Making Room for Baby

This whole pending parenthood thing has turned out to be very exhausting! So exhausting that, in fact, I am writing from a cushy bed in the Staybridge Suites hotel on Reserve Street in Missoula. Check out our sweet suite – could this be our honeymoon?

Kitchen, living room, bedroom, pool, all-you-can-eat breakfast (they lost money on me)…What? Why sleep 4 miles from your house? Here’s why…

A growing family requires a place to put future family members. When we bought our little house we were more concerned with where our dog beds and flower beds would go, not an extra bedroom for a baby. The choices are, either the baby/toddler/teenager lives in our room indefinitely, or we remodel our house – you can guess which one Matt enthusiastically opted for.

Matt and the construction guys started destroying and re-building our house a couple of weeks ago, and by a cruel twist of fate, I started modified bed rest at the same time. It turns out that I ruptured a disk in my lower back 4.5 months ago, and it refuses to heal with this baby draining my life force. I have been exiled to the man shack to work for the next few weeks or months until I’m healed and back on my feet. Matt even built me a laying down work station:

The dogs think they are on bed rest too

Blue bonds with the baby bump

Here are a few reasons why I am staying out of the house 87% of the time – construction dust, smelly men, exposed nails, no heat, mud, tripping hazards, electrical wires, pure chaos!

Let’s start at the beginning with a “before” picture from 2 years ago:

Stairs to guest room and door to baby room before

Planning from inside old baby room

demo begins with nasty old rug coming out

Blue is in future hallway to bathroom (door on right), Wade is in future baby room on other side of wall

Stairs are gone, new big beams are up

Red wall comes out, new wall and door are framed in to make hallway

Stair stringers

Half stairs

The stairs are up!

Now we just need some sheet rock over and under the stairs and down the hallway to make it a real baby room

I have been promised that this little project will be done by THIS Tuesday – HA! Yeah right. No matter if the project is done by Tuesday or not, it will still be a great day because we find out the baby’s gender! The baby has affectionately been named VBJ – Matt’s chosen baby name, Vigilante Bacon Jennings. He assured me that this would work for a boy or girl (Vigil or Jill for short). Bacon is a family name on my side, so that is less far-fetched, and awesome in Matt’s opinion.

Baby Bump Watch:

Matt said that I looked especially big today, I agree! Must have been the all-you-can-eat breakfast.

18 Weeks