Painting the Nursery

So, we decided, after I called my doctor to make sure I could paint, that we would tackle the fun job of painting. We are a good painting team, Davey's with his mad rolling skills and me with my trimming skills, so we figured we just might be able to finish it all in one evening. It took about 7 hours to paint 2 good coats, with dinner and part of the presidential debate in between.



(left) This is a picture in the evening before it was all the way done (you can still see the blue around the top)









(right) And this was taken in the morning once everything had dried.






Here's the cute little night light!






We're happy with the way it turned out. The next project will be taping and painting the horizontal stripes around the room. That's going to be a lot more complicated, so it might be awhile.

Oh, I almost forgot the funniest part of the evening...
To say that Davey dislikes trimming is a BIG understatement. I did everything on the lower part of the room, but because I don't need to be up on a ladder, he was going to have to trim around the ceiling. Well, apparently he'd been dreading it all day (as he told me later). He finally came up to me and said, "I'll make you a deal [I'm thinking "Oh great, what now"]. If you'll trim the ceiling, I'll stand by you on the ladder the WHOLE time and make SURE you don't fall. Please?" How could I resist? At one point while I was painting, I asked him if he was bored just standing there, to which he replied quite convincingly that no, he wasn't. He was still glad he didn't have to do it!

Shopping Fun!

Yesterday was a day of firsts...first purchase for the nursery, first time picking out paint colors, and first baby clothes! We headed to Babies 'R' Us yesterday afternoon and bought some wall hangings that matched our bedding set that we've chosen. They had the most colors in them to match, but were a lot cheaper than the whole bedding set. As you can see, they perfectly match the existing blue in that room, but in the case that we have a girl, we'd prefer a more neutral color. So, off to Lowe's we go...

After talking to the ladies in the paint section, we had a few different paint design ideas for the room. Some of the ideas we tossed around were: paint an accent wall with a neat design where the crib will go; paint two-tone vertical stripes around the whole room (Davey's favorite...but too much work), or horizontal stripes of varying widths around the middle of room, about the height of a chair rail. As of now, the last one (horizontal stripes) is winning out. Then came the fun of choosing paint colors. And here were the options...

You never knew there were so many shades of "tan," did you? This morning, in the natural light of that room, we quickly narrowed them down. We wanted a soft neutral because the rest of the room is going to have a lot of color. The stripes around the room will be in white, which will match the trim. I can picture it in my head, but don't have a way to show it on here. Don't worry, when we finish it, I will post pictures! Anyway, our final choice was "Vanilla Steam" (the lightest color on the swatch shown below).

I love this whale! He's so cute. The bedding set we've chosen is "Alphabet Soup," and has all these pictures in it. I'm so excited to plan a room from scratch. It's going to be a fun work in progress.

To celebrate making it through the first trimester (at least that was MY excuse), and to take advantage of a buy one get one 50% off sale, we chose our first two baby outfits. Buying these totally made my day!

Our first baby

Well, with all this talk about the new baby, I figured I shouldn't leave our first kid out. He's got red hair, weighs about 30 lbs., and his favorite thing to do (besides snuggle with his mommy) is run up and down the yard with an empty milk jug.  Sometimes we call him our "red-headed step-child," but he answers better to "Rudy."  We adopted him from Petsmart a couple of months after we got married.  He is my constant sidekick when Davey travels, and I would go crazy without him!  Of course, he makes me go crazy from time to time, but what dog doesn't?  

We have told Rudy that he is going to be a big brother, but I don't think he quite gets it yet.  He hasn't changed since I've been pregnant, so I doubt he senses anything different.  I've heard some dogs do.  He already loves to lay on the couch and put his head on my stomach.  In fact, on days where I feel a bit yucky, this is what we do pretty much all evening!  He's laying peacefully beside me right now as a write this.

Hopefully, Rudy will easily adjust to having a new baby.  So far he loves little kids and the one time he saw a baby, he seemed to be very perceptive of the fact that he needed to be gentle.  He actually stopped short in his tracks and became calm.  My hope is to have our kids playing in the yard with Rudy so he can protect them if necessary.  Since he's only 2 and 1/2 now, we should have many years together.

I've posted a video below (a new thing for me), and I hope you enjoy watching Rudy chase bubbles in our kitchen.  It's pretty entertaining!

Flippin' Out (in a good way)

I've gotta get two posts up in one day here since I'm very overdue in updating this thing! Last Wednesday (9/3/08) Davey picked me up at work again for my OB check-up. The doctor said my blood work all came back fine and told me my blood type. Come to find out it's something like my philosophy in life: "be positive" (sorry. couldn't resist!) The rest of the appoinment we discussed what tests I was going to have done and when, and then had a routine heartbeat check for the baby. When the picture showed up on the screen, our little acrobat did some kind of crazy flip! It was so neat to see Baby move! We laughed about it and on the way home jokingly hypothesized what he/she could have been doing. Davey's theory? "Maybe he was doing bootcamp class" (which is a workout class he used to do at the gym). My theory was that maybe Baby Akin is a girl and she was doing gymnastics. Regardless, seeing our baby move made this whole thing seem a little more real. I smile every time I think of it.

I love getting updates from different websites (whattoexpect.com, babycenter.com, thebump.com) about what changes are taking place with Baby each week. Check the link on the right side of the page to see how big Baby is this week. It says that from crown to rump (aka head to butt) Baby is about 1.6 in., or the size of a lime. However, I have never seen a lime that small, but maybe you have. Regardless, it's incredible to think of the miracle taking place inside of me as fingers and toes are visible, that precious little heart is working so hard, and even hair follices and fingernail beds are beginning to form. It amazes us everyday.

Camping trip to Black Rock Mtn. State Park

Over Labor Day weekend, we drove up to northeast GA with some friends of ours, Kurt and Shelah, to camp for 2 nights and enjoy the great outdoors. Lately I've been experiencing some queasiness in the evenings, and I was a little apprehensive about being sick in a tent in the woods! Also, I knew that I couldn't make it through the night without a pit stop, but Davey and Shelah both rescued me different times by walking with me down the hill to the bathroom in the dark. Overall I felt great the whole time...until I got home on Monday night!

The drive took about 2 and 1/2 hours, and fortunately we didn't hit any of the weekend construction traffic that everyone in Atlanta had been warned about. When we got to the park and I checked in, the staff said that they advised us to keep all food, even toothpaste, in our car because of the bears and raccoons! Apparently they will smell anything and then come after the food. It was inconvenient to have to drag everything up to the campsite for every meal and then take it all back, but I guess that's better than finding a bear in your tent in the middle of the night.

The weather was pretty nice the whole time we were there. The first night could have been a few degrees cooler, but it definitely wasn't as hot and humid as it has been earlier this month. The GA heat is the reason we don't camp in the summer anyway. We like to stick to fall and spring.

After sleeping in and breakfastthe next morning, we decided to go hiking. Davey and I had hiked at this park before, but we forgot which trail had the great lookout point. Come to find out it wasn't the one we chose. We got halfway through the trail and came to a point where we crossed a road. Davey and Kurt decided to walk back up the road to the car and then come get us girls. We laid in the grass and talked while enjoying the breeze. I think a few people driving by thought we were stranded, but when we smiled and waved instead of looking desperate they probably figured we were alright. After about 35 min. the guys finally arrived and we contemplated our next adventure: find a place to swim!

Davey and I didn't have bathing suits with us, and Kurt and Shelah had left theirs back up at the campsite and didn't feel like going all the way back up there. So, it was off to Walmart we went. I guess we just missed bathing suit season, so Shelah and I ended up with shorts and tanktops. The boys, however, had some fun trying on way too small boys swim trunks! I believe Kurt's was Transformers and Davey's pick was Batman. This was quite entertaining, let me tell you! They finally ended up with some other shorts, and we headed off to "Rabun Beach."

Little did we know that Lake Rabun would be so beautiful! Sorry I forgot to take pictures, but just imagine a lake with mountains surrounding it, and incredibly gorgeous lake houses, or shall we say, lake mansions. We seriously considered showing up at one of the immaculate lake houses and crashing someone's Labor Day party. Instead we settled for the public beach, which was small but still very nice. After lunch at a shaded picnic table, we ventured down to the water. We never really "swam," but just being in the water was nice. It definitely cooled us off after hiking earlier.

That evening we worked to keep our fire going so I could cook "hobos" on the fire. They consist of hamburger meat, potatoes, carrots, and spices wrapped in foil pockets. It took awhile to get the fire right, but we finally enjoyed our dinner and relaxed around the campfire while roasting marshmallows and eating s'mores. Our dog Rudy was so tired he just slept in my lap all evening. Seeing a 30 lb. dog squashed up on my small lap was pretty funny, but he just wouldn't budge.

This will probably be our last camping trip until Baby gets here, but hopefully someday we'll be able to pick up camping again. We hope so!