"nursery" pictures

As I mentioned in my last post, the baby will be sharing our room until we move in August, and we've been busy transforming it into a partial nursery. I am pretty pleased with the result. You can check out how it was arranged before here.

The crib:


close-up of the pattern on the bumper pad and comforter (although I just realized this picture is sideways...oh well):


The pictures above the crib are from a calendar I had a few years ago, featuring my favorite book, The Little Prince. It's perfect because the book was originally in French, and the pictures all have a quote from the book in both French and English. Plus they're pretty darn cute. This is my favorite:

Rocking chair and bookcase:

Dresser/changing table:

We also have his name on the wall above the crib; however, we are not really telling anyone his name til he's born (not that it's anything unique, it's just kind of fun to have something that only we know), but here is one of the letters:

I can't wait til we have the baby and can actually put all of this to use...only 3 months to go!

On an unrelated note, though we haven't heard from all the schools yet, Thomas has been accepted to his top 2 schools for his PhD (University of Kentucky and University of Tennessee)! We also haven't heard about funding yet, which is what will really be the determining factor, but he seems to be a good candidate for an assistantship at both schools. Tennessee is even paying to fly him out for their visit day, so they must really like him! I'll be glad when we know where we're going.

For Valentine's Day, we went out to dinner at the Pear Tree, which is a fabulous restaurant about 30 or 40 miles away from Kirksville. While we were there, some random guy recognized Thomas from a play that he was in almost a year and a half ago and complimented him on what a good actor he is. I feel like I'm married to a celebrity!

Yesterday we celebrated my little brother Johnny's 22nd birthday. We made homemade pizza and my brother Benj made a cake. It was pretty fun. Happy birthday Johnny!

Finally, here is the latest belly picture, though it's a couple of weeks old - 24 weeks. Any time I feel like I'm getting big, I just compare myself to my sister-in-law Sarah, who is having twins who are due 3 weeks before our baby :)

25

January is a busy birthday month for us. Thomas's dad's birthday is on the 15th, my mom's is on the 18th, and Thomas's is on the 22nd. We had nice birthday celebrations with our parents, and Thomas got a 3 day long celebration.

We spent his actual birthday at home with just the two of us. It was a very relaxing, fun day! Thomas had to work in the morning, but when he was done, we went out for breakfast and then came home and hung out and played games most of the day. I made pot roast with mashed potatoes and other veggies for dinner, which is one of his favorites...and mine too...how convenient. :)

After dinner, he opened his mound of presents. It may look like he got more than he really did, since this pile includes crib bedding and baby clothes. We decided it would be more prudent to spend most of the money we'd normally spend on presents for birthdays and Valentine's day on baby stuff, but he did get quite a few things for himself as well, including the new Stephen King book, another book, a couple CDs, and a movie.


For dessert, a carrot cake with homemade cream cheese frosting...Since he turned 25, we had to get two boxes of candles to have the right number!


The next day, we went to his parents' house for dinner. I forgot the camera, so we don't have any pictures from that night. He got a lot of nice gifts there as well. The most exciting for me were a baby bathtub and diaper bag, but he also got a lot of Byzantine books, the board game Diplomacy, and some tools, and probably some other things I can't remember!

Then on the next day, we went to my parent's house for dinner. My mom made meatloaf for dinner and I made a strawberry rhubarb pie for dessert.


Among his presents that night were some more baby books, receiving blankets, a gift card, Connect 4, Axis and Allies, and a CD.


Johnny in the wrapping paper pile:


It was quite a fun weekend! Since then, we've mostly just been working on school stuff and, in the past few days, putting together some things for the baby. We only have one bedroom, but it is fortunately a very large room so there will be no problem fitting all our stuff and the baby's stuff. We deep cleaned and rearranged it a week or two ago, and we've put up some decorations. Yesterday I assembled the crib. I know it's probably a little early to be doing all of this, but it's fun and we're just really excited! We are waiting on a dresser that we ordered that will double as a changing table (our Valentine's day present to ourselves); we'll post pictures once we've got that here and everything's set up!