It's been a minute since we've had a home improvement post to share. But this one has been sitting in the drafts folder for a while now, and it seems time to share. 

Once we got through the scariest parts of my pregnancy and were pretty confident we'd be bringing home a baby in the summer, we got to work converting the room that had been our home office into a room for the baby. 

The room is the smallest of the three in our house, and I knew since it wasn't huge, I wanted to do some sort of wall feature. We debated a bit between board and batten or picture frame moulding, but before we could do anything to add some character to the room, we had to do some basic repairs. 

The floor in this room squeaked horribly from the house settling over the years. We tried a couple of simpler solutions that ended up not solving the problem, so we had to open the wall and add a bunch of screws into the wall framing to tighten things up. 

Once the squeaking was eliminated we patched the wall back up.

(I promise I didn't just take the pictures. I did work too). 

Once we had the wall repaired, we had our blank slate to work with. We settled on board and batten for our wall feature, and started using painters tape to visualize the height and width of our potential battens. I will not tell you how long we spent on getting all the measurements right and trying to figure out how to make sure no battens overlapped outlets or created awkward spacing in corners or by doors. The prep work and the math took a lot of time, but it was worth it because once this was done, it was a matter of getting the supplies and diving right into the work. 

I also went a bit overboard on the paint samples in my quest to find a green that would feeling calming and soothing. 

Since this was a small room, I wanted to make sure our battens were very thin and wouldn't make the furniture sit off the wall too much. We priced out quarter inch thick wood boards and realized it would cost us a lot of money to buy all the battens individually. Instead, we bought a single piece of quarter inch thick plywood and used my dad's table saw to rip it down to 3 inch wide pieces for the battens and 4 inch wide pieces for the horizontal boards at the top. 

Once we got all the wood home, it was time to start nailing it to the walls. We worked section by section, hanging our horizontal pieces first to ensure they were level and then fitting our vertical battens in as we went. Since our walls aren't perfectly level, we had to get creative at some points and add some filler at the bottom of some of the battens so everything would line up nicely between the baseboard and the top board. 

Oh look, a picture of me actually doing work. 

After we got the wood all hung, it was time for my least favorite part of any project -- the caulking and the wood filing. There were tons of small nail holes that needed to be filled in, though that part went fairly quickly. The caulking always takes me forever. I knocked it out in an afternoon though, and let it sit to dry overnight so that I could dive into the priming and painting. 

The wood all got a coat of primer and so did the areas of the wall that we had patched.

Then we hit everything with two coats of Benjamin Moore's Jack and the Beanstalk. The painting took some time as we had to alternate between brushes and rollers to get clean edges around the wood and smooth finishes on the walls. 

To brighten the room a bit, we also painted the top half of the walls Benjamin Moore's Chantilly Lace. 

For safety, we changed all the outlets, replacing them with childproof ones. We also rehung one of the closet doors to make it easier to open after we had the crib in the room. 

We built the furniture, hung the bookshelves, and then just waited for our little guy to be ready to move in. 

I spend a lot of time in this room now, and I love the way it turned out.

I didn't read a lot of books in January, but the ones I read were so good. Three five star books in one month, not a bad way to start the year. 

Five stars

The Light Pirate by Lily Brooks-Dalton
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I cannot stop thinking about this book, and I really want to talk about it with people (good thing it was my book club read for the month). It reminded me a bit of The Displacements in that Florida gets hit with devastating hurricanes. I liked how this book imagined what could happen if the storms became too much that it was impossible to repair critical infrastructure. I loved many of the characters in this book and despised others. All around a great thought provoking book.

A Fever in the Heartland: The Ku Klux Klan's Plot to Take Over America, and the Woman Who Stopped Them by Timothy Egan
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book is so wild it’s hard to believe it’s nonfiction. It tells the story of the KKK’s resurgence in the 1920s, and the woman who brought them down. The way the author wrote some of the court scenes made it feel like a thriller and I just kept reading to find out what happened next. It’s hard to make a story that compelling when people already know the outcome. But this was so good. Highly recommend.

Gone Missing by Linda Castillo
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I tore through this book in like a day and a half. It’s another great mystery thriller featuring Detective Kate Burkholder trying to find three Amish girls that have gone missing. This book is five stars despite the fact that I hated the ending and that I felt one of the characters ended up with an unresolved storyline.

Four Stars

Mother-Daughter Murder Night by Nina Simon
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was a fun and fast read about about a mother, daughter and grandmother that unwittingly get sucked into a murder investigation when a body is found at the daughter's work. When the police question the daughter, the grandmother is determined to find out who really killed the victim and clear her granddaughter's name.

Three Stars

Through the Glass Ceiling to the Stars: The Story of the First American Woman to Command a Space Mission by Eileen M. Collins
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I always enjoy a good astronaut memoir, though I wish at times this book would have given some deeper details about various aspects of the life of an astronaut. At times I felt it just bounced from one event to the next without some deeper insight that only Eileen could have shared. But despite that, I still enjoyed hearing Eileen tell the story of how she became the first woman to command a space shuttle mission.

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After 6 months, my maternity leave is officially over and I'm filled with so many emotions. 

I'm so grateful to have had this time even though it was not what I imagined it would be. There were times when it was so, so hard and days when I so deeply missed talking to another adult during the day. There were times it felt so isolating even though I was lucky enough to have friends on maternity leave at similar times. And there were times when the baby would cry and I just couldn't figure out what he needed and then I'd be crying too.

But as the time draws to a close, I know I will miss the days of getting to spend all our time together. Watching my little boy experience something for the first time or make progress toward a milestone. He's such a serious little boy sometimes, who concentrates so hard on whatever toy he's holding or whatever new thing has caught his attention. 

I'll miss some of the little routines we've fallen into like spending 20 minutes sitting on the porch each morning to get some fresh air and sunshine, while I drink my tea and he either studies the patterns of the bricks in the wall or watches the cars go by or intensely studies one of the electrical outlets covered in a water-proof box. 

I already miss some of the early stages when he was just a few weeks old and would fallen asleep on me easily. So many times when it happened, I remember being frustrated that I was "nap trapped," and couldn't go to the bathroom or get more water or eat some food. I wish I had realized how short that phase was and did a better job just enjoying those very fleeting moments. Now my kiddo pretty much won't sleep anywhere but a crib or if we're lucky a car seat while we're on the road. 

But it's hard when you're in the thick of it, and you just desperately want a minute to yourself to regroup or meet one of your own basic needs. 

Maternity leave for me had a lot of struggles. My initial recovery was hard given all the hemorrhaging I experienced in the hospital. I was lucky to have parents and in-laws who came and helped in the first two weeks after we were home. And my husband was able to take four full weeks off of work right when we got home. 

I had a great support system, and pretty much always had another adult around to chat with when I wasn't napping in those early days. 

As I started to heal more from the C-section and my husband went back to his day job, I found camaraderie with two friends who also had babies over the summer. I started attending a weekly mom and baby yoga class in the neighborhood with one of my friends, and it was so nice to have a sliver of normalcy and a reason to get out of the house once a week. 

I relied heavily on my daily walks, which were such a lifesaver when the baby would nap the entire time. I could put on a podcast and walk for easily an hour or hour and half and feel a bit like my normal active self. 

The news that I'd need another surgery at around 12 weeks postpartum because I wasn't healing well from the C-section was a huge blow -- physically for sure, but mentally more than anything. I know I wrote a whole post on this, so I won't spend too much time here on it, but it was hard to start recovery all over again, and it wasn't until maybe mid-December that I felt like I was maybe, finally full physically recovered from childbirth. For those counting, my child was over five months old at that point. 

Before I gave birth, I had all these visions for fun little outings I wanted to do with the baby while I was on leave -- reasons to get out of the house and also chances to show him new things and have new experiences together. 

Some of these things I eventually got to do -- a short hike in Rock Creek Park with another friend who was also on maternity leave, weekly story time at the library, exploring at the Arboretum, saying goodbye to the pandas at the National Zoo (snuck this one in the day before my second surgery).  

The one outing I was most bummed to have to cancel was apple picking and visiting one of our favorite farms this fall. The timing of my second surgery basically meant I was laid up for the bulk of the picking season. 

As the baby got older it started to become a little harder for him to fall asleep any time, any where, and I spent a lot of time trying to establish a somewhat predictable nap schedule. Figuring out sleep was probably the hardest, but most worthwhile thing (and perhaps the thing I'm most proud of baby-raising wise) from my maternity leave. 

We got very lucky in that our child was always a pretty good night sleeper from the beginning, but we also worked hard to establish good sleep habits. By like week four or five, we'd introduced a "bed time routine" basically just a set of consistent things we did each night to send the message it was time to sleep -- bath, PJs, feeding, book. 

The first time he slept for more than a three hour stretch overnight, I obviously panicked and thought something horrible happened. But by the time he was three-months old, we were fairly consistently getting 8 hours of sleep each night. 

Naps were a different story, and I swore I read to the end of the Internet on how to help get better naps so our kiddo wasn't so overtired all the time. I tried a million different things, that all got disrupted with that second surgery, but eventually, eventually we found a system that worked. I now consider myself a minor expert on baby sleep. Ask me about wake windows, sleepy cues and linking sleep cycles and I can talk your ear off. I was happy when I got us onto a consistent four-nap schedule around 3 or 4-months old, and life has become tons more predictable now that we're on a three-nap schedule. I feel like I can actually plan things that won't totally mess with nap time and I'm not as trapped in the house. 

But boy that feeling of being trapped and isolated really permeated a lot of my leave. I loved getting to spend time with my child. Every time I managed to get a gummy smile or a giggle, my heart would melt. But I missed interacting with adults, and using my brain to solve more complex problems than why is this child crying now. There's only so many times I can do the same activities with the same toys or dream up a new game to play when we're bored after 30 seconds. 

And for all those reasons, I'm sometimes so excited to go back to work. I have a job I really enjoy. It plays to my strengths. It lets me problem solve and be creative. And I work with some of the best people, several of whom I consider friends outside of the office, and I miss them. There have been a handful of times over my leave when I've popped in and looked at a few work emails, and I'm excited to get caught up on everything I've missed the last few months.

But holy heck, the minute I think about being excited to go back to work, I feel slapped down by some major guilt, and then I get nostalgic for this uninterrupted time with my child that I'll never have again, and woof that swirl of emotions is tough. 

I'm grateful that my husband still has some of his paternity leave left and he will be staying home with the baby while I transition back to my salaried job. If I had to juggle my transition back to my day job with a daycare transition too, I'd be emotionally spent. 

Despite the fact that my maternity leave was not a walk in the park, I am so beyond grateful that I had this time. I got so lost, but learned so much and it was messy and hard, but also really beautiful. It's a privilege that many people in the U.S. do not have, and I'll forever be thankful that I had this time, and that as it comes to an end, I'm not feeling forced back to work, but prepared and a little bit nervous to take that next step.

I read more books in 2023 than I expected to, and honestly, I think I have to credit the summer months with a newborn who was up at all hours of the night needing to be fed. I did so much reading in a dark nursery on my Kindle. 

Of the 72 books I read, I only gave a handful five stars. I don't have a very scientific way of determining whether a book is four stars or five stars, but I tend to reserve a five-star rating for books that I rave about or constantly recommend that others read. 

2023 Five Stars

Sworn to Silence by Linda Castillo
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

It has been ages since I tore through a book in just over a day, hating to set it down and looking forward to picking up again, and that's exactly what happened with this book. The opening was dark with a very grisly murder and it was hard to read parts of night because it was a bit creepy, but I was sucked into the story of a serial killer in Amish country and the formerly Amish female chief of police tasked with hunting down the killer. As soon as I finished this, I immediately requested the next book with this character from the library, and I look forward to working my way through them all.

The Breakaway by Jennifer Weiner
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I loved everything about this book. First off, I almost always love anything by Jennifer Weiner, she just tells the best stories. And secondly, I particularly loved this storyline of a woman finding herself, her confidence, her path forward through sports/athletics. I was sad to put this down when I finished it because reading it just made me so happy.

Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book has been sitting on our bookshelf for years, and I finally got the nudge to pick it up and actually read it, and I'm so glad I did. I didn't know much about the Osage murders before reading this book, and Grann told the story in such a gripping way, it was almost hard to believe it was a nonfiction book. Highly recommend.

Mad Honey by Jodi Picoult
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This book certainly lived up to the hype, and I tore through it. High schooler Asher lives with his mom Olivia, a bee keeper, in a small town, and he loves his girlfriend Lily. This book is told through the perspective of Lily and Asher's mom after Asher is arrested for Lily's death. Lily's story is told backwards in time while Olivia's is told moving forward. It's hard to say too much without giving away one of the bigger surprises in the book, but boy this was so good, and I'm so glad I finally got it off the waitlist at the library.

Happy Place by Emily Henry
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Emily Henry's books are just the best and most fun reads. I was so excited when I got this book off the library waitlist so quickly, and I tore through it in a day or so. A group of friends have been vacationing together in Maine since college. When they come together this year, things have changed. One is engaged, and one is keeping a secret that they no longer are. As the friends spend more time together, some of the secrets come out. The book has a happy ending, but I'll leave it there to not spoil it.

Fly Girl: A Memoir by Ann Hood
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I loved this book because I felt like I was getting a behind the scenes look at what goes on before, during and after a flight. I actually read this on the plane to Europe in March, and I appreciated being in the air, reading about all the training the author had to go through to be a flight attendants, some of the antics she experienced and in general just learning more about her jet-setting life. It was cool insight and an enjoyable read.

Her Sister's Death by K.L. Murphy
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

This was just the book I needed to drag me out of a major reading slump! It's a mystery set in Baltimore during two different time periods. In modern day, Val is trying to investigate her sister's mysterious death at a fancy Baltimore hotel. The police have ruled it a suicide, but Val doesn't buy it. Back in the 1920s, Bridget is getting ready to be married off to a wealthy man in the same hotel. She has some concerns, but goes through with the wedding anyway. I thought it was interesting the way the author wove these two very different storylines together, centering the hotel as a strange and mysterious place. I couldn't put this book down and tore through it in just a few days.

2023 Great Four Star Reads

Occasionally, when I look back at what I read, I realize maybe a book wasn't perfectly a five star for me, but was still really good, and I talk about or recommend it a lot. I have a few of those this year too. So these are the four-star books that I keep recommending. 

Spare by Prince Harry
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

There was nothing quite like Prince Harry narrating this book through my headphones. I listened to this while working on some home improvement projects, and while some of the parts of the book that focused on Harry's military service were a little slow, I really enjoyed learning about his travels to Africa and what drew him to working in various countries there. I also of course loved the behind-the-scenes Royal Family insights, and man, the press and the relationship between the Palace and the press and the way they all turn on each other to feed stories, that was tough. Highly recommend this as an audiobook.

Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A modern take on David Copperfield, set in in the heart of the opioid epidemic in Appalachia. This was a great and heartbreaking book, but it was really long, which is why I only gave it four stars instead of five. There were a few parts of Demon Copperhead's story that I thought could have been condensed a bit, but overall, I wanted to keep reading because I wanted to see if Demon ever caught a break in life.

Canary Girls by Jennifer Chiaverini
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a fictional account of the women who worked in munitions factories in Europe during WWI. This story follows four different women from very different life circumstances that find themselves working in the factory. While the men are gone, the women not only do the work, but they also form a professional soccer league, playing games against other mutionettes to raise money for charity. I feel like most historical fiction I've read has been set during WWII so this was a nice change from that!

December reading was entirely thriller/suspense/mystery (if you don't count the one book I read on starting a baby on solids), and honestly that is a pretty ideal kind of reading month for me. I love the twists and turns of suspense books, almost nothing holds my attention better, so it was pretty much a four-star month. 

Four Stars

The Christmas Murder Game by Alexandra Benedict
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

A holiday read, but make it murder-y. Lily is called back to her family's estate for the annual holiday game, but this time her aunt's been murdered and has left a cryptic note for Lily to help her solve the case. I enjoyed this book for the most part, but I felt like the end was a little bit rushed and there were a couple of dots that I was a bit confused about the way they were connected. I'd probably have given it 3.5 stars, but rounded up because overall I still enjoyed a solid holiday murder mystery.

Pray for Silence by Linda Castillo
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Still really enjoying the Kate Burkholder books by Linda Castillo. This is the second book in the series and follows Kate and her team of police officers as they investigate the murder of an entire Amish family. I tore through this book just as quickly as the first one, and enjoyed seeing each of the characters develop. I already have the third book in the series from the library and I can't wait to start it.

Breaking Silence by Linda Castillo
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Continuing to enjoy these thrillers set in Ohio Amish country. In the most recent story, Amish families are the targets of hate crimes and things quickly seem to escalate when an Amish mother father and uncle are murdered on their farm. Kate and her team work quickly to uncover who is targeting the Amish population.

Gone Tonight by Sarah Pekkanen
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I've only ever read Sarah Pekkanen when she's writing with Greer Hendricks, so it was fun to read one of her solo books. Thoroughly enjoyed this thriller about a mother and daughter and their mysterious lives. As Catherine graduates college and prepares to move to Baltimore, her mother begins showing signs of early onset Alzheimer's. Catherine tables her move to stay close to her mother, but then realizes everything is not as it seems. The book flips back and forth between Catherine and Ruth's perspectives and you begin to learn more about Ruth's early life and why she's never stayed in one place for very long.

Simply Lies by David Baldacci
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

It's been a while since I've read a Baldacci book, but I stumbled upon this at the library and got to meet a new character he introduced -- Mickey Gibson -- a former cop, single mom to two kids who currently works on digital asset recovery. Because of her expertise tracking down criminals on the dark web, she gets pulled into a murder of a former mob accountant. I enjoyed this thriller and both of the two female main characters trying to crack this case, despite very different motivations.

Three Stars

Rogue Justice by Stacey Abrams
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I enjoyed this more than the first Avery Keene book, though there was a lot going on and I couldn’t remember all the details from the first book that seemed important in this book. This plot wasn’t quite as technical as book 1, but I do wish it was a bit more standalone.

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