The Den

The process begins. . .

'Sup, Internet.

So we've been in our house now for like, oh, three years, thereabouts.  In that time, we've made plenty of exterior and interior improvements, but nothing overly structural in nature. . . until now.

Our basement (for those of you unaware) consists of a long, big main room, with three other rooms branching off of it to one side (the kids' room, the Captain's Quarters, and storage room), and two rooms off to the other (the laundry room and crawl space.)  In this large room, we were forced to house a hodge-podge of stuff, and none of it really went with the rest:  a TV area for the girls, my exercise area, and Kris' office.

While this wasn't initially a huge deal to us, the problem became evident as we began to host more and more parties with our circle of friends.  During our larger affairs (Halloween and St. Patrick's Day, most notably), we'd have about 20 - 30 kids running around the basement, and we'd have to get creative in putting away our belongings that were fragile, expensive, dangerous, or any combination of the three.  This meant hanging a bed sheet over Kris' office cubicle, blocking off entrance to the Captain's Quarters with the treadmill, putting the rest of the exercise equipment in the storage room, etc.

I came up with the idea of putting a wall in the basement about a year ago, and in theory this would continue from the existing wall (the one that frames the Captain's Quarters) and bisect the main, long room of the basement.  My plan was to create a fourth bedroom, essentially, as this newly-created space would already contain the code requirements of a.) an egress window, b.) a closet (currently being used as Kris' office space), and c.) existing light switches, vents, and outlets.  This wasn't due to our desire to sell the house, mind you - we're going to be buried in this frickin' house of ours - but rather to increase its value for refinancing purposes whenever opportunities arise.

Morgan let me borrow this huge truck in order to pick up supplies for the wall.

When all this Covid-19 bullshit broke out, Kris and I found that we suddenly had nothing but time on our hands, so we got my step-dad, John, to give us a hand in finally throwing up a wall.  It took him and I two days to build the wall itself, and then about a week to put in the door/door frame, add on all the trim, and layer on multiple coats of wall cement in order to smooth out the surface (because there was lots of time required between coats in order for the layers to dry.)

The end result, as you're about to see below, was the creation of our fourth bedroom, which, for the time being is housing my exercise equipment and Kris' office.  For all intents and purposes, we're all referring to this new room as 'The Den.'

Check it out:

This part took a long, long time - building the frame with 2x4's.  Lots of measuring, cutting, and locking into place.  I don't have the patience for construction work.

With the drywall panels up on one side, I was able to throw up rolls of insulation (wearing long sleeves, obviously - you don't want that shit on your bare skin.)  We could've skipped this step, but I wanted the wall soundproof, in case the kids were blaring the TV and Kris needed to work in a quieter atmosphere.

Double-wielding drills as we throw up the other side of drywall paneling.

Covering all divets and bumps with drywall cement. . .

You can't really tell from this picture, but this new room is a lot bigger than we initially anticipated.  We thought it'd end up being cramped, but after selling the spin bike and removing the old TV stand (I'm going to mount the TV on the wall in this room), there's more than enough space for everything.

The door - which was definitely a bitch to put in right - and the trim, all up and ready to roll.

All that remains now is some paint (Kris' department) and decor and we'll be in business (you can expect pics of the finished product once we wrap it all up.)

- Brian

Reproducin', Part II: Bring It On Home

(continued...)

kris shot out that baby she'd been carrying around (for the last 17 months), the hospital wheeled her over from the delivery room to our post-labor room. this room, in which we would spend the next 48 hours, had a fridge, a bathroom, a couple beds, a DVD player, and a big, flat-screen TV that was bigger and better than our own TV in our house. it was a decent little set-up for the kid's first two days of post-vagina living, but nobody got much sleep.

alayna, upon bursting out of her flesh-walled prison, weighed about 6 lbs. 1 oz. and measured approximately 19 inches in length. for those of you who are as oblivious to the knowings of babyhood as myself, that's not quite dangerously small, but its definitely underweight.

being underweight isn't necessarily bad, i guess, but it does bring about some small problems. problem #1: low blood sugar. or high blood sugar. i forget which one it is, but its something to do with her blood sugar levels. one of those two. anyway, she had to have a series of blood samples taken during her first 12 hours out, which meant kris had to breastfeed more frequently and, as a result, lost a crap-ton of sleep in the process. and, as a result of her losing sleep, yours truly didn't sleep much either. this sucked.

problem #2: jaundice. i'm not sure what this condition is, really, but i'm pretty sure it has something to do with pirates. or maybe that's scurvy. i'm not sure. what i do know is that jaundice turns the skin yellow and has something to do with her liver. i guess most babies have some level of jaundice when they're born, but underweight babies are more susceptible to it. and, a sure-fire way to treat this condition is to stick the baby out in the sun and let the UV rays cook the jaundice out of her. or so i'm told (i'm not a doctor).

anyway, back to the tale... we spent about 48 hours in the post-delivery hospital ward. we had to attend some boring, pointless discharge class on how to take bathe your baby, how to hold your baby, etc... boring rubbish, and i was the only dude in a room full of newborn-wielding moms so it was pretty awkward as well. we also had a bunch of old ladies man-handle kristina's titties on a regular basis and show her how to 'appropriately breastfeed' the baby (note: if you ever want to be really creeped out, knock a girl up and stick around for the "lactation specialists...). then, finally, on wednesday, they let us take the kid home... which ruled.

hospitals are great and all, i guess, but after awhile you get sick of old ladies bossing you around and the constant smell of disinfectant and rubber. i also hate hospital food and the clammy feeling you get from the air conditioners. anyway, we brought alayna home on wednesday and introduced her to fezzig, who was not nearly as cordial as we would've hoped (though we kinda expected that from the get-go).

...and there you have it. baby-birthin', hough style. keep a weather eye out for more updates and pictures to start popping up on here. if you guys need me, i'll be elbow-deep in baby shit.

stay outta trouble...

- brian

Reproducin', Part I: The Cannonball

what's up, fan club...

as most of you guys know, preggosaurus went into labor on monday and shot out a little baby girl, which, after a few hours of deliberation and polling from the public, we named alayna renee (who we often refer to as 'cannonball,' for reasons disclosed below.)

our tale begins on saturday, the 14th of june... allow me to backtrack for a sec, here...

kris had just finished swimming in the pool and was home showering off when she thought her water had broke. the folks at the hospital figured it was best to err on the side of caution and had us drive from our place in hunter's creek to the winter park memorial hospital (all the way across friggin' orlando). after four hours of running tests and sitting around a hospital labor room, bored of our wits, the doctors discharge kris and tell her that, in fact, her water had not broke. more than likely, they said, preggosaurus had peed herself.

the next day, absolutely nothing at all happened. it was a really boring day, and kris was so exhausted she couldn't really do much. this all changed, however, at about 2 am, early monday morning, when she started having severe contractions. they started off being an hour apart, then began at half-hour intervals, then fifteens minutes apart, and then finally at ten minute intervals. not wanting to drive all the way across town for yet another false alarm, i told her to call the doctor's office when they opened at 9am and ask if they wanted her to go to the hospital again. in the meantime, i had to drive down to kissimmee for that stupid, boring ESOL strategy class (the one i mentioned before in my last posting), and, as you all remember, i could only miss one day of class before they'd drop me like a sack of wet laundry.

i was not about to use up my own absence on yet another false alarm. so i went to class.

after about 45 minutes of sheer, mind-wrenching boredom (that class was horrible, horrible business), i received the phone call from kris stating that the doctors wanted her back at the hospital immediately. i drove back to the house, picked her up, and we went back, yet again, to the hospital in winter park.

this time, however, they wanted her to stay. preggosaurus was dilated to 4, and she was thinning out like nobody's business.

while kris' cervix was spreading apart like the red sea, i was frantically calling my HR department for the school district and trying to see if i could retake that ESOL class in the fall. i was convinced that i wasn't going to be able to make it back the next day at 8am and continue to attend class regularly for the next two weeks, thereby completing my teacher's certification requirement and, consequently, keeping my job. by the time kris was dilated to 8, i had been told that i could take that boring ESOL class in the fall. trumpets sounded from the heavens.

these trumpets, however, turned out to be the thundering approach of a terrible lightning storm that would kick off around the time of the baby's birth, and which would ultimately screw up my mass picture texting from the hospital (for those of you who received the same picture text message three or four times that afternoon, and for those of you who didn't receive anything at all, this is why).

now, kris has bore witness firsthand to the painful throngs of labor before, and she wasn't having any of it. natural vaginal childbirth was not something she was down with. therefore, she had an epidural done as soon as possible to nullify the pain of the contractions, which, for those of you previously unaware of this practice, is when they drive a railroad spike into your back and run a feeding tube of numbing goof juice into your spine. with this done, kris was oblivious to just about everything afterwards.

by noon, the nurses brought in this skinny, piece of blue plastic the size of a shortsword and rammed it up kris' crotch to break her water. for nearly three hours afterwards, absolutely nothing at all happened. nothing. it was boring as hell, and the only thing on the TV in the room was a marathon of home improvement. i wanted to kill myself. you always hear about the emotional and chaotic times of people in the delivery room, but it wasn't like that at all for us. occassionally, kris would ask me to check the monitor thingy and see if she was having a contraction or not. she'd feel a little bit of pressure, but that was about it. so yeah... really boring for a good three hours or so there.

...then the nurse came in and realized kris was dilated to 10, her uterus was vanquished, and the baby's head was in view. holy crap, its time to call the doctor.

the delivery gear was brough in and the doctor told kris to start pushing. she does this, no joke, about three or four times, before the baby's head comes out and the kid cannonballs its way into freedom. that was it. that was the delivery process: four or five minutes of painless pushing. and then we had a screaming, bloody baby on our hands.

in closing, i highly recommend all women out there reading this considering reproducing any time soon to receive a railroad spike of goof juice in the back. totally worth it. just make sure you bring crap along with you to the pass the time, just in case you're stuck in a room with nothing on but home improvement.

- brian