I think it’s too early to say that my nesting instinct has kicked in, because I think that isn’t supposed to happen until my third trimester. But over the past week I’ve had more and more interest in pulling lost and forlorn items out of boxes that were packed over six months ago. There’s been a lot of “Oh yeah! THIS!” along with the realization that my house doesn’t feel quite as spacious as it did before I had all this stuff out and everywhere.

Last week I was motivated to install the tile backsplash in the kitchen and after five hours of painstaking labor, I stupidly insisted that Matt stay up until 12:30 am helping me grout the thing. We’re both happy with how it looks, but I fear my husband is starting to think of me as one more of his cases.

Inevitably I’m running into the same old stupid problems that you always run into when you’re working with what you’ve got. When we first moved into the house I loved the color on the walls of the living room and dining room, but there were a few patches where the paint needed to be touched up. Luckily we had an original paint bucket in the basement that the previous owners left, but it had no lid with a color code, and was empty with dried gray paint on the interior. I had high hopes that my favorite paint guy at Home Depot could match it for me, but after painting my touchups with the new paint I’ve discovered what I have is a shade darker. So yes, this means we need to completely repaint the living room and dining room. The optimist in me keeps saying to Matt, “Yeah, but I wanted to repaint the trim anyways.” And again, he jots down notes about my behavior in his little black notebook.

Last night I decided I was going to hang some shelves on the wall while watching the Superbowl. Matt was in front of the computer doing some last-minute work.

“Look at me! I’m even measuring where to hang them so they’re perfectly centered!”

“Good job, hun.”

“But I’m not going to screw them into studs.”

“You should definitely screw them into studs.”

“Well, I’m not going to. I won’t put anything heavy on them.”

“But they’re pretty heavy as they are.”

“Yeah, well… <sound of drill>… too late.”

So the floor is open for bets. How much longer before Matt decides to murder me? And/or institutionalize me?

For those who haven’t been following along on Facebook and Twitter, we just found out that we’re going to be having a baby girl. We got to watch her moving around for a full half hour on the ultrasound yesterday, and we are smitten.

Everything looks great – she’s growing well, and has a nice strong heart and a good lookin brain. I am overwhelmed by how blessed I am to have been able to carry her for the past 20 weeks. I realize that at any moment it could be over, and I don’t take this lightly. Seeing her squirming feet while she rubbed her eyes with her hands was quite possibly the most exhilarating experience of my life.

I’m halfway done with my pregnancy, but I suddenly have a very strong desire to be finished and holding her! My little Penny, I cannot wait to meet you face to face. For now I’ll settle for looking at your cute little bootie. And I’m certain you got those feet from your dad.

Behind the shelter in the middle of the roundabout
A pretty nurse is selling poppies from a tray
And though she feels as if she’s in a play
She is anyway

It is gor-ge-ous here. Ok, well not specifically right now. Right now it’s drippy and dreary from rain, but it’s 56 degrees, is what I’m sayin! The past few days have just been downright springy. And I almost don’t know what to do.

After Christmas, I had myself all ready to settle in for a long winter’s nap in front of the fireplace with hot cocoa and National Geographic. We had a week which was referred to as the “Deep Freeze” wherein our hot and cold water lines to the washing machine started to freeze up. But after that it became positively lovely, and I will be darned if that’s going to change.

Every morning I wake up and hear the chirping of birds outside my breakfast nook window, and I brew myself some coffee and sit down to check my email. And when I take the dog outside, many afternoons I don’t need a jacket. I could really get used to this.

All this to say, in the midst of the “Deep Freeze” I had a heart to heart with Matt wherein I mentioned that um, hello, we’ve moved to Tennessee where it’s not sposed to be so darned cold, and we bought a house, and I had kinda hoped that when it was so darned cold out we could just open the dog door to the backyard and let Berlin outside without having to shoe up and jacket up and scarf up to keep her company. I mean, we’re not apartment dwellers anymore. We have a fenced backyard. Dog should do dog things back there without the need of an escort. So I asked, would he please put together a Behavior Modification Plan for Berlin?

And he did.

See, our pup loves being outside, and she loves romping in our backyard. But she doesn’t like being places without us. We are her security blanket, so she’d rather hold her bladder in the house all day than go outside by herself, bless her heart. When we take her outside for potty time, she needs us to go out the door, down the back deck steps and out into the grass with her. Then and only then will she pee and poop. But she might not do it in the dark because she’s scared of the dark.

Well let me just say, my husband is a brilliant man and my dog, despite her many fears, is very smart as well. Matt put together a plan, and the key was consistency – we each had to do the same exact thing when he took her out in the morning and I took her out in the evening. Gradually we would make her try harder things, which wound up being not so gradual because she’s a very quick learner. (Aside, will trade husband for a week of potty training your toddler in exchange for two David Gray tickets at the Ryman!)

We started off by making her use the dog door when she came back into the house. Then we would stand at the bottom of the deck steps but wouldn’t go out into the grass with her. Then we stood in the middle of the steps. Then at the top of the steps. She didn’t like that phase. Then we would stand at the top of the steps and she had to go both in and out of the house via the dog door. Let me also note that no treats were used. See, she’s not food motivated, she’s praise motivated. So there was a lot of yelping and “WAY TO GO, BIG GIRL!” And our neighbors officially think we are nutty!

Then yesterday as the sun was setting, I took her outside, and she zipped right out the dog door, down the steps and into the grass. I sat in an Adirondack rocking chair on the deck while she played in the backyard, completely out of my sight. She eventually brought me a ball which I threw off the deck and into the backyard for her and this version of “fetch” ensued for about a half an hour. Then towards the end, when it was completely dark, she flopped in the grass to rest out of my sight chomping on her ball. So I snuck into the house, and about two minutes later she was back in the house via her dog door.

Of course, the next step will be just saying “Wanna go outside?” and having her run over to her dog door and out into the backyard without anyone’s accompaniment whatsoever. We’re getting there.

But frankly, with this gorgeous spring-like weather, I kinda wanna be outside with her. You know, endorphins and whatnot.

From Daily Daguerreotype

Yesterday my grandmother lost her very difficult battle with cancer.

But to define her beautiful life by how cancer ended it would be falling so short of what it was. I have nothing lovely to write because I’m pretty sure everything lovely died with her. You know those things in life that are SO wonderful that you couldn’t quite describe them to someone if you tried? Like the whole Van Morrison album, Enlightenment. Except Grammie was far more beautiful and indescribable than Enlightenment.

The only way I can think to describe her is hard for outsiders of Massachusetts to understand. Because people who have never lived in Massachusetts think it’s a stupid place. My husband, Matt, hates that people who have never lived in New Jersey think that New Jersey is stupid, because he’s from South Jersey and it really is a whole different ballgame than North Jersey. Well, that’s how I feel about Massachusetts. You really can’t love it until you’ve lived there, and then whenever you live anywhere else all you can think about  is how wonderful Massachusetts is.

So people from Massachusetts will understand it when I say that my Grandmother was all of the beautiful things about the Commonwealth without any of the bad. She was the MFA and Walden Pond. She was the beaches of Cape Cod and the swan boats. She was the Revolutionary War statue in the center of Lexington, the Alcott House, the Victory Garden and Salem Harbor. She was all of those things, and it’s as if they’ve all disappeared for good.

I am itching to go home to honor her this weekend. I’m itching to be surrounded by the other people who knew how wonderful she was.

And strangely enough, more than anything else, I am itching to see my sister and rub her pregnant belly. Because my sister Gina is about as close a replica to my Grammie as you could find. And I am now counting down the days til the brand new life inside of her will meet us this summer. I know that baby will have reflections of Grammie, just like its mother, and will remind me that with every chapter that ends a new one begins.

Hans and Betty Band

This morning I awoke to the beautiful realization that the bathroom renovations were complete, and that for the first time in almost a week I would be able to shower in my own bathroom instead of at the gym. So I grabbed my towel and danced into the bathroom to hop in a steaming hot shower.

Now I say that the renovations are complete, and they are. Except for one small thing. With the installation of a new threshold in the doorway, the bathroom door has been taken off its hinges so an inch can be cut off of the bottom allowing it to fit snugly back in place. Currently the bathroom door is leaned up against a wall in the living room. But that was of no concern to me. The cat and dog have both seen me naked, and into the shower I went.

Just as I was starting to lather up, I heard a hissing and swatting. And then, out of nowhere, Berlin had hopped in the tub with me. I was, frankly, stunned. After thinking about it for some time, I have no reasonable explanation except to say that I believe the cat chased the dog into the shower. Yes, I do.

Berlin is quite familiar with the shower, so her hopping in of her own accord is really not that crazy. Someone told us when we got her that the easiest way to bathe a big dog is to just take it right into the shower with you. And as strange as it may seem, it really is the easiest way. So about every 5 weeks or so, Matt, who is in charge of bathing the dog, takes her into the bathroom and about fifteen minutes later they both come out sparkling clean. (If you could only hear their conversations in there, and the singing, you would think much differently about my husband than you currently do.)

So after my shock wore off this morning, I realized it might be a blessing in disguise. After all, Berlin hasn’t been bathed in over 7 weeks, and is certainly overdue for a shower. But I had neither the dog shampoo nor her towels in the bathroom with me. So I told her to sit, and sit she did at the other end of the tub while I figured out a plan.

I might as well clean myself up, I thought. So I looked at her and she looked at me while I washed my hair and shaved my legs. All the while she was getting soaking wet, and all I had in that doorless bathroom was MY CLEAN TOWEL.

If I had even so much as thought of walking out of the bathroom to get her towel, she would have followed me dripping through the house. So I did what any decent person would do – I dried her off with one side of my towel, and I dried myself off with the other. And I daydreamed about a day in the near future when I really COULD have that new bathroom spa experience that I had been longing for. A shower in a clean bathroom, with a clean towel all to myself, AND A DOOR CLOSING OUT ALL OTHER CREATURES.

And then I saw it – my hair elastic on the floor. Berlin must have been between it and the cat; never a good place to be.

So I’ve never made one of these before because I’ve never designed a room from start to finish. But I wanted to think it all through before I started as I’m working with a hodge podge of items, and wanted to make it look less hodge podgy. I had fun pulling together this moodboard, but I think I’m going to have even more fun actually putting it all together.

• I’m planning on painting the walls a warm cream color and then about 3/4 of the way up the wall creating a big fat maybe 2 foot deep horizontal stripe that runs all the way around the room. That stripe will be mostly orange, but with a few smaller stripes of turquoise, blue gray, red and cream mixed in. The door trim, window trim and crown moulding are all painted Behr’s Polar Bear White already, so I won’t need to do anything there. I will have a better time picking out the blues once I pick up a crib sheet from the set that I’ve chosen. That way I can find some blues that work with the rug and the crib set as well.
• The two-toned crib shown is the one that I’ve picked out. My lovely Momma is buying the crib for me, and while I typically try to stay within my generous Momma’s good graces by picking moderately priced gift items, this one’s a bit pricier than usual. But it’s a convertible crib that turns into a toddler bed, and I can see that being quite useful in the future. (Can anyone speak from experience here?)
• I hunted high and low for crib bedding that was A) gender neutral B) subtle and C) reasonably priced. I originally had my heart set on some by DwellStudio, but couldn’t swallow the nearly $400 price tag for a baby registry. There is nobody in my life that loves me that much. But then I stumbled upon this really bright yet tasteful turquoise bedding that I think can easily be used for either gender.
• As for rockers, let me just say that there are either big, expensive upholstered armchairs, front porch rockers, or really ugly gliders. I did find one $900 glider that I loved, but HELLO!? Ikea has this more moderately priced chair with “rocking feature” that I’m hoping would work. After a few years doing nursery duty, I think it could transition well to the den and work double duty. Just waiting to hear back about whether or not it really rocks enough to be a nursery rocker.
• As I mentioned before, we’ve got a nice daybed in the room right now awaiting the rest of its bedding. I have plenty of twin-sized white sheets and a down comforter – just need to pick up a white duvet. And I love these lounging tiger pillow cases at Urban Outfitters, so I’ll watch to see if they go on sale. Throw a few bright orange pillows on the bed, which will break up all the white, and I think it will be a nice place for me to crash for late-night feedings.
• The pillows I pictured are from Target and Urban Outfitters. I’ll most likely just head to Hobby Lobby and pick up some fabric to make my own. I have some white wooden blinds on the windows and might throw together some simple drapes as well. But I sort of like the look of just blinds, so we’ll see what happens.
• I also have a beautiful mahogany dresser that I’ve inherited from my grandmother. Not pictured in the moodboard, but it, along with the rug, will save the room from looking too “kiddie.”

Now I know what you’re thinking. “There is only one thing pictured here with an animal on it! Where is the Priscilla we know and love?” Oh honey, the walls will be COVERED with animal artwork. Just you wait. And a hedgehog mobile.  HEDGEHOGS! I KNOW!