Secret Spaces and Burgeoning Bellies

Oh how I wish, for just a little while, to be a careful youth trudging through the mud of time--lamenting how long it seemed to take to get from one event to anther. Now I am in a speedboat, racing with the current of a raging river. looking for any kind of anchor with which to slow myself down.

That is my fancy way of saying, "Holy Freakin' Cow! I'm 27 wks pregnant! How in the heck did THAT happen?!?" Well, obviously I know how THAT happened-- I am more baffled by the rapidity of the process. Suddenly I feel huge and cumbersome, whereas a month ago I was still wondering where my belly was as I had been sure my third baby would make him or herself known much sooner than the others. And then there it was. My huge belly. Complete with stretch marks, back aches, and an ever-growing need to eat things that are not good for me. And while I am struggling with the discomforts (I experience really extreme pelvic rotation with my pregnancies-a very painful and inconvenient condition) and the difficulties of managing pregnancy and the care of two younguns', I am still (as always) in awe and in love with the journey of growing a new human. As with every new experience, we are adapting to accommodate and evolving as a family along the way.

I realize I have been sorely negligent with picture posting-acquiring a new computer threw me off as all my pics are on the other, and apparently I shant dain to work upon it, as it is now old and ucky. But here are some just taken today, at 27 wks 1 day:

Now onto the other truly exciting developments in our household--whilst removing the old, ugly fiberboard wall paneling that covers our upstairs rooms (you can see it in the above pics), our love for our old house was reaffirmed in the discovery of a (duhn duhn duhn........) hidden room. Nope, I'm not kidding. And no, there was not a dead body in it. Nor any valuable antiques. But oh, the excitement of finding it! And oh, the many ideas and suggestions we have had for using it!
We have known for some time that the crawlspaces upstairs were huge and could be put to use if we so chose--so some of what we have discovered is crawlspace, but the exciting thing was the discovery of a sealed-over doorway behind the paneling we were removing. The "room" (really more of a closet, but big-large enough to be a nice reading room) is finished in the same hardwood paneling as the bedroom itself, complete with a floor. The second surprise came from finding another, smaller door opening leading into the crawlspace behind the room (next to the bedroom's walk-in closet--there's another space the same size on the other side of the closet). These spaces are currently unfinished, though there are leftovers of wall and floors coverings that indicate that at some point they were. The space behind the hidden room connects to a crawlspace large enough to walk/creep behind the bathroom, handing for installing new vent fans upstairs and down. There is also enough space to run ducting from the furnace in the basement to the upstairs, which has never had its own heating system (we had planned on installing electric forced-air heaters, but now won't need to). My current plan (though that seems to change hourly) is to have the two large crawlspaces serve as the kids' individual bed-areas, with the bedroom serving as a common playroom. They are thrilled at this idea, and oddly anxious to sleep in the "spooky rooms".

The doorway into the "hidden room" (Morgan is our tour guide)-the mirrored door is the closet:

Inside to first room-the opening is the doorway into the unfinished space that will be Garrett's "bedchamber":

Looking into Garrett's future room, left of the closet (that is a gable vent, but will be a real window), it's roughly 8'x10':

Morgan's room, to the right of the closet (that's my dad--they're here for a couple weeks visiting, and we put him to work-he's laying new electrical cables so the rooms will have outlets and wall sconces, and laying down sub floor that we will probably cover with carpet). Her space is slightly smaller.

The big bedroom, which we had originally intended they share by actually putting beds in it. The opening behind Dad goes into Morgan's room. Garrett is measuring. He's in charge of measuring.



The whole is exciting and fun and totally overwhelming-we have probably tripled the total project time and effort, and are baffled by the fact that we are doubling the square footage of that room--but oh, how cool it will be when it's finished! We haven't even started work in the small bedroom yet and yes, there are crawlspaces that big on either side of it, too). It's driving me crazy to not be able to get in there and build with Dad, though. He and Troy are having all the fun (though I won't lament the absence of 50 yr old black cobwebs hanging from my hair).