Drywallin' and a Cleaner Nursery

This week has shown major progress from last. We were blessed with help from a friend to help hang sheetrock with Kel on Tuesday. The new cabinets came in motivating Kel even more to get the kitchen in order to install them. As far as the nursery goes, it's getting more organized and we have a new nice soft surface on the floor. I also put together two dressers from IKEA...one child can't ever have enough storage space!

THE BIG NEWS, Kelly turns 31 years young on Wednesday the 23rd! Happy Birthday Boy!

moth·er 1 (mŭth'ər) A female person who is pregnant with or gives birth to a child.

Hello all, I hope the beginning of spring finds you well. Just so you all know Mother's Day includes the host of an unborn child. Court and I had a little debate about this and as shown in the title she is officially a mother. Sorry for not keeping up on the correspondence too often but as Court described in the previous post our world is torn asunder. Even the kitchen sink is now gone. I need to make note today because I feel we are at the low point right now and are on the upswing towards the other 1/2 of our house being habitable. I have felt we were at the low point more than once before, but now I am pretty sure if I tear out anything else I will be outside. An electrician friend coming tomorrow and when he is done the "de" can be removed from our consruction project and the room can begin its transformation. Hey, you can't build a castle on a pile of sand......unless it's a sand castle.....but you can't cook dinner in a sand castle. (My proverbs have a ways to go).

Court is being a great sport through all of this. I'm a little surprised she hasn't snapped yet, maybe the preoccupation of being prego is a blessing in disguise. She is feeling great for the most part, a little sore now and again but she is a trooper. To be honest I thought she would be laying on the couch with the back of her hand atop her forehead asking me to go to the store to get more lemons for her lemonade, and another block of ice because she likes freshly chipped ice opposed to cubes. Not the case, in fact in her own little cute, stubborn way Court mowed the lawn today while I worked on the kitchen. That pretty much proved to the neighborhood that her husband was the biggest deadbeat and should be run out of town on a rail. Great. Our neighbor even offered to help her, she declined (I could have told him that). Pride aside the lawn looks great and the kitchen sink is in the backyard.

The babe has been checking out A-OK and is feisty in the evenings. Court had a ladies shower up here and the babe got some wonderful trinkets and tools thank you all. In fact, you think the kitchen is bad check the accumulation in the nursury.

Apparently there was an amazing spread of food as well. I would elaborate but I was eating a turkey sandwich at the time, with mustard! All the best to everyone and here is a parting shot of babybartz head on.

29 weeks

There is a very good reason why the blog has not yet been updated. Who really cares? Well, I’ll have to say once you embark on a remodeling project, much is put to the wayside. Blogs, cleaning and cooking are a few things that instantly come to mind…but I’m sure I’m missing a bunch of important daily routine tasks that fail to exist when you don’t have a kitchen or dining room. Everything from those rooms are now located in our very dusty basement or in our overcrowded upstairs bedrooms. No rhyme or reason was used in storing these items, so I’ll admit I just don’t think of the things that are out of sight.

Good reason not to blog!? I’ve been feeling guilty so I’m going to post a few photos baby bartz. While visiting the doc last week, I mentioned I wasn’t feeling much movement (or compared to all of my pregnant friends) so I was lucky enough (being an optimist) to have the chance to get another 4D ultrasound. Everything turned out perfectly fine, Baby Bartz passed with flying colors. There was a thought I may have a little too much amniotic fluid, but just turns out I'm just on the high end of normal. This thought suggests I can't feel every movement baby makes. Oh well!

Of course I’m bias, but what a cutie pie all snuggled up in there! Enjoy the photos (I tried my hardest to scan them in...and I did...it just didn't work too well) and we’ll try to keep up on this better….
If Kel just could do more than four things at once….

Nesting????

Go Team Bartz!!!!! The baby is also wearing a respirator, don't worry!

The desire to get rid of the cream carpet in our living and dining room was overwhelming last Thursday evening. Kelly and I didn't have time to really think out what we may be living in for the next three months once we began pulling up the carpet. One might say we were blinded from the workload by the solid oak flooring we saw hiding under the layers of carpet, pad, cork, tarpaper, and endless amounts of glue. Not knowing the condition of the floors, we continued to keep our hopes high and pull, scrape, grind, and bust our butts all weekend long. Spotless oak floors were found and we couldn't be happier. I can't take much credit for scraping, but I was here sweeping and dragging cork, tar, and glue away from the work area. Because I was somewhat left out of the floor project weekend (it ended up turning into a 'dude festival'), I chose to begin my own very important task. Like it wasn't enough we currently had three other projects in progress, I decided to add another to the list and rid our kitchen of the lovely hunter green ivy wallpaper we've been living with since we moved here. I'm sure in 1982 the choice was perfect, but times have changed and hunter green and ivy are no longer 'cool'. BUT i obviously had NO idea the can of worms I was opening, even though Kel's momma had just done the same thing to her kitchen and warned me over and over again. Some call it 'stubborn', I call it learning through doing it yourself. Plus, there is really no way around removing the wallpaper if we want to get down to bare walls. Timing is the problem here. Our plan for quite some time has been to remodel our kitchen, but we've now added a few other projects on the way. Living in our bedroom is not too bad, small, but it's the only somewhat clean and cozy environment left. The goal is to have our home back by June...???!!! Is this too much to ask? My sister thought this was an over the top form of nesting, I'll go with that!

I'll leave you with the stunning photos of the new floors that Kelly has revealed through an entire day of sanding. Tomorrow he will lightly stain and poly coat them...which again I'll be out and about for the sake of the little tyke!

The project's beginning!

Old cream carpet, the carpet pad, cork underlayment, tarpaper under that followed by black glue! We were not as ambitious right away, thinking if we discovered poor flooring underneath we would keep the living room carpet and redo the dining room with some type of flooring.

Dustin was so kind to donate hands and knee time to scrape the glue off. Eventually a neighbor came over and told us about the Rip R Stripper, a powered floor stripper which Kelly is using in the photo to the right. Kelly's boss, Tony, also helped in the work while Brenda, Coco, and I hung out on our deck.

The floors after one weekend of power and hand stripping. The next step is to sand and poly. We were not sure if we'd hire a professional or if Kelly would take this on....but after the quote...we were left with little option other than to do it ourselves.

Beautiful white oak floors . . . our final destination! Thanks for everyone that helped along the way!

And for all who care to see the belly and button grow!

Helloo...Baby Blog

So anyway, baby's fine in case you were wondering. Not that everyone who checks this was wondering how we fared in the blizzard of '07, or as I like to call it: Normal, but I thought i'd put in a little ditty about our unborn child. Court is sitting at a even 24 weeks (and counting), feeling a little sick right now but baby Bartz is feisty. We sit on the couch with my hand on her belly and the little one practices their best Bruce Lee "Enter the Dragon" technique. I havn't contemplated the destiny of our child but I would be alright with a karate grand master (if that is an actual karate title I have no idea but it sounds very official....and very karate). They don't really have the history to fall into the karate profession, though I must say I did stay in my karate class long enough to break a board with my foot. I had the official outfit that I was ever so proud of with a gleaming white belt. For all of you creating this mental image I was 7, this was not a college elective or anything.

Okay, back on task. I think the babe has been usurping a bit more energy from the host than it used to. Court has been getting tired lately and the walks wear her out more than normal. I'm sure most can relate to Court insatiable walking, running, moving appetite and so this is a noticeable change. In response, I have been diligently posting up on the couch to make Court not feel bad or lazy, this is what makes us a team. We go in next Thursday for the next check-up and it seems everything is going smoothly. We are starting to discuss our "birthing environment" lately which brings up a lot more questions than I realized. There are some pretty important decisions we need to make and my roll as a wide-eyed ineffective coach (e.g. Minnesota Vikings) is going to change to one of a wide-eyed useful cheerleader. I intend to learn more so I can be an advocate in the heat of the moment for my wife and I am becoming more comfortable with notion of confronting doctors/nurses and am ready to use any or all of the afore mentioned karate techniques... if necessary, because grand masters only use force when necessary. WWCND

Parting thoughts:

Hope all is well and I heard this quote at the end of a movie I would like to share with you all to show my sentiment of recent local politics and, of course, the ongoing international stage.

"Politicians are like diapers; they should be changed frequently and for the same reason."

My Sunshine Sick Day

Ahhhhh, look at this day! Sunshine, blue sky, and snow. For all that know me, ya'll know I'm being tortured right now.
I've been so very lucky this entire fall/winter season dodging the 'illness' bullet. However, yesterday morning I awoke to a scratchy throat and a nose stuffed with boogs. Sorry for the details, but I'm sharing it because it truly caught me off gaurd. Call it karma, but the day before I was bragging to someone how my immune system was made of gold and I was above getting sick. I suppose, though, spending everyday with two little dudes in my face and one with a runny faucet for a nose, I am bound to catch something sooner or later. Today is my day to recover. Today is my 'sick day' to mend the sore throat and feel better. Although I'll admit I am itching to get outside in the beautiful sunshine Duluth is sporting today. Yesterday we had a blustery snow day and today is quite the opposite, lending this town to natural beauty full of snow and sunshine. If I had it my way I'd be cross-country skiing, but can't do that on a 'sick day', can I?

Kel and I forgot to mention Eddy's ailments this past month. Our pooch went 'under the knife' February 16th to curb her progressing left shoulder limp. The vet told us she had major inflammation in her shoulder joint which connects to her bicep muscle. Synovial tendonitis can become a debilitating disease if not cared for properly. An injection of corticosteroids provides the quickest symptomatic relief. About 50 ml- 100 ml of cortisone went directly into her shoulder joint. Most dogs who suffer from this are retrievers who chase balls, go figure. The motion of running as hard as you can and sliding to a screeching halt wears and tears on the shoulder area. Yes, this makes a lot of sense! The great news is surgery has been successful thus far. Ask Eddy and I bet you'll hear a different tune, but the time really went fast. Poor girl had to stay inside ALL day and ALL night, no exercise for a month. Mom (me) weakened this past Tuesday and walked her..a few days early..as it was about 60 degrees and sunny...AND still light outside after 6pm. So far she's had two on-leash walks and has loved it. Part of me wanted to remove the leash and just let her run, but then the month would be wasted and that would be naughty and irresponsible of me. I will say this much, a walk/run/hike without watching Eddy bound through the forest is just not the same. I've never appreciated my four-legged canine companion as much as I did on Wednesday on our walk through Chester Park. I'm so glad she's back and gonna be fine!

These photos show scenes from Blizzard 2007. Our car was almost covered from all the snow. Grand totals were around 39". The streets were all just as full of snow.

In the Belly of the Beast..or.. What's she buiding in there?

Today was the big ultrasound/checkout the baby move around/ be amazed by technology/ flip out at the reality of the child in CJ's belly day. It went well. The play by play went as follows: Got to sleep in a bit, got up and had a great b-fast (oatmeal, smoothie, coffee for me) headed to the hospital and court peed in a cup. Gripping, I know.


When we went into the sonographer's office she didn't waist any time. Court had her pants at her knees faster than a dress is off on prom night (an apt simile I feel). The goo was applied and the machine was doing its thing in a matter of minutes. It didn't take time to find the babe but it was a challenge keeping up with it. Apparently, we have a feisty little one agrowin' in her belly. The ultrasound showed a little person this time. We saw fingers, toes, a face, then she focused in and we saw bones, where the stomach is, a brain! Our little baby has a brain! It was amazing.






OK, pretty cool, like the first time we saw the babe but much more defined much more of a little person in there. Personally, I would have come home elated and all excited about the pics like this one to show. But it didn't stop there. Technology played its card today and we got to see the 4D image of the short-round.


That technology is frickin' crazy, it actually gives your baby a face and personality.... well 50% of each anyway since its got that much more time to cook before its done. NOTE: I am reffering to our unborn child as "it" not because I cannot to relate to them as a person, but because we didn't find out the gender today. We're going to leave that surprise for the unveiling day, kind of like Christmas without digging in the closet to find your presents.


Here are some of those 4D shots






















Crazy huh, personally, I think this one looks like Han Solo frozen in carbonite in Jabba's Lair.





Pretty much a fact that Court actually has a baby in there and is not sneaking McD's when I'm sleeping. We are pretty excited about this whole thing. Court is doing great, feeling good ready to take care of the little chitlin and for it to be in her arms. She'll have to settle for the belly for a while longer (I don't think it is that bad of a sacrifice). She's been feeling the little one move around quite a bit and a few nights ago I too felt a flutter. It's great to have a visual of what is moving around in there.

How about another pic, they're too fun.



Now you can all put a face to the belly from the previous posts. Well there you have it everyone BabyBartz in person... or 50% in person, anyway. We will keep you posted as the babe grows.