One Room Down, Many More to Go

The bathroom is done! Chris finished up painting the trim this week, and I (finally!) found some curtains for the window. It was tough trying to find some. I went out yesterday and had a hard time finding any curtains at all that weren't floor length drapes. But today I got lucky and found some with green in them. I wasn't sure the green would match the trim, but figured I'd take them home and see, I could always return them if I had to. Well, I am so happy, they match great! I have to say, to me they look more like kitchen curtains, and since I already have ivy in my kitchen, I am afraid of there being a little bit of ivy overkill in the house; but hey, that was the only pattern with green in it at all. (Well, ok, I skipped right over the all green curtains that were too frilly. Waaaay too much ruffle.)





I decided to go ahead with a green stripe in the kitchen, and that is looking really good too. I am doing it in just acryllic paint, but it is a half inch wide stripe, so it doesn't matter. I think it helps make the two tone colored walls look like they are supposed to be that way. I will post a picture of that once the stripe is finished.


Chris power washed the deck yesterday and today. It looks really nice, except now it really should be sanded and sealed. I don't know if he is going to do that.

He also rented a storage unit in town today. Now we can start packing up stuff for real, because we have a place to hide it all. I have only been making sad little efforts at decluttering because I didn't want to have boxes sitting all over the house. I just knew the boys would get into them and unpack them for me, and lose stuff or break it.

The plan is for Chris to finish painting the stairs and hallway this weekend. I picked a very light yellow color, because the carpet is a dark rust color. I wanted something bright but there isn't much that goes with rust, lol. And we are NOT going to replace the carpets! I will post a picture of the hallway once that is done, too. That will leave us with just the living room and family room/play room to paint and declutter, and we will be ready! I am getting kind of excited. I suppose I'll get over that very quickly, as soon as I have to keep the house clean for showing. Ugh. LOL

Proof

Here is proof that at least one of my kids is clean ;-)

Micah having a bubble bath

I guess it is also proof that my tub is not reeaaaalllly clean LOL.

I took some pictures this week, because Chris, over at the Big Yellow House, took such a beautiful shot of her street, and I wanted to see if my neighborhood was as nice. I think it would be, if it would just STOP RAINING!!! Here are some pictures:

Down our Street (yes, that is our house with the front porch 1.5 feet from the road)

Back Yard (see, we make up for the front yard by having a great back yard!)

It really is pretty here, when the sun is shining; it just so happens that that is not so often :-( Something about the mountains here trapping all the clouds in our area, or something. Bleh.

I was going to try to repost all the stuff I lost last week, but I just lost my momentum with that one. I don't even remember what all it was about, except a 1 am poop blowout, followed by a 2 am puke fest by the 6 yo. Oh, and Chris worked late all last week, and on Thursday, which is Survivor/CSI night (ok, so now you know how low my tv standards can go, but hey, I balanced it out with the CSI!) he had called to promise that he'd be home to put the boys to bed at 8. Ok, perfect timing. Well, at 7:45, the 8 yo, 6 yo, and 2 yo locked themselves in the bathroom and broke the knob. Joy. I got out screwdrivers, I got out nail files, nothing worked. Finally I resorted to a hammer. No good with that one either. It was 8:15 and I was fuming, Chris was no where to be found, and the boys were still stuck. Micah had pulled down one towel bar and the curtain rod. Let's just say that the knob became Chris' head as I pounded, LOL. Finally he came home, and I gave up and went down to watch tv. Of course the boys were out in 5 minutes. It seems I was using the wrong size screwdriver. Oops. Oh well, now the knob is ruined and we have nothing on the bathroom door to keep it shut. We will be replacing the knob, but with something easier to get open, LOL. In the mean time, we have not a peephole, more of a peep window. It is exactly at Micah's eye level, so when I'm sitting on the pot, I hear "See you Mom! See you!" LOL

I Have a Spare Minute

literally; Levi is asleep, lol. I thought I'd post a quick picture of the wallpaper in our hallway, so you can see why we are painting over it. This is the paper that was here when we moved in, and aside from the boys peeling it in spots, and gouging out a nice hole under the window, we haven't changed it. I guess we were just waiting until the youngest was old enough to not destroy it before we bothered putting any work into it. Now we just want it to look nice enough that it won't scare away home buyers, LOL.



Also, in that huge post I lost the other morning, I mentioned that Levi is smiling and giggling now. I tried to get a picture, and this was the best I could do:

Each time I tried to get a picture, he'd get a startled look on his face and ruin the picture, lol.

Aaarrrgghhh!!! I wrote out a whole long post this morning, and the site went down and lost it!!!

so now I will have to rewrite it. No idea when I will have time to do that.

Too Tired (or would that be Lazy? lol) to Type

I can't believe it's been a week since I've written anything. Levi has been very much in a Don't-Put-Me-Down mood this week, and it is too hard to type with just one hand. So what has happened since last Friday? Well, Chris got the kitchen painted. It looks pretty nice. It's the wrong color, but hey, it still looks nice, lol. I had wanted a white, but not a bright bright pure white. We looked at paint chips and decided that they all were so close, just choose any one of them. Well, he went and just bought a can of Antique White. Hello, that's cream. Very yellow. Not white at all. Ugh. Oh well, it still looks better than fingerprint-and-macaroni-and-cheese-and-Cocoa-Puffs-white, LOL. Now to declutter.....

Chris worked late nights all week, so we didn't get any further with painting. He has to meet with some coworkers on Sunday, too, so no painting then either.

On Tuesday I had to run to the store, and on the way home I went through the drive through at McDonald's and drove back to the park. Levi slept the whole time, and the boys had a great time eating at the picnic tables and playing. It really is a neat park.

Today I took the boys out again; we finally made it back to the WalMart portrait studio for Noah's portraits. A month ago I took him out, but there was a power outage at the mall that ran up and down the whole street, so all the stores were closed. It took this long to get back, lol. This time, though, I had all the boys with me, and it was raining out. That didn't seem too promising, but I wanted to get out of the house anyway. It turned out to go pretty well, the boys were very well behaved. I didn't much like the photographer, but you get what you pay for, right? I think the picture came out nice. We did some more shopping, I found some stuff for the boys for Christmas already, drove over to the Super-WM and did grocery shopping, came home with loads of junk food (Halloween is too much temptation for me! lol) and crashed on the couch. Maybe next week I will get something done?

Noah 8 years old

On Wednesday Levi turned 2 months old! Today he is 9 weeks old. Wow, that went fast. Today he had a milestone. He has been hinting at a smile for a few weeks now, but today was the first time he looked straight at me and smiled in response to finding my face! :-) He also cooed at me, that was his first coo. So exciting! This week also saw his first official poop blow-out, yuck. In fact, he had 4 of them LOL Today Troyer was holding him when he did it; yuck it was a mess. I have done a lot of wash this week ;-)

Levi's 2 Month Check Up

Short Story: Levi is 12 lbs 6 oz, and 23" long. He got 4 shots, and is now napping peacefully.

Long Story:

Just wanted to give the stats on Levi. He was scheduled for his 2 mo check up for next Friday, but I got a notice in the mail yesterday that I needed to reschedule. When I called, they rescheduled for this morning, yikes! I hate having to drag all the boys out on such short notice like that. This was our first visit to the new doctor, so I had to make sure we had time to find the correct building, and to fill out forms when we got there. Of course it was a fight to get the boys all dressed and fed in time; Micah in particular thought it was a great game to run around the house with no shirt or shoes on and missing one sock. This with 5 minutes to get into the van. I also wanted to get a shower this morning, and I had to be bad mommy and let them all run around the house screaming and fighting, and Levi crying in his bed, just so I could have clean hair. I just couldn't stand the thought of the doctor's first impression of me being dirty, kwim? Well, I should have been happy with dirty. The boys were not so good for this trip. Caleb was worst of all. He has been very whiny lately, and disobedient on top of that; take that and put it in a tiny exam room with 4 other boys and a baby, with one toy for them all to share, and you get chaos! I was so embarrassed about not being able to hear the poor dr.

I should say here, that we found the building fine, walked right up to the desk and checked in, and as soon as they were done copying his insurance card and getting information from me (I didn't have to fill out any forms!) the nurse was ready to take us back to the room - NO waiting! Wow! And after she did the basic weight/height measurements (Levi is 12 lbs 6 oz and 23 inches long), it wasn't more than 5 minutes before the doctor came in for the exam! What? Not 45 minutes??? LOL And he was very nice. I am almost sad we will be moving in a few months and not be able to go to this office anymore, lol.

Anyway, there was one of those beads-on-wires type toy, big enough for them to share, in the room, and a basket of books. Of course they all had to fight over the one color of beads rather than each claim a color. Caleb screamed and cried and pinched his brothers' hands. Ugh. I put him in time out and he cried some more. Ugh. Levi had to get his shots today, and Caleb cried during that too (I can't blame him there!). Then it was time for check out, and I promised Caleb we'd weigh him on the way out, to see if he weighs enough to get out of his harness on his carseat, and use a seatbelt with just the booster. (He does, he was 40.7 lbs!) They fought over who would get weighed first. Then the boys needed to wait for me to check out and pay the co-pay. Again, they were antsy and picking on each other, and Caleb was screaming that Samuel was whispering in his ear. Ugh. Finally it was time to go back to the van, and Caleb wanted to hold my hand, so Micah just walked off. I told Noah to hold his hand for me, but Micah ran from him and ran all the way down the sidewalk. Yikes! I find it very scary to see my 2 yo running away near cars! I ran after him, with Levi in the infant seat slung over my arm, and caught him, but he wasn't happy about the firm grip I kept on his wrist! Even worse, there was someone parked right there, sitting in the car talking on their cell phone, watching the whole thing. All in all, I found the entire visit embarrassing. I was not a good example of a TOK mom in control of her well-behaved kids, LOL. I yelled in the van, and when we got home Caleb had a mandatory nap. I am still not feeling much better.

A Day At the Park

Yesterday was a beautiful, warm and sunny day, so I grabbed the boys and we went to find a nice park. I had a few in mind I wanted to check out that we hadn't been to before, so I let them pick. On the way to the park, we passed by the fruit farm that has a life sized wooden tractor out front. It is there just for the purpose of taking pictures, and I like to do that each fall. They have a bunch of their pumpkins out front too, but the pumpkins didn't make it into my pictures.

Troyer




Noah

Samuel

Caleb

We drove past one playground and decided it was too crowded, so drove down the road to the next one. This is a park not far from our house that we have driven past many times, but have never stopped at. From the street you can't really see much more than the ball fields, so I didn't know what to expect in terms of play equipment. I had thrown the boys' scooters and skateboard in the van in case there wasn't much to do; as it turns out, it is a great park! Lots of climbing equipment and slides and swings. Even better, we had it all to ourselves :-) There was also a nice paved path all the way around the playground and playing fields, so we went for a walk. Well, I walked, Levi was in the sling, and the boys scooted ;-)

Micah was a real trooper and pushed his tractor all the way around. He was pretty hot by the time we made it back.

Today it is even warmer and sunny, but Levi is cranky from his shots, and I am cranky from the office visit, lol, so the boys will have to make do with playing in the yard.

Sore and Tired

On Sunday I knew I was going to have to go out and do a big shopping trip. I told Chris this, and he said he wanted to go out first and pick up paint, so we could get started this week on at least one of the rooms. Yipee! So I said sure. He took Troyer and Noah with him. It turns out that he decided that since Troyer turned 10, it was time for The Talk. Yikes! Already??? I wasn't so sure Troyer even wanted to hear it, he always yells and covers his ears when I mention girls at all, LOL. It turns out they were gone for quite a while. When they finally got home, Noah couldn't wait to tell me all about it. It was really embarrassing, LOL. My electrical engineer husband of course described it as being like "plugging in a cord into an outlet" LOL. So Noah told me how gross that was and he didn't think he'd want to "plug it in" anywhere, but then his imagination took over and he started suggesting other places to "plug it into" and I just didn't know what to say! LOL *Sigh* I don't think *I* was ready for the talk!

Anyway, it took them a while longer than I thought it was going to to get back, so I didn't get started on my shopping trip until after 4. I took just Levi with me, and this time I remembered the sling! It was getting really old having that carseat take up room in the cart when I was just carrying him on my shoulder anyway, and it was hard to push the cart with one hand. I am glad I remembered it! We stopped at 3 stores, and he was wonderful through all 3. He stayed awake through the first 2, but didn't cry at all. I did have to nurse him in each parking lot, before I strapped him back in his seat, but at least he wasn't crying while I was checking out! He did get a little cranky at Super WM, the last store, but it was because he was tired, and as soon as I got him to sleep, he slept in the sling for the rest of the trip. I think my brain also fell asleep, because even though I had a list in my hand, I kept skipping items and having to go back for them. I think I lapped the store 3 times, because they put things like light bulbs and shampoo on the opposite side of the store from the groceries. Ugh. By the time we got home, he was seriously hungry for more than a snack in the back seat, so Chris unloaded the groceries from the trunk while I sat down on the couch to nurse Levi. Holy Cow, my feet were SORE! I was out a total of 5 hours, most of that time with the extra weight of the baby strapped to me. It must have been quite a workout, because my leg and butt muscles are still sore today. I also spent more money than I should have. Because Chris was so late, making me have a late start, the bank branch that actually opens on Sundays was already closed, so I had to use my debit card instead of cash, which I prefer. I was also buying some clothes and bins for starting to pack up the house for painting, but those things don't come out of the grocery budget, so I wasn't paying attention to the total bill. Oops. When I got home and added it up, I found out that now I only have about $35 for the next two weeks. Good for milk and peanut butter, I guess, LOL.



Not surprisingly, after being rocked to sleep so wonderfully all evening, Levi was prepared to be awake for quite a while. That's ok, I thought, the price to pay for him behaving in the store, I didn't mind. I watched some tv, then got on the computer for a while. I really wanted to drop into bed, because I was so worn out from carrying him everywhere, so I was waiting for him to drop off to sleep. He would keep nodding off while nursing, but wake right back up again when I tried to lay him down. Finally I gave up at 1:30, when he was asleep on my shoulder, and took him to bed with me so I could get some sleep. We had gotten home at 9, so he had been up for 4 1/2 hours.


He slept for 2 1/2 hours, until 4 am. I had hoped for more, but didn't mind getting up, as maybe he would go back to sleep in the bassinette and I'd get some more sleep. Well, guess what? He wouldn't sleep. He would fall asleep on my lap, but as soon as I even tried to get out of the chair, his eyes would be wide open again. Ugh! Finally I got him to lay down, it was 6. Chris was already up and in the shower. I knew that it would only be a half hour or so before Micah and Caleb were up and bothering me, waahh. But worse than that, do you know, within 20 minutes Levi was crying? He just would not sleep alone. I laid in bed and cried myself, LOL. After 5 hours of power shopping with that baby strapped on, and then getting only 2 1/2 hours of sleep, I was going to have to get up with the rest of the boys and start the day. My feet *still* hurt, and my butt hurt from sitting in the chair most of the night, and now my stomach hurt from not enough sleep. I had Chris bring Levi to me in bed, and I nursed him until he fell asleep, but it was not until 7 am! The boys did get up, but they were really good about going down and watching tv and getting themselves breakfast so I could rest in the bed. It wasn't a deep sleep, but it beat getting up.


Of course, being a Monday, I knew it was going to be a bad day. Mondays are laundry day here, plus it's a fight to get the boys back into school work after 2 days off, and I had a lot of cleaning up to do after a weekend, because I usually put things off. I was right, and Monday lived up to its reputation, LOL. By the time Chris got home I was getting a second wind, but I was still sore and tired. He so nicely offered to make dinner for me, and I was able to get a little more laundry done. There is a lot I didn't get done, though, so I will be playing catch-up all week.

Field Trip

On Friday morning, our homeschool group went on a tour of the local EMS station. Our group has mostly large families, so it was pretty crowded. Only 7 moms, but 29 kids! Since I had Levi in August, I am now the second biggest family in the group; one mom has 8 kids (she just had a baby in August too!), two have 5 kids, two have 2 kids, and one mom has one. For as large as our group is, though, they are very well behaved. I think my boys were the worst behaved there, lol. A few times I was thinking what an appropriate place to bring them, so when they hurt each other, they can get care right away! LOL

We started with a little talk in the meeting room, then a tour of the inside. It is not a big station, so it was a short tour, LOL. The boys were really looking forward to the ambulance tour anyway. Somehow Noah thought they were going to get rides, whoops, lol. The paramedics did strap a few kids to the back boards to demonstrate how to stabilize a body, but my boys didn't want a turn. I asked about getting some of those systems for my house, for after I finish cleaning the house and they are trying to follow behind me and mess it back up ;-)

Finally they all got to have turns going inside to look at all the equipment, and the EMT gave out purple latex gloves. They were a big hit!