The nursery breakdown (physical not mental)

I’ve mentioned before that we aren’t doing a nursery in the sense of a themed nursery that has become so popular among new parents. Our child will have a place to sleep (a laundry basket is okay, right? j/k), a place to store their stuff (clothes, toys, other boy stuff), brand new drywall and a fresh coat of neutral paint.

When I bought the house, the three things I hated most were the windows (old and uninsulated), the carpet upstairs (old and ugly), and the texture on the walls downstairs (really, texture on walls! Do you know how hard that is to paint?). After I bought the house and discovered that the downstairs bathroom didn’t have outlets, I added that to my list of hated items. All of these things are easily remedied, but all of these things take some cash and I don’t like to use credit unless I have to. All but a few windows have been replaced at this point. The carpet upstairs is coming up as we work on rooms up there (hard wood underneath), and our plan has been to replace the drywall one room at a time as we were working on those rooms. We haven’t had that opportunity yet, so needing a place to put the baby gave us the motivation to actually see what we were in for in the rest of the house.

Our fabulous friend is a carpenter type person and came over and looked at the room for us and told us it shouldn’t be a big deal. He helped Gene take out the molding and wood covering the ductwork (the ductwork for the rest of the house comes up through the floor in this room and runs to the rest of the house). Gene got the rest of the old drywall off later in the week and made a bit of a discovery. There was NO insulation in the walls…none, nothing, zero! I’m not talking about just the interior walls, the exterior walls as well. How ridiculous is that?! (This is one more thing I’m adding to my house hating list.) No wonder our heating bill is out of control in the winter. (We are talking $200-400 a month in the winter when everyone else we know pays around $100-$150). Luckily, I had budgeted to replace/add to the existing insulation in the nursery when we were planning this.

This biggest thought that keeps running through my head is, imagine the money that could have been saved by me and the previous owners if someone had just taken the time to put something in these stupid walls (yes, I’m frustrated by this). This is my fourth winter here (winter 2006-2007, 2007-2008, 2008-2009 and 2009-2010) and because I like a good bill history I can tell you that I have spent (and I’m including the projection for the rest of this winter) $5,000 on heating alone over four years! Friends with very similar sized houses and heating units have spent a ¼ to a 1/3 or that (and most of them keep their thermostats at 68-73 and we keep ours at 60-63, so this isn’t exactly a fair comparison). Now we know our issue, we can address it correctly. Our priority is the baby’s room, then the kitchen wall that is leaking (gutter/flashing problems), the living room, and our bedroom. We plan to tackle the kitchen this spring and maybe the living room this fall or next spring. I’m hoping by this winter we can have a much warmer house, but that will depend on how much all of these things will cost.

We should have the new drywall up in a few weeks. I’ll post before and after pictures then.

Whoopsie

Looks like I took down all of out food posts when I was playing with the site. I'll get them back up as soon as I can.

Making It Work

I have to say that we are so blessed as a couple. We were able to get pregnant without struggling (or trying….but that’s a whole other post!) and we both have good jobs that provide decent health coverage. We are so very fortunate not have some of the issues that some new parents have when trying to make “it” work with a baby. But we do have our issues.

Day care

I struggle so hard with this. I hate the thought of not knowing the person who is taking care of my child personally. My mom offered, but my mom needs to have her own life. She needs to take some time for herself (not that she ever would) and I just can’t burden her with our baby. I could try to work part time, but then we would have to give something up. I’m not sure what that something would be right now, but it would involve giving up vacations, maybe downgrading our house, not paying as much on student loans. I don’t know, but we don’t want to give those things up right now. If after sometime, we want me home with the baby or at least part time, we will figure out a way to make it work.

Cost of a baby

Day care is expensive….really really expensive. We have the income there to pay for it, we have to modify our savings a bit and it will cut into our fun stuff, but we’ll live. Diapers, college savings, clothes, and food are all swimming around in my head. It is so overwhelming. What do you budget for what? I got scholarships to college and Gene joined the military. He does have some student loans for other expenses in college, and our parents did help us out to a certain extent, but otherwise, we took care of it ourselves. However, in today’s rising costs of college, how much should we expect to help him? Should we try to pay for all of it, part of it, or see what he needs and go from there? I know we will help him, but I don’t know to what extent or what he’ll want to do. The other things (diapers, clothes, food) we are just going to have to figure out as they come.

Our Relationship

I don’t want to be one of those couples who only have their baby in common, nor do I want to be one of those couples who function as if they don’t have a child. I know there is middle ground, but how do you find it? Date nights? Couple time after the baby is asleep? How do you fit it in with everything else that will be going on? I know the first year will be hard on us as a couple, I hope we are able to see beyond that when it gets bad and not take our time together for granted (when we have time that is!)

Nursery

We aren't doing a nursery. We have a room for the baby, but it won't have a theme or decked out in the "must have" items. There will be a crib, a dresser and toy storage for later on. I've got a lot of questions about why we aren't doing a "traditional" nursery and our reasons are mainly fiscal. But when did having themed nursery become traditional. I didn't have one as a baby, neither did my parents. Anyway...our reasons.

First, we both feel that nurseries are for the parents and not for the baby. When the child begins to notice the room, they will be old enough to want to change it to something of their own liking, so why waste the money on expensive themed crib sheets, mobiles, wall hangings, etc.. I found a neutral crib bumper for $3 and crib sheets and blankets in neutral colors can be found for similar prices.

Second, we are lazy people and putting together a themed room takes time that we aren't willing to give up on yet. We would rather spend this time being close as a couple and time with our friends.

Third, we just aren't the theme kind of people. Our wedding didn't have a color scheme or theme. We just wanted to get married without the fuss and our marriage is just as valid as someone who went all out, just like our child will be happy (or not happy) in their crib regardless of what color the sheets are.

Now, we are fixing the room up a bit. This is going to be our test room for the rest of the house. We are going to replace the drywall, update the fixtures, add insulation if needed, fix any other issues that come up and paint it a neutral color. This room doesn't have a closet, so we may add one or just do a small shelving unit with a bar to hang up clothes.

The Weight of it all...

Confession time. I’ve never been comfortable with my weight. I know it is something that many women struggle with, but even when I was smaller, I was uncomfortable with myself. After I got pregnant, my focus had to change from losing weight to not losing/gaining. It has been the hardest thing about this pregnancy so far. The funny thing is, I’m easily eating 300-400 more calories than I was, but I have yet to gain any weight. In fact, so far, I’ve lost 8 pounds and I still haven’t gained those back. I’ll admit I was a little overweight to start and apparently my body can function and grow a baby without the extra weight, but I don’t want to hurt the baby. I’m eating foods that are super healthy and I’m skipping out on things that are not. (Though I did have a few bites of ice cream last night but that’s loaded with calcium, right?) When I want a little chocolate, I have ONE kiss or miniature chocolate bar. Literally, one. At my 19 week ultrasound, the baby was measuring a little ahead, so I know he’s getting what he needs. Because the baby is okay, and I’m not gaining weight like I thought I was going to, I’m going to try harder not to focus on weight. It is just not the best frame of mind for me. Instead, I’m focusing on eating what my baby needs and developing better eating habits for after the baby comes. If I can get the eating better part down, the (currently non-existent) baby weight shouldn’t be a burden or too much of one.

Its a boy!!

We found out today that we are having a boy! Name issue mainly solved! The middle name is a little up in the air, but I think we know where we're going with it.

Everyone kept telling me that it would feel more real when we found out the sex, but I don't know. It doesn't feel more real, it still feels odd and well, scary!

I'm happy we are having a boy, but I would be just as happy if we were having a girl. However, I'm very happy not worrying about the girl name now.

The Name Game

I love my husband, he is so cute. How many guys do you know that has had a boy name picked out since he was a teenager? The issue is the girl name. We don't find out what the sex is until January and I'm stuck between two names. We have a middle name, but we really like Emma and Abigail equally. The other issue is that they are both really popular names right now and that can be hard for kids when they know tons of people with their name.

I'm officially putting all name talks on hold until after January 12th.