Griffin's First Week at Home

It has been quite a week, Griffin came home last Sunday, we celebrated Sawyer's 3rd Birthday on Monday, had a few days of downtime and then did an egg hunt on Friday followed by a weekend of Easter festivities. Lindsay and I took just Harrison and Sawyer to an easter festival and the grocery store on Saturday, and even after just a week it already seemed incomplete to be out and about with just the two of them and not little Griffin as well.

Baby Griffin is Here!

At 1:23pm, baby Griffin was born at a nice healthy 8 lbs 4 ounces and 19.75" long. Everyone's doing real well (now that it's all over).

Baby Griffin is definitely on the way!

Today is the day! We called the hospital at 5am, and were told to call back at 7:30am, so we were worried that we wouldn't be able to get in to do it today, but at 7:30 they said come on in, so here we are. Lindsay was having regular contractions before they even started the Oxytocin, and now she just got her epidural and her water broken, so we are all good to go. Hopefully we'll have a new little guy here with us by 2pm!

All Ready for the Little Guy to Get Here

We've come all the way to the end of this journey and our new baby boy should be here tomorrow. The nursery is finished and the boys have taken their 'Super-Sibling' class, the house is clean, landscaped, the car is clean with a 3rd car seat securely installed. This'll be the last post before he's here probably.

Our Finished Nursery


Harrison & Sawyer at the 'Super Sibling' class

Poppy's Birthday

Catching up on some photos now that the nursery project is pretty much done. We traveled to Austin for Poppy's 60th birthday a couple of weekends ago. Courtney and Stefan came down from NY, so we got to see them and it was a full house for a 3-day weekend. We all threw Poppy a nice little ninja turtle party :)

Setting up a Nursery, Part 5

The last major task of setting up the nursery has been completed! We installed the crown molding last weekend and put a couple coats of paint on it throughout the week. This was the most challenging project of all, but I got through it thanks to the information and tools from compoundmiter.com. I bought the book and a angle measuring tool and although I couldn't get it perfect, I think it came out a lot better than if I had just tried to wing it.

My lessons learned from the whole process:

• Make the templates! The book talked about cutting templates before you begin, and I thought why bother if there's plenty of pictures in the book? Lets just say I had a couple backwards cuts from accidentally looking at the wrong picture in the book... I'm going to be cutting some templates out of my spare pieces :)


• Write the measurements down on the back of the molding. Normally when doing these kinds of projects I can measure a cut and keep that figure in my head until I get to the saw, but with this project I kept on having to try and remember a linear measurement, a corner angle and sometimes a ceiling slope and by the time I was finished following the charts for the miter angles, the linear measurement was partially forgotten.

Everything else from here on out will be just the furnishings and decorations, so next up will be pictures and a video of the finished room!

Setting up a Nursery, Part 4

This weekend we took on the chair molding to get us one step closer to being finished with this room. This project was a first for us and I finally got to try out my Christmas present.

The first challenge encountered was that the height of the stripes I taped out kind of increased by about 2 inches between the first wall and the last wall, not too apparent to the naked eye, but it called for some extra touch-up painting. The next challenge encountered was trying to find a process for installing each piece that would not result in liquid nails all over the place. Our general process for each piece went kind of like this:

1. Measure the angles and mark the trim for cutting


2. Walk out to the saw and then try to remember which side of the tick mark to line the blade up with


3. Return and fit the piece into place, check it with the level


4. Take the piece back off the wall and put some liquid nails on it


5. Try to put the piece back in the same spot, check it with the level again


6. Turn to grab a nail quickly before the piece falls off the wall or shifts slightly from whoever's holding it


7. Try to find a stud with my semi-reliable stud-finder


8. Check the level again and fix it


9. Nail a few finishing nails in, counter-punch and then try to clean up the glue that smeared out

It was a success, though, although I did have to cut a few shim pieces, and Lindsay's caulking finished it off into a nice professional looking installation. Lindsay also did the painting, which was not as much fun as the yellow walls. Instead of the Valspar, we just went with some inexpensive ultra-white semi-gloss that claimed to be commercial quality. Commercial quality apparently means very drippy and messy, and requires commercial quality cleaners to get it off the brush and your hands.

The final big project will be the crown molding, which we will take on in early February.