Nursery No More / Toronto Life / Grandpa

Nursery No More

One of my readers requested a peek in C Monster's space how it is set up and so on. I though a great way to start the series on the Monster's space would be with his room. In the next few days I will follow this up with another post about his play areas in our home.

I uses the title for this section as Nursery No More because well his room definitely is no longer a nursery; the crib is long gone and so is the rocking chair and baby mobile. These have been replaced with a big boy bed and a reading corner.

I have to say if we ever have a second baby we will probably not use the crib; C Monster ended up co-sleeping with us until he was old enough to be on a mattress on the floor. When we first got the mattress he rolled off a few times and then that was that - he seemed to understand were the edge was and now pretty much never rolls out of bed. I have to say he is a pretty lucky boy this is a premium bed: all natural organic cotton mattress an sheets with shredded rubber pillows (matching mom and tot). The main large blanket is mine from childhood my grandmother made it; the knitted blanket at the foot of the bed was a gift from my sister and the 2 little throw pillow I made from 2 cloth bags we received with pj's from grand-mama.

I have to mention that the little rocking chair in the picture was found on the side of the curb - it was too cute to leave there.
















I use the same bins in C Monster room; the kitchen and living room to sort his toys; that way once every two weeks I can rotate the bins so that he does not always have the same toys downstairs. However we make sure to keep an abundant supply of books and puzzles in his room as these are his favorite before bed activities. The rocking horse was a gift from my mom and travel to Toronto all the way from Moncton - she found it at a yard sale for 2$.

As you can all see for yourself his nursery is now a little boys room...

Toronto Life

During my blogging hiatus I kept busy - and I also got interviewed for Toronto Life. If you want to take a look at the article - http://www.torontolife.com/features/totally-freaked-out/?pageno=1

Grandpa Roy

C Monster was trilled today to spend the afternoon and evening with his Grandpa. I love watching him interact with other members of the family - I think it's so important for him to know his grandparents. Maybe this comes from the fact that I probably spent more of my childhood at my memere's then any-where's else.

Grandpa also brought us to Mahar one of the locale Indian restaurants on the strip. C Monster is getting a bit more eventurous with food - typically he would have only eaten naan but today he had some samosas and barfi along with his naan.

Looking Forward To

Music Class.

Nursery Sleeping

Christophe's been co-sleeping with us since birth, in a co-sleeper. We've been talking about transitioning him to the crib, but Pierrette wanted to do it on a night where the next day, I'd be home (e.g. a Friday or Saturday) so that if the sleeping went badly, I could help out the next day.

So today was the first experiment. Pierrette fed Christophe in the early evening then gave him to me. I settled him, then put him down, while Pierrette went to the bedroom to sleep. Half an hour later, Christophe was firmly asleep and Pierrette came back to the nursery with a pillow and blanket. She's in there sleeping on the floor right now.

Ah, mummies. :)

And we present the nursery...

Nursery Flooring Reno

Still working on the renovations in the nursery. The crown molding is almost done; the splices have been patched with wood filler (yellow), and the corners and top and bottom seams are caulked (white). The caulking might not be necessary if the ceiling was level and walls flat, but, well, welcome to the joys of an old house.

If the crown wasn't high up, I might need another round of wood filler to get it really perfectly flat/smooth at the splices, but it's good enough for something that'll be painted and well above eye-level. Still another coat of trim paint required, but getting close.

I cut the carpet into strips. Underneath that, there was foam underpadding, which I also cut into strips. The foam underpadding seems as if it as made by chopping up a bunch of different kinds of foam and then recycling them into a new sheet of foam - there are all sorts of colors and textures in the one sheet. Rolled both the carpet and the foam up into cylinders, tied them at the ends, and put 'em outside.

Underneath that, there's a layer of faux-wood vinyl tiles. You can see these layers here.

The tiles are pretty ugly, but I guess that comes with age. They came up relatively easily: I inserted a thin prybar under each tile, shoved it around to loosen the adhesive, then lifted. Some of the edges were stuck a little more firmly with the adhesive, others nailed down with a few finishing nails at the edge, probably because they started to lose their grip over the years. All in all, it could have been worse.

The adhesive is a thin coat over some kind of wood - I'm guessing this is the sub-floor, but I'll know better when I can see all the layers -- which should be possible where the layers reach the stairs. If it's the subfloor, we'll clean up that layer a little and then lay the bamboo down over that. If there are more layers under that, I might still have some more demolition to do.

Two or three tile sections had some kind of marking on them that's held up over the years, as if it's heat or water damage. Not sure what caused them, but it doesn't matter since the tiles are coming up anyway. The floor underneath doesn't show any sign of damage, so whatever it is, it's a surface thing. I'm curious, but not curious enough to try and dig any deeper.

The carpet was held down at the edges with tack strips, like the one pictured here. "Premium Carpet Strips," they're labelled.

The carpet strips held one last surprise -- beside a good five-foot stretch of the carpet strips were a family of little wormy bugs, and some discarded wormy skins. Not sure how they were surviving down there, since nobody eats food up there, and underneath a firm layer of carpet, doesn't seem like there'd be much to survive on, but ... well, I guess that's one more reason not to have carpet. Just hope there's no little family of worms living under your carpets, I guess.

The nursery

Geoff working hard on the nursery. On the weekend he started the floor. The painting is almost all done, just needs to touch up the trim once the old floor is ripped out.

On the other hand, I have been sick now for a few days. I missed work on Friday and then again today. This morning I felt like a truck ran me down. I am starting to feel better. My head is all stuffy and my muscles are a bit achy. Not much you can do other then sleep and rest. Most drugs are bad for baby unless you have a fever and thank god I never developed one. Baby's temperature is higher then yours so a even a slight fever can be dangerous to baby.

THE NURSERY

After spending the day fixing all the gaps in the moulding in the nursery Geoff discovered there are 2 kinds of caulking one that is paintable and one that is not - the hard way. He had to remove all the caulking today and clean everything up to accept new caulking. :-(

We did some testing with the furniture in the room and it looks like the room is too small for the change table dresser crib chair and shelf. So we will most likely get one of those change pads you can place on top of a dresser and pass on the change table.

I will try to take some pictures of the progress and post to the blog this week...