Home Renovations

A few months ago, we had a light fixture installed in the toy room. The installer managed to put 6 holes in the ceiling and one in the wall. After a few months of walking past these very obnoxious holes, we finally decided to do something about it. We patched, we sanded, we patched and sanded, then we patched and sanded some more....and then we were finally ready to paint!

Here's the old toy room (this was the only picture I could find where the drapes were still up):


Then we painted the walls (3 cream, one pink). My addiction to Pinterest gave me the idea for an artwork display for the girls:


Then we put up decals on the pink wall:


I would have felt satisfied with our progress, except for this one pesky little problem--that there is no break in our walls where we can just stop painting. The entire main floor of our house must be the same color. So this meant that I had to also paint the cream walls in the tv room and kitchen.

Here's the "old" tv room:


I started painting, one wall per weekend. Oh, and we moved the tv:


On the list of things to do is to order new shades for the tv room, get a new tv stand, mount the tv on it's new wall, put some of the wall decorations back up, and, of course, paint the kitchen. We'll get to it...

Our girls are hysterical.

We think (know) our girls are pretty funny. This will get them far in life. Here are some of our favorites:

Paige
-We were playing a game where we trapped the girls and they had to say, "open sesame" to get out. When we trapped Rylie, Paige decided to offer some advice to her as to how to escape. She said, "Just say open up sesame....wait, it would be open up sesa-Ry for you."

-The other night Paige came in our room around 2 am saying she was scared. When she got up in the morning she said, "I had a bad dream last night, so I came in your room." I asked what the dream was about, and she said, "Izzy's poop."

-At bedtime, Paige has this routine of crying 5 minutes after we put her to bed. We go up, ask what is wrong, she asks for a hug, and we're good. A few days ago her reason was that she wanted some pickles. Except, she was serious. We offered hugs, but she wanted pickles.

-One of Paige's friends was coming over for a playdate, and I made the ultimate mistake of talking about it at dinner THE NIGHT BEFORE the playdate (these things are usually discussed only minutes before they happen). I told her that it wasn't going to happen until the next day (to try to stave off some of the incessant, "is he here yet?" questions), so she asked, "Is Noah coming over after my dark nap, or my day nap?"

Rylie
Rylie's funny moments are better captured by video, so enjoy:

Santa

So we saw Santa today. It went as expected...Rylie screamed, Paige got bashful. At the end (after we removed the screaming banshee from Santa's lap), Paige got to tell Santa what she wanted for Christmas. She told him she wanted a "dog pit." I asked her afterwards what a "dog pit" was and she said, "my present from Santa." Duh.

This is the best picture we could get. The lady wanted to re-take it because, "the older one is leaning away from Santa." I was like, "uh, I think that if we're concerned about anything it's that the younger one is screaming, and while I think she'll forgive me for putting her there once, I think we'll need a baby therapist if we do it again."

Enjoy:

Shelf, the Elf on the Shelf

Last year, after a lot of discussion about the matter, we jumped on the "Elf on the Shelf" bandwagon. We heard our local Target had some in stock, and headed out to try to get us one. We may have had to elbow some desperate mothers out of the way to get ours, but we now have our very own little bundle of elf joy. We eagerly read the accompanying book with Paige (Rylie was only a few months old and we didn't think she could possibly begin to understand the idea of constant surveillance and reporting to Santa), and about half way through, they have this part where you have to name your elf. So when Paige was asked what we should name our elf and she barely thought about it before deciding on, "Shelf." We were like, "Ha ha, no, you don't understand, what should his NAME be," and she declared that his name is, in fact, Shelf. So last year we played along and didn't make a big deal out of Shelf, but he was definitely there when we needed him. This year, though, Shelf is like a celebrity in our house.

We got out the book at the beginning of December, and immediately Paige recognized her friend Shelf (I was secretly hoping she wouldn't remember his name, so we could make it a normal elf name this year...I never actually wrote it in the book, but I think we're stuck now). Our elf, Shelf, is not as creative as some other elves, he just hangs out up high, constantly watching. The very first thing Paige asks every morning is, "Can we go find Shelf," so we do have to be pretty diligent about moving him. She asks how his night was just about every morning, and sometimes will be like, "so did you tell Santa I was a good girl," to which he replies.....well, nothing, because he's a doll. But she still asks, every day.

Rylie still doesn't acknowledge Shelf, but I have high hopes for next year. When she is throwing a tantrum and I say, "Uh oh, I hope Shelf doesn't see you..." she doesn't even pause for a second to think about what I've said, so, like I said, next year.

Video Update

Here are a few videos from the last two months:

Paige has embraced her inner dare-devil and this is what she does every time we go out in the cul-de-sac. Don't worry, we've started making her wear a helmet. It was unsafe, I know...



A few months back I bought a deal for 4 cheerleading classes for kids. This was their final activity on the last class. As you can see, Paige has a real future here.



Andrew and Colleen went down to W&M for homecoming weekend. We got to watch Drew, and he's hysterical. Not sure why we didn't put clothes on him...watching 3 kids was hard.

Election Eve 2012

Tonight at dinner we were talking about voting tomorrow. Paige excitedly exclaimed, "We're going on a boat tomorrow?!" I decided to give her a brief overview of voting, and what it means to vote. Then I asked, "Who should I vote for tomorrow to be our next president?" Paige responded, without hesitation, "SANTA!"

Since we're on the topic of Santa, Paige decided that since we've checked Halloween off the list for this year, Christmas is really soon (not sure why she has that idea, Costco has only had Christmas decorations out since the second week of October). She told me that she's excited that Christmas is soon because it's almost time for Santa to bring her a dog bed. That's right, a dog bed. Apparently she would like a dog bed for when she's crawling around pretending she's a dog (which happens more frequently than I'd like to admit).

So, get out and vote for Santa tomorrow. Turn those states white.

Nom Nom

Rylie's palate is an interesting one. I foresee an episode of "My Strange Addiction" in her future. She's a great eater at all meals, and will eat just about anything I give her (exceptions are eggs, shrimp and tomatoes), but it is her non-approved between meal "snacks" that concern me.

Example 1: The other day I met a friend at Starbucks and we were sitting outside enjoying our coffee while her baby and Ry walked around on the sidewalk. There was a planter close to us and Rylie decided to try a handful of potting soil. Now, I get it...potting soil looks a lot like crushed up Oreos, so why not give it a go?! You'd think, though, that after one handful, Rylie would have thought to herself, "hum, that was gross," but instead she went back for about 5 more handfuls.

Example 2: When I get ready in the morning, often times the girls will play in our bedroom or next to me in the bathroom. Rylie is known to get into the stuff under our sinks, so I have to do a lot of dancing around to keep a knee on whichever vanity door she's trying to open. However, occasionally she will get through my Fort Knox like security and get something out. A few weeks back she got out Dave's deodorant, popped off the lid, and took a big chomp (this is the point that I would like to make this a little less disgusting by saying it was a brand new deodorant, but that wasn't the case). Bad, right? Well, after that, she was zoned in on that deodorant and would wait for me to look away so that she could get another little taste. She's even gone after mine a few times. In total, I think she's taken about 3 big bites of deodorant.

Example 3: To prevent Ry from rummaging around too much in our bathroom cabinets, I've started putting her in Dave's sink while I get ready. His contact solution is usually sitting on the countertop and she'll drink from it like a bottle. So now I have to survey what products are out, make sure all lids are securely in place (or put them away), then plop her in the sink...all just so that I can brush my teeth.

Example 4: When I was unloading the groceries the other day, Rylie went into the pantry, grabbed the canister of brown sugar, carried it to the tv room and started shoveling handfuls of brown sugar into her mouth. Now, this is the first of her "odd foods" that I actually understand, but maybe not eating around a cup of it at once.

These are just the items that she actually ingests that gross me out, there's a whole laundry list of things that she just puts in her mouth that I think are pretty foul as well (toilet plunger, toilet brush, rocks, mulch, chalk, etc) so we've basically hidden everything in our house.