Jack | 20 months

Looks like we're in the homestretch to turning 2- oh my!

1.  This month we discovered playing on our deck.  For both of our sanity I have to find time in the day to let him play outside.  It has been difficult to figure out how to make that work with living on the second floor and Charlotte's schedule.  Gating off a huge section of our deck on the second floor has been the solution.  We even bought a kiddie pool to go up there.  (Look out below!)  So far it has been successful.

 2.  He's slowly adding new words and phrases to his speech.  "What's that?"  "It's hot??"  "I'm hot"  "snack"  "eat".  Every time we eat or anytime he tries a new food, he asks: "It's hot?"  For instance, he wanted some of my salt and vinegar kettle chips.  right.  He licks it and frowns and says, "It's hot?"  I explain that no, it's sour... and we repeat this every time he tastes it.  Also, every time we go down our stairs and he see's the parking lot he says, "Caaaarrrr" and points.  As if it's the first time cars have ever been parked there.  Then we go through our rhetoric, "yes, that's right.  Those are cars."  Jack- "Caaarrrr."  (point.)  (repeat)

3.  He had his 18 month check-up this past month.  He came in at the 50% for height, weight, and head size.  He weighed 26 lbs.

4.  Size 5 diapers, 18-24/ 24 month clothing.  size 5/6 shoe.

5.  He's still giving everyone kisses.

6.  I'm beginning to understand why there are so many pins on pinterest about "activities for toddlers..."  This kid is busy.  below is not a pinterest inspired activity:

7.  Praise Jesus!  Jack has been sleeping in until 9:00 for about a week straight.  Whoa.  Whoa.  We were 1st blessed with this over a weekend.  Saturday and Sunday.  I feel young again.

8.  Riding a tricycle.  Not pedaling yet.  just flintstoning it

9.  He peeks when he prays.  And it's obvious.

10.  He does whatever he can to steer conversation towards shoes, keys, cars, water, or whether or not something is hot.  I'm trying to expand this vocabularly.  Conversation is getting rather dull.

11.  When Jack wakes up from a nap the first thing he says to me is, "water..."  And it's how he says it that makes it funny.  He sounds like he hasn't had a drink in several days.

12.  My friend Angela, mother of 3 boys, had the glorious idea of taking the kids to the park to play in the creek.  It was great fun!  Here's Jack getting to be one of the boys:

13.  Jack says "Hi" and then "bye" to almost anyone who walks by.  Particularly when we're playing out on the deck or around the apartments.  All of the college folks have been moving in lately, so as people are carrying load after load up the stairs Jack tells them "hi" and "bye" with every pass. 

here he is "hi"ing someone:

Charlotte | 3 months

another month gets away from me...

1.   Charlotte had her 2 month check up- weighing in at 12 lbs who-cares-how-many-oz-I-forgot.  Maybe if I look hard enough I can find the check-up sheet.  She came out in the 50% for height, weight, and head size.  This puts her at an all-american-average.

2.  Sister goes nuts when you put her in front of "the bug."  Jack loved this toy too.  She actually kicks it and reaches for it as well.  She's already grabbed ahold of the mobile on her bouncy seat too and made the music play.  I'm impressed.

3.  She is super-content.  The only time she's needy is between the time I put Jack down for bed and our bedtime.  (8:00-10:00)  This is lovely because I'm about spent by 7:30.  It's mostly just that after I feed her around 7:30-8:00 she is restless and can't sleep and then I end up feeding her an hour later... then she's out for the night.  This is fine... I believe it's just the cluster feeding before the long stretch at night.

4.  During the day she eats every 2.5-3.5 hours.  In the morning she will take a LOOONG nap and goes about 4 hours between eating.

5.  Consistently she eats before we go to bed and then doesn't eat again until 4:30-6:30.  This has been great.  I actually sometimes prefer 4:30 so that I get to go back to sleep, but if she does 6:00/6:30 that usually means I'm up for the day.

6.  SO SMILEY!!!!  I love it.  She is such a sweet baby.

7.  She holds her head up so well and has been hanging out in the Bumbo some.

8.  Boring stats:  she's still in size 2 diapers and 3 month clothing... but it won't be long

9.  A nickname is born.  There are some nicknames that I don't know where they come from.  I think this one evolved from me calling her "Chica" and now it has landed at "Cheeky-Cheeky" or just plain-ol "Cheeky."

10.  She's still in our bedroom in her bassinet.  I haven't been in a hurry to move her.  She's no nuisance to me.  In fact, I love rolling over in the middle of the night and peeking in at her.  Sleeping babies are about the most precious thing ever.  She sleeps really well... and maybe I'm sleeping really hard these days too- HA!  There are never any guarantees of baby #3, so I'm really soaking up and enjoying the time while she's still a tiny.  Or at least I'm trying to!

11.  She did lose a little hair on the back of her head.  Typical.  However, right at the tippey-top of the back of her head her hair is growing in longer than the rest of her hair.  It kinda resembles a little mini- "poof."

That's all for this month!  I love getting to know this baby girl.  Hopefully we'll take some "official" 3 month photo soon.  I'm hoping for a whole family shoot... but that's ambitious

Apartment Therapy |

    So... I had this great epiphany about 2 years ago.  We've been renting our entire married career of 5 years, and I'm always thinking that by the next time our lease goes up we're probably going to be moving into a house.  We've actually only moved once and that was from a 2 bedroom apartment to a 3 bedroom apartment.
    For some reason I've always imagined that whenever we moved into a house that things would magically be nicer, not only the house- but the paint colors in the rooms, the furniture, decor, the appliances, wood floors, tile, countertops, you name it!  It would be just like all the pretty homes you pin on pinterest.  It never dawned on me that when we moved that all of my crappy hodge-podge hand-me-down, got it on the side of the road/dumpster diving at the end of the school year, or for $20 on craigslist furniture was going to be what furnished our new home.  There are were actually holes in our couches and somehow it never really bothered me.  ?  or maybe it did, but at the time I didn't have a plan for how to fix it.
     I also had the reality check that any house we could actually afford is probably going to need a lot of up-dating... which we also probably couldn't afford.  Which brought me to my final conclusion, that I should probably just enjoy where we live and work on sprucing up the things that we have.
     I knew that I wanted to take our apartment from being so dark and hodge-podged to a new light, bright, and airy feel.  I wish I had more "before" photos of what our apartment has looked like the last 3 years.  I've made quite a few improvements throughout even if they were all still on the "dark side."  Here's a glimpse of what our 1st living area in our apartment looked like:  (yea, I know... random door to our hotwater heater.)

Here's what our apartment looked like before the remodel:

I also HATE the lighting in our apartment.  We only have 1 window for natural light in all of the living, kitchen, dining area.  Hence why I needed to try to "lighten things up a bit."

 I'm embarrassed at what used to be my gallery wall- HA!  I've had these black wal-mart frames since college and I've been making little photo arrangements with them for about 9 years now.  This particular arrangement was inspired from a pottery barn magazine.  (Pottery Barn are you flattered?)  Here's the Pottery Barn inspiration:

 
Anyhoo.  One of the 3 bedrooms in our apartment has been my "office"/our movie room.  I'm not sure how, but we crammed a desk, a couch, and a love seat all into one of our tiny bedrooms.  It was cozy.

 it was fun watching movies w/ friends

     We needed to make room for the new babe, so I decided to move my office to an armoire in the living room (you saw it in some of the before pics) and sell the desk and 2 couches.  I actually made money selling our furniture.  5 years later I sell this crap for more than I bought it for.  I guess that was made possible by the fact that some of our furniture was free... for instance, I found my desk on the side of the road.  :)  I used the money that I made selling our stuff to fund my decorating budget.
     Alright, let's just show the "After" pics:

 ...painted the bench white, ditched the old pad that was on it, and roughed it up.  painted the armoire "pool spa" blue.  recovered pillows with fabric from JoAnne's and Hobby Lobby.  (I made the window art in college.)

hung up some drop-cloth curtains.  whittled a letter "g" out of cardboard and wrapped it in twine.  painted my cheap walmart frames white and backed them with scrapwood that I painted patterns on.

it still looks dark b/c I didn't want to completely blow out the window with the exposure, but promise... this is a lot better.  ;)

painted my parents' old kitchen table white and sewed up some seat cushions.  I also had Corey build me a [wood] canvas and then during a naptime one afternoon I whipped up some lemons.

Recap: