Hanging in there

It is down to the final few weeks before the baby comes (2 and a half weeks left), and so far we are doing alright. Yesterday Karl and I made a big push to get our bedroom clean. Emily had pointed out on a few occasions when we asked them to clean their room that ours was not a shining example of tidiness. Well, it is not quite perfect, but it is a HUGE improvement! Yeah us! We also got the girls to get their room clean. They finished off the last little bit with some micromanagement from Karl. They are pretty proud of themselves, but that pride never seems to care over until the next round of toys come out, so here's hoping it works.

The baby's room is not quite done. The room is painted, and it just needs to be decorated now. The crib & changing table are both us, I have everything I need in the room, but it just isn't really cute yet. So that is the goal for this week. I had forgotten how much my cats love changing tables & cribs. Apparently they are the best cat beds ever! So I am going back & forth between keeping the door to the room closed, and using my lint roller. When April & Caleb visited last week, Caleb got the crib, and he had no major complaints, but it needed to be de-furred before he could use it:) Sadly we also discovered that when Caleb is here in that room, the girls are more than happy to suggest to April that he play in that room with the BABY toys (translation...Get out of our stuff squirt!!). They even went so far as to politely shut the door once he was back in his designated area. Poor Josh. They have already moved all the artwork up on the fridge so it is out of baby height. I tried telling them that for the first few months, Josh won't be able to stand let alone crawl so their stuff really isn't in danger right away, but that didn't seem to impress them very much.

Mentally I am not exactly ready to deal with a newborn, but physically I am all for it. I guess the master plan is to make you unhappy enough with the last month of pregnancy that labor & delivery really doesn't seem that bad at all. In fact you are down right excited to go through it just so you can have your body back.

We also meet both the girls teacher on Thursday at their orientations and I like them all. Emily's teacher seem very nice, and I did warn her a little bit about some potential quirks. She doesn't have too many repeat friends from last year in her class, but then we didn't actually get a chance to see everyone in the class. Emily is beyond excited about school starting. Every morning I get a new daily count down.

Sydney will be riding the bus to her school (Logistically getting both girls to school that start at the same time was a little overwhelming, and since they offer and prefer busing for her preschool, we are going for it. Since she gets to ride the bus, I had to agree to Emily riding the bus as well.) The kicker will be that I was usually waltzing into school a few minutes before 9 last year. It will be more of a challenge to be ready for an 8:15 bus! I hope they can help me out until I am used to the new routine as they are such morning people and I am not! Sydney is also thrilled about school because her teacher has horses in the play area! She just loves playing with horses right now! I am worried about the nap-time hour in her class. She has not napped in 2 years. I took away naps because she would stay up until 9 or 10 with a nap. We will have to see how that part of school goes. Just 2 more days!! Yeah!!!

Hiccups

So what makes a baby get the hiccups anyway? I get them when I eat too fast, but it's not like this baby can even eat yet! He hasn't even been born! He has not come close to Emily's record of 3 days straight, but he gets them a lot!

Bet you didn't know this

"Some buggers stick to my skin and become skin!"

This was said by Sydney in all earnestness after giving her a pointed look at catching her mining for a particularly deep piece of gold.

Beasty Breakfast

I really should have Karl blog about this since he took the girls and I was at home but...Saturday the Virginia Zoo was having a special members only event where you got to wander the zoo at breakfast time before it was open to the general population. The girls had a wonderful time, especially at the lion cages. The young lions were especially playful and the male lion was about 4 inches away from Emily on the other side of the bars. They also love visiting the prairie dogs. Except that when Sydney mentioned she wanted to go see the prairie dogs, Emily said "You mean the fairy dogs?" Who knew they had a different name!

This is one of the funniest pictures Karl took. (Sadly my camera was home with me so this was taken by his phone) I have no idea what exactly was going through Emily's mind when she smiled, but it makes me laugh.

Superhero capes sewing project

I finally finished the superhero capes!! I started these about a month and a half ago. Yikes, but oh well, they are finally finished. I wanted to chose fabric that would go with their existing princess dresses, yellow & pink for Emily & blue and purple for Sydney, but at the store Emily insisted on getting red for Snow White. She does not actually have a Snow White costume, but I guess that didn't factor into her decision.

I needed to assemble the capes so both sides were wearable, and not scratchy using so velcro was out, and ribbons seemed like a bad idea. I found a link on another blog that I borrowed the general shape and crown idea ftom, but once I downloaded their template, I had to tweak it in illustrator just to make it a little crisper. Yup, I have accepted the OCD in me!

I printed out the crown, cut it out on double sided fusible web, added that to the cape, satin stitched it down, then assembled the cape, pressed, and topstiched them. Next I made a buttonhole and sewed on two button on the cape so you can use either side. I thought of that little adaption all by myself! I am so proud of that! It lets the cape get past the picky police. But I should have made Emily's button hole a little bigger, since she is still not great at doing buttons and hers is a little snug. I made the buttonhole before I bought the buttons. (A classic faux pas) I thought I had some round white ones laying around, but never found them so got some colored hearts that worked, but are a little tricker to get through the hole.

After I finished Emily's cape, she immediately mentioned that she wanted jewels on hers. Well, that would have been nice to know before I sewed both sides together. So she is campaigning for a trip to Michael's to buy some jewels to glue on her crown. Maybe if they get their room clean....

Feeling blue!

Emily got glasses about a month ago for reading. About two weeks ago she misplaced them. I can't find them anywhere. They were in the closet in her old room, but when we moved rooms they seem to have disappeared. My friend Jill helped me move the closet stuff around and she remembers putting them into the new bedroom, but the trail ends there. Emily does not know where she had them last, and thinks we should just get a new pair. I did explain that they were expensive, so that isn't really an option right now. So basically she had them in her possession 2 weeks. The warrantee we got for them covers all damages, but not loss or theft. I have not given up, but feel pretty gloomy at this point.

Snoring tips

I was lying in bed the other night, unable to fall asleep as has been my usual for the last few months, and beside me Karl was blissfully sleeping and snoring away. I nudged him once or twice, tried to ignore it for about 15 minutes, then gave up. I shook him again and said "Karl you are snoring." Normally when I tell him that, he grunts and rolls over and stops, for at least a few minutes. This time he replied, "so tell me to stop." (Now why didn't I think of that!) He didn't stop, didn't roll over, and just kept snoring away. I finally fell asleep a little while later after I just got used to the noise. When I told him about it the next day, he just laughed and laughed and didn't remember it at all. I think it is funny now, but I was a little annoyed right then.

Painting is done!

Yeah! The room is finally painted and we are just getting started bring the crib, changing table, bassinet, etc from the attic to get it all set up. It is pretty exciting. I have one or two display shelves that I am considering painting, but right now I am pretty sick of the smell or paint! No new pictures yet, maybe tomorrow.

Not a huge baseball fan but...

I absolutely love this song! JustinRoberts.org/popfly

We listen to kids music in the car most of the time.  I actually am starting to like several different artists, and this particular song gets stuck in my head and I don't even mind it.  I was even looking at the iTunes store thinking about buying his album, but didn't yet. So I was especially pleased to see that the artist, Justin Roberts has a video on his website of this song, so when I get it stuck in my head I can get it out again by listening to it. Of course the girls love music on the computer so now that they now I have certain songs, they ask to hear them again & again.

When school starts, I will switch back to my favorite stations again once they are out of the car. he he!

Funny Quote

So last night at dinner (and of course we had friends over to witness this) Karl noticed Sydney bouncing all around as he was getting her dessert so he asked her if she needed to go to the bathroom.  She replied " I'm not grabbing my bottom, I was just touching it."

Emily Update

And now Emily is in tears because she misses the pink in her room and wants to know why little boys don't like pink.  Argh. I can't win.

Baby's Room Update

Before-Saturday Night

After-This afternoon

So far things are going well. I have 2 coats of paint in the room so the pink seems to be gone on the walls, and cut in the edges and trim. I am also out of my gallon of paint, so I am on hold with yellow paint for now. I still have the closet and the closet doors to tackle, then any little shelves that need to be painted to match the room. I also want to replace a strip of quarter round moulding that seems to be ruined by water damage. Not sure how it happened or when exactly as it is fairly recent, but it could have been a wet towel left on the floor, or a spilled sippy cup.

So now a survey for everyone out there.... Would you rather have a white closet or a painted closet?

When we bought the house each and every closet was painted. What was wrong with the default white?? I like plain closets! Since the house had some wild & bright colors, most have since been repainted. This means that the girls' room, which was pink when we bought it, had a pink closet. I skipped painting that one since I was in a major time crunch and their room was painted a lighter pink so a darker pink closet was not really a big issue. But pink & yellow don't work so well for me :) I can paint it white now (I should have enough white paint to do this after I prime the pink) or paint it yellow (after I buy more yellow paint). Textured walls really suck up more paint than regular ones.  I really like smooth ones!!!

Also to mural or not to mural. I had planned to take the frog stamp set that I got for decorating the room and use my scanner to blow up the frogs, then use an overhead projector (someone I know must have one) then trace them on the wall & paint them. But now I am not so sure. I think it would be very cute, but it will take lots more time to do, and I am nervous about doing it on the textured wall. Any thoughts? I could just blow it up, transfer on watercolor paper and make a nice piece of wall art instead.

The girls are doing really well in their new room, and have not complained about the down sizing at all.  It has been easier to get them to put away their toys in the new closet set up, and the dollhouse that had not been played with very much is getting lots of use.  They debated putting the kitchen in the babies room at some point just to have a little more room, but since that is played with by almost every child who comes over to the house, I'm not so eager to shift it out just yet. Maybe in a few more months when Josh might actually want to play with it too.  I also have not mentioned that the IKEA chair that has been in Sydney's room since birth is moving into the babies room.  That will probably not go over very well, but it really is my chair not hers!!

Moving Day

Saturday we decided it was finally time to shuffle the girls from one room to the other to start getting their bedroom ready to become a nursery. I had done some prep work with a friend the week before when we started consolidating toys from their plastic bin systems along the wall into bins that would work on their existing shelving in the closet. Despite the hours we put into the toy sorting last week, it took all day to get the room shuffled around. I am fairly happy with the way things turned out. We had planned to get rid of their large plastic dollhouse, but when I set up the rooms and started taking pictures to sell the dollhouse, Emily who had agreed to getting rid of the dollhouse a month or so ago was in tears. So we did everything we could to keep it. The room would have been a tiny bit more comfortable without it, but she is a happy girl. I am thrilled with what we did get out of the room though!

Today I am cleaning the other room and getting it ready for painting! I chose a soft yellow color that will go well with the bugs & frog theme. I was surprised that I was a little sad to seem things changing around. It seems silly to me somehow not be to excited about the changes, but what can I say, I guess I have never handled change well. Pictures to come soon!