My half-finished sewing projects are housed in the giant basket underneath the card catalog (which is AMAZING for housing tiny office supplies and sewing notions).  The chalkboard frame turned place-to-clip-photos (because my chalkboard handwriting is horrible – just ask my students) came from our Minneapolis home.  The framed pictures on top of the card catalog contain a picture from each of the major vacations we’ve taken since getting married — Ireland, Costa Rica, and Italy (the frame that each one is in was actually purchased on each vacation… a tradition that I’m hoping to continue as our family travels the globe).

The chair that I recovered is still happily sitting in the office, but with a new pillow.

We moved the desk  and the banker’s chair that I refinished to the other side of the room.  We added shelves and curtains to either side of the desk to hide the large dog kennels that are hiding beneath them.  It’s so much nicer to walk into the room and see curtains rather than cages!

I also asked Jason to hang shelves above the desk to house frequently-used books, family photo albums, and other important family mementos.  You can spy my sewing machine cover, and two!? photo printers, which I know is just ridiculous, but we’ll probably phase out one of them sooner or later.

I am pretty crazy about our cornice/curtain combo.  Jason made the cornices out of wood & L-brackets, and then I wrapped them in batting and fabric.  They’re hung using more L-brackets mounted to the wall.  The white sheers are from Ikea (and are fairly easily removed for washing… we have to be kid-friendly now!).  These are our first attempt at cornices, so I’m pretty thankful that they turned out as well as they did (thanks to Erin for the inspiration/directions/information about cornices!).

And looking back towards the doorway, we’ve got a small console table with office supplies, books, dog treats, a lamp, and a really sweet photo family tree that was sent to us after Lilly was born from our friend Janmary whose blog I have read for years and whom we had the pleasure of meeting when we were in Ireland.  (I think the family tree was intended to go in the baby’s room, but I get to see it much more frequently here, and it makes me smile!).

I’m pretty pleased with the way the room has come together.  It feels useful, uncluttered, and easy to pick up.  It suits our family’s needs for now — a place to use the computer, to sew, to store dog kennels, and to look out the window for daddy’s arrival home at the end of the work day.  That’s probably most important, that this space is useful for us now.  But I’m also loving the yellow, gray, and navy color combo, and that it feels “grown up” to me without being too stuffy or unwashable (must think kid-friendly!).  It’s sort of fun to see how my style has changed/grown with our family, and I think that this room is one of a few rooms in our house that is really “us” (perhaps the other rooms would be our bedroom, Lilly’s bedroom, and the upstairs bathroom?).

My first Mother’s day was low key, which was just perfect. I had somehow come down with an itchy rash on my face, which was diagnosed as a staph infection, and I was not particularly excited about going out or doing much of anything. Lil was either sick or teething Saturday night, and neither of us got much sleep. Jason got up with Lil in the morning and let me sleep in. We were going to head out for brunch, but my favorite brunch spot here in town has 12 tables and a regular wait on non-Mother’s day mornings, so I elected to postpone until this weekend. I was gifted a wonderful homemade Mother’s day card that Jason & Lilly collaborated on (although word has it that Lilly’s contributions were limited to trying to eat the card), and we spent the beautiful, sunny day planting flowers & mulching the garden.

This year’s Mother’s day was equally low key, and I think that’s the way I like it. Lilly woke us shortly after 7, and entertained us while we slowly woke up. The pretend breakfast she brought me in bed was almost as good as a real breakfast would have been. We somehow all managed to get up and out of the house by 8:30 am, and we headed to a new, nearby brunch spot. The food isn’t as good as my fav brunch spot, but the wait is short and the food is still pretty darn good. They also served Jason lunch. At 9:00 am. We came home and spent the rest of the day painting the guest/baby’s room and hanging out with Lilly June. Jason hung the fan in the guest/baby’s room and made dinner.

Its nice that we take a day to say thanks to our moms. Heck, none of us would be here if it weren’t for them. Also, I am lucky enough to have an awesome mom (who is willing to show up at my house and sleep on my couch so that I can finish painting the guest room… among other thoughtful things she’s done in the past 32 years, right?). If I can count Lilly’s sweet cradling and rocking of her baby dolls as a reflection of my mothering skills, I hope that my mom will take it as a good commentary on her own mothering that I’ve managed to keep such a happy little person alive for the last 1.75 years.

As a mom, though, I can’t help but feel that I’m the lucky one to have such a wonderful little person to cuddle. And yep, it can be a royal pain to find a place to change her diaper when she poops in public, and sometimes I don’t want to share whatever I’m eating/drinking (my two least-favorite parenting tasks), but it doesn’t really matter. My little person is so happy and fun, and she makes our lives so much richer that I feel like perhaps I should be the one spending a day thanking her. I can only hope things get even better as we’ve got two little ones running through the house!

My heart goes out to everyone missing their mamas on this day, and to those whose dreams to hold babies in their arms just haven’t quite happened yet.

My heart goes out to all the mamas out there. It’s not always an easy job, but nothing that’s really worth it is easy, right?

The recent change to warm weather (*FINALLY*) has brought about a few new things in our house.  First: chalk.  One of Lilly’s new fave things to do.  She alternates between wanting to draw and wanting US to draw (a house, with a door and however many windows she specifies).

The picture below was taken just before we found out that Lilly has a fear of bees.  As she was drawing, a fairly large carpenter bee swooshed past her and she shrieked, began crying, and ran towards me.  Oh my.

Ever since then, whenever she hears something fly by her (usually large carpenter bees — they’re making nests in our wood siding), she cries and starts running for J or I.  We’ve tried to assure her that they won’t sting her if she leaves them alone, but I think it’s hard for an almost-two year old to remember that.  It’s hard for me to promise her that she won’t get stung — because, really, she might get stung.  I can’t really blame her for being afraid — I think the wasp sting that she got on her finger when we were visiting family must have really stuck with her.

My solution for now is to hug her when she’s scared, and tell her that if she leaves the bees alone, she probably won’t get stung, and that I’ve never been stung at our house.

We’ve also been trying to explain to her just what the bees are doing: the carpenter bees are building houses, the honey bees are making honey using the pollen from the flowers, and we’ve talked a little about how bees do a little dance to tell each other things since they can’t talk (it’s called the waggle dance, and yes, this piece of information is taking up space in my brain, thankyougraduateschool).

I’m hoping that between the reassurance and the exciting bee info (they dance! how cool!), that maybe her fears will subside.  If anyone has any tips on dealing with toddler fears, though, I’d love to hear them.  (We’ll also be calling an exterminator to get rid of the carpenter bees that are destroying the house, so that may cut down on a few of our issues).  Until we figure this out, though, it’s so very sad to hear Lilly’s tiny voice say, “bee not sting you” nearly every time she walks out of the door.

The biggest attraction in the sanctuary is a large pond with geese and swans.  You can feed the geese and swans corn, although the pedestrian areas are separated from the pond and other nearby areas, which means that your toddler has to somehow throw the corn over or through the fence.

It was okay with me not to get that close to the birds (birds are not my favorite), but Lilly doesn’t yet have super corn-throwing skills, even if she almost looks like a teenager in these pictures.  How did that happen?

The sanctuary also has injured hawks, eagles, owls, and pheasants in cages.  Lilly seemed pretty interested in the birds, and was especially excited when the barred owl opened it’s eyes to look at her.  We had a picnic lunch after walking the park, then headed home for the rest of the afternoon.  A fun field trip, for sure.

Two of the mamas were wearing their 8-9 month old babies, so when we got home, Lilly was inspired to wear her own baby.

She walked around for over an hour with her baby strapped to her chest.  I am a little relieved that she’s chosen to be so interested in babies and being a tiny mama (she rocks her babies or gives them “nurnur” when they cry).  I am hopeful that this means that she’ll be a sweet and helpful big sister.

• PAPER: finish taxes and our estate docs.  Bonus points for drawing out a kitchen layout (we’re halfway on this one – we’ve got measurements and a tentative plan, but we need exact cabinet & appliance sizes, which we’re attempting to do with the help of Ikea’s online software)
• GUEST ROOM: finish painting the trim.  Bonus points for buying a ceiling fan & figuring out how to install it.
• OFFICE:  buy/hang shelves & clean up desk. I’ll share pics soon – I’m really pleased with the way that things turned out!
• GARDEN:  clear the area that will be the garden, build raised garden beds.  Bonus for clearing the garden/yard of dead plants, sticks, & leaves.

Some of us have been working in the yard and some of us have been sunbathing.  I’ll let you guess who has done what.

And some new (probably overly-ambitious) goals for a new month:

• GUEST/BABY’S ROOM: repair hole in ceiling from old light (darn those awkward square recessed lights!), paint ceiling & medallion, mount ceiling medallion, get rid of extra furniture, choose wall color & paint walls and closets, put only baby-related things back in the closet once the closet paint is dry (it’s currently full of lots of miscellany), replace light switch & electrical outlets
• GARDEN/OUTSIDE:  fill raised garden beds with dirt and plant garden, mulch flower gardens in back/side yard, clean out hoarding garage, get rid of random pieces of rusty metal left over from our super-giant satellite dish (seriously, it was huge… see it in action here)

My dirty little secret.  I hope to have this cleaned faster than you can say, “sign her up for Hoarders.”  Why yes, that is a super-large-outdated TV, a pink toilet, and two half-full 5-gallon containers full of water.  All super-crucial for my existence, or I wouldn’t have saved them, obv.

• LIVING ROOM: revisit couch & chair shopping
• LILLY’S ROOM: buy closet organizers, get rid of the dresser in her room, get started building a play kitchen, frame and hang awesome new animal print from my cousin (it’s so awesome, I can’t wait to show you all)
• ORGANIZE: put away winter clothes/coats/decor, clean out/purge/organize cedar closet in master bedroom
• KITCHEN: finalize kitchen plans, order fridge, empty cabinets of anything we don’t use frequently, get started with kitchen demo
• SUPERAWESOMEFUNPROJECTS: sew denim picnic quilt, finish our wedding photo album

These are much more ambitious.  Probably too ambitious, but I’m hoping to get quite a few things crossed off of our list when mama bear visits mid-month.  I also am realizing that I have (gasp!) roughly 4 months until I have a newborn in my arms again and my time for home organization/fixing/cleaning/prettifying is again limited.  <insert panic here> So. much. to. check. off. before then, and of course now we’ve got the usual playdates and field trips to the zoo to compete for our spare time!

Anyways, weeks 20-21.

In dramatic fashion, I exclaimed to Jason one morning that, “getting dressed is the WORST part of my day!”  And he’s all, “tough life, you’ve got there” which is absolutely the truth.  It’s not been too tough around here lately.

Still, my (nonmaternity) pants aren’t fitting anymore, nonmaternity shirts & dresses are too short to wear, and I’m just feeling big.  Truthfully, I don’t own many maternity items – a pair of jeans, a skirt, two dresses, and 3-5 long sleeved shirts.  When I was pregnant with Lil, I borrowed clothes or wore clothing that I had bought and have since given away, so it’s probably time to buy a few more items… especially because life with a toddler means that nothing stays clean for more than an hour or two.  I’m not super-wild about the idea of buying things I can only wear a few times, I’m not super-wild about the synthetic materials that a lot of maternity clothes seem to be made from, and I don’t have the patience/energy to go clothes shopping while chasing a toddler.  Anyways, all this is to say that feeling like I’ve gotten so big so fast has been an adjustment, and one that I generally don’t deal well with at 6 am!

Here I am at 21 weeks, 1 day:

For some reason, I can’t take baby bump pictures without making insane faces.  It’s a real problem.

The bump is much bigger than it was with Lilly at 21 weeks.

My hips are achy, and the ligaments/muscles under my belly have been occasionally sore.  It seems like these changes (wider hips, stretchy ligaments/muscles) are happening much sooner than they did last time.  I’ve also been feeling Braxton-Hicks contractions already.  It’s possible that I was feeling them with Lil at this point, but I didn’t really know what they were, so I wouldn’t have identified them as such.  I’m now predicting that baby is coming in August (early!), and also that I will be more uncomfortable by the end of this pregnancy than I was with Lil (because I was totally cool with her staying in there 42 weeks).

The baby is moving and kicking up a storm – getting stronger every day!  I think Jason and Lilly will be able to feel kicks soon.  That part is awesome because it’s a reliable way of knowing that things are as okay as they can be, and it’s a good reminder that hey! we’re getting a little one soon.  Which is a nice, happy way to remember that all of these insignificant complaints re: clothing and belly/hip aches are absolutely worth it.

Now that we’ll be using all 3 bedrooms as actual bedrooms, I figured it was time to get my act together and organize my sewing stuff into “current projects” housed in the office and “fabric/notions/scraps” housed either in a dresser in the living room or in the basement.  It may also soon be time to give up hope of ever completing the 5-year old projects in my stash… time to just let go and move on…

The machine itself needed a pretty cover so that I don’t stare at it longingly when I don’t have time to use it.  Oh yes, also, to prevent dust from gathering, I suppose.

There’s a pocket on either side for things like scissors and other miscellany that never seem to make it back into my sewing drawers once a project is complete.

And, it’s reversible.  Just because.

(I mostly used this tutorial to get an idea for the project… then I just winged it.  Per my usual MO.)

This is not a super-revolutionary project, but it was quick and easy, which are now the two biggest qualifications for any crafting projects that I undertake.  Yay for my office almost being fully organized and a little prettier.  I have just one more project to complete before I can definitively check the office off my to-do list… just in time for May & the creation of new monthly goals…

Jason built her an indoor balance beam last fall by screwing a 4′ 2 x 6 to two 2 x 4s, and she’s been loving walking on it ever since.

Now that it’s warm outside, one of her fave activities is walking along the retaining walls that surround the house. Some of the walls are only a foot or two above the ground, so it’s fine. But the 10′ drop off in front of the house is a little terrifying. Lilly is pretty good about asking for us to hold her hand while she walks along the retaining wall (thank goodness). Her tiny giggles make it worth repeatedly walking back and forth and back and forth and back and forth along the wall.

;

She’s also loving climbing up on things — the stairs, tree stumps, raised garden beds, whatever.

;

;

I’ve got grand plans for an outdoor play area that contains logs to balance on and stumps to climb. Elsewhere in the yard we’ve got piles of rocks that she enjoys shoveling into buckets. (One of the very few perks of having several half-finished landscaping projects). It’s a real nature’s playground out there, and I’m *so* thrilled.

I’ve been trying to add more art projects to our routine.  Markers and stickers seem to be okay, but she has difficulty taking the tops off of the markers or removing stickers from paper by herself.  I’ve showed her how to use a scissors a few times, and she seems interested in cutting, but still lacks the hand muscles to be able to properly use a scissors.  Lilly likes to “paint” and by “paint” I mean that she asks me to pour a little of each color of paint out of it’s jar, and just when she’s got a gob of each color paint, she loses interest in the whole process and I find myself frustrated because of all that “wasted” paint.  (Wasted in parenthesis because I’m sure she’s still learning a lot about pouring, etc… it just wasn’t the lesson that I’d intended and sometimes that’s difficult for mama to let go of).

I thought she might like these tiny glitter glue pens, so I picked some up and added them to her Easter basket.  As with most things, she was hesitant at first.  I showed her how to use them and held her hands in mine to squeeze the tube with her.  After a few trials, she was up for the task on her own.

She’s since created a few glitter-and-marker masterpieces.  I can tell she’s really concentrating and working her hand muscles hard to get the glitter out of the tube.  I love watching these little moments of concentration!

I’ve been rethinking my paint strategy now, too.  Perhaps she’d be more into some sort of squeezy bottle than she is into using a paint brush… (and perhaps then I can relax a little about “wasted” paint…)

What are some of your best strategies for doing art — especially painting — with the littles?

We went to bed pretty quickly upon arrival Thursday night.  Friday, mama bear, sister, Lilly, and I had a girls brunch at a cute little cafe.  Lilly was doing a little pre-breakfast wandering and was stung by a wasp.  There were a lot of tears, and it was probably a good thing that we were the only ones in the place at that point.  She was completely recovered and eating “cupcakes” (carrot cake muffin), but then began crying the saddest cry ever as she recounted the story to her dada.

Sister, mama bear, and I headed for manis and pedis after brunch.  Quality girl time!

The rehearsal was later that day, and we were all pleased that Lilly happily ran down the isle solo when it was her turn.  She was also quite happy to sit up front with mama and auntie Ashley, although that wasn’t quite what we planned for her during the actual wedding.

Dinner after the rehearsal was a delish BBQ.  Beaded necklaces in the wedding colors (blue and silver) were laid out on all of the tables, and Lilly decided that she should wear approximately 50 of them.  She made quick friends with “other Ash” (the groom’s cousin’s wife) and begged her for more necklaces, pushing out her lower lip in a fake deep pout when “other Ash” didn’t produce a necklace quickly enough.  I think this is a sign that we are in big trouble… our little sweetheart is also an actress!

Saturday morning was busy and filled with the traditional pre-wedding stuff – hair and make up and getting dressed… all in a rush!  We were happy that Lilly took an early nap and ate almost an entire Chipotle burrito bowl before the ceremony.  She was in a pretty good mood while getting dressed and doing her own make up (with my blush brush), and she was REALLY excited to play chase mama down the isle.

We were so proud when Lilly actually DID play chase mama down the isle – running and giggling at the same time.  I had a cookie in my bouquet to hand to her when she got me, and she seemed pretty happy sitting on nana’s lap eating it… for a while.  After a while, she began to cry for mama, and I’m pretty sure it was because she wanted to be included in the fun that was going on at the alter.

Auntie Ashley and new Uncle Kyle made their promises to each other!  There was cheering as the pastor announced the new couple!  Yay!

After the ceremony, we took pictures at the church and then at a nearby park.  It was 30s and kind of snowing that day, so we were a little chilly taking pictures — who would have thought that this spring would be so cold?Then, we all headed to the reception for apps and drinks (water for yours truly), dinner, and dessert.  For weeks I’d been asking Lilly what we were going to do at Ash’s party, and she’d reply, “EAT CAKE!” so she was *thrilled* when the cake finally came out.

Our girl was the first AND last out on the dance floor.  She hit a bit of a slump around 9/9:30 but rallied with the help of several Hershey’s kisses and made her way back to the dance floor, dancing with “other Ash” and my cousins.  I think my cousin Haley, who quickly became Lilly’s favorite dance partner, may have learned some important truths about toddlers that night like: don’t engage one unless you’re willing to play with her all night.  Also, my guess is that cousin has figured out why I never wear heels or short skirts anymore.

We were so surprised that Lil lasted until the end of the party (midnight!), and we were even more surprised when she actually cried because the music turned off and the lights turned back on.  Needless to say, she fell asleep almost immediately upon being strapped into her car seat.

Sunday was spent visiting with siblings and cousins and recounting the day before.  We made excellent time on the way back to MI, again thanks to a kiddo that let us drive 4 straight hours without stopping.

Overall, it was a super-fun weekend.  I’m so happy for sister – she is just so darn happy!  And it’s pretty swell to have a new brother, too.