WOW!!!

I have never seen so much snow in all my life! This is the craziest, snowiest, most unpredictable, most unusual, most unDC-like weather ever! It's unbelievable! It's crazy to think that I shoveled my walk and cleaned off my car yesterday--it had NO SNOW on it-- and spent a long time shoveling out my parking space and now it looks like this!!!

Of course, now I am completely second guessing my decision to not stay in that rediculously long line at the grocery store yesterday to buy more food. I swear the line stretched all the way back from the registers to the back of the store and then crossed the store perpendicularly and went almost all the way to the other side. There must have been at least 50 people in line! I just did not have the patience and my cabinets are full of food so there was no need. If I was snowed in til May I wouldn't starve. I just wanted what I wanted (cookie making ingredients, wine, ice cream.. no wonder I'm not losing any weight!)

So, I am without Toll House cookie making ingredients but I am nice and cozy inside while the wind whips about my windows. It's scary, to be honest with you. I am so grateful for this warm house. It sure is cozy in here with my tea (seen here in my favorite "COCOA" mug I made)

but I wouldn't be surprised if we lost power. I had read that the weight of the snow was making peoples awnings and roofs collapse. That is a very scary prospect. I cleaned off my awning as best I could yesterday and this morning I thought about the skylight in my bathroom. I pulled it open to clean off the snow that had accumulated. Look at all this!

I need to do that every hour. So, yes, I am off work for the rest of the week with loads of time to work on the nursery and prepare for my daughter's arrival but it won't be as relaxing as I had anticipated.

It's whiteout conditions out there. Our second blizzard in a week! I will never forget this winter, hence one of the names I gave my daughter: Naomi Winter Almaz.

Blizzard of 2010

I swear, this blizzard must've been created just for me! :-D

I haven't been able to find the time to do anything to prepare for my daughter's arrival even though I know it has to be a priority. Unfortunately, it seems like lately everything is a priority! Bills. Meetings. Assessments. Report Cards. Family health issues. The nursery and all the other hundreds of things related to her arrival have taken a back seat since that's over a month away. And then when I am not dealing with life-stuff, I want to be hanging out. I want to accept every invitation since I know that's all about to be shut down. But at the same time I really, really, really need to be home getting everything ready. It's a Catch 22, people!! Well, there's a blizzard out there so now I have no choice! Everything is shut down and I am alone in this house with nothing but time on my hands!!

I got home early on Friday because my school district closed 2.5 hours early. It had just started to snow. I was celebrating in my front yard, giddy with the prospect of a chance to accomplish some things off my mammoth never-ending to do list!

It was all fun and games taking these pictures until my camera fell off my car, smashing onto the concrete. I'm lucky I didn't crack the screen, although it now has a grinding noise whenever I open it or try to get in for a tight shot. :(

oops.

So I went in the house with my bruised camera, unpacked my groceries (salmon, ice cream, Chardonnay and pizza were some of the musts!) and prepared to hunker down for the storm. I turned on my heated mattress pad - love.it. - and got cozy in my bed to work on a name for my girl. I am keeping Almaz as part of it but want to add something to it. Look for a post on that process to come. I spent the whole evening coming up with combinations of the names I love. Meanwhile, it kept snowing and snowing and snowing. It's blowing like crazy out there now and the snow keeps piling up. It hasn't stopped snowing since Friday morning. There has got to be at least 2' out there. It's incredible!!

This morning I created a Blizzard To Do List. Trust me on this: it's long. But it's also manageable! I am sure that I don't just have this weekend to accomplish the items on it. DC is not prepared to handle snow of this magnitude. There is NO WAY they will have this plowed in time for school on Monday. Or Tuesday. And they are forecasting even more snow for Tuesday so that means there probably won't be any snow on Wednesday either! I'm predicting we are out until Thursday at the earliest. That gives me five straight uninterrupted days to get things done! First up, the nursery. Remember these photos? I will start on this today and will do another nursery-related post at the end of the blizzard. Wish me luck!

Nursery *edited*

I have been going back and forth for months on what room in my house should become the nursery. One room seemed perfect. It was in the back of the house overlooking the yard and got lots of light and very quiet. I moved all her things in there and made a plan. But when I got matched with a toddler and not an infant that ideal room was no longer ideal. You see, you have to go through another room to get to that quiet back room because it is an addition. That would mean I could possibly have a toddler wandering through the den or the walk-in-closet at any time--and in the middle of the night when I am sleeping doesn't seem like such a good idea.

So, the room decision has been made for me and with only nine days til court I think it's time I start putting it together! Here's the 'before' photo.


(Yeah, it's a huge mess!! I have too much stuff!!)


(angle from the other side of the room)

Here's the plan:

* clean out all the crap
* put crib in the corner where the computer is
* paint a white tree in that corner
* get rid of the blinds with the dangerous cords and replace them with cheap-o paper ones
* hang the mini lanterns
* remove all my stuff from the shelves (or at least the bottom two) and replace them with baskets for her diapers, socks, tights, pj's etc.
* put a table and chairs in there for her to create art (I'm planning to raise an artsy, tennis player :))
* hang a wire to display her artwork
* integrate my butterfly theme somehow


This is going to be fun!

Butterflies

I finally came up with a theme I like for the nursery/toddler bedroom! Butterflies! I don't have sheets--or furniture for that matter (even though it was recommended that I start with sheets and build from there) but I'm not into everything being super matchy-matchy so if the sheets are solid or a different butterfly pattern or a flower pattern I won't mind. I just know I want it to be multi-colored pastels and have butterflies. Once I decided that, butterflies appeared out of nowhere!

My mother brought these mini orange ceramic butterflies as a gift to me from one of her travels so these will be hung up somewhere (I know they're not pastel but they're going up!).


When I was at the dollar store the other day and I found these cute wall decals,

this butterfly stamp

and this wooden butterfly.


Then at CVS I found these mini lanterns:


And when I was going through my clutter I discovered I had these stencils!


I can't wait to get started decorating! Here's the room currently as a den (excuse the wires!). It's currently pale yellow but I tested it and it's lead paint so it will need to be repainted. I have some lavender paint that I could use or I could get something else. I kind of like it the color that it is but right now I am open to anything.. well, anything but pink. I'm already overwhelmed by all the pink girl clothes! LOL

Any suggestions on furniture/mini lanterns placement, paint color, window treatments, what/where to stencil or anything else?

Cribs

I have started looking into nursery furniture and I thought I would start with the crib. (Actually, I started with bedding as it was recommended that I buy that before I paint the nursery and while thinking about bedding I started thinking about cribs.)

Anyhoo~I was looking at cribs and bedding and I started reading how dangerous cribs can be (splinters, injuries, entrapment, strangulation, etc.). So then I looked at the bumpers created to protect the babies from the slats only to discover that they, too, can pose a suffocation or strangulation hazard. So I figured I would buy a crib without slats-- but there appears to be no such thing!

Can anyone explain why they continue to design cribs with slats if the slats are hazardous as well as the bumpers used to cover them?

I mean, seriously, wtf?

Mural in the Nursery

I think I'll paint a mural in the nursery. I have done it before. Here I am painting Clifford on the KG classroom wall at the orphanage in Addis Ababa.




























For the nursery, though, I'm thinking a tree. Modernwallgraphics has this which I like a lot.















Or maybe I won't do a tree at all. I found this on Project Nursery. I like this, too, and I wouldn't have to repaint as she got older.























Does it make sense to look at bedding first? Hmmm.
Which comes first the paint or the bedding?

Preparing Myself (and the Nursery) for Baby

My house has four small bedrooms upstairs. One teeny, tiny one that I turned into a walk-in closet right after I moved in (with permanent closet organizers) and three other slightly larger rooms. The master bedroom is in the front of the house. Next to it is a bathroom. On the other side of the bathroom is another room, which will be the nursery, and in the back of the house is the forth bedroom. The back room was added as an addition, like most houses in my neighborhood, probably about forty years ago. It is nice to have the extra space, but in order to get to that back room you have to either walk through the walk in closet or the future nursery. Currently, the middle room is my TV room/den/office and the back room has all of my art/scrapbooking/photography stuff in it. This hasn't presented a problem when it was just me living here, but it's probably not a good idea to have a room with expensive cameras and enticing art supplies and hundreds of markers and decorative papers in a spectrum of colors one room over from a curious toddler. (Although I don't know what age my daughter will be when I bring her home, I'm going to prepare for a child who may be crawling or walking already).

So, I have a dilemma. I don't have enough space in my small home. Ideally I would like separate spaces for:

* a place to watch TV (preferably not in my bedroom or in the living room)
* an office space
* a playroom
* a place to do my creative stuff, and
* a guest room

But other than the back room upstairs the only other possible spaces I have are the sunroom/breakfast room on the first floor--which leads to the backyard where no doubt we will be coming in and out of all summer--and a fairly large, extremely humid basement. So three rooms (back room upstairs, sunroom and basement) when I need five. I realize I can double up but I am having a really hard time trying to figure out how to do that without spending a lot of money. If money were no object I suppose I could make the basement climate right, buy some comfy furniture, section off the washer/dryer, add some built-ins for art supplies, mount a flat screen TV and turn that space into a guestroom/artspace/den. My art supplies would be safe because she would never be down there without me and it'd be a place to go and relax with guests or when she's sleeping and I don't want to disturb her. Then the upstairs room could be simply an office and the sunroom could be her playroom. Maybe you have a better idea?

With the above idea in mind I started to clear out my den to make room for baby. I really want to start setting up the nursery because I really need to make this adoption feel more real. I know usually people don't want to look at an empty room in the midst of the process because they feel sad and empty, but I feel the opposite. I want that space done so I can really start to feel like motherhood isn't just some illusive concept. I want to feel that yearning! I want to see the baby furniture and the clothes and toys and books. I want to feel the excitement building that I imagine pregnant woman must feel in the months leading up to their child's birth.

The adoption process is mostly doctors appointments and document gathering and check writing and, well, it's basically no fun at all. We don't get the new wardrobe and the sonograms (or are they ultrasounds? --you know the little picture of the developing baby) and the pats on the belly and the cravings and all the other accoutrements of the impending arrival. I want that! I want people to be excited and involved and send little gifts in the mail. I want my family to be excited and talking about it-- and by 'it' I mean the baby. If I were pregnant the comments from friends in family would be:

* Congratulations!
* How do you feel?
* Have you thought of a name?

But when you say you are adopting you don't get those questions. The questions, if you get any at all--and there have been many people in my life who have not asked one question at all from good friends to close family members--are more typically :

* Why?
* Can't you have any of your own?
* Aren't you afraid of illness/attachment/low intelligence..?

Most people just aren't excited about adoption and even if they are, they aren't talking about it every time they see you like they would if you were pregnant with that big visual reminder. They don't congratulate you or ask you how you are feeling or drop by with little booties or board books. So, I want to do the nursery so when people come over they will have that visual reminder and will be excited and so that I, too, will have the excitement that is so lacking from this whole process.


So, today I started clearing out the den to prepare the nursery and if I squeeze my eyes tightly shut and sit still for a moment, I can detect a wee bit of excitement stirring from within.