The Construction Zone

Dear Baby Girl,

Ah, the dynamic duo that is “Stimmy.” These two are like an old married couple. They’ve been flipping houses in Florida for two years now, and their one mistake during the process is that they haven’t got a camera crew filming them. They are hilarious together. Add in their living arrangement—with Grandma Tracy and Mammy—and you’ve got yourself some prime time hit TV. Jimmy has titled their show "Flipping Out," which is a duel reference based on flipping houses and flipping out at one another. Although I haven’t video-recorded anything, I have been documenting their progress (and some of their antics) via photo.

Top: Granda Steve trying to plant one on Jimmy.
Bottom: The two of them sharing a little post-work snack.

As much of a full house as we’ve got now in Arlington, you can always count on comic relief and quality work. Jimmy is unbelievably talented. Historically, his area of expertise was drywall, but in the last couple of years he has really honed his skills at tiling. I put these skills to test by picking out glass tiles for our showers. It’s his first time working with glass tile (and he has declared it his only time working with glass tile) but it is coming out even more beautiful than I could have pictured in my wild imagination. He hates working with the stuff. It is difficult to cut, and tedious to place, but he is my new best friend for it. I’ve been trying to win him over with good food and Bud Light (thank goodness for our enormous store of Italian freezer foods), but I know he probably wants to kill me as he carefully places each brick. The bath tub that he’s working on downstairs will likely be your toddler tub, and you couldn’t be bathing in a more regal looking space.

Left:  Upstairs shower. This will eventually be the "kids bathroom" (that's you, Baby Girl!)
Right: Downstairs shower. Your toddler tub as Dad and I can both fit in this bathroom to bathe you.

Jimmy also saved us with the air conditioning. We hired a crew to move the furnace to make room for a larger downstairs bathroom, but they did a truly terrible job with the duct work. With their work, the bathroom ceilings would have needed to be absurdly low. Jimmy corrected all that, didn’t miss a beat, and now the bathroom is going to be perfect. So add duct work to his repertoire.

Of course, Grandpa Steve is working equally as hard. He loves the “wow fact-ah," and as the primary painter he generally achieves it. I don’t always like to give him the satisfaction (I feel obligated keep his ego in line), but when I saw your nursery I couldn’t not be wowed. He’s almost done with the painting, and it looks great. I love the colors that we picked, and the whole house is looking more like the environment that you will know and grow up in.

Top: Grandpa Steve doing his famous proud "peacock."
Bottom Left: The stairway is refinished with a rail and spokes to keep you from tumbling over!
Bottom Right: New windows, paint, and "wet bar" (which will serve as your infant/baby bath!)
Lest you forget what all of this looked like before, go: here.

Grandpa Steve loves demolition and a good trip to the dump. He’s been bonding with your father who’s been assisting him on weekends, and I think they had a solid dump run this past Saturday as both came back in excellent spirits. Your father finds Grandpa Steve's little “Steve”-isms hilarious (glad somebody does). For example: most modern truck owners will use belts, straps, and buckles to secure construction items in their truck bed. Not Steve. He goes old school, using only rope and sailor knots. He was very excited to show your father the functionality of his sailor knot (later, a piece of trim fell out of the truck while driving on the highway. Grandpa Steve contends that the trim snapped, and it was NOT his knot job). Another “Steve”-ism: he rates each truckload of trash with his own personal highway safety label—45MPH, 50MPH or 60MPH. This one makes your father nervous.

Top: Grandpa Steve and Dad on their dump run.
Bottom: Stimmy on a Home Depot run, and Jimmy try to secure Grandpa Steve's sailor knot.

Grandpa Steve and Dad hanging the siding on the house around the new window.
The top picture is an action shot, but the bottom one is posed.

Of course, MY job is primarily being the crabby wench who tells them what I don’t like after the fact and then adds to their already extensive to-do list. I try to balance it out with compliments, and I even annoy myself with how critical I can be. But I do love their work—honestly I do—and we have a good time (mostly). I’m cooking for them as much as I can, I have ridden to the dump once, and I join them on some Home Depot runs (even though as you know I loathe the place).

We’re trying to get everything complete by the end of the month, so your father and I can have a weekend to arrange furniture and what-not in time to have it all set up for your baby shower on July 9^th.  Some of your extended family is trekking to DC for this event (which I am so very grateful for) so I want the wow-factor almost as much as Grandpa Steve does.

Once all of this renovating and the baby shower are done, your father and I will have a couple of months to chill before you come along. Maybe finally get some R&R this summer (HA! Like that will happen. Dream on, Dad)!

Love,

Mom

Dad at it again!
He has taken over cooking duty a couple of nights when I've been tired.
No one has complained, except that he is making them fat.
Above is one of his delicious pepperoni rolls.

24 Weeks, 25 Weeks and 99 Days to Go!

99 DAYS TO GO! 

THE "DOUBLE DIGITS" COUNTDOWN BEGINS!

AH! Look at YOU!
You don't just look like a baby; you look like OUR baby!
Such personality in that little smirk.
In the bottom picture, the ultrasound tech caught you yawning!

Dear Baby Girl,

You are one beautiful little baby! At 24 weeks, we had our last ultrasound at the hospital barring any complications. This means it was the last 3D ultrasound, and you went out rather photogenically. The technician was able to capture a couple of solid glamor shots, despite your head being nudged against my uterus (that’s why it gets blurry at the top). I think you definitely look like your father (nose and mouth), but he thinks you are too young to tell. That would be typical. I do all the work, and then you look like him! That’s okay though. He’s a handsome fellow.

More importantly, you are healthy and on track. You’re in the 64^th percentile for size, and kicking a lot more often. I love it when you kick. Because the placenta is in the front, I feel it less often than others who are 25 weeks, but when I do it makes me happy. Dad is brave enough to touch my stomach now (before it made him nervous), but he hasn’t felt you kick yet. You seem to get shy when he puts his hand on there, and you’re very sporadic with your kicks—always keeping me on my toes.

What’s going on in the world while you’re in there? Well, the presidential primaries have concluded. It’s going to be Donald Trump v. Hilary Clinton in November. Zika is on the news just about every day, but I got a tiny bit of relief when one study found that pregnant women who contracted the disease in the third trimester had no issues with birth defects. We are about three weeks away from the third trimester, but I’m going to stick with the bug spray and mosquito net hat until you are born (of course I have a mosquito net hat)!

Did you REALLY think I was kidding?
Audrey and I enjoying a nice outdoor backyard BBQ. More on Audrey in a bit.

One more positive event in the news (and there have been a lot of negative ones)—the Pittsburgh Penguins won the Stanley cup! Afterward, Dad officially declared 2016 “a good year” (obviously it was already going to be the best year of his life). He was a nervous wreck during the series. He gets so worked up that he has to watch the games in the isolation of his man cave. He has his Pittsburgh group text going, and yells at the TV to his heart’s desire. I watched some of the playoffs with him, but the 8PM games did not jive well with my 9PM bedtime. I did manage to be there and awake when they actually won. I was very happy for him. I even bought him/you a couple of Pittsburgh Penguin onesies for Father’s Day.

HI BABY GIRL!
Your Aunt Joanne sent us these Penguins T's from the home games.
And on the right is exactly how Dad watches every game.
Sad that the XL shirt fits me pretty well.

I read that your hearing is pretty developed at this point, so I’m trying to counterbalance all the yelling/snapping I do at your grandfather and father with “The Mozart Effect.” Everything I’ve read tells me that classical music will not make you smarter, but I continue to believe otherwise. It WILL, dammit!  I also have absolutely insane dreams. I feel like if I could get myself out of bed at 2AM I could easily crank out a teen fiction novel (in fact, I think this is how “Twilight” came about). I actually finished the entire series of “Game of Thrones” in one dream. There’s some 2016 pop culture for you… “Game of Thrones” might be the hottest show out there.

You’ve been raking in the gifts, and the other day when Audrey came over for a “Fuller House” marathon (a reboot of my favorite childhood show) she brought what has probably been the most amusing of all gifts. Audrey “gets” Dad and me. She’s one of my best friends from college, and I’m sure you will be on a level with her where you call her “Aunt.” She almost lost it when she saw the nursery. Audrey has been there for me through so much, and I know she will be there for you in the same way. She’s very excited about your arrival. You will do well to pick up some of her sarcastic nature.

ONESIES!
Top Left: From Audrey- "Home Brewed Baby"
Top Right: I bought this for Grandpa Steve, but it applies to both
the Cicala and Leavitt side of your family.
Bottom Left: From Audrey- "lil' lager" baby bottle
Bottom Right: The Pittsburgh Penguins onesies I bought for you/Dad

HA. My new favorite children's book. "Go the f*ck to sleep."
Audrey also had the same idea as your Aunt Joanne with the Star Wars bedtime story.
I told you... she "gets" us.

I’m doing poorly lately with “the bump” photos, but that’s because we have so much going on with Grandpa Steve and Uncle Jimmy working on the house. That is going to be another letter entirely, so I will wrap this one up for now.

Jimmy took this bump photo for me. It's not my typical bump outfit but it will have to suffice.

It was so good to see you, Baby Girl, and crazy to think that the next time I’m at the hospital just MIGHT be for your grand arrival!

Love,

Mom

Crib Drama

Dear Baby Girl,

The decision around your crib and changing table was one of your mother’s crazy, neurotic, indecisive, obsessive moments. This is exactly what I was talking about when I said that I am driving your father insane. I think he wants to murder me, yet feels incredible pity for me at the same time. It must be a difficult balance for him.

On our lovely Pittsburgh shopping spree, Dad and I picked out a crib and changing table at Pottery Barn. We were in the store, we had a discussion about which was best and why, and we came to a decision. It wasn’t the crib I had had in mind prior to walking into the store, but logic and reason diverted us to a different crib. White made more sense than weathered gray (I just have a bit of a weathered gray fetish). Your Nonna graciously footed the bill and everything was hunky dory.

Fast forward a few hours later. I am second guessing my decision to the “n”th degree. I often have this notorious habit, and your father hates it as he is a “once-it’s-done-it’s-done” type person. Would that I could be more like him. I suffered through much mental anguish, enlisted Aunt Joanne and Marielle’s opinions, softly broached the subject with your father who relinquished the decision to me, and decided to return to the weathered gray crib as that was the one I originally had in mind.

Fast forward to the next day. We got home from Pittsburgh, I went to Pottery Barn, paint samples in hand, held them up against the crib, and hemmed and hawed at the store by myself for a while before ultimately switching our order. Never mind that the gray crib was on back order until mid-September. I was determined.

Fast forward to the day after that. I painted a small section of your nursery with the colors that we picked. I tried to envision the entire room with the gray crib, and then the white. I pictured it with the rocking chair, the rug… the gray crib just wasn’t going to work. I called Pottery Barn, changed our order again and told your father not to let me think about it anymore. His response: “PLEASE tell me how I can do that Taylor, I’ve been trying to figure it out for years.”

So now you have a taste of how the rest of the renovation process is going. Dad calls me the “inspector” and every time I mosey on over to the work zone he’s like, “uh-oh, inspection is coming!” Honestly, it’s a stressful way to live life and I wish I could be more laid back about this sort of thing but I can’t. Maybe if you have a sibling things will be different (see picture above), but for now the crazy continues to haunt me. I also realize that this is a silly thing that doesn’t matter and that there are much more important things in life, but it is just one of those things I can’t get out of my head. I’ll chalk it up to being pregnant.

All of this being said, I am happy with the final decision. Now that the nursery is coming together I know that the white will be absolutely beautiful. I bought you a gorgeous chandelier and a rug that I love, and I think that it will be a room fit for a princess. I realize that the picturesque nursery may be more for me than you at this point, as babies don’t generally wield an opinion on such matters, but I think that by the time you are a toddler you will really appreciate it. I know that my childhood pink-walled, pink-carpeted room with triangle windows that my father built at my request was young Taylor’s personal oasis and sanctuary. I hope that you will love your room as much as I did mine.

Added bonus: the white crib and changing table will arrive today (NOT mid-September)! This gives your father peace of mind as now your nursery will be ready a couple months in advance verses a couple weeks (Dad hates “scramble” mode). Now I just need to pick a rocking chair…

Love,

Mom

Can't resist giving you a sneak peak of your nursery.
There's Dad waving to you in your bedroom!

A chandelier fit for a princess!

You and I in your bedroom at 25 weeks.