A birthday party

Eating cupcakes to celebrate the big 5.



Reading a new book.


Showing some other new books.



Henry loves to party hard with a cupcake, too!

Things that go bump in the night

Henry comes to our bed nearly every morning. At about 5 a.m. a sweaty, sometimes naked, sometimes urine scented baby sneaks between his parents to cuddle. He takes over my pillow and snores until one of us wakes up. Those are the easy mornings.

The other mornings Henry heads upstairs. These other mornings come in two types: noisy and stealth silence.

The noisy mornings, when we wake up aware that he is flushing something down the toilet, playing in the bathroom sink, reorganizing the bookshelf. On the noisy mornings our ears can follow the sounds to monitor his activities.

When we wake up to stealth silence we are very nervous. No baby snoring. No toilet flushing. Silence = disasters.


He has been caught red-handed dumping a 4# bag of sugar over the kitchen floor, cutting the dining table with a butcher knife, peeling plaster off the wall and jamming it into the dvd player, helping himself to a box of hot chocolate packs and finger painting brown paw prints over the hallway walls, eating most of a box of chocolates, making his own breakfast (a stick of butter in his cereal bowl) and sitting nicely at the table with a napkin eating politely with a spoon, pouring 5# bag of flour on the dining table (Scooping and pouring into a cup).



And before we are accused of negligence, our house is baby proofed. Locks on most drawers, doors are closed and latched...Henry is a master lock smith.

New bunkbeds.

Today was a family day for El's birthday. All she asked for (repeatedly 1000x) was a bunkbed for Juan and Samantha (and Lucy).

Izaak came through with his craftiness. I am in process on a full compliment of bed linens.

The babies are cozy, finally.

New chair.

Blue velvet, tufted, estate-sale-cheap. Dreamy.

Engineering

Henry loves the train set.



He discovered that the train track pieces fit together.

Farmland

The kids and I drove out to the boondocks to pick up some asparagus. $1 /lb. 30 lbs. We love pickled asparagus.

I may have pick up some extra things on my way home.

I wonder if Izaak will notice the new roommates?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yLSE4vGmX2s&feature=youtube_gdata_player

After making mudpies...

Dirty babies.




Just a hint of what I am in for this summer.

If a picture is worth 1000 words...we bring you a post with 1,002.
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November tenth!

Hello ladies.

Meet Luke, Leia, Darth Vader, Darth Maul, Hedwig, Yoda, & Chewie




Seriously? Seriously.

Wanna guess who named the chickens?

A: Princess Leia

Kitchen counters. Before/after

Before: Boards were put down to create a work surface.







After: they were finished with a high sheen for a nice wet look. Turned out more "gray granite-y" and less "white with gray veins" then I had wanted. But they are beautiful, and who can argue with that. Who?



Quite the change. Right?

Do you see the dish dryer in the back? That is for baby bottles. Fake grass. Love it. We use it for everything except kid's stuff.

And the charming unfinished wall? It is screaming for some tile. Soon baby, soon.
We have a few projects on the list that rank a higher priority. (closets in the bedroom, perchance...or giant gaping hole in hallway...hum)

And today's post is brought to you by....




Elliot. (super excited to be able to rock some Princess Leia buns.) ( itty bitty little Leia buns)

To judge and be judged.

Link to article I liked...I think I must like it be because the author's style...'cause I am not a runner....and I spent my final WEEKS of pregnancy whining loudly. I must identify with the writer's style, or general premise more than the CRAZY pregnant lady that is the subject. Whatev'. Just cut and paste the link.

http://www.moxiebird.com/2011/10/area-pregnant-woman-does-thing-gets-judged-for-it.html

Speaking of judging (which no one was, right?). I decided for concrete countertops. Thanks to everyone for the feedback. I will post pics soon. Very lovely results :)

Additonally, there will be a new (or 7 new) additions to our family. Tomorrow. Pictures to come. Elliot is very excited and we are namestorming like crazy monsters.....

Stay tuned!

Entry table. Dirty walls. & Defining space.

We found this nice entry table at Renewal, in Boise. One of those must-buy this-table moments. (ever get that feeling?)



Here it is the day before we started to paint the living room white. Do you notice the ugly dirty seafoamy walls? Can you even see the table with those dirty walls glaring at you?


We are considering painting the table gray...to match the china hutch, window sashes and 1 dining chair. You know. The gray I have painted Everything else!

All is still in process but it does feel nice to have a table defining some entry space. Espec a nice heavy wood piece. (can i get an amen for real wod furniture)

Ugly lights have to go. Stat.

Dining room light was bad. It had to Go for a few reasons. It was broken, poorly installed, singed the ceiling. Oh so ugly.





Can you see in this terrible and unclear photo that some of the fake candle parts on this brassy masterpiece are tilted, cockeyed, broken and ugly?



If i turn off the light you can almost notice something else. Smoky black marks on the ceiling above each candle. That is safe, right?



Here is the new light (pic tis a week or so out of date)and a quick peek at how the main floor is progressing. Remember what it used to look like?

Here is a pic of move in week.





1) furniture is arranged and we are no longer in boxes. 2) living room wall is still horribly painted. Gag. 3) do you see my folding table/dining table? This has been replaced (happy birthday me). I had a vision of a big, thick, rustic farm table. Pics coming soon.

Let sleeping babies be

Henry's last day in an infant carseat.




Growing up a little more each day.

Preschool blues

First day of preschool for Elliot. We were a little nervous because she is just not a morning person.





I don't know. I think it went pretty well.

Geesh. September must be a birthday month.

Happy birthday to me! And to (uncle John)

Kitchen update.

This is that kitchen about 2 weeks after the move.




Hi sad Henry.

The kitchen is coming along. Izaak framed in one of the doors into the kitchen. This was to create some wall space - in one small kitchen there were three doorways, a funny jut, and a window. No unbroken walls. Hard to plan the layout of a modern, updated kitchen.

Most of the cabinets were found Second Chance. A local reuse home store. Some other cabinets have to be custom made because of some odd dimensions. We canibalized supplies on hand and parts of another cabinet to do this. (did i mention this is on a wee little budget?) I am thankful that Izaak can do stuff like that. No sweat just throwing that together. Right honey?



Yes. I am cooking in this space.
Meals are being generated.



Still working on the kitchen. The next step is countertops, then wall tile. We have the opportunity to get cement countertops nearly at cost. It seems like a good way to go. Stylish but super tenant durable. Anyone have experience with these? Good idea, bad? Let me know what you think.

The real tragedy of today was not getting winded while going so fast on the bike (with kids in the back trailer) trying to get to the store to buy the thing on hold that i swore to Elliot she would have today...getting there 5 minutes before they closed...only to learn that they closed 10 minutes early (bummer moment for a 4 yr old).

Nor did the tragedy occur when my untied shoelace (hurry too much to stop and tie it) caught in the bike chain and my gracious dismount looked like a bike-kristen-pavement sandwich in front of no less than 6 other ladies and 2 sidewalk fixing gentlemen.







No. The real tragedy* occured when we got home and i started to get dressed to go out (finally) to an adult-centered dinner (finally).
I needed bandaids (triage, seriously) for my wounds. Bandaids options: My pick of star wars or toy story themed. My lovely summer dress and heals, a buzz lightyear elbow, and woody on my ankle. Not quite the vision of adultness i had been shooting for. Sad me.



*tragedy in the light hearted sense...clearly. Not meant comparitively to other pressing world matters.

Moving down the block.

The end of July saw us move down a few blocks. A bit rushed and under planned. I found it too hard to pack with any sense of organization with 2 littles underfoot... And with Izaak out of town up until we moved.

To streamline and simplify our lives, we tore out the kitchen, bedroom closets and most of downstairs the day before getting a uhaul. Ha ha.




Really. We moved into a rental that had been treated very roughly by the last couple of tenants. It is a work in progress. Needs some tlc before going back on the rental market.

It is nearly impossible to tell. Yet, the pic in the upperleft corner is showing you the bottom of the ugliest fan ever, and seafoam colored sponge-painted walls. Terrible. The two pics on the right are of the kitchen. Dreamy, right?

Solid chaos for the first week or two. (right, Maia?) We lived with our stuff in two rooms upstairs while Izaak added flooring. A bit like camping. Camping without smores is nearly totally without appeal.


Henry is a climber and our stuff was stacked in towering towers of climbable fun. I spent hours corraling and pulling him off of shelves.

We transitioned from a tidy and tiny place...doubled our square footage (or more) but nearly all of it needed some work done.

Needless to say the kids were a little disoriented with the change of space and routine -but all is good now :)

Elliot's lemonade stand.

Elliot has been desperate to have a lemonade stand, ever since we stopped at one earlier this summer.

We obliged and facilitated. With 2 looming and dark caveats.

#1) she had to make and sell her own products with as little adult help as we could get away with. NO store package of cookies or carton of Newman's limeade.

#2) she had to work and hustle her booth. Solo. Mama would not be an employee of the stand.

Hard work. And reward. She was also told that she could decide how to spend the money. If she works to earn, she can decide how to spend. (easy to say because we thought she only make a few dollars to blow on candy and a juice box)

Game on, sister.



She made an easy sugar cookie recipe that I found for her. Mama directed and did oven duty. But little lulu has moves in the kitchen. Colored sugar was the best part.

She spent a week posing with her table and chair to get the feel of free enterprise.

"do I look like a real lemonade stand girl, mom?". A thousand times a day.

She also used cloth napkins to practise picking up cookies with touching with her fingers. Because that is a gross violation of safe food handling.




Oh. And sister hustled. She sang charming ditties. She flagged over cars and blocked in oncoming bikers and runners. She upsold and made package deals for bulk buyers.

She also gave her mean face to cars that raced by without pausing.

She worked in the sun for hours until a gallon of pink lemonade and 2 dozen cookies found new homes.

And the financial rewards? What pittance did she scrounge together for a trip to the candy store? Oh you wonder.

She made more than I made at my first job. Nearly $10 an hour. Candy store plans got scrubbed because there were some Star Wars action figures just calling to her. Luke now has all his buddies...and a Darth Vader to boot.