16 Week Mark / 41 / A Nearly Perfect Garage
Nicole has made it to the 16-week mark! Her pregnancy is going well and after a four-week lull in appointments, the 16-week check-in went great. We appear to have a strong daughter who likes to be heard: During the check-in appointment, we heard the heartbeat just fine but we also heard moments of random static which the doctor said was her moving around in there. Perhaps our daughter was using her rabbit legs to kick against the side of the womb in protest for being woken up and pushed against! It might not have been that but I think of that and it just seems so adorable to me. With each passing day, I feel the excitement and anticipation growing. Nicole has been struggling less with nausea as well as the nagging fear that the pregnancy will somehow have an untimely end. Thankfully, every time we do go in for our regular appointments, we're given such good reassurance and evidence that everything is just fine. It's really truly beginning to look like we're going to have a healthy little girl in five-and-a-half short months. Wow.
So I turned 41 earlier this month! It wasn't as pivotal as my 40th birthday last year but it was exactly what I wanted: A quiet and humble evening at home after a day of running around hitting some of my favorite thrift stores in the Portland suburbs. This could very well turn out to be my last birthday without having children so I was told to make it special somehow but even after our daughter arrives in March I'm not sure how much my birthdays will change. I mean, when it comes to celebrating myself, I'm into simple events and simple stuff as opposed to big parties and crazy nights. But anyway it was a nice day being out scavenging around the area for more music CDs! We even went out and splurged on a pre-made carrot cake which had too much frosting but was still a guilty pleasure nonetheless.
Another thing we've accomplished in September was to finish the renovation of the garage. When we bought the place in late 2020, there was a large false wall the previous owners had put up which bisected the garage and prevented any cars from being parked within. Ever since we moved in, I've been dreaming of removing the false wall and moving everything up against the walls so that we could get at least one car in there. It started in July when I built a replacement workbench then we succeeded in tearing down the old false wall and reclaiming all that wood. In August, I redid the lighting throughout the garage and added a cool dual-rocker light switch which allows us to light all or half the garage at a time with these super-bright LED lights. It really transformed the whole space. Finally it was all down to just organizing everything and finding homes for everything which we just finished up here in September. We installed a bunch of stuff to hold tools on the walls, reused boxes to organize stuff, laid down some nice foam flooring from the door to the washing machines, and I even have a few mason jars repurposed to hold wood screws. It's really come together and it actually looks like a real typical American garage finally. Here's a photo of the final product!
October is gonna be epic for us. Nicole's parents are visiting for the first week of the month (They're on their way driving up from California as I write this) then after their visit it'll be time for our fifth wedding anniversary which means a celebratory trip somewhere! This year, we're going to the same place we went last year so that we can really try to enjoy that part of Washington. On top of that, we've got the 20-week check-in for the baby which is the big one. They're going to do an anatomy scan and check out if our baby is developing correctly. At that point, we'll truly be comfortable sharing the news of our pregnancy with anyone and everyone, including my estranged family. It's going to be a hell of a month.
So I turned 41 earlier this month! It wasn't as pivotal as my 40th birthday last year but it was exactly what I wanted: A quiet and humble evening at home after a day of running around hitting some of my favorite thrift stores in the Portland suburbs. This could very well turn out to be my last birthday without having children so I was told to make it special somehow but even after our daughter arrives in March I'm not sure how much my birthdays will change. I mean, when it comes to celebrating myself, I'm into simple events and simple stuff as opposed to big parties and crazy nights. But anyway it was a nice day being out scavenging around the area for more music CDs! We even went out and splurged on a pre-made carrot cake which had too much frosting but was still a guilty pleasure nonetheless.
Another thing we've accomplished in September was to finish the renovation of the garage. When we bought the place in late 2020, there was a large false wall the previous owners had put up which bisected the garage and prevented any cars from being parked within. Ever since we moved in, I've been dreaming of removing the false wall and moving everything up against the walls so that we could get at least one car in there. It started in July when I built a replacement workbench then we succeeded in tearing down the old false wall and reclaiming all that wood. In August, I redid the lighting throughout the garage and added a cool dual-rocker light switch which allows us to light all or half the garage at a time with these super-bright LED lights. It really transformed the whole space. Finally it was all down to just organizing everything and finding homes for everything which we just finished up here in September. We installed a bunch of stuff to hold tools on the walls, reused boxes to organize stuff, laid down some nice foam flooring from the door to the washing machines, and I even have a few mason jars repurposed to hold wood screws. It's really come together and it actually looks like a real typical American garage finally. Here's a photo of the final product!
October is gonna be epic for us. Nicole's parents are visiting for the first week of the month (They're on their way driving up from California as I write this) then after their visit it'll be time for our fifth wedding anniversary which means a celebratory trip somewhere! This year, we're going to the same place we went last year so that we can really try to enjoy that part of Washington. On top of that, we've got the 20-week check-in for the baby which is the big one. They're going to do an anatomy scan and check out if our baby is developing correctly. At that point, we'll truly be comfortable sharing the news of our pregnancy with anyone and everyone, including my estranged family. It's going to be a hell of a month.