Another Saturday Project

In preparation for the carpet change (the new carpet is now laying in my family room, begging to be laid tomorrow!), Randy switched out tile in front of the fireplace and laid a section in front of the patio door. Or I should say Randy and Wyatt did.

When Randy is home and Wyatt is awake, he. must. be. with. daddy. I love that. He's convinced he's helping. Either that or he just knows that a boy is supposed to be in the shop or helping daddy. This last Saturday he played contentedly for over an hour in the garage in 100 degree heat "helping" daddy. We made sure he got plenty of water, and before his nap we stripped him down and plopped in him in his pool to cool off.

Scraping the concrete clean in prep for tile.

Shop vaccing the area. You can't see it too well in the picture, but Wyatt is definitely vacuuming. Did I mention that he. loves. vacuums? Strange child.

"Grouting" the ottoman.

And "grouting" the actual floor.

Seeing the tile go in gave me a little glimpse of what the family room will look like without the awful blue carpet, now complete with the green paint stain. Tonight, tear out and it goes away!! Lord willing, I'll have pictures of NEW carpet tomorrow. YAY!

Happy Things in My Garden

A fun thing about a new house is finding out what is planted in the garden. And I now have daisies. Daisies make for a happy day.

What to Expect When You're Expecting....1949

When I was 5 or 6 weeks pregnant with Wyatt Randy's grandparents moved into an apartment and held a family moving sale. With a stack of Grandma's linens I found a little book that was very interesting to me - You and Your Baby: A Guide for Prenatal Care. Published in 1949, Grandma had this book for her pregnancy with Randy's dad and the four that followed.

I thought I'd share a few excerpts during this pregnancy for some good laughs. Let's just say a few things have changed since then. If you're a guy reading this....sorry.

Signs of Pregnancy

Missing her monthly period is often the first sign that cause a woman to suspect she is pregnant. However, there may be less obvious signs that point in that direction. She may feel unusually cheerful...[and it goes on but I'll skip the graphic parts]...It may seem strange to her that, even at this point, the doctor cannot say positively whether or not she is pregnant.* (The footnote) There are laboratory tests such as the so-called "rabbit test" that are highly reliable for diagnosing pregnancy. However, these are expensive and unnecessary except in an unusual situation. ...Not until about the fifth month does the heart beat of the baby become audible. This reassuring sound is of course the proof-positive that a baby is on the way.

Oh, how thankful I am for the $11 pack of 3 prego tests. And by 15 weeks, I have had two sonos and heard the baby's heartbeat three times (154 last time, for those of you who are superstitious on the heartbeat/gender). I'm grateful for the major medical advances since 1949!

Wyatt & the Cup

Yesterday my mom made my day by bringing me an iced vanilla latte from Starbucks. Yum. It definitely gave me the boost I needed. The big boost.

I rinsed the cup and gave it to Wyatt because he likes to throw things in the recycling bin. The cup never went in. It became a toy all afternoon. Soon the lid made it's way out of the recycling to join the party.

Later in the evening, I went to girls night with the ladies from our small group and Randy shot a whole reel of pictures of Wyatt trying to take the lid off the cup. Who needs toys when you have plastic cups?

This was how it started. I think learning young is a good idea. :-)

No cup in this pic, but you do get to see Randy's shiner from the garbage disposal. Cool, huh?

Work that lid, Wyatt!

Silly lid won't come off!

Errrrr

Randy said he eventually did get it off, and the next challenge was getting it back on. Ah, an evening full of developing motor skills.

The Sink Completed

So I'm making up for last week's many blog posts by being late with this one. This feels like it's been a crazy week. Today is the first day I'm home with only one evening thing planned. I'm supposed to be cleaning right now during Wyatt's nap, but I'm working up the energy. My sweet, wonderful mom is dropping off a skim, half caff iced vanilla latte on her way to an appointment in a little over an hour. Can't. Wait.

So, the sink. Did I mention that it's not Randy's favorite chore, but that he's AWESOME. Here are a few pics to tell the story. Unfortunately, I don't have one to demostrate the day's drama.

Wyatt was actually a really good helper. He sat and played with only the tools Randy gave him for a long time. As in, I actually got some other things done while my boys were plumbing. Impressive!

Oops, didn't realize Wyatt's eyes were closed on this one, but aren't they cute?!?

This part was my not-so-favorite part of the project. Circular saws send fine dust EVERYWHERE in my kitchen. Cleaned up more of it this morning.

Wyatt helped clean up some of the mess. Oh, and of course he loved the shop vac. You never saw a kid get SO excited about vacuum cleaners. Strange child.

Sometime between that picture and the next we had to reinstall the garbage disposal. It's heavy, so Randy was supporting it while I tried to get all the hooks in place. It slipped. And landed directly on Randy's left cheekbone. Ouch! In less than a minute he had a knot the size of golf ball on his face. The rest of the sink installation found me holding ice on his cheek while he finished up. Did I mention that he's wonderful? By today all the swelling is down, but it's a great yellow green color.

And here it is! My lovely new sink! I actually feel like I can wash more than two dishes at a time, and I no longer have a reason to chant "I hate this sink. I hate this sink!"

And one final pic - the old yucky sink where it belongs...on the way to the trash can!

Drinks, Dressings, & Dishes

Drinks

So for the last week, this sippy has been missing its blue lid. Missing a lid makes it quite a bit less useful. I was convinced the dishwasher (which I heart) ate it. Turns out I was right.

This morning I came out to the kitchen after getting ready for a super fun fabric shopping trip with my mom and smelled something hot and smoky. I rushed to check the dryer. Whites were still tumbling just fine. Next I checked the dishwasher, which was at the very end of the heat dry cycle. Sure enough, as I opened it up smoky steam poured out. I have no idea how old our dishwasher was, so I assumed the heating element was going out. I turned off the heat dry cycle and finished getting ready. Late this afternoon I got home and emptied the dishwasher. This is what I found in the very back.

Mystery solved, but I think that lid is shot.

Dressings

Window dressings, that is.

As we were planning the move, I knew I wanted to do something completely different with our living room furniture. The couch is a gray-green and we have a khaki chair and chocolate leather recliner. I wanted to mix a bunch of different greens with some blue thrown in, making it a brighter, happier room. A few months ago, I found this fantastic Michael Miller fabric at Prairie Quilts.

Then we found this house. This furniture fit perfectly in the family room....well, it will as soon as the carpet is changed. The family room has 5 tall narrow windows plus a sliding door. The blinds in the room were, well, less than my taste. Remember this?

MMMmmmm...mint green. However, they're really nice blinds that we can't afford to replace. I thought about just taking them down, but again, they're very well functioning blinds.

Then I pulled out my fabric. The other day I picked up simple cream-colored curtain panels for $8 a piece at Target. My plan is to sew on a narrow strip of the small green print and a wide strip of the aqua and green print on the inner side of each panel for semi-custom curtains. I think I'll be able to do the windows for around $100. Not bad for a room full of windows. And look!

It's as though we planned it that way. And people say God doesn't deal in the small stuff. I don't believe it!

Dishes

Washing dishes has never been my favorite chore (did I mention that I super puffy heart my dishwasher?). Since we've moved to this house, I've disliked it even more....because of this beauty of a sink.

1) It's porcelain and doesn't clean up well. 2) It's super small - I can't find a dish drainer any smaller than this one and it doesn't fit in the sink at all! 3) The faucet is really low, so rinsing anything larger than a spoon is a pain. 4) It has a huge lip around the edge, so cleaning up around it is .... a pain.

I'm usually a pretty contented person, but I wash dishes thinking, "I hate this sink, I hate this sink."

Tuesday night though we took a trip to Lowes. One of our 10% off coupons was about to expire, so we picked up this true beauty and the faucet (to the left). Saturday my sweet hubs, who really, strongly dislikes plumbing is taking on the mess. There's a garbage disposal and a reverse osmosis system under the sink. I have a feeling the RO system may not make it.

Ahhh....so close to peaceful chores.

More Inspiration

WOW...two posts in one day. THREE posts in a week. I'm on a roll.

Just wanted to point out the new links under Crafty Inspiration. Cluck Cluck Sew has some great projects (and a fat quarter giveaway right now from Fig Tree by Moda). Have I mentioned that I really want to start quilting? In all my spare time. Right. However, if this baby is a girl, she's getting a quilt right away. That's all there is to it.

Simplify is a quilting blog. I LURVE her patterns and fabric. She has my baby "girl's" first quilt. She's also due in early December.

Homemade by Jill...well, I've already distracted several of you by pointing to her site. Enjoy!

Prevailing Obedience

This morning I was studying last Sunday's sermon on 1 Peter 1:14 which talks about us not conforming to the former ways and living a life of holiness. Pastor Rick talked about how the prevailing nature of our lives as children of God is to be obedience - not perfection, but obedience.

As I journaled in my big comfy chair this verse hit in me in two ways. 1) My heart - It was a challenge to me as I started the day. In all I do, I need to consciously think about how I can best obey and glorify God in each situation. 2) Wyatt's heart - I was reminded that at 13 months, the prevailing nature of his life is disobedience and sin. He is in the early learning stages of learning to obey and he does not have God's Spirit helping him. This reminder started my day with peace and patience, and another challenge - to be a mom who is obedient to God in discipling my son.

It's a good thing that God chose to start my day this way. He knows all things! Wyatt woke up, did a great job eating breakfast, and then had a marathon of stubbornness as he refused to say thank you for his food. About five or six minutes, I started timing him. It took close to TWENTY minutes of me sitting in front of him, waiting for him to say thank you. It really wasn't too bad. He started getting frustrated toward the end, and I'll admit I felt the twinges and then the reminders from the morning kicked in. Sometimes I think instructing and disciplining Wyatt is more about instructing and disciplining Dana.

Oh did we celebrate when he finally gave in!! Let's hope the rest of the day is better.

And just because they're so cute....this was in the middle of a wrestling match last week.

A little bit of Sunday

This morning our church celebrated 15 years of being a family. I missed out on most of the celebration because I was hanging out with 3 & 4 year olds (although most of them are 5 by now, scary). Usually I have 16-18 kids in my class. This morning most of the kids were out in the big tent with their parents and I only had 6 girls. Six super fun girls who were absolutely astonished that anyone could have 11 brothers and 1 sister (Joseph).

Good news! Lucy came home this afternoon! And Wyatt was extremely pleased to see her...and so was her real family.

Also, I found this blog with some super fun projects on it - Check out Homemade by Jill for some serious distraction and inspiration. Thanks to her and this tutorial, I have completely destroyed a pair of jeans that only fit so - so. They were the kind that stretch to plumber pants every time you wear them and were just enough too short to only be worn as capris. Hopefully by the end of this week they'll be worn as a skirt....saving me $30 at Old Navy and accommodating my growing bump. And yes, it is definitely a growing bump!

Boys & Mud

How does a nice clean boy go outside and get soaked and muddy in 5 minutes flat?

With a sippy and a birdbath. Oh and a tomato plant that got watered.

And "his" dog who lives across the fence. Lucy is a great dog and loves Wyatt, and that's as much of a dog as we need!

Lucy scoots as close to the fence as possible and Wyatt reaches through to poke, pat, or get kissed. When Lucy isn't out, Wyatt stands by the fence and yells. When Wyatt is out but not petting her, Lucy barks to high heaven. I'm not sure what they'll do when we put up a privacy fence later this summer.

Unfortunately, Lucy the very nice dog ran away yesterday. We hope she comes hope safely.