Geek Habitat

So, I started assembling our Ellis 4-in-1 crib, manufactured by Simplicity, late last night. I didn’t get very far. One of the metal pieces (“Part G: Mattress Support Beam”) was not machined correctly so it wouldn’t allow any of the proper screws to thread on to it tightly.

All parts of a crib are crucial, of course, but since this particular one I was having troubles with is in fact the crib mattress support — eg. what Sprout’s going to be wiggling and eventually hopping up and down on — I knew I’d unfortunately have to call the crib manufacturer for a new/replacement part.

The call to Simplicity, my particular crib’s manufacturer, couldn’t have been easier or quicker! I swear I was on the phone only 1.5 minutes, and that was just to describe the problem, tell them which part I needed a replacement of, and provide my shipping address.

The new/replacement part will be delivered in about 1 week.

I posted this on my birth board as a reminder:

The crib assembly, BTW, is pretty straight-forward. If it weren’t for a flaw in this part, I’d probably have gotten most of the crib assembled last night before I got too tired/fuzzy-brained to continue (I started on it late in the evening.)

I may try to resume assembly of the crib, bypassing anything that looks like it’ll tie my hands to the component I’ve had to stop working on until I receive the new part. The impetus? To clean out the nursery as much as possible so we can finally paint over the hideous glossy lavendar paint the original homeowners put on this very small room’s walls. Our base goal is just to get her walls back to neutral/white, and then, if Thomas has time and inspiration, we can have him aim his artistic talent to proceed with the wildlife, outdoors, nature, space travel, bicycling mural we have vaguely floating around in our heads.

The good news is Sprout’s closet is 100% hers now and looks downright amazing… all this wonderful gear, baskets for organizing things like receiving blankets and binkies and bibs (we need more!) and the slow trickle of toys that will one day flood her toybox (which I still need to buy rubber or fabric to reline the insides–Help, Mom!) She’s even got two shelves of a bookshelf full of baby and toddler and young kiddo books. And we’ll start Sprout-i-fying her bathroom very soon, now that one of the two cat litter boxes has successfully past its first full week production test after being relocated downstairs. The hold up now? Where to move the remaining upstairs litterbox, with the least amount of angst… our master bedroom? Uhg, we did that when we lived in an apartment. The computer room/office? Not like it’s not already super dusty in there, but we keep the door to that room shut so the cats don’t hang out behind the desks, munching on wires and such. Hmmm… not many other options, man. So, ’til we figure out this conundrum, none of the cute dolphin stuff I picked up on eBay is allowed to migrate into the Room Formerly Known as Litterbox Central. It’s bad enough that the original carpet in there needs to remain for awhile, til we have the time, energy and funds to put in tile. (In a pinch, I’m thinking a big Banana Slip & Slide could do the trick for floor-covering…no?)

So, progress… well, we’re moving, more in a zig-zag fashion than a precision march.

8 WEEKS TO GO

No pressure….

—eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek—