Cribs, cradles, and baby

Jim's back from San Diego, the weather's great, and it's only Saturday. What more could we want? Today Jim put the first coat of finish on the cradle. We are doing a clear, polyurethane finish. There are probably lots of nicer finishes we could've done, most involving oil, but we are running out of time and we've had pretty good luck with poly in the past. Jim finished our front door with it about 6 or 7 years ago, and it came out great. As with the door, the cherry wood is a beautiful color, and as time passes, it will darken. Plus, each coat only takes a few hours to dry. He'll probably put 3 coats on. He's working on the top of the cradle now (head board, foot board, side boards, roof). Later, he'll do the bottom and the rockers, and then he'll attach the rockers to the bottom and bottom to the top, and it'll be done.

We also looked at cribs today. We wanted to do a little comparison shopping with Babies-R-Us and went to a place called Baby Furniture Warehouse in Braintree, which was supposed to have great prices and great quality. It was recommended by the Baby Bargains book that has sort of become my bible and security blanket for purchasing all things baby. Well, I think this place carried some higher end and designer furniture, but with fancy brand name comes higher price, and we simply don't need a top-of-the-line, designer crib for the relatively short amount of time we'll use it. We did find one brand, Romira, that seemed particularly well-made, but $800-$900 for a crib? I think not. Even if it does have dove tails. To be honest, the cribs all start looking the same after about 5 minutes of shopping. So we're sticking with our original plan and getting the crib from B-R-U. Unfortunately, it's temporarily unavailable on-line, so we'll have to make a trip over there to order it. Maybe we'll do that tomorrow when it's supposed to pour rain.

I'm getting awfully tired of lugging around all this extra weight. It really seemed to hit home this afternoon. I took a nap on our couch out on the front porch. When I woke up, the sun was in my eyes so I tried to sit up quickly and I couldn't. Jim ended up helping me sit up. Then I started walking around and I just felt like my body had been filled with cement. I can't garden - Jim worked the compost into the garden this afternoon, to get the soil ready for planting in a couple of weeks. It's hard to put on my socks and shoes. All I feel like doing is sitting around. I feel like a slug.

Tonight we have friends coming over for dinner and we're going to cook out on the grill. I love that. It's a sure sign that summer is really going to come.