Month: August 2012

am i totally crazy for this?

Posted on by mommyinthemidwest

One of our non-negotiables when looking for a house was that it would have four bedrooms.  All my close family and best friends live out of state so it’s always been important to me that my guests have a nice place to lay their heads at night when they are visiting.


We bought a house with three bedrooms.  

It seemed natural at first that the older child would have the bigger of the bedrooms – we’re talking about 30 square feet bigger – but that didn’t feel right.  They’re only 14 months apart anyway.  After thinking about it, we’ve decided to see how it goes, letting the boys share a room.  The room is about 13.5′ x 13.5′ and has plenty of room for two cute toddlers.  I guess my instinct is telling me that they play wherever the other one is, they go to bed at the same time, they get up at the same time…so why not?  Does this seem like a disaster in the making? 

Since we bought a house with just three bedrooms, this seems like a simple solution until the boys are older and express a desire for their own space.  There are some possibilities for a fourth bedroom either in the basement or unfinished attic space later on down the road.  

The only thing I worry about is bedtime.  When we move, we are giving Theo’s crib to Dexter and getting rid of Dexter’s.  Cold turkey.  Theo will have a new house, a new room, and a new bed.  Oh, and he’ll be sharing his new room with his little brother.  Too much at once?  Anyway, I anticipate putting them in bed and then Theo getting out of bed 500 times while he is getting used to his new freedom.  Maybe I’ll be wrong, I hope I am, but that’s what I worry about the most.  

With them both being boys, playing with the same toys, and being so close in age, it just seemed like a good idea.  We shall see…I’ll have to keep you posted on that one.  

Here are a few pictures of recent progress, starting with Dexter’s crib bedding (from Amazon, last year’s Kimberly Grant Zoom Zoom collection) and the new twin bedding I picked out for Theo (currently at Target).



The base colors – light gray and blue (with one row of tape, getting ready for stripes.

A couple of visitors came by to supervise our work. 


They approved.
They had fun playing with the used painter’s tape.
Momma working on those stripes.
Finally – finished paint job and the old carpet is gone.
Momma working on the master bedroom.
Going to paint those window walls some other color – just haven’t figure out which one yet. The color of the walls is a light aqua shade.  So pretty!  I’m thinking maaaybe red.  Too much?

If you google “red and aqua bedroom,” there are so many inspirational images…oh my.  Here’s one that I love.



Just realized I was ALL over the place with this. So here’s the recap… am I crazy for making/letting the boys share a room?  And is red/aqua awesome or what? 

xo,
~C~

this is the hard part.

Posted on by mommyinthemidwest

Since I’ve got two weeks off between jobs + a house that needs LOTS of work and updates, I’ve been spending as much time as possible at the house doing whatever I can to get it (more) ready for us to move in to.  That means getting up in the morning and getting the boys ready for the day, whether that means going to the babysitter’s house or staying home with Nana, and then only seeing them for another hour or so each day.  This is the hard part.

I keep thinking it will all be worth it.  I have only been going at these long days for a week or so but I feel like it’s been 10 years since I’ve spent any time with my kids and I really miss them.  I wonder if they think about me when I’m not around because they cross my mind 10 times a minute.  I know they’re fine without me around.  But what do they think?  Do they miss me?  I’m looking forward to moving into our house and living there as a family.  Dinners there, baths there, bedtime there.  Living with my husband there.  Seeing the improvements we make over time.  This is the hard part.

My mom is in town. She has been hard at work painting for me the last 4 days.  I can’t wait to show you what she’s done!  I’d be lost without her, my father-in-law, and my mother-in-law.  I asked my mom what she thought dad would be working on if he was still here with us.  She laughed and said, “probably whatever you told him to.” I sure miss him at times like this. I know he would love our house, flaws and all, and would do anything he could to help us make it better.  This is the hard part.

The house looks worse than it did when we bought it because it truly is a construction zone right now.  We keep asking ourselves how we ended up in a total fixer upper when we have no time and very little money to make it the way we want it.  We can’t keep beating ourselves up for our questionable decision making skills. We have to look to the future and realize how great this house WILL be one day.  This is the hard part.

I really do believe one day we will look back at these days fondly and admire the work that we did.  The love that our family shared with us throughout this process..  Their talent, their generosity, their time, their aching backs and knees, and the list goes on and on.  I just have to keep telling myself that it will be worth it. It won’t always be like this.  This right here, this is the hard part.

xo,
~C~

easier/harder

Posted on by mommyinthemidwest

Do you ever feel like you’re wishing away the age that your child is at because it’s harder than what you anticipate the next stage will be?  I guess I wouldn’t say I’m wishing it away, but I find myself thinking “it sure will be better when…” Fill in the blank with anything the boys will be able to do 6 months or 6 years from now.  There is always something easier and harder than the way it used to be…there is always something easier and harder about the way it will one day be.

When the baby is a newborn, you’re thinking it will be nice when they can sleep through the night, tell you what you want, and doesn’t need to be held all the time. Later you remember how snuggly they used to be, how they used to nap 6 times a day, and how they didn’t ever say “mommy, I don’t like you anymore.”

When they are 6 months old you wish they could walk or crawl so you don’t have to carry them every second of every day anymore.  Once they start that, you’ll remember what it was like to sit them in one spot on the floor and leave the room, knowing they would still be there when you got back.  You know, as opposed to licking electrical outlets or something (mine have safety plugs, I’m just saying!).

Then they turn 2 and they start throwing tantrums like you’ve never seen. The kind non-parents didn’t know existed.  Then you think, man, it will be nice when he’s 5 and can be reasoned with at times like this.  You think it was a lot easier when we didn’t have to try to talk him into peeing in the potty every day.  Or bribe him to eat.  Or bribe him to do just about anything because he’s so dang independent that he wants to do what he wants to do when he wants to do it, or else (see first sentence of this paragraph).

Needless to say, I am only 2 years and 5 months into this parenting thing.  I can only imagine how I’ll be sitting around one of these days, feeling pretty sad about my boys driving away from home on Friday night to go to a high school basketball game or pick up their dates.  I’ll remember how they wanted me when they were sick and how they reached for me to pick them up out of their cribs.  I’ll think about the joy on their little faces when they were only 1 & 2 years old and they had just discovered something so simple and new.  Every time I find myself idealizing how wonderful the future will be, I bring myself back to the right now because these little kids of mine?  They are pretty much perfect and the most fun that they’ve ever been.  Will there come a day that I don’t feel that way anymore?  Hope not.

~C~