Today Lilly is three weeks old. What a wonderful three weeks it has been, too! Not only do I get to hold and delight in my baby, but I can now eat, sleep, walk, bend over, climb ladders, and everything else like I used to do without having a huge tummy getting in the way. What a great sense of relief that has been!

It seems like, in many ways, life has gone back to how it was before, with all of our extra attention being focused on the Monroe house project. We got sidetracked when it was time to have a baby and then get ready for Christmas. But by Christmas night, we were back at work, and we’ve been busy at it almost every day since then.

Today, on the way home from spending four hours working hard at the Monroe house (those four house sure seemed longer than that!), I told Michael that I hope we can continue our push to the finish line. We are so close. The kitchen project is almost done. The floor is beautiful, the crown molding is up, the wainscoting is going up, and there isn’t much more to do after that. But this is the stage of the project where it would be so easy to slow down and lose heart. It reminds me of being at the end of labor and not wanting to make the final push to get the baby out.

My big job in this project is to get the crown molding painted. Then I’ll move on to painting the wainscoting. Michael’s job is to do the construction, such as putting up the wainscoting and finishing the trim around the kitchen.

I’m eager to get some photos taken and posted so you can see what we’ve been doing. Maybe next time we head over there I will remember to take the camera. Until then, you can just imagine a beautiful 100-year-old heart-pine floor that shines with a rosy complexion. I can’t believe it was hidden all this time.