Another Round...

Of "Whose Belly is THAT?" Good luck contestants.

One of the below pics is of a 29 week belly and the other, well, likes to chase flies. It's a doozy so put on your thinking caps!





I also don't want to usurp John's good news but he's plugging away at something else so I figured I'd also throw in a stairs update. He's got most of the spindles in and things are looking great!

Happy Talk Like a Pirate Day

Thanks to Liz, we learned why Pirate Patricia (Patricia is unfortunately not the chosen female name, nor is Pat the male name) is having a wild party inside mom's belly today. Why you ask? Well argh matey, it's National Talk Like a Pirate Day.

Don't believe us? Check it out: Talk Like a Pirate Day. Watch out though, apparently all hope abandon ye who enter there...

Odds and Ends

Fall has definitely arrived in Newburyport. Fall means that winter is close... which means we're about 12 weeks away from our due date. We have a hospital tour on Wednesday to visit the birth center at .Anna Jacques. It will be exciting to see the rooms and get a better sense of the place. Our midwives are great and have been very helpful in preparing us thus far. Seeing the physical space will be good as well.

Speaking of hospitals, I think I'm glad that we don't live in Amersterdam. Someone with whom I went to high school and his wife just had an adorable baby over there and were home from the hospital in six hours. GULP!

I just finished a book that my friend Julie recommended. Operating Instructions is a hilarious and poignant look at a mother's first year raising her son. I higly recommend it.

We bought our first piece of furniture for baby last week -- a changing table. Slowly but surely, our house is showing signs of being more family friendly.

Stay warm everyone and we'll add a belly picture and an updated stair picture next week.

Reader Appreciation Night

Below is a post exclusively for one of our regular readers, Liz Stockwell.

Dear Liz, Your comments are appreciated and do not go unread. Here is another belly picture.

Melissa, Pat, and Tom Caron at Week 27

Pat's New Room

Yeah, yeah, so the blog creator hasn't been quite as good as his mate at posting anything meaningful about Pat lately. Martha Stewart came over this weekend, however, to help Meliss and I finish Pat's room. Check it out!

I know what you're thinking. We should've been designers. Did you guess the theme? Eco-basement. It's the next big thing, trust us. There are are a number of eco-features to be sure Pat's existence on planet Earth is low-carbon/no-carbon:

- basement: the safest place in a hurricane or tornado, plus easy bulkhead entry/exit

- sawdust and fieldstone flooring: natural oak sawdust with the damp fieldstone gives a firm, comfortable base for sleeping or playing

- all metal, stone, and wood toys: Pat's got a nice workbench and metal ladder from grammy and grampy. also note the different sizes of wood blocks. Pat could also make dolls out of loose stones and pebbles, or weave the latest fashions with some of the weeds growing out of those walls

- recycled wall hangings: we already had the breaker box down there, and martha added a few old wires and cords to make it a real showpiece for the room. no fork jokes, please.

- recycled cardboard furniture: the big box with the skil saw and sander is the changing table. The little cardboard box on the floor is the cradle. What a great recycled piece. Do you see the vision? It's the leftover moving look. We're not sure what we're going to do with Dad's golf bag yet

There's even a table in the back there so that if Pat is indeed a Pat-ricia (which is a roughly 50/50 chance when you do the math) can have a tea party with the entire family. Anyhow, if anyone has any HGTV-like suggestions for what will really finish off the room, let us know.

PS - One bonus is that Pat will grow up without daddy's dislike of bugs and insects, basically because Pat will be able to harmonize with the basement biosystem fairly early in life.

Dad's First Bad Home Improvement Idea

Hey, what do you get when you mix a home improvement rookie with an old carpeted staircase?

What you get is an unnecessary amount of manual labor, including painting, sanding, suspected toxic paint removal, and trips to Lowe's and Home Depot for new tools. Then you also fork over a few trunkloads of money and time, as well as any interest in ever undertaking any other home improvement project.

That said, a now infamous stair project is starting to wrap up, and while it was difficult, the results are taking shape. While it has nothing to do with Pat (except that she or he will one day need decent stairs to run up and down), I had to post at least a few pictures for family and others to see the progress. For someone who has never really done any major project involving wood, unless you count the magazine rack we were forced to make in seventh grade, it was a great learning experience. I admit it's no 2nd-story addition like Beth and Jake just finished up, but you need to start somewhere.

By the way, special thanks goes out to Davis Lee, a.k.a. McGyver, who thanklessly provided excellent advice every time I either hit a wall or was about to make a big, costly mistake. Except, potentially, the mistake of taking on this project. Grampy also gets a save as well for keeping me from over-complicating the whole thing. Two words: Liquid Nails. Lastly, I'd just like to confirm a bit of wisdom that was once shared by good buddy Ezra when we were about a month into painting my parents' entire house back in 90-degree summer 1998 weather: "hey, this is why nobody wants to end up painting and sanding." affirmative, ez.

Time to make a bad mistake.

Post tear-out of carpet. Hard to see, but these 100-year-old stairs were pretty much riddled with nail holes and dents. Nice and creaky, too.

Some of the old stairs in their almost-final resting place.

The new oak treads are in, along with a fresh paint job for the staircase...not done yet, but it's usable again. The new balusters and some moulding work is on tap for next weekend...

Above is the first-ever chisel job; it's dedicated to Davis McGyver, who told me that yes, i would need to use the chisel to do this properly. Given it was Dad's first-ever chisel job, it caused Melissa to see more of the Pats game on Sunday than me. Luckily they won. Anyhow, here's Davis McGyver this past Saturday night in his favorite "Sou-Wester?" hat. Had to memorialize it. Thanks McGyver.