours going so as things get unpacked if we don’t love it, it goes to good will. We’ve dropped off about 5 bags of clothes/sheets/towels and 20 boxes over the past few months. Just this weekend we donated 3 more boxes and now the one we have going is almost full, I’m sure by the weekend we’ll have 2 more. Its amazing how much you don’t need when you are trying to maximize your space. We slowly went from 4 full size billy bookcases 3 years ago to 3 halfsize ones today. When all our books didn’t fit in the new allocated space we ditched enough to make it work. I only kept ones I loved or haven’t read before because thankfully I finally realized that I don’t care if people walk in and say “wow, you have alot of books” It makes me feel so much better to say “I go to the library” Same with DVDs. We stopped buying them for the most part years ago, I think we probably only accumulated 2-3 a year the past 5 years but we still had about 150-200. We have netflix, and cable, and plenty of places to rent them if I’m having a psychotic DVD viewing related emergency. If it wasn’t a kids movie and I didn’t watch it in the past year I donated it. I would have liked to sell them but in the end the time just wasn’t worth the $50-$100 I would have made.
This week I have been dealing with the miscellaneous boxes of random stuff. Office supplies, crafts, old photos, mementos, stationary…probably the hardest ones yet.
#4 – If you have large junk people will buy it.
Even though its a huge pain in the behind, take the time to sell anything on craigslist before you move so you don’t have to deal with it later.
Now this may seem like a no-brainer and really we tried to get it together but ended up with 4 things at the new apartment we needed to get rid of. Matthew goes to the school of just putting everything out on the street but I can’t help it – if I can make $25 thats better than nothing.
It was a bit of a hassle to sell all those things at once while unpacking but I brought in a total of $230. Which was more than enough to cover the baby’s new dresser/changing table!
#5 – Things take way longer than you estimate.
Do not offer to paint. If your landlord asks what you want to do just say no even thought you don’t want a crap job done by crap workers with crap paint that you will want to touch up for 2 years. Tell them to just do it all white even if you want Natural Wicker.
Especially if you end up painting your humungous LR/DR area Cotton Ball. AHEM.
(We are doing the pipes and around the windows this week. Again, HOW DID THESE PEOPLE LIVE HERE??)
Add comment June 15th, 2009
Grrrr can’t decide on a baby bathtub. Isn’t that pathetic???
I think the problem I run into with these small things is that I didn’t have a baby shower so I have waaaaay too much time to hem and haw about what to buy. Its a little insane when you are talking about a $25 item. Like who cares already! Buy 2 and shut up. (I imagine that is Matthew’s inner dialogue as he is too nice to tell his pregnant wife to hurry up regarding a decision that is so completely life changing, obviously)
We walked into the scary baby superstore a few weeks ago and walked out with this:
That place is so overwhelming and I needed alot so I didn’t want to linger on something so boring. Seemed to make sense – its smooshy and it folds up. Yay.
Then I read some reviews on amazon.WHY? WHYWHYWHYWHY? and someone said you have to let out a bit of air to fold it which sounded a little too high maintenance for me. Plus there is zero support for the baby and I can see this situation leading to 2 parent baths which is a hell no. Honestly. So I started looking around and now I think I want this:
I like that there is some support for them to lay down as newborns and you can put it in the bathtub or on the counter, then when they get bigger they can sit up for a while without worrying about toys and stuff getting all over the bathtub. Its nice that its just all contained in the little tub. Right? RIGHT?? I mean we are talking about THIRTY-TWO DOLLARS. I obviously have to research the shit out of this investment.
Since almost every mom I know reads my blog I thought I’d ask around via a post. So lemme know. Is this bathtub stupid? What do you have? Do you love it/hate it/think baby tubs are stupid in general? I think I’ll just store it upside down in our tub, Is that what people do? It seems the easiest and most out of the way place.
6 comments June 14th, 2009
I’m so excited because we are redoing the bathroom this weekend. The walls in there are a mixture of brick and wood paneling, kind of a scarier version of this:
We got permission to repaint and basically do whatever we wanted. Matthew primed the walls last night and he’s finishing up in there this morning before we head to ikea for some cute shelves and a new mirror. I think it’s going to be an amazing transformation for under $100. We shall see!
Add comment June 14th, 2009
So we’re really concerned with getting the baby’s room ready, CAN’T YOU TELL??
Isn’t that bare lightbulb dead sexy. And don’t you just adore that black pipe in the middle of the white wall?? So special. It really makes me wonder what the heck the people who lived here before us did day in and day out. Don’t worry, I am compiling a list of grievances and will share with you all. Know this – they did not have a doorbell. Ok.
(note to self – add put up ceiling fan to the to-do list)
We’ve pretty much been using it to store all the baby stuff we have, plus 2 old dressers, a cabinet and a sideboard currently listed on craigslist (lots of interest on one of the dressers, hopefully selling it tomorrow!) Also those kitchen cabinets we took down that need to go to storage…lets see, what else…3 boxes of toiletries I’m supposed to be unpacking, oh and a bunch of old funky (read: NASTY) shelving we replaced and need to put out on bulk day or give away for free. Who has that kind of time?
So yeah. The black hole. Its sort of the bottom of the list in regards to unpacking.
My dad is coming in 2 weeks to help us finish up last minute projects before the baby comes so hopefully the little dude will not be too early. I know he’ll probably be late but one can dream.
Its not as if we haven’t done anything, I have been working on accumulating some items for his room for months in the event we actually do get around to setting it up.
Since these items are stored in many different places including:
I decided there was no way I’d be able to choose a paint color without doing a mood board of sorts so VOILA! My first attempt at mood boarding via digital scrapbooking.
So yeah. There’s no theme and no real rules except “no pink”. Other than that anything goes. We got animals, we got sports, we even have cars/planes/boats in the form of some wooden toys I bought to display. I guess the main colors are blue and brown with green, brick red, and yellow accents. I’m also thinking about covering up the bottom of the crib if I can do it creatively and still use the drawer (I think some sort of decoupage fabric action, need to do more research but stay with me here). We aren’t planning on setting that up until the end of the summer at the earliest so I have some time to look into the options.
Add comment June 2nd, 2009