plaster party (& baby clothes)

Yet more progress on the nursery occurred during week 31, leading me to take the easy route with pictures several days during the week. (Amazingly, this did not result in pictures that I completely hated, as it sometimes does.)

But first, we actually had something new for lunch that Sunday! Steve and I had kind of fallen out of the habit of cooking something new every weekend, since they've been increasingly devoted to more necessary baby-related pursuits. However, I had looked at my to-make list on Pinterest the week before, and I realized that we should get around to making this Nectarine Pizza while nectarines were still in season. Steve really used the recipe as more of an outline—it leaves some leeway in the toppings category anyway. He made the pizza dough from the Delancey (Seattle) recipe and topped it with spreadable goat cheese, dollops of ricotta, nectarine slices, basil, and balsamic reduction. It ended up being good enough that we decided to have it again the next night with our extra nectarine.

211/366 nectarine pizza

On Monday, I started work on the nursery wall. The one that's on the opposite side of the living room wall had several pretty bad cracks, which we probably didn't know enough to repair when we first painted the room six years ago. Having cleared the last of the stuff out of the nursery over the weekend, I was finally able to gouge out all the cracks—or at least the ones I decided were the worst. (I left a couple of the less obvious ones.) After that, I vacuumed out the excess dust, filled the cracks with spackling paste, and applied the fiberglass tape to reinforce my repairs. Unfortunately, I ran out of spackling paste (and energy) after doing about half of the cracks. I went back the next day and used plaster of paris for the rest. And I used up the last of that too. Luckily, the rest of the plastering just needed joint compound, and we had gotten a large enough tub of that the previous weekend to do the job.

But back to the pictures. My order from the big Carter's sale arrived on Monday, so that's what I photographed that evening, after Steve brought the box home from work. On the left are several sleepers (with feet) in 0-3 month size; in the middle are a few more sleepers, some long sleeved onesies, and pants in 3-6 month; and on the right are a few outfits in 6-9 month. I've been trying to order the cute stuff in a variety of sizes while there are sales so that I'll be stocked up on clothes, at least until the next big sale makes it worth buying stuff again. Between the things I've bought and various hand-me-downs, I think we're in pretty good shape for baby clothing, especially for 0-3 month.

212/366 carter's

Tuesday was more of the same with the plastering of the wall, so I went to my reserve list for photo ideas. I had gotten these sugar wafer cookies at Safeway on Sunday when we went to use the Coinstar machine. I haven't had a ton of specific cravings while pregnant, but I had been wanting some of these cookies for a while. I checked Whole Foods once, but all they had were fancy, good ones. I wanted the artificially flavored chocolate, vanilla, and strawberry wafers of my childhood. Safeway had them. When I actually went to try the cookies on Sunday afternoon, I got out a couple of each flavor to eat, like I probably did the last time I had them when I was in college or grad school. This time, I got through three of them before the sugar got to me. Not only are they suspiciously bright in color, they are also insanely sweet. A few weeks later, most of the bag still sits abandoned on the kitchen table, but at least I got a picture out of it.

213/366 technicolor cookies

Wednesday happened to be August 1, which meant it was time for another picture of a calendar page. I'm starting to run out of ideas for backgrounds, so this month, I used a onesie as my background. It's one of a few that arrived in an order from Baby Gap the day before, and I thought that the colors complemented the picture on the calendar.

214/366 august

Speaking of the Baby Gap clothes, I used those for my picture on Thursday too. I had come across this food-related collection on their website, and I thought it was pretty much the cutest thing ever. But I was good and waited until I got an email with a code for 30% off before I made my order. I also bought most of the things in larger sizes so that the baby would be able to wear them for longer. The onesie on top is 6-12 months, and the middle two long sleeved onesies are part of a set of three—including the one I used in the picture above—in 12-18 months. The striped sweater-knit romper on the bottom is the only thing I got in a smaller size: 0-3 month. It's not completely practical, with its buttons instead of snaps, but I figured it would be the little guy's outfit for Christmas pictures this year.

215/366 i eat my veggies

And yet more plastering on Friday! After Monday's initial gouging, filling, and taping, the daily routine went something like this: sand the previous day's plaster, vacuum floor, apply another coat of plaster, and feather it out a couple more inches on each side from the previous stuff. I was feeling lazy by Friday, so I took a shot of the wall as my picture of the day. Carmen had seen it and pointed out that it looked like clouds, which meant made it a bit more visually interesting to me. At this point, the side pictured was completely done. I was a day behind on the cracks to the right of this, so that stuff still needed its last sanding, which I did on Sunday afternoon. I must say, I was rather proud of myself. I'm much better at plastering than I was when I did the living room cracks five years ago. The wall ended up nice and smooth this time. I'm not sure whether the improvement was from watching Bruce do more plastering in the last few years or reading a quick tutorial before doing it this time, but I'm happy with it. The only visible imperfections in the completed wall now are the ones from someone else's inferior plaster repairs.

216/366 cloud cover

Saturday marked 28 weeks of pregnancy and the beginning of my third trimester. I decided that that warranted using my weekly shot as my picture of the day. I also decided that this was a good time to finally switch to my white maternity tank top for these pictures, rather than continuing to squeeze into the non-maternity one for any longer. The maternity top is probably just as tight, but it definitely has more stretch.

217/366 28 weeks