Boys Room update!

It's done! Well until we get/build bunk beds and get/ build a desk. But for now the room is much less cluttered! For now I just took the toys out but we'll see what happens to them. I'm hoping this will decrease the fighting too. New rule is if they fight over a toy they lose it for 4 days!

I'm blogging from my phone and the blogger app doesn't let you put the pics in the post with words so I can't actually describe each pic but they're pretty self-explanatory. ( side note, I had a different app to blog with that I loved but it started having problems so I deleted to reinstall and update - I have a new apple id so had to do that- but it's not free anymore :(. I rarely ever will pay for an app so I'm using this one but it sucks so I might just have to breakdown and spend $1.99...)

Anyway, I took out Eli's bed and brought in the two tables. The tall one I put the fabric on to cover the cords for our Internet and router ( I'll dewrinkle it soon). On that table I put Rowan's tool box filled with plastic cups to hold art supplies ( probably get something more permanent eventually). That table is where they can keep their lego creations. There won't be much room so they won't keep every little thing they build...

The rest of the room basically just got cleaned up. They had random Legos all over the bookshelf that I picked up. The giant Rubbermaid container was stuffed full of toys and that's what we took out! I was going to let them each pick 5 toys to keep but they weren't acting very good this morning so I didn't give them a choice!

The green toy box under the table holds all the toys! ( except for train tracks, Lincoln logs and costumes that are all under the bed and hexbugs and Legos by the lamp table) I kept the play food, two of those echo microphones, and a few other toys that I decided were ok. We also have blocks and a box of small cars. No more random crappy toys especially ones from happy meals! :)

As soon as the art stuff was out they sat at the table and started drawing! Yes!! Success! :)

Boy's Room Ideas

Lately I've been super annoyed with how messy the boy's room is.  They have so many crappy toys that they barely play with (but apparently they have no problem throwing them on the floor for no reason?!)  One day Mike helped them clean and his way was to bring in a giant rubbermaid container and throw most of the toys in it.  It's awful! But I don't have anything else.  I'm thinking about letting them each pick a few (thinking 5?) toys and everything else will "go away." This doesn't include "sets" like legos, train tracks, Lincoln logs...we'll keep all those things but the other stuff I'll put away for a bit and see what happens.

If you remember I switched their room to the bigger office a few months ago- find it here . And now I'm ready to switch it up a little more.  Eli hardly ever (and by that I mean never) sleeps in his bed, he is always in Rowan's.  SO I am thinking of putting Eli's bed in Silas's room and moving a small white table we have in there back in where Eli's bed is.  I'd love for them to have an area where they can do craft stuff and also have a place for legos.  SO that's what I've been thinking of doing lately (I'll probably try it out this weekend!

The boys both loved this idea (although Rowan was hoping Eli would sleep in Silas's room (ha!) but now I'm thinking this will just be a temporary fix. The table is pretty small, so at first I was thinking about getting another to put next to it so they'd have more room.  Then I started thinking about how Rowan will be turning 8 (what!!?!!) this summer and he will soon be getting too big to sit at one of those tiny tables for very long and be comfortable.  Then I started thinking maybe we'd get them a desk! I know Rowan would love to have a desk! And I imagine Eli would throw a fit if he didn't have one so I found one on IKEA's website that would be big enough for both of them (and cheap!)

My next thought is bunk beds. I've always kind of been against bunk beds.  They scare me.... BUT, I slept on them and never fell off and Rowan is kind of obsessed with safety rules (you should have heard hil flipping out the one time he had to ride in the front seatdue to car issues with our main car "but there's an airbag" "kids under 12 aren't supposed to sit with the airbag.." seriously. the.whole.time.) So I don't think we'll have to worry about him jumping off and we'll probably just make it off limits to ELi or try.  Of course I'll be pretty picky about what kind we'll get (or Mike will build) the railing will have to cover the whole side, except for the ladder opening, and be decent height, also it will not be super tall.  I'm thinking maybe even having Eli's bed practically on the floor (if we don't try to build it using the bed Rowan has now.)  I do see the practicality of them though- the boys need more room in there and soon Eli won't be able to fit in the toddler bed he's sleeping in so we'll have to do something...

So, today I decided to play around with photoshop to get some ideas for their room :)
I had waaaayyyyy too much fun with this (expect a living room one shortly ;)

 

I LOVE this desk it was maybe $70 so I don't see Mike being against it, unless he can build it cheaper, but I like that there's two drawers! Eli helped me look at stuff at first and he said he liked the red chair and wanted white for Rowan.  We'll see about that, I wish they had green (why do they have to change colors!?). If we end up with the flag bedding or curtains maybe we could do red...Rowan's bedding now is the green and blue dots (that's his bed in the pic) I love it so we'll be keeping that! I don't know about the flags bedding but just pulled it up for an idea.  We'll have to get something since we have no other twin bed size bedding.  Since we will most likely be ripping up their carpet soon (woohoo wood floors!) I want to get a rug.  I didn't see anything I actually loved on the IKEA site but I saw the green one in a living room pic on their site and kind of liked it- we'll have to see what the actual color looks like though...the circles are cut out on the sides and it looks kind of neat.  Eli picked the black rug (obviously we would only get one rug.) I kind of like it.  I'll have to do some measuring to see what size we'd need anyway.  I'm also thinking a shelf above the desk tohold art supplies!

 

oh, and the backgrouns color is just one I put one here.  I was trying for a more gray color. Their room is an off white color and we will not be painting it.  We still want to move so nothing major besides furniture stuff will happen (at least in their room) and of course taking out the carpet...

Silas is 7 months!

Another month, another "Wow, I can't believe he is __ months old!" I know I say it every month, but it is crazy how quickly the time goes! Silas is all over the place now. STill not officially crawling, but he rolls, scoots, and does anything he can to get around. he tries to pull up on stuff that is lower to the ground and gets up on his knees. I've even seen him up on his knees with his hands up on the wall!

Of course, with all this movement comes some frustration because he can't do everything he wants to do. If he drops a toy and it rolls away from him he wants to be able to get it right then but he can't. He gets very mad! He also wants everything- phones, remotes...- and when we move them so he can't get them (or god-forbid take them away from him!) he gets so mad and screams and cries! It's kind of cute ;) He has a grip though- this baby is strong!

 

He loves to blow raspberries with his mouth! He babbles and does the "dadada" thing.  He is still in love with his big brothers.  He gets so excited when they get home and give him attention.  Eli calls him Cutie but says it like "cootie" Its pretty cute.  He'll come home and say "where's my cootie boy?"

 

We have two plastic baskets we keep under the bench in the living room with all the baby safe toys and Silas loves to sit on the floor next to a basket and take toys out.  He gets really excited when he dumps the basket and then turns it over! The other day he was banging a toy on the upside down basket laughing up a storm and then he smacked his other hand with the toy and immediately started crying :(  He also loves to stand! He can't do it on his own but when we stand him up he loves it!



He's still not really in to food yet.  He did suck on some pear for quite a while during breakfast yesterday.  Tonight I'm going to steam it and see what he thinks.  He still nurses and I've ben trying to teach him to sign "milk" I think he's done it a few times, or maybe he just realized he can open and close his hand...

He has been doing better with going to bed and staying asleep longer at night.  Naps are so sporadic though, some days he'll nap for 20minutes some 2-3 hours.  I won't complain too much as long as he sleeps better at night! He hardly ever falls asleep in the car anymore.  He tries to stay in a sitting up position where he leans his head forward the whole time.  Makes me tired just looking at him!

 

Just the other day he learned to put himself in a sitting position when he's been "crawling" around.  He'd been pretty close but kept having issues with one leg. We all love watching him discvover new things.  Rowan thinks everything he does is so fascinating, it;s cute and fun to watch him too :)

 

 





Oh croup!

It's been a long weekend!

Saturday night was the worst and Eli and I were up a lot! In and out of the steamy bathroom. Sunday he was pretty good during the day and the only time we had to run the shower was after he woke up from a nap. Every time he woke up it was the same - he'd start coughing, couldn't breathe very well, would start crying cause he was scared and then it would get worse. It was so scary for all of us! You'd think it would get easier to see him like that but it didn't. Luckily it only lasted a few minutes after we were in the bathroom and leaving the steam to the cool house would finish helping.

I tried taking him outside in the cool air a few times but that made him mad! Steam worked better for him. Last night we did the shower at 11:30pm and that was it got the night! He still woke up quite a few times coughing a little but it wasn't nearly as barky sounding and didn't last. He's acting pretty good today. I'm hoping at least by Wednesday he can go back to school ( fevers been gone since Saturday).

I've been sleeping on the couch since this started. Silas starts in the crib and then always comes in our bed. We tried to get Eli to sleep with Mike but he wanted me so Silas and I slept on one end of the couch and Eli at the other. I'd sleep with Eli to hold him until Silas would wake up and want to nurse then I'd go back. It has not been very comfy for me! I'm really hoping he can go back to his room tonight! I'd love to sleep in my bed :)

He still has a pretty raspy voice and looks like he doesn't feel well but hopefully tonight is another good one!

Croup

Eli came home from school Thursday looking like he was getting sick. I could tell by his eyes and assumed it was another cold. He had a slight fever later and asked to go to bed around 6! He woke up crying and saying his throat hurt. By this time I assumed it was strep and knew we'd head to the doctor in the morning.

He woke up around midnight coughing a lot. I didn't know much about croup but had heard it sounds like a barking seal. Yep, it really does. It was so scary for all of us. He had trouble breathing and was crying which made it worse. His voice had been raspy earlier and with the coughing we could hardly understand him. We turned the shower on hot and sat in the steamy bathroom and that really helped. It seemed all gone once we left the bathroom and the cool house air hit him too. He had some Tylenol since his fever had went up and within 20 minutes he was acting silly again.

This was our first experience with croup and it really is awful. Silas had an appt for shots at 9:30 Friday morning so I called to see if someone in the office could see Eli. We got an appt but it was at 10:50 so we had to hang out at the office for awhile. We didn't eat breakfast so I let him pick out a donut in the coffee shop. He felt so bad he even fell asleep on the bench in the lobby :(

We saw a doctor we'd never seen before and she was great! Croup is viral so she didn't want to just give him antibiotics if it wasn't needed do we decided to just watch him for a few days and see what happens. Especially after knowing how long he was sick before Christmas we thought it might take a while. She thought some of his symptoms were kind of different - he didn't start off with a cold which is typical for croup. Since its a weekend and she was kind of concerned she ended up giving me her cell phone number to call if I had questions!!! Wow! Not many doctors will do that nowadays! And our offices/ hospital have a nurses line to call so this really isn't typical at all. I don't know if I'd even call her but its still nice. She said if he's not better by Monday or Tuesday to call back and they'd call him in an antibiotic.

For now we just hope he gets better soon. He hasn't had too many bad coughing fits but when he does they scare him. We've sat in the steamy bathroom a lot and we hardly got any sleep last night ( I'm pretty sure he got a lot more than me though!). We've also done a few breathing treatments- something we hadn't done in 2 years! This morning he was feeling well enough to get off the couch and actually play! He took a nap later and the fever came back but I'm seeing improvements already! I really hope he isn't sick as long as we was last time!

Dreaming....

I've been look at homes for sale recently.  A lot! I don't know why really, because even if we sold our house and the perfect home in the prefect area with enough land came up for sale we aren't financially ready to buy...but I still look. We don't even know where we want to live eventually.  The plan has always been to move "to town" when our house sells, rent a house, and save money for a place in the country.  Lately, we've been really liking our school district and the people we are meeting here so maybe we'd rent in our district- but closer to the school....so we'll see.

As far as our dream home eventually, Mike wants to build.  I want to find a liveable home that needs some work so we can remodel while living in it.  I've almost convinced him to come to my side ;)

These are some homes that 've seen recently that interest me.  Something I notice about my taste- I don't like new homes at all!, most of these houses look so close to their neighbors (makes me really rethink my whole moving to town idea..), I like windows and hardwood floors, and fireplaces! I'd love a big front porch too, I don't really like 2 story houses.



                        From here
I like the woodsy yard look of this one.  Plus it definetly needs some work- not according to them but to me it needs lots of updates! I love the thought of having a sunroom too!


here
Love this one.  Big windows, wood floors! Kitchen needs major updates but still decent.


here
hardwood floors, big windows, fireplace! it's almost too big for me though...


here
I kind of love this one.  I usually don't like 2 story houses because I like to think about getting really old in a house and I don't want to mess with stairs when I'm old! I'm also not a big fan of split levels but like the layout of this one.  Plus it totally needs some updates!

here

It has stairs but I like the rest of it.  hardwood!  I like the entry too..


hereNothing special on the outside, but it has some potential. I don't like the little dining nook thing at all- wonder what they were thinking when that was designed/bult?...I'll have to do some googling to see if people do neat things to those windowless rooms! Mike would love a giant pole barn!  I don't know why a family room and lving room would be right next to each other either...Seems kind of repetive to me.  Maybe make one a guest room/office...

here 
Lots of potential but- family room is kind of strange with the fireplace in the middle, the ridiculously large master bedroom! I don't really like the idea of my kids sleeping on a different floor than me either.  I know i'm just paranoid but I want them close..maybe I'll feel differently when they are older. Love the yard here too!

While I'm dreaming here, I can't forget my other dream

I'm not picky about color so whatever you want to buy me is fine ;) It must have a hitch though! We can't wait to finally take our pop-up camper somewhere!  Soon! 

Wednesday Whining

 

 

I'm trying to play with photoshop more.  Clearly I don't know what I'm doing...

 

 

I used to love when the week got closer to Friday, because that meant the weekend was almost here! Lately, I find myself dreading the weekend. Rowan and Eli fight so much! WHY!?!? It's awful. They fight about anything and everything, I bet they've even fought about what to fight about. I don't get it. Last weekend we got up early Saturday morning and went to a pancake breakfast at Rowan's school. It was fun and the kids were good! Later we went to the park and ate Subway, by this time Rowan was mad about something and having little tantrums every few minutes. He lost his dessert so that led to more complaining. Mike made sushi for supper and bought them a neat (but weird) dessert from the Asian grocery store. That wasn't good enough and there was a lot of complaining by Eli- of course not till he had finished the dessert! So frustrating. We signed the boys up for Saturday Art School at the University so hopefully regularly getting out of the house will help with the fighting on the weekends...hopefully!  Is it spring yet?
 

Last night Rowan had an hour long meltdown. He was crying so hard we thought he might get sick, or a hernia or something! Over what? I made him a word search (by hand) with his spelling words for next week.  I through in a few extra words- Mom, Dad, Silas and Eli- thinking he would be excited to find those words in there.  Oh no! Apparently he was worried that when he took his test his teacher would say a word that sounded like one of those extra words and he would get confused and write down the wrong word and it would all be my fault for putting those words on there.  WHAT!? That doesn't even make sense to me but he could not be reasoned with.  I told him to just not find those words then, but aparentl;y that could not be done! He wanted me to make a new one and I said no.  He seriously went on about it forever! During dinner he said the worst part of the day was when "Mommy becamse my arch enemy" haha at least it ended in a laugh from me.

Eli continues to find things to whine about daily.  His first fit usually happens when he realizes I'm not going to let him watch tv after school. He is horrible when he gets to watch tv and wants to watch hours of it not just one show and then whines non-stop cause I tell him no.

Mike is working late two nights a week this semester.  It's only been two nights but I'm kind of reminded of what it was like when he was in grad school and Eli was a baby.  It shouldn't be too bad though and I can get away with not making "real" meals for dinner if it's just the kids.  Dinner time is already really hard because Silas almost always wants to nurse and/or be held.  If he could just nap during that time it'd be a lot easier! Of course, if I actually got it together and made dinner earlier and just warmed it up that would make everything easier.  But I'm not that smart ;)


Silas is as awesome as ever.  Can a 6 month old not be? He's still not really into food so we just offer it to him every few days to see if he wants it.  It is kind of easier not having to worry about feeding him food or having something ready for him (since we don't do jarred baby food) and since we are going with the BLW thing I haven't even made any pureed foods to freeze like I usually would.  When we do give him food I usually mash up some of whatever I'm giving him and try to fed him a bit but he really doesn't like or want it.  I think he's just got enough going on to worry about food right now! He gets around like crazy! Not crawling yet but he's up on his hands and knees a lot and can pull himslef around with his arms! All legos and other small toys have been banned from the living room because of how much he's moving.  Eventually when he's really crawling I'll just put a baby gate at the door to Rowan and Eli's room and everything small will stay in there.

Resolutions!

We don't really do the whole resolution thing, but we usually make a list of things we'd like to accomplish or do more of this year, mine are usually things like- read more, sew/knit more.  We talked about it with the boys On New Year's Day to see what their ideas were for some new goals.


Our most important goal for this year is to buy a minivan!! This WILL happen, hopefully very soon!

Some of Rowan's:

-Eat healthier meals and snacks (I mentioned eating healthy and he took it from there!)

-Use everything wisely/ make the world a better place (seriously how awesome is this kid?)



 -Save money (for a minivan) cook and grill at home (we do..) and don't go to the grocery store (this will be hard... ;)

-Only eat candy every 3rd Sunday (he later changed it to every 10 Sundays but we told him 3 was pretty good :)

Some of Eli's:

-Only give Silas HIS toys (not Rowan and Eli's toys)

-Thursday night have taco's every week

-Clean our room more

 I never get tired of seeing those blue eyes in the middle of the brown!

 

 I want to enjoy our house more! Since we are trying to sell it I don't think we've been enjoying our time here like we should.  We do love this house, we just know this isn't where we want to be forever, and need to appreciate it more....We need to stop thinking "well, when we move we'll...." this is where we are now we need to enjoy it!

 

Bathroom/Laundry Remodel

Last February we started remodeling our bathroom and laundry room.  We didn't do everything since we do want to sell the house and really didn't want to put that much money in it.  If we planned to stay here forever we would have done a lot more (mainly new bathtub!).  I'd been meaning to blog this forever and just never got around to it.... All pics are from my iphone so not the best quality but you get what's happening.

 

This was the "wall" between the bathroom and laundry room. On the right is the bathroom door with robes on it. The part with the mirror slides to the left and the part on the left slides to the right.  Nice, huh? The best part- it's all just plywood :/ (Don't ask me why we didn't fix this years ago...)   The other side of the bathroom   Close-up of the awful plastic tile.  We painted the top pink to try and go with the tile.  It worked, I liked the pink for the most part, it didnt look as bad in real life.   The left picture is with the mirror door open and the view into the laundry room. Middle pic is the view from the kitchen (that's the back door). The pic on the rightIs the view back into the bathroom.  The laundry room had a cabinet like the bathroom- they were one piece built together.  I forgot a pic of the ceiling here- we had a leak from a big storm.  That's what started this whole thing and we had to have some roof work done too.     My belly! :) (This was last February so I was like 23 weeks or so)   There was a small leak above the shower too, plus those awesome drop ceilings!   Mike taking out the built in cabinet- it was all pieced together with plywood too.  Picture on the right is the view from the bathroom after the whole "wall" was down.   The wall next to the bathroom door, we discovered it used to be an outside wall! (Also, ewww ugly fake brick outside??)     We really liked having the easy access to the laundry room so we decided to do a pocket door instead of just a wall.  This was the part of the remodel where we had to wait for other people to be able to help us so we lived with that half a wall/door for several weeks.  Mike had started to take down some of the ceiling tiles too so he could see what we were dealing with up there.  He did this above the shower too.  I hated taking showers during that time, I kept thinking a mouse would come from the attic through the installation!     Mike had some friends come help with the drywall (apparently a weak pregnant woman isn't very much help!) and they installed a fan with the new light since there wasn't a fan in there. mp;current=iPhone3100_zps64ba1a90.jpg" target="_blank">
Laundry room- drywall ceiling Bathroom- new light and drywall ceiling Drywall next to the pocket door  

We went with a neutral color and did it on both the plastic tile and the wall

  All the trim and moulding got painted white So much better!! I got a new shower curtain (I did LOVE my old one though) white towels and rug (not a good idea with little boys btw). We thought about replacing the vanity but it was too pricey and it really didn't look bad once the rest was updated.   

Since we lost a lot of storage with this remodel Mike built this shelp for me! (plans on ana-white.com) It looks purpley on here but is more blue.  He got those great jars at a garage sale and they hold q-tips, cotton balls.  It'd look better if I had all white towels stacked nicely, but that's not reality ;) and the hamper sits next to it in front of the window (the pocket door is to the right of the blue shelf).

 

I didn;t take many after picks of the laundry room- oops! We got a cheap cabinet at the Habitat for Humanity Restore and just put 2 wire shelfs next to it to hold stuff. We did this room all white.  The wall where the built in was is all white.     Here's a side by side looking at the shower   and the other side- hard to believe it's the same room!  

We still love what we did! Both rooms had new floors put down a few years ago so we didn't have to worry about that.  Now we are planning some more changes- we recently discovered most of our rooms have wood floors! I LOVE wood floors! So we are thinking of ripping up some old carpet- the downside is that the dining room (the one room I hate having carpet!) doesn't have hardwood :( So trying to match it (really don't want to try and refinish them all since they look so good) might be hard...but hopefully it'll work out! We also want to paint the kitchen cabinets! SOmething I've wanted to do for years and Mike has been against- he finally sees things my way- woohoo!

Of course, I'd rather do nothing and just sell this house......