Thursday, March 29, 2012

Saying Goodbye to an Old Friend

Maybe people will think I'm weird for feeling a bit sad and nostalgic about this but since we are having a second baby, we are buying a newer, bigger car for dual carseat purposes and, as a result, today we sold our older car.  It is my old '98 Chevy Prism.  I have had it since my first year in college and it has been a great car for me.  Very rarely did it break down and I made many memories in it.  I remember back in college, I was the one with the fancy, new car.  Now it's like ancient but I still have always liked it (which I guess also makes me ancient since it's a 98 and that's the year I graduated high school, but I digress).





Anyway, I'm glad it will be taking someone else around safely.  *sigh*  My last hold to my college years is now going bye bye.  Got a bit choked up watching it drive away.  Goodbye, Old Friend! *sniffle*

Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Fingerpainting, Take Two

Okay so we finally got some nice weather so we gave the fingerpainting another go.  Elijah seemed to really like it.  It only lasted about 30 minutes before we were trying to paint things other than the paper (i.e. shorts, the chair, our own legs, etc.) but it was fun while it did last.  (I used spray and wash on the shorts so we'll see if the stains come out.  If not, we'll just make those the painting shorts from now on.)  Unfortunately, I have a lot of unusable paint left over.  Next time I'll probably make half of what I made this time.  It kept in the fridge for awhile but I had to really stir it up to get it to mix again.  Anywho, here is the chronicle of the experience:












I am very glad that I made the paints with edible stuff because some of it did end up in the mouth.  And he got a little overzealous with some of the paper so it got torn, but here is the final masterpiece:

Thursday, March 22, 2012

If I wanna fingerpaint, then I'm going to fingerpaint!

Yes, that's a line from South Park.  I watched it when I was in college.  I'm bad.  But I hardly watch any grown-up TV anymore so maybe it evens out.

Anyway, this week it has been raining constantly, which means we are stuck inside all the time.  Not that I'm complaining about the rain; we certainly needed it.  But it is mind-numbing to be stuck inside all day every day.  But I wanted to do a day at the park and a day of fingerpainting.  The forecast on weather.com misled me to believe that this afternoon it would not be raining and so I chose to do fingerpainting.  It was short-lived because as soon as we got out there and started painting, it started to rain.  But I did get a few fun pictures before it started.

I got this recipe for fingerpaints from someone else's website so I don't take credit for it, but I liked it because, other than food coloring, it was all stuff I already had in my kitchen, and it's all edible stuff so if you have a little one who likes to put stuff in his mouth whether he's supposed to or not, this is a good way to go.  Here it is:

1/2 c corn starch
3 tbs sugar
1/2 tsp salt
2 c cold water
food coloring

Basically throw everything but the food coloring into a pot and put it on the stove over low heat.  Mix it all up and stand there stirring it until it starts getting thick.  Then remove it from the heat and stir it all up.  Mine started to turn lumpy thick and I was afraid that I did something wrong but when I removed it from the heat and stirred some more, it all mixed together.  Then while it's still hot you separate it into smaller containers and add food coloring to each and stir it up to make whatever colors you want.  I just made the basic colors: green, yellow, red and blue, but I'm sure you could mix yellow and red to make orange and blue and red to make purple.  Also, I used a lot of red coloring because I was trying to get it as close to true red as I could.  If you use just a little red it will be pink, which could also be fun if your kid likes pink.  Mine doesn't care, I'm sure.


Here is the result.  You can store them in airtight containers and supposedly they will keep for three days.  I'm going to try to store them in the fridge to see if they'll last longer than that since I doubt we'll be back outside to do more fingerpainting in the next three days.

The forecast said it would be sunny until 5:00, which would have been fine since I have to come inside and start cooking dinner at 5:00 anyway, but Elijah took a long nap today and didn't get up until 3:30 and then, of course, he has to have snack to tide him over until dinner.  So we didn't really get outside until like 3:45.  This again would have been fine if the forecast hadn't lied to me.  ::give evil eye::  We only got to paint about 15 minutes before it started to rain.  But here is what we got:

Yes, that's one of Mike's old undershirts and a drop cloth I've used 100 times on the table.





Some of it goes in the hair, of course.


So there you have it.  Hopefully we can do it again at another time where it will be more fun and we don't get rained on.

Tuesday, March 13, 2012

Nursery #2

Look at me blogging two days in a row.  There's probably not going to be much talking in this one though.  (I'm sure most people are relieved.)  I just wanted to share some pictures of our new nursery in progress.  We bought a new crib and a new glider from Nebraska Furniture Mart (a.k.a. furniture heaven).  Here they are:







Ignore the blue box sitting on the glider.  That's a storage box of Elijah clothes that are too small that needs to be taken down to our crawl space but I'm being lazy and waiting to take it down until I'm ready to bring up the box of his smallest clothes to hang up in the closet for baby #2.

Anyway, as you can see in the first two pictures, the room was painted yellow because it was a guest room.  I still have the adult bed in there for now so that people can still come and stay with us for awhile, but we painted the room this past weekend.  And when I say "we" what I mean is my wonderful mom and stepdad painted the room.  I like painting but am pretty sure if I had tried to help at all, I wouldn't have been able to get out of bed the next day due to severe back issues.  Anyway, I used these sheets as inspiration:


Got them on sale at Babies R Us.  I'm not getting a whole "bed set" since bumpers aren't really safe anymore and you can't put blankets on them until they're older.  Just got the sheets and will probably get a mobile of some kind.  I'm trying to keep the furniture in the room to a minimum so other than the crib and glider, I have a chest of drawers that I refurbished awhile ago.  They used to be all white but I painted it brown and used wallpaper for the front of the drawers and put new knobs on it:


But now the room is blue thanks to my mom and stepdad.  I picked the lighter colored car in the sheets for inspiration.  Here are some pics:






And of course in the one with the chest of drawers there is Elijah getting into the trash.  I am still planning on adding a border of some kind around the room.  Either I will use the darker blue and red colors in the sheets and do some kind of painted border or I will find some wallpaper border.  I haven't decided yet.  For one thing, I haven't found a wallpaper border that is exactly what I want (not that I've looked really hard or anything) and for another, when we put up the wallpaper border in Elijah's room it was such a pain in the arse that I swore I would never do any wallpapering again.

However, the major stuff is more or less accomplished.  We still have several items that I need to add to the room like a hamper, a diaper pail, a toybox, etc.  One thing I am not adding is another changing table.  During the day we'll just use the one in Elijah's room and at night we'll just make do.  Plus, he'll be in our bedroom at night until he at least doesn't need to be changed at night so there's no need for another changing table.

Well, I said I wasn't going to talk much in this one but I guess that's nearly impossible for me to do.  Anyway, as it comes together more I'll blog more and post more pictures.  Hope you enjoy the blue room for now.  I just realized that all the rooms in my house (except the basement) are a shade of either blue, brown or green.  Guess I know what colors I like.

Monday, March 12, 2012

4 Days without Daddy

So last week Mike had to go to Iowa for work.  He said he was going to be gone Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday evening and be back Thursday night.  Alas, he did get back Thursday but not until 9 p.m. and when you have a toddler, 9 p.m. is very close to bedtime even for the grown ups (or perhaps I'm just old), which meant that I was in charge of chasing Elijah around, feeding him, putting him down for nap and bed, getting baths, picking him up off of the furniture he climbs on, etc. for four whole days all by myself.  And while most normal women get to be done with nausea by the time they are 26 weeks pregnant, I am not so blessed.  So in addition to feeling nauseated all the time, as well as tired from carrying the extra 30 or so pounds I'm toting around my waist, I get no breaks except when the little man is asleep, and no help when Daddy comes home because Daddy is out of town.  I have no idea how one does anything if she is a single parent.

Anyhow, to make the week go faster, I tried to think of things to break up the monotony of playing with blocks, doing puzzles and reading "Green Eggs and Ham" sixteen times per day.  On Monday I had an appointment with my OB and Elijah got to go over to my Aunt Jennifer's house for an hour or so.  (She runs a daycare out of her home.)  I was a little worried he wouldn't do too well since it was a new place but he apparently did fine and all the other kids loved having him there--he was like the new toy.  (I didn't take any pictures because I didn't know how the other parents would feel about random pictures of their kids being on my blog.)  Of course, what made it the most fun is that I had to do that stupid glucola test for gestational diabetes.  If you've never done it before you have to drink this stuff that tastes basically like flat sprite, only WAY too sweet and syrupy and you have to drink the whole thing in like 5 minutes.  Then an hour later they draw your blood.  I'm not a fan of getting my blood drawn, but drinking the glucola was definitely the worst part.  Since I'm still nauseous, I was a little worried I would throw it back up because it was so gross, but fortunately it stayed down and my levels came back normal, so no gestational diabetes.  Yay!

That afternoon we went outside to play.  Now this is really more trouble than it initially sounds.  For one thing, we have a big dog who, obviously, does his business in our back yard and since Mike hasn't cleaned up the yard for awhile, there are tons of land mines to avoid (which is hard to do with a toddler who likes to take off wherever he wants to go).  Also, one thing that Elijah loves to do is pick up rocks and hand them to me.  Well, sometimes the dog's older business resembles a rock and... you get the idea.  We always wash hands thoroughly after playing outside.  And of course, our yard isn't completely flat and even.  There are several places where it slants up or down steeply but Elijah has no regard for these silly concerns and just takes off.  And how dare Mommy attempt to hold his hands while he runs around the yard.  The nerve!  So we inevitably do some face plants, but fortunately, no serious injuries.  Here are some pictures from our yard adventures.







Tuesday was pretty uneventful.  Just home doing our regular thing except it was a really nice day outside (like in the 70s) so when he got up from nap I put him in the stroller and we walked up to sonic and got a root beer float.  Normally he has a healthy yogurt snack after his nap to tide him over until dinner, but I decided instead to let him have some of my ice cream that day.  I drank the root beer and ate most of the ice cream but he had some.  Here he is enjoying it.


Wednesday morning we went to the library to check out a storytime for ages 12-24 months.  I have been trying to find a weekly storytime to take him to at one of the local libraries.  There is a library within walking distance of my house but their storytime is for like three year olds, so I found some others online.  I wasn't really impressed with the one on Wednesday.  For one thing, it seemed like they expected the kids to sit still the whole time which seems really unrealistic to me when the kids are 2 years old or younger.  They read a couple books and sang some songs but there wasn't much interaction among the kids and I was hoping they'd do a craft or at least a coloring page, but they didn't.  Pretty much everything that happened I could do with him at home--and better, I didn't find the woman reading the books very engaging.  She had kind of a monotonous voice and since she read "Cat in the Hat" (which I have practically memorized from reading it so many times) I knew she was messing up a lot of the lines in it.  And then it only lasted 30 minutes.  It's way too much trouble for me to get him in his carseat and drive all the way there and get him out, etc. for only 30 minutes of stuff that I could do at home.

There was another storytime we planned to attend on Thursday but it didn't happen.  I'll get to that, though.  First I need to share a theory I have that toddlers are actually made out of rubber.  After last Thursday I'm really starting to believe that.  Thursday morning I was sleeping and sort of waking up.  I could hear Elijah moving around in his crib on the monitor but he wasn't crying or making any babbling sounds so I hoped he was just turning over to go back to sleep when suddenly I heard a very loud thump.  I jumped up and ran in his room and lo and behold, the booger decided to climb out of his crib and had fallen to the floor.  I made it in the room before the crying began and I checked him out and he didn't seem to be hurt, just freaked out.

The crib mattress had been on the second to lowest setting for awhile and it's really hard to lean all the way down in there to put him down for naps or bed and since the top of the crib still came up to his upper chest when he stood up, I assumed it was fine and we would just move it down to the lowest setting when we converted it into a toddler bed.  Well, I learned my lesson.  I should have known better since I have a climber.  I moved it to the lowest setting that afternoon before his nap.

Anyway, after that we had breakfast and everything and headed towards the plaza library to check out their storytime.  However, as I was going down Wornall and through the intersection at Gregory a girl turned left in front of me and I had no room to stop even though I slammed on my brakes.  Fortunately, neither Elijah nor I were hurt at all (again, furthering my theory that he's made of rubber).  We were both buckled like we were supposed to be and the seatbelt and carseat did their jobs.  He was scared, obviously, but thank God I had brought a pacifier with me (which I normally don't give him unless he's sleeping).  That calmed him down and kept him occupied while I dealt with the mess of a smushed up front bumper and all the lovely headache that goes with having a car accident.  It was obviously a pain and not how I wanted to spend our morning but since no one was hurt and it was her fault, it's really just an inconvenience right now because my car is getting repaired and we have a rental car that I'm not too fond of.  It's even more compact than our Cobalt.  But we'll only have it for a few weeks, I guess, and we don't have to pay for it.  Here's a couple pictures of my poor, smashed up bumper.



I am going to try again this Thursday to see if we can make it to the Plaza library for storytime.  I just hope it's worth it after getting my car all crunched.  We were very blessed that my friend Elizabeth from church came to help us, although I ended up just driving the car home so we could wait for a claims person to come out and give us an estimate.  But since Mike was out of town and I didn't really have anyone else to call, I was very grateful.

So that was our eventful week.  I'm exhausted just reading about it again.  We had a fun weekend with my parents, too, that involved working on the new nursery, but I will blog about that tomorrow or something since I need to get pictures to add and this blog is getting too long anyway.