I'd like to introduce everyone to Parker!!

So on Monday Feb 23rd at 5:22 AM Christina gave birth to our daughter (and future weekend home remodeler) Parker. In just 2.5 hours of labor Parker was born and that was that. Parker was born at 34 weeks, which is a bit early, so she's been in the ICN at Pennsylvania Hospital and is tentatively coming home this Monday or Tuesday. Good stuff.

In the meantime Christina came home on Tuesday, and so we started to wrap up Parker's room. Luckily we have an extra week while she's being taken care of, and it's time that I desperately needed. The list for Parker's room was:

• Paint the back wall magenta
• Trim out behind the radiator and piping in the corner
• Paint the old sub floors
• Hook up all of the electrical and install the recessed baffles
• Get the furniture and put it together

Not a bad list, but since I hate painting it took all of my effort to get at least that part done. Right now the magenta is up, the electrical is 90% done (just need to connect two receptacles and find plates for the 2 square boxes (not an easy find).

Scattered throughout are some pictures of the room. As for the floors, note in the first room picture that the floors are just the old sub floors. They were deemed not really salvageable by our flooring guy, and after flirting with installing carpet, we opted to just use a dark grey floor paint. Admittedly I was kind of apprehensive about the process and the potential outcome, but Christina was right...the floor looks good.

Up next is painting the second floor hallway the same color as Parker's room, and picking up the baby furniture tomorrow. I need to run at least the baseboard trim in there, so I'm hoping that I can squeeze that in tomorrow AM before the furniture arrives. But man, who knows. Do babies care that the baseboard and the base caps is not installed? Maybe she'll notice at 4 months...but probably not at 9 days.

So yeah, that's that. Parker's IV and feeding tube (used as a back up only) were removed yesterday, and she's already back to her birth weight and nursing like a full term baby.

In summary, Parker has made all of the months of blood, sweat, and expletives worth it in every sense.

P.S. - Since I drafted this post like 8 hours ago, the second floor hallway has been painted the same color. Also, Parker has all tubes removed from her but is unfortunately under Billi lights for the next day or so. What's a "Billi" light you say? Use Google. But in the meantime I'll say that the lights are used to cure any signs of jaundice, to which Parker has just a hint of. They say maybe 2 days with the blue lights. We'll see I guess.

- Bryan

Knowing when to just walk away

So it's Saturday night, and I left the hospital early to try and pick up the house tonight/tomorrow morning in time to get back to the hospital for Christina to be induced. Yep, it's here. 2 weeks ago we looked like we saw Bigfoot walking into a Wawa after we got the news, and now we're apparently ready to be parents? Life is insane sometimes.

On the kid front real fast: everything is great and like I said Monday is GO TIME! We had a tour of the NICU this evening which was actually not terrifying in the least bit. Well besides finally having it all hit me like a ton of bricks...we're actually going to have a kid in the next 48 hours. Damn.

On the house front, it's been a looooooong week. In between trying to balance work and entertaining Christina at the hospital, I was responsible for priming and painting just about 65% of the surfaces in the house. It was a long week (but thanks to Cat, Joey and Rich for the help!). I'm posting some pictures that are small, so click on them to see the full size.

Oh, and you'll note that the picture quality looks vastly superior than the usual drab ones that we have. Well that's from my father-to-be/weekend house warrior present, a new Nikon D40 camera. It's nothing too fancy, but it'll be sweet in the upcoming months with the baby, and it helps with the house shots a bit too. Some shots are with the flash and some are without. I was playing around a little.

The pizza boxes really make the place feel like home I think. That, and if you look really closely at the living room blinds, those should be white. Not the shade of beige they appear. I guess that is what 12 solid months of dust will do........

At this point, the priming is done (all 8 gallons of it) as are all of the ceilings. I did manage to get the nursery walls painted, minus the soon to be magenta one. My goal today was to work on the main colors throughout which is an MAB color called "Lemon Ice". It makes me want pie when I see it. I hope that feeling doesn't last forever. Anyway, when the realization of the fact that I will be a father before the next Flyers game hit me, we decided that he rest of the wall paint and the floor paint can wait a bit. I needed some time to decompress.

I wasn't going to argue. I'm tired, sore and really lacking decent sleep.

So the plan is that after the fun with the kid subsides a bit, as she'll be in the NICU for 1-2 weeks, I'll work on her room to complete it which includes wrapping up the electrical items. Not a big deal. We did decide to paint the floor of the nursery and the second floor hallway to speed up this process to be able to then get the baby furniture in and set up. There is apparently no rest in any of this.

On a totally more random note, I was playing with the new camera today in the hospital and I realized something that must be pretty obvious to everyone else in our daily lives. While Christina is working to keep our kid healthy by being in the hospital room for 2 weeks, being stuck with needles over and over each day and braving hospital food, to the left is how she looks at this point. A portrait of beauty and grace as usual.

To the right was me this afternoon. I am way out of my league, and badly need a haircut.

That's really it right now for us here on South 13th Street. I mean aside from needing to finish painting the walls and floor and trimming out the nursery, assembling the furniture, cleaning the place up, buying diapers and even premi clothes...it's like sitting on a beach.

A beach next to the great Sea of What Have We Gotten Ourselves Into. It's a beautiful view.

- Bryan

It's always the darkest before dawn

I'm blogging about our house progress from Pennsylvania Hospital here in Philly. Why? Well on Friday Christina had a bit of fluid leakage and the docs said her water broke (only slightly but it's all or nothing there) and she's been admitted until delivery. She's fine and the baby's heart rate, size, and fluids look great. Christina is 32 weeks along (if you don't know what that means for this situation I'd suggest Google) which means she needs to hang here so that everyone can help the baby not come out for a couple more weeks at minimum.

In summary: while she's going to be here 24/7 watching tv and keeping the home fires burning in utero, the house HAS TO BE FINISHED. I'm also blogging about the house to help show our family and friends that we're doing fine and that when this baby comes home (albeit not in the way that we had planned) the house is going to look amazing.

With that being typed, to what I'll assume are complete strangers, it's time to blog about the house. Because I'm sitting here in the hospital I didn't have the patience to resize the pics in Photoshop. So apologies to those 4 people that are still on dial up.

After months of toiling on the house doing things like removing the old wiring, reinforcing joists and making huge messes, I think I see the proverbial light at the end of the proverbial tunnel. As our last post mentioned, the drywall is in full effect at the house which still makes me smile.

Since drywall posts are so fun for other people to read, I'll cut to the chase. Everything has been hung and two coats of mud have been applied. Sanding will be today (Sunday) and hopefully wrapping up tomorrow. I think I shed a dusty tear thinking about that. As usual I'm including some pictures so that you can see what we're up to.

The next piece to this puzzle are the floors which are ready in the wings. I've lined up the guy we used for sanding and sealing the red birch on the third floor that I installed. He's ready to roll on one day's notice, and I'm thinking Wednesday to start with the final two coats going down Friday will work out just fine. That'll keep the last of dusty and annoying tasks back to back which is A-OK with me.

The goal here is that while Christina is in the hospital I want the floors done and the place cleaned up. I have offers from some friends to help me prime and paint the new drywall which will help out tremendously and for which I'm grateful. If Christina does deliver in two weeks our kid will be here in the NICU for a couple weeks, so I'm hoping that those two weeks will mean that in the evenings we can head home and all Christina has to worry about is what outfit goes into what drawer, or where the wipes should go ease of use. That's it. Period. I don't want her worrying about when the paint will be done, or when the baby's room will be put together. I'm really going to work on getting that done so it's a non issue. In my perfect world she'll worry about what painting to pick for the room from our stash, or if the rug should be centered in the room or not...but nothing about the trim in the room or the second coat of paint.

So that's what is going on here on 13th street nowadays. I don't know how to properly manage work, hospital and being a part time G.C., but I'll find out tomorrow.

It's finally gotten pretty crazy around here, but I see dawn breaking on the horizon.