Help from the boys

Nathan and I went to dinner Saturday evening. We had been looking forward to a nice dinner at a local Steak and Seafood restaurant. We have heard wonderful things about McGraws. People have told us to make reservations, but I completely forgot. We figured with Memorial Day weekend everyone would be grilling out. We were wrong. I called ahead of time (we were already dressed up), and they told us the earliest they could get us in would be 8:45, more than 3 hours wait. We were both hungry so we went to a local bar/restaurant, the Black Sparrow. The food was good, we were a little over dressed, but they were not too busy.

The whole time at dinner, we discussed our progress and plans for the kitchen. As soon as we got home, Nathan got to work again (in his nice clothes)

This is what the wall looked like when we got home. I started emptying out cupboards and Nathan tore them out.

We worked until about 10 and then called it a night. Most cupboard are down on the other side of the wall. Just in time.

The boys came home around 11:30 Everest was so excited to help out. We found his safety glasses (I got them from Montessori Services- they have real life stuff in kid sizes), and let him go to work. He tore down the majority of the wall. Leaf helped too, but he was in his birthday suit so no pictures to share.

Everest really getting into demolition. We have to be careful, he keeps going around the house asking if he can tear down the other walls.

Everest worked for a good hour or so. He was tired. He took a 3 hour nap later in the day. Maybe we can get him a job with a moving company and a demolition company.

No more walls. Hurray!! Wait til you see the what we have done today! I will try to post again tomorrow.

We have done a lot of clean up, and more clean up, and more clean up. I am sure we will have a lot more clean up in the next few weeks. We were supposed to do only one wall for now, but ended up removing 2 and a lot more.

This is what happens.....

This is what happens when Nathan and I are left alone for 2 days without kids. It has been 4 1/2 years since we have had more than a few hours alone. Most people would be having their "romantic time", which we did, but we also miss working on the house together. Something that is 10 times harder with 2 little kids.

We have hated this wall since the day we looked at the house. The house feels too compartmentalized for us. We love the open floor plans. I am not fond of the kitchen so we decided to change it! This is phase one!

 View from the living room.

My parents took the boys to a local hotel where they went swimming and out to dinner. Today, they went to the Imagination Station, which is like a small children's museum, and swimming again. 

Nathan and I went to dinner last night at Peaceful Greens. It is a new vegetarian restaurant in downtown Lafayette. It was really nice and the food was EXCELLENT! I had an incredible portabella sandwich and Nathan had a burrito.

The wall is coming DOWN!

No more dry wall. I can see out the front window from my kitchen. I love the view...and the light!

Our biggest challenges was going to be matching the hard wood floor. We only needed a little bit, but getting it the same was going to be tricky. To our surprise, the hard wood floor was under the wall. We are not sure why, but who cares. It stops at the kitchen, but we are going to tile the kitchen so it doesn't matter.

Very dirty!

Hurray! We got it done in a matter of an afternoon. It is not done by any means, but it has been started and there is no turning back. I love my husband.

Nathan saw our friends Courtney and Matt's house a few weeks ago. They have an open floor plan, except for the bedrooms and bathrooms. We both love it. The house we thought we were going to buy last year had an open floor plan (we put in a full price offer on a Frank Lloyd Wright style house, that had had no interest for over 60 days. The day we put in an offer, someone else put in one too and they got the house instead of us. Sad, I know. But if we would have gotten our dream house, we never would have met Doug and Lisa, so I guess it has been worth it.) 
Our plans are to knock out the wall between the kitchen and dining room too. We have to move the stove and fridge. The kitchen is my least favorite room in the house, and it is the room I spend the most time in. We are putting in a 9 foot island, tiling the floor and a back splash for the stove. This may take us the next year to be completely finished, but as long as it is functional, I am ok with that.

Playing in the dirt!

We had a little bit of a rough morning today. Not sure why, maybe it is the heat. It has been VERY warm in Indiana, especially when you are 6 1/2 month pregnant. I can't bring myself to turn on the air. I am not a fan of air conditioning for many reasons: it feels too cold for me no matter how low you set it, I hate walking outside after being in the air conditioning, and of course environmental and financial reasons.
Once things settled down a little, I worked in the garden and the boys...well they did too. They had a blast. Many people would freak out about the kids in the mud, especially when one of the kids sucks his fingers, no matter how muddy they are. Long ago, I gave up trying to keep Leaf's fingers clean. The boys played together and had fun, that is all that matters. 

The boys have their own dirt pile at the edge of my garden. Nathan had dug a hole to check the down spout, but the boys decided they had a better idea for the hole. They filled it with water and went fishing.

Leaf had a good time putting things underwater, then finding them. He giggled every time he found something.

Everest was digging to make a stronger damn so the water would stay in. He wanted to be like Leaf (no pants, but I persuaded him to go topless instead.

Can you tell who has had their fingers in their mouth? A dirty little boy only a mama (and daddy and a brother)  could love!

In the late afternoon, we headed out again. We ditched the clothes from earlier. It was so hot, I just let Leaf go natural. We have some really cute pictures of him, but none that are appropriate to post on the internet. He was just as dirty this afternoon as he was this morning. He and I took a shower before bed. Nathan and Everest opted for a bath. So both boys went to bed clean.

This evening, they filled their pool up with dirt. When they got out, they both looked like they had on mud socks. It was really funny, but the pictures we have, we can't share because of naked Leaf. What is with Everest? He went inside and put on a long sleeve shirt. It was in the upper 80's today with PLENTY of humidity. He loves his fire truck shirt (friends-Courtney, Nolan, and Meredith- thank you so much) got it for him at the beginning of school.

My parents will be here tomorrow!!!!!!! Can't wait. I am sure we will be playing in the mud some more, it is supposed to be hot all week.

Alicia Horst Photography take 3

I warned you there were a lot of good pictures and it is very hard for me to choose only a few. There was only a small window of opportunity that Leaf was not screaming and Alicia captured them beautifully. Looking over these pictures, you would not know about all the crying that went on during that day. Everest had fun hamming it up, although he was getting a little jealous that we were putting so much effort into getting Leaf to stop crying.

I am glad we got a few of Leaf with his fingers. It just wouldn't be Leaf without his fingers.

 

 

It is amazing to look at these pictures and see how much my boys have grown in 6 months. Leaf has gotten so much bigger and is talking. Everest has grown at least an inch and has matured.

Alicia Horst Photography take 2

Family

I stressed over what we should wear for our photo shoot. I got a couple different outfits for each of us. We started off with black shirts and jeans, and that is all the further we got. We had fun and it turned out perfect. When we have the baby, we want to do an outdoor shoot with her sometime. She has a nice studio though, her wonderful husband Kendall and her dad Jeff (Nathan’s best man in the wedding), built it for her.

During the session, Leaf wanted to take a snack break, so I sat down and nursed him. I knew Alicia would not mind, she was a lactation consultant and helped me out when I was having trouble nursing Everest in the beginning. To my surprise, she asked if she could photograph me nursing him. I was delighted. We do not have many pictures of me nursing the boys. It is such an intimate and beautiful thing, but at the same time, we do it so often, we don’t think about taking photographs of it. I love these pictures.

 

 

Thanks again Alicia.

Photo session with Alicia Horst Photography

Over Christmas, we visited with Nathan’s high school friends Alicia and Kendall. We had a great visit with them and a photo shoot with Alicia. We were very excited to have family pictures. We tried to keep the day low key before we went, but somehow things did not work the way we planned. When we got to Alicia and Kendalls house, they boys were tired and hungry. We had found out I was pregnant a week or so before this day and the morning sickness was kicking in. I was trying VERY hard to hide the fact that I was so sick. I ended up spending most of the shoot with Leaf and Nathan was with Everest. We did get a few great family photos. Alicia is an amazing photographer and we loved the way they turned out. There are way too many to post them all, but I have included some of my favorites.

2 of my beautiful boys. She did an amazing job. There are so many pictures, I will post more tomorrow.

A cape of his own...

After making capes for the last 6 months for varies children, I finally got around to making Leaf his very own cape. I have had the material for a while, but haven’t had the time to make it. From start to finish, it took me about 2 weeks, not because of the complexity, but because I typically only have 5 minutes here and there to work on it. I do not think Leaf minds at all. He seems to love his cape. He begs to wear it anytime he sees it. One day he had his apron on and then wanted his cape too.

This is the back of the cape. I love the material, it is just fun. It wasn’t wide enough so I had to piece it together. I lined the inside with a light yellow. It was my first attempt at piecing a cape together and double siding it. I also velcroed his tie in the front. It makes me  a little nervous to tie something around a toddlers neck. (not sure if the picture will turn out ok or not. I loaded it twice but the bottom half is blue on my screen, hope it is not on yours)

Leaf has been making all kinds of faces with his eyes. He seems to know he is cute and he will look up, slyly or even roll is eyes. He batts his eyes at us sometimes when he doesn’t want to do whatever we are asking him to do. Where does he get this stuff????

Playing with big brother. They love their Plan Toys garage.

Trying out the balance board with his cape, amybe it will help balance better. What do you think?

Mother's Day gift gone astray

*I had to delay this post until our mom's got their gift. 

Gelatin sun catchers.

Recently I put up an inspiration line in our dining room. It is a simple piece of twine connected to push pins. I find all these great craft ideas online or in magazines and I save them, but then I never look at them again. Now, when I find a fun craft idea or saying, I hang it on the line. It has helped so much with our crafting. Everest has looked through all the pages I have and picked a few of his favorites. 

We found a sun catcher craft idea in Family Fun magazine. (If you want to craft with your kids, but don't know where to start, I highly recommend this magazine. I do not love the commercialism in it, but I do love the crafts.) Everest and I decided to make them for Mother's Day. We went to the grocery store to collect all the supplies and started making them. 

Mixing the gelatin and adding food coloring.

They were turning out thinner than I thought they should be, so I added a little more water to them. (They are made from unflavored gelatin). We added food coloring, then dumped them onto a plastic plate. We then added drops of food coloring and swirled them into cool designs. 

For Everest, this was the most fun, making the designs.

We also added glitter, that was lots of fun too, but quite messy.

It said they should dry over night, but 2 days later, they were still...jello-y. 

Everest has a good time playing with the pieces that were still pretty rubbery.

Not thinking I put them in the sun to dry. Big mistake, they melted into a mess. All our nice designs ran together. I set them on the counter meaning to throw them away and start over, but forgot about them. Later that evening, I found they were drying. They were not nearly as nice as they were in the beginning, but they still turned out ok. Everest liked them and wanted to finish making them for Nonnie and Grami, so we cut out some shapes and added string. We started these sun catchers in plenty of time to send them for Mother's Day, but since we had so much trouble, they were sent late. Sorry, Nonnie and Grami, we hope you enjoyed them when you did get them.

In the end they turned out ok. They catch the sun nicely, even if they are wrinkled and bubbly. Everest named each one of them, we had moon and ball, watermelon, foot print, square and heart. Some of the names he came up with were very clever

We love and miss you both! Hope you had a great Mother's Day.

Potty training

We are working on potty training with Leaf. We started at 18 months with Everest and he did very well. It took about 6 months before he was mostly potty trained, but it was nice to wash fewer diapers. With Everest, I just took off his diaper and let him run around naked for the summer months. The first week he peed and pooped on the floor a few times, but after that, it wasn't very common. He usually went when we put pants on him. 
Everest and daddy offering encouragement to Leaf. We have fun with him while he is practicing. We sing songs, say funny things and just talk to him.

I have been reading about Elimination Control  (EC) so we are doing things a little differently with Leaf. The first time I heard about EC, I thought it was a little weird. In the past 4 years, I have heard and read a little more about it. In a recent article I read in Mothering, I realized, it is very similar to what we did with Everest. 
One of the suggestions is to have "potty stations" throughout the house. And to have a key word or sound you make when they pee, even if it is not in the "potty".

This is our down stairs "potty station", just his size. We put a potty seat on a small bucket, he loves to sit on it.

Leaf has been doing very well. He doesn't always make it to the potty, but he is aware of when he has to go and tells us. He started to pee on the floor today, but stopped, made it to the potty and peed in it. He was so proud of himself. It was fun to see how excited he got. No bribing, begging or offering rewards, other than praise. 

Leaf enjoying a snack, he decided to sit on his potty. I guess you never know when you might have to go.

He does still wear a diaper, we just have "diaper free" times at home. Even with a diaper on he tells us when he has to go. It is fun to see peoples expressions when they see him telling us he has to go. Most of them are amazed that a child that young can tell you when he has to go. I find this is much easier than what most of my friends go through potty training or diapering until they are 3 or 4. 
In the article we read, there was some information I loved and think it is worthy of sharing.
They were talking about potty training and how most experts say it is best if it is "child -lead". Human babies are born with an instinct to stay clean with an awareness of elimination, which they display through body language and other nonverbal ways of communicating.....Waiting until a child can verbalize the need to go is not necessary for the process to be child -led....We don't require our babies to verbalize the need to nurse or to sleep, but instead learn to respond to their body language and signals......it is the same with elimination.
For us as a family, this makes a lot of sense. We cloth diaper, because we feel it is safer for our children and the earth. But even with cloth diapering we use a lot of water to clean them (we hang them to dry). Working on Elimination Control early, means using less natural resources and getting to know our kids a little better. We have decided we will try EC with the new baby from the beginning. Stay tuned to see how our journey goes.