Bookshelf Complete

I had my doubts, but I should learn by now that I don't need to question my father. The bookshelves are finished and beautiful! Now to find things to fill them...

2012 Wrap Up

This 2012 wrap up is a bit late, but honestly, that's how all of 2012 has felt, a little bit late. But what a year it's been for us. The beginning of the year started out with Bob saying, "You're almost 20 weeks pregnant, you have to tell people." and me responding by, "I've got plenty of time."  Plenty of time to continue to be in denial.  Although 2012 sped by, here's some of our highlights:

Fun at the botanical Garden

• I almost finished the Star Trek Quiet Book. I've yet to bind it, but it'll happen I swear.
• We traded in Rosie the Cavalac for a Prius V 5
• With the unseasonably warm winter, I had the opportunity to spend a lot of time to spend with my camera and branching out of aperture priority into manual mode.
• We finished the study, bathroom off of the study and completed the laundry

Calm before the storm.

  

• It basically rained babies this year



Baby D

• Added a new niece to the family from my brothers side
• Added a new nephew to the family from Bob's side
• Announcement of a new niece from Bob's side
• Added a new 'nephew' from the Spisich side, whose first birthday we had the pleasure of hosting
• Chicago gang all having babies
• Oh yeah, we had a baby

•    We installed an electric fence. You're thinking, did you just put in a physical fence a couple of years ago? Well yes, except our circus dog, Sheeba, can clear a 5 foot fence as if it was an inch tall. The last straw came when Ani was 7 days old, Sheeba jumped the fence, and I had to chase her down with the new baby. Sheeba was 3 houses down barking at our neighbor on her back porch. 4 days later, the fence went up.

 

•  The Color Run - happiest 5K on the planet 
• Lots of visitors at the Pitt, some have compared us to a bed and breakfast
• Another year of good friends getting married

So yeah, the year has been a blur. So much has happened, and we've had so little sleep, that I don't think it's all sunk in yet. So here's some of our
goals for 2013:

• We're starting the kitchen!!
• The master bathroom?? (Slipper tub!)
• Landscaping?
• Tri Goddess Tri
• Sleep, sleep and more sleep. If that means I'm going to have to start giving Ani whiskey before bed, so be it :-)

Baby Brigade

•  A finished living room with possible new furniture additions

• Going back to healthy choices - this one's for me, I mean Bob still has 0% body fat, and I feel like I'm 95% body fat. It's not babies that make you make unhealthy decisions, it's the lack of sleep. "Getting More Lean in 2013"
• Yoga for me. I hate to even type it because I hate yoga so much, but it's so bloody good for my back. So there, now I've typed it so it must be so.

So here's to another year of renovations at the Pitt, but more importantly a year of family and love.

Eating Zingerman's Challah at the Pitt

Baby Grand Piano Room? Check.

Even with a babe on board, we've been really busy continuing renovations at the Pitt. I really didn't think that we would do much this year, but apparently the babe lit a fire under our butts. We moved out of the bedrooms and into the living room/baby grand piano room. The plan was simple, replace drywall tape, replace ceiling, mud everything over again, install new floors, cut a whole in the wall, install built in bookcase - all before the end of 2012. Success? Not quite, but close, oh so close.

This is our before:

 

Here's our during:

Which color do you think we picked?

Super Dad!

 The afterish:

OK, so I'm really showcasing a great kid picture here, but look the floor is done! In fact, all the floors are done. It seemed that the whole room was done. But in my head I saw a beautiful built in book case on the end of our living room. There was a book case there when we first moved in, but it was so ghetto. So my dad is building us a floor to ceiling wall to wall shelf. Here it is in process:

As soon as it's done, we'll show case it.

How much wood, would a wood chuck chuck?

Anika arrived 3 weeks early. Early enough for us

• Not to have the car seat installed
• Not to have any nursery room furniture assembled
• Not to have the bedroom part of the house done
• Still have all the boxes of hardwood sitting around the house

See we thought we had plenty of time, and I was in quite a bit of denial about the coming baby, even in the last trimester, but time was up. I went into labor and Bob immediately went to install the car seat. We came home from the hospital and the next day Bob put together the changing table. Two days later dad arrived to start working on the hardwood.

We selected old mission maple from Chelsea Plank Flooring, a local company, and went with variable lengths (3", 4" and 5"). And here's what it looks like:

 

I love the floor, it's beautiful and we'll probably put the same thing in the living room.

And what our living room looked like for the first 8 weeks of Anika's life:

Talking

OK so this is not home improvement related, but we've been busy with this little beast the past few weeks. We've finally reached a point of laughing/talking not fussing/screaming. I call this a parenting success.

Changes..

Some things have changed at the Pitt - as the new header indicates, we've got a new family member, and it's not a dog. (Thank you Karie Anne Photography for the new header picture!)  Lots of changes have happened and a lot of home improvement projects are taking place, but finding the time to post has been hard, but hopefully in the next couple of weeks we'll get the updates up on the blog.

Until the home improvement updates let me introduce you to Anika Dezsi Marinier, born June 2, 6 lbs 15 oz.

Two Weeks Old