Bathroom pictures!

I need your help deciding what to do with our bathroom medicine cabinet and over-sink lighting.

Below are 4 pictures of two medicine cabinets and the light fixture in different positions. I will tell you my favorite, but not until I hear what you guys think.

We need to thank my lovely (and strong!) medicine cabinet holder Vanna Mike. Thanks, Vanna Mike!

This is the small cabinet, with the lights in the down position.

Larger cabinet, lights down.

Small cabinet, lights up (and note for the record that *I* installed
that light AND swapped it to the up position)

Big cabinet, lights up.

So, what do you think?

Also, that's the paint and our new! functional sink/vanity. I'm very excited. Mike installed the two pieces of molding needed for us in hook up the toilet (which is off to Mike's left in that picture, the shower is behind him to the left and the window is on the right.) I'm hopeful that we'll be able to get the toilet installed tomorrow night. And then, we can move back in to that bathroom and USE it. WOO! We still need to install the niceties like a toilet paper holder, towel bars and figure out this medicine cabinet conundrum, but we're getting there. And it only took us 4 years.

You Keep Using That Word...

... I do not think it means what you think it means.

Emily's new favorite word is "exhausted".

This morning, Domino ate part of Emily's breakfast bar. As I was getting her some applesauce, she told me she was exhausted because Domino ate her cookie bar. Mike and I, through our chuckles, tried to explain what exhausted means.

Later today, Emily asked me to replace the batteries in her digital camera. Because I had been promising to do it and then forgetting, I decided to seize the moment. And while she was following me from the battery closet to the kitchen, she said she was exhausted because her camera needed batteries.

Again, I tried to explain what exhausted means, but I don't think she understands. I know she hears Mike and I (and probably Miss Courtney, too) say we're exhausted and she's trying to stretch her language, but I have to chuckle at these malapropisms.

And the next time she says she's exhausted about something? I am totally going to say "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." And then I might just have to tell her that my name is Inigo Montoya. And 10 years from now, she'll understand what the heck I was talking about.

Yeah, Baby!

Tonight is Night 4 of the Go To Sleep Or Else plan.

Last night was ... not so good. Lucy screamed bloody murder until Emily came to bed and then it was party time. Emily was moved into the playroom to sleep and everyone was asleep soon after that. The night before was the same.

Which puts the score at Parents 1, Kids 2.

We went through the motions of bedtime tonight, figuring it was another case of More Of The Same. Emily didn't nap at all this afternoon, a concept I am slowly coming to grips with, and she was pretty tired. I put Lucy to bed at about 7:45 and Emily hung out in the living room with us until about 8:30. Mike put Emily to bed and had to go back in almost immediately to tell Lucy to settle down (it didn't help that Lucy had pooped and therefore needed a diaper change, a fact Emily and Mike discovered when they entered the room.) A few minutes ago, I realized that it was quiet in the girls' room. I could hear Lucy talking quietly, but there was none of the raucous laughter and clapping and chattering that typically marked bedtime not happening.

I went in to check on the girls and Emily is OUT. Sound asleep. Lucy? Not so much. She was laying down, which is a step in the right direction and was talking quietly to herself. Awesome. I told her to settle down, got her set up with her friends again (you know, putting Monkey, Oscar and Baby in her arms and so on) and took off.

That makes the score tied at 2 on both sides! YAY!

I'm not a big fan of Emily staying up so late because it cuts into my kid-less time flaking on the couch, but if it means that the girls are learning to go to sleep while in the same room? I guess that is a small price to pay.

And I am working on coming to grips with the fact that at nearly 44 months of age, Emily is pretty much done with the afternoon nap. She stayed up all afternoon today, playing nicely in the playroom, only complaining a little bit about being lonely in there. She was definitely tired this afternoon, but not so bad that she was painful to be around and the tiredness worked in our favor come bedtime. I was actually very surprised that Emily didn't nap today, because she had preschool this morning. But I guess preschool is no longer quite so draining on her. We'll see what happens next Tuesday when she has preschool in the morning and swimming at 1. She typically naps at my mom's on those days, but I might suggest Mom bring her back here so that she's not trying to entertain a punch 3 year old all afternoon. I guess we'll see how it goes.

Oh? And now? All quiet on the northern front. Sweet.

Maybe not so bad after all

I implemented the Sleep-Now-Or-Go-Live-With-The-Gypsies sleeping plan last night and was pleased with the results.

This is boring for all of you, I'm sure, but I want to record it. So I'm going to.

6:45 pm: Lucy finishes the last of her "cookies" (caramel rice cakes from Aldi) and I scoop her out of her chair and take her to get a bath.

7 pm: Lucy is bathed and running around naked (the sight of that little naked booty running around never ceases to crack me up. It helps that she runs like a complete loon.) Mike and Emily ar getting ready to go to Home Depot.

7:05pm: Lucy is in bed, crying pitifully for me.

7:30 pm: Realize she is not stopping. Go in, comfort her, tell her Emily will be in later to sleep.

7:35 pm: Silence from Lucy's room.

8:15 pm: Emily and Mike return home. Emily apparently fell asleep in the parking lot of Home Depot, due to lack of nap yesterday afternoon (score!).

8:30 pm: Emily is in bed and on her way to sleep.

8:35 pm: Emily is out of bed, going potty. Put her back to bed, remind her that she is not to get out of bed again.

9:15 pm: Check on girls and realize they are both sleeping. Woo!

And they stayed that way until just after 7 am, when I heard Lucy talking to herself. I took her out of the room, hoping that Emily would stay asleep, but she came out a few minutes later. Either way, it was a great improvement over the prior situation.

I just got Emily up after an hour (or so) of nap and will go wake Lucy at 4. I cannot tell you how hard it is to bring myself to go wake sleeping children. But, I am doing it so that I don't have to deal with the annoyingness of our prior bedtime routine.

Frustrated

The girls are driving me crazy.

Ever since we put them in the same room, they can't stop playing and laughing long enough to go to sleep. They went from falling asleep between 730 and 830 to going to sleep somewhere around 930 or 10, or if it was last night 11. That's just not acceptable.

Mike and I spend our entire evening going into their room to quiet them down, yell at them to lay down/stop playing/stop talking, etc. And then dispense spanking hands when all that fails.

We've tried giving Emily a toy as a reward for going to sleep nicely. We've tried giving them books to read that get taken away when they are naughty. We've tried the yelling. The really frustrating part is that Emily wants to go to sleep. She's tired. But Lucy sits there calling her name and there's only so much of that a 3 year old can ignore. Lucy is totally the instigator in this.

Last night was just NOT GOOD. After I went in at 10:40 to yell at them and separate them, I was so mad, I couldn't go to sleep. I wound up tossing and turning until 1. I couldn't get my brain to shut down. So I formulated plans.

As far as the bed time thing goes, this is the current plan:

> Nap time for Emily will be about 1 hour. When she goes to sleep, I will wake her up after she's been asleep for about an hour. I think she still needs the sleep, but I don't think a 2 or 3 hour nap is doing her any good. And it sure isn't helping the bedtime situation any. After the hour is over, she can play quietly in the playroom or go outside.

> Nap time for Lucy will end at 4. She will happily sleep from 1-5, especially on busy days and that's great, but she's not very tired at 7:30 if she's only been out of bed since 4:30.

> Lucy will be going to bed between 7 and 730.

> Emily will be going to bed between 8 and 830, basically an hour after Lucy goes to bed. I'm hoping that this will help Lucy start to settle down or fall asleep before Emily gets in there. I'm also hoping that the later bedtime will help Emily be more tired.

> If the girls are still talking and playing at 9, they will be separated and Emily will sleep in the playroom that night. Lucy has huge dark circles under her eyes from lack of sleep and this has got to stop.

So there you have it. My new bedtime plan for world domination.

Sesame Street

We are taking the girls to Sesame Street Live this weekend and I couldn't be more excited.

We told Emily on Thursday that we were going and she said she didn't want to go. But, we've been talking about it since then and she seems pretty excited.

I am going to put the girls in Sesame Street t-shirts, because I am a geek like that. Lucy has a Cookie Monster shirt that she's never worn, mostly because it's been too big, but it should fit. And what better time to break in a new shirt than at a Sesame Street event? And Emily is going to wear her Elmo shirt, which I think is appropriate because the show we're seeing is "When Elmo Grows Up".

I am currently enjoying the peace and quiet that comes during nap time and watching the 7th season of The West Wing. What I'm going to do when I'm done with Season 7, I don't know. I am seriously addicted to this show.

Hellooo Spring!

Spring seems to have officially sprung around here. We've had temps in the 50s and 60s the past few days and I am LOVING it.

Mike sent the girls out to the backyard to play yesterday and they both came in happily muddy. It was awesome.

The bathroom is progressing nicely, but I would love it if someone somewhere would change our project switch from "Nothing is ever easy" to "Easy Peasy Lemon Squeezy" because the setbacks are DRIVING ME NUTS. Case(s) in point:

<>I was helping Mike assemble the glass doors for the shower stall and he had to CUT one of the door supports because it was too long.

<>The vanity? Needs to have a couple holes cut into it so that it can sit flush against the wall and peacefully coexist with the water supply pipes. One of the holes? Would pretty much obliterate the drawer slide/support. So we'll probably have to take the pipe apart, cut a small hole in the vanity and then reassemble the supply pipe inside the vanity. Augh.

<>After searching all over the world for a 2x14 floor register, including several websites which were ALL out of stock, I found one at Lowe's. Brought it home and tried to put it in the hole in our floor. Except it didn't fit. Of course it didn't.

<>Mike looked at the new light fixture we are going to install over the sink on Saturday night and discovered it doesn't have a switch on it. That's a problem, because there is no light switch to control that light. While at Lowe's we looked for alternate lights that had switches. They were all hideous. Ultimately, we decided that if we're going to do anything with the light (and we are SO replacing that light), we're going to do it right and install the darn switch already.

Tonight is the beginning of what will be a two day celebration of St Patrick's Day. We're having corned beef and cabbage (and potatoes and carrots) and I made gluten-free Irish Soda Bread. It smells really good, so I'm very hopeful that it will taste good. I've even got some real butter sitting out on the counter so that it is nice and soft in time for dinner. Yum. And while I was in the baking mode, I made a gluten-free variation of the Baker's Chocolate One-Bowl Brownies. I'm hoping those are good, too. We'll see. Tomorrow night, we're going to go to a local Irish restaurant and have more Corned Beef and Cabbage. Theirs is the real deal and it is SO GOOD. Can't wait.

So much for "Awake Now"

This afternoon, like every other afternoon, I put the girls down for their nap at 1 pm.

At 1:30, Emily came out and told me she was awake. Meaning she'd been asleep, had a lovely nap and was now ready to claim her gum and go play quietly.

Yeah, not so much, kid.

I told her she hadn't yet been to sleep (I think she closes her eyes for a minute, which feels like YEARS to her and then is so delusional she thinks she's actually slept) and that she had to go back in the playroom and go to sleep in order to get gum when she woke up. She insisted that she wasn't tired and she didn't want any gum.

I laid her down in bed and encouraged her to read her books while maintaining the prone position and told her I'd be back to check on her later. I checked on her twice. Once she was playing and I told her to quiet down. The next time I checked on her, she was sound asleep.

It is now 4:45 and she is still sleeping.

So much for not being tired. Mommy is right yet again. The stinky part about that is I can't gloat to her about it because she won't understand.

I! Have! A! New! Microwave!

Woo!!!!

A couple weeks ago, my parents had both kids during nap so that Mike could work on the bathroom without disturbing anyone's beauty sleep. Except, as it turned out, he was done with his noisy work before nap time. We decided to send the girls off to my mom's anyways and went to Home Depot to spend some money.

We bought the remaining things we needed for the bathroom remodel (specifically, a vanity & vanity top, a faucet, paint, and primer). While we were there (which is pretty much my modus operandi. I get Mike to agree to some errand and then ask him if it would be ok if we did something else in the near vicinity while we're out. Makes him crazy.) we looked at over-the-stove microwaves and decided which one we wanted to purchase.

We had one 10% off coupon and used that bad boy on everything all at once. We spent over $900, but none of it was on our credit card and all of it was paid for with money we've been saving specifically for these projects. The lady who checked us out laughed at the wad of cash I pulled out and asked if we'd robbed a bank (she and I used to work together at H&R Block, so I wasn't as insulted as I would have been otherwise).

The microwave we wanted wasn't in stock (of course). It finally came in Friday afternoon and I picked it up Saturday morning. And then promised Mike several sexual favors to get him to install it Saturday afternoon. He's a wonderful husband and so he installed it for me and it's beautiful. Even better, it works! Unlike the first over-the-stove microwave.

I'm hoping that I won't keep seeing it out of the corner of my eye and being surprised by it for much longer. And I'm also hoping that some elves come in and clean and reorganize my kitchen (to my specifications, because if you're going to believe in elves, you might as well go all the way and have them be mind reading elves) while I sleep.

PS: I recently joined the 21st century and started a Facebook page. If you are interested in being my friend, send me an email and I'll friend you. Or you can hunt me down over there.

Miss Manners

Emily and I had a bit of a standoff this afternoon.

She was about to leave Madison's birthday party and I told Emily to say Thank You to Miss Liz. She (Emily) clamped her mouth closed in her usual "I'm shy and can't say that" pose. And I told her to say Thank You again. And Emily stuck her fingers in her mouth.

And that's when I pulled out my bargaining chip. I held up the goodie bag and helium princess balloon that Liz had just handed to me and said "If you don't say thank you, I will give these back to Miss Liz."

Emily still refused to say thank you. So after several false starts, I handed the goodie bag back to Liz and we left.

Emily lost it. She was shrieking and crying and trying to throw herself on the floor (which is THE biggest and fastest way to tick me off, especially when we're in public). We made it to the exit area of the bounce place where Madison had her party and I decided to give Emily One Last Chance to get her goodie bag. I sat down and asked her what she had to do to get that bag. And she told me she had to say thank you. I told her if we went back there and she didn't say thank you to Miss Liz, not only would we walk away (AGAIN) without the goodie bag, but the Spankin' Hands would be coming out when we got to the car.

We walked back to the party room (which felt like it was MILES away, but that's mostly because I had Lucy on my hip the whole time) and Emily said thank you and gave Miss Liz a hug. All of the adults in the room cheered with me and Emily was given her goodie bag.

I have long said that I know my kids (all kids, really) are Walking Birth Control. They can't help it. They are messy, they are loud, they fart and burp and throw up and don't understand that we don't do those things in public. They pitch fits over minor things and spill goldfish at the most inconvenient time imaginable. All of this and more helps the childless decided to remain so until their biological clock overwhelms them.

But, even as I know that my kids are WBC, I insist that they be polite Walking Birth Control. They must say "Please" and "Thank You" and "Excuse me" and "I'm Sorry" and so on. I realized recently that though the girls are very good about saying please and thank you to our immediate family, they (especially Emily) don't do as well being polite to other adults. And that is more important than them being polite to us.

So, I decided this morning's party was the line in the sand. Emily WILL start saying Thank You to adults.

She is incredibly stubborn and moderately shy. This? Not such a good combination. But we will work on it and she'll get better.

I also want to work with her on the interrupting of the Mommy when she's talking with another adult or when she's on the phone.

I am hopeful that we won't have to repeat the party scene many times before Emily (and by extension, Lucy) realize that it's just so much easier to say Thank You and be done.

Primed and ready to go

Mike is, as I type this, finishing the last of the sanding in the bathroom.

That means that it is nearly time for me to take on "my part" of this bathroom project: the painting.

I primed the new base molding this afternoon and then headed back downstairs a few minutes ago to give them a second coat.

Tomorrow's nap time will likely be spent taping, tack cloth-ing and priming the bathroom.

I'm really excited to get to this part of the project. Once the walls and ceiling is painted, the remainder of the project is mostly installation. We have a new shower stall, toilet, vanity, sink, and faucet to install, so the installation part will be a big project, but it's getting closer to being done.

And then I can take a shower in OUR bathroom! And that is VERY exciting. I'm not even sure I have quite wrapped my head around what that's going to be like. Awesome, I would guess.

Mike and I picked out the paint color last Saturday (well, I picked it out and he said "Yes, sweetie, that looks great." which is pretty much how design decisions like that go 'round these parts) and I'm really pleased. I was going to go with the same green that is in there currently, but decided I would rather have a nice calming blue. I chose Waterscape by Behr. The layout of the bathroom doesn't lend itself nicely to pictures, but I will definitely post some when it's all put together.

Isn't She Lovely?

My friend Courtney is addicted to Vera Bradley bags.

When we became friends, I didn't understand her obsession with them and didn't find them all that appealing or attractive.

But, as we grew closer, my interest in the VB bags grew and I found that there were certain patterns that I found quite pretty.

Courtney, sweetheart that she is, offered to lend me a selection of her Vera bags so that I could decide for myself what kind of bag I would want, if I wanted to get a Vera.

After much deliberation, I decided to buy myself this bag.

It is a Purple Punch Villager. It has 8 pockets, 6 on the inside and 2 on the outside and it nicely handles the role of dual purpose purse/diaper bag that I prefer to have. I have it packed with a bunch of stuff (diapers, wipes, wallet, checkbook, snacks, etc) and it lays nice and flat against my side. I'm really happy with it and I love the pattern.

Courtney was with me when I made my historic first Vera purchase and took pictures, but ran out of time to send them to me before leaving for Florida. Yes, she abandoned me. Heartlessly left me in the arctic cold of New York to bask in the warmth of Florida.

But, I guess I can forgive her. She said she'd bring me back a souvenir.