Life Lately

Tonight I brought out the big camera for an ordinary evening outside after dinner. I realized when I wrote Porter's 14 month post that I haven't used my real camera much lately and wanted to change that. And in the name of getting the blogging mojo back, I'll use this as an excuse to post lots of pictures from tonight right here, instead of worrying about which one to put on IG.

Last night, or super early this morning, I woke up in a cold sweat with a not right, not right at all stomach. I have not puked in years but this morning I tallied the feat twice and it was every bit as horrifying as I remember. Nate stayed home from work this morning without me even asking because I was certainly not in any condition to parent the kids. He was a huge help and took Cecelia and Porter to the oil change I had scheduled for the van, and then to a playground. By the time he did go into work around 12:30, I was feeling more human and also hopeful that the littles would give me gigantic naps as a gift. That part didn't happen but it was still a nice and uneventful afternoon/evening. Really really hoping the kids and Nate don't get whatever this was and also very thankful it seems to be short lived.

Ticking time bombs? I hate the paranoia that comes with just waiting for one of them to get sick. So far so good, come on kids' immune systems!






So much else I wanted to mention on the old blog, but all of the things I had listed in my phone are already outdated from weeks ago. But there was this one night when I had this conversation with Truman and it must be documented:

T: "Mom, when CC and I came out of your belly, how did we get out of there? Out of your mouth?"

Me: "Um, no, not out of my mouth. Out of...somewhere else." (After further persistent questioning from Truman). "Out of...my privates." (Cringe, cringe, cringe, OMG, why is this so weird to talk about!!??)

T: (wide eyed, stunned). "Oh." And he rolled over and went to sleep.

We've talked about labor and birth before, last time the important debate was whether or not it was painful for THE BABY to come out of the mommy's belly. This time the conversation really took a turn for the graphic, I'm afraid.

(pink cowboy boots--her find at a consignment shop, hasn't taken them off since!)


(Did I mention that he ditched a training wheels a few weeks ago? It was surprisingly emotional for me, he is just so big!)


(revived an old toy for this guy, too)


Another night awhile ago, after a particularly rough day with Cecelia, I was eager to get the bedtime routine completed so I could properly collapse onto the couch and reflect about how difficult it is to be a great mom to my daughter. Luckily, our emotional/challenging/disaster days are few and far between lately, thank goodness. But they still happen and I still worry that I'm doing it all wrong with my girl. Anyway, after one of those days, I was tucking Cecelia in and we were talking a bit about the favorite parts of our day. I asked her what she liked the most from the day, trying my hardest to get her to focus on the positives, expecting she would certainly say 'going to the swings.' But instead she looked right at me and said, 'playing with my mommy.' I'm not even sure what we had done that day to qualify as 'playing' but it struck me right in the heart, to ease up on myself and realize I'm just doing my best with Cecelia. And that I was meant to be her mom and I AM mom enough for her, no matter how much she makes me question my abilities. I mean, I was the best part of her entire day and I think she knew I needed to hear that as a confidence booster!! She is really something, I love her with the same intensity that I fear her ;)



Then there was my 'best day ever' at work, which was a Friday and a short day in that I only saw three patients in the morning. One of my patients that day also had been working with me for about 12 visits, which was a decent length of time for us. She started off so weak and afraid of trying to get better. Then this day, she was able to walk down her front stoop, out to her sidewalk, down another step and into her garage without a ramp and without her wheelchair. It was huge and made me feel like all of the hard work and all of the preparations we had done before this day were worth it.

The other notable patient of that morning also reminded me why I love my job so much. I had been seeing this one for nearly four months which is abnormally long for my time with patients, and she's always been a favorite of mine. We had been working so hard to get this patient stronger, walking again, and specifically we were working on preparing her for her front porch stairs so that she could leave her house safely. Without a wheelchair, without her family pushing her---she wanted to be independent again. On my very last day with this patient, we did those six front porch stairs as three of her family members came over to watch and cheer her on. It was awesome, it was rewarding, it was a ton of fun to see my patient so successful in our goals. She's always been a favorite of mine so after we did the stairs she said, 'Okay, now we have cake to celebrate.' She and her family had bought the most delicious, gigantic, over the top double chocolate cake (with genache filling and buttercream frosting) for us to share. She literally said, 'You are having a big slice with me right now, so how do you like your coffee?' We had a slice of the cake, a cup of coffee, and we all chatted a bit about life and all of the non-therapy things possible. It was just a highlight of my work year for me to see her kick butt with her progress in PT and also to have such an amazing gesture of cake and coffee. She made me take half of the cake home with me and my family did not mind at all;)



I enjoy a lot of my patients and especially when they actually get better and meet their goals, but both of these ladies really went above and beyond for EXCELLENT visits. Also, I can't stop thinking about that chocolate cake. Mmmmmmm.

And now for a series of Porter Standing Pictures. It's all so exciting.


Classic P face.


New fave.


Oh hey, where are you going, baby boy? And why do you always have to trash your outfits beyond belief, so that many of your pictures are with you in a diaper only?


We've been adjusting to having Truman in Kindergarten, and he loves it so much that the adjustment hasn't been too jarring. We've been having fun, we've been tired, we've been busy (I dislike that word so much, though), and we've been adjusting to life with these growing kids.



Kids are fun, man.


Someday he'll be a school kid, too. Sigh.


Still my baby for now.

Porter at Fourteen Months

The months, they just keep on coming, don't they? This is going to be short and sweet which means it will bug the HECK out of me when I remember a million other little things about my Porter boy after I hit 'publish'. But I'm in a bit of a blogging lull and surprisingly don't seem to mind it one bit, so I'm afraid if I put this off much longer it's never happening. And then all (over) documentation of our lives will cease, and I will be annoyed/panicked about it, and I just can't let it go yet.

So. Porter. He's fourteen months old and seriously a freaking riot, with loads of personality and a lot of perplexing qualities that make us think he's going to be even more feisty than Cecelia. Hold me.


P's favorite naughty habit is to throw drinking cups consistently and without hesitation. You should see Truman when he hands Porter the sippy of whole milk (totally done with formula AND bottles here, hallelujah!). Truman will hand him the goods, then cautiously block all angles of the high chair tray with his arms so that WHEN Porter tosses the cup to the ground, Truman has a chance at rescuing it. I do the same thing without even batting an eye anymore. I'll take a bite of dinner, stare right at Cecelia and carry on a conversation, then with my free hand I'll lunge at the falling sippy cup with razor sharp peripheral vision. I only catch the thing about 10% of the time and Truman averages 50%, but either way there is something Porter loves about chucking his cups after every sip. It's maddening and so very Porter.





But yes, we weaned off all formula and also finally got rid of the much beloved bottle. This is huge for my Porter boy! He now drinks cold whole milk from sippy cups and prefers this new one I bought that sort of looks like a bottle nipple/soft spout. Sometimes I will warm up the milk a tiny bit first if I really want him to chug it but mostly our days of intricate milk feedings are over. It's so refreshing to simply provide a cup to drink at meals and for snacks and be done with the rest of the hoopla!



Porter eats solid foods when he feels like it and is one chunky monkey, being described as 'solid' most of the time that anyone picks him up for me. He loves chicken nuggets, Greek yogurt, corn and black beans, feta cheese, cheese pizza, watermelon, and all desserts the best. Also: any starchy carb will be his best friend should you offer. He's not into veggies but does seem to tolerate new foods a little better than Truman did, but it's not as great as Cecelia's love for new foods.





He's probably 23-24 pounds and wears 18-24 month clothes, so not a giant but not a twig either. He will for sure pass Cecelia up in his size shortly and his leg girth is already twice as large as hers;) These are actually 2T Gap pajamas and Cecelia can also wear 2T Gap pajamas, so yeah.


This kid is ridiculously verbal, I cannot even list the words he will repeat to us or initiate saying. Granted he's just over one year old so a lot of the words are things only Nate and I can understand. Nearly every animal is a 'Gaga' and the last time we went to the zoo Porter was literally shaking with excitement over the flamingos. He was screaming 'GAGAAAAAA' and pointing at them and saying 'Oooooooh' and squealing. It was the cutest thing imaginable and his excitement did not decrease over the visit, either. He can say 'cracker' sort of, lots of 'mama' and 'more' and 'mil' for milk. Lots of 'uh-ohs' and 'bye-byes', and 'shhhhhh'ing sounds. He will jam his index finger up to his mouth and tell us to shush. I mean, what? He'll say 'deeeees' when I ask him to smile for my camera.



Porter is starting to understand what we are saying and is getting better at communicating but he still gets supremely frustrated when we aren't able to read his mind. Because he certainly has opinions and knows what he wants, so watch out if you deny him that 'thing' (i.e. if he spots M&Ms, if you don't let him hold alllll of the helium balloons at a birthday party, etc). I love that he will now say 'go' and then crawls to get his shoes for me to put on his feet, when he knows we are packing up to leave the house.



Not only is he verbal but this was a big month for Porter's motor status. He can now go from sit to standing without pulling up on anything, just pushing up from the ground. He can stand without any support for at least 30 seconds and I don't know how this is even possible, since he was not crawling, not pulling to stand, and was barely even ROLLING over two months ago. He'll cruise along furniture and I swear he is getting close to taking a few steps on his own, Nate is placing his bets that P will be walking within the month. But Porter does seem like a cautious dude who will perfect his skill before actually launching it....and then I think we are in big trouble because he is already sneaking into places he should not be in this house. Case in point: I've caught him splashing in the toilet, climbing up the stairs, he did fall down about six of our hardwood stairs this month, fell off the couch, likes to get stuck under the dining room table, etc. The stairs thing is super annoying because we've never had to put baby gates up in our house, preferring to just shut the doors to the hallway to keep him out of trouble instead. But Porter will wail and scream if we close the doors and will sneak into any cracked door if we aren't paying attention to the little guy. He totally doesn't know how to climb down stairs yet but he sort of tries to sit there and swing his legs over the side like he's problem solving the task. He's just all over the place and it's SO.MUCH.HARDER to keep him out of trouble now, OMG. Exhausting really, but I'm glad he's mobile, too (I guess).


We had to re-sleep train Porter this month because I was going certifiably insane with the frequent night wakings, and he was addicted to getting a bottle in the middle of the night. Eventually I hit a sleep deprivation low (for the millionth time in my parenting career) and decided enough was enough. So I made sure Porter had a sippy cup of water in his crib and when he woke up I'd let him cry for about ten minutes. Then I'd go in there, place him back down in his crib (because he was nearly climbing out), and tell him it was time to go to sleep. I'd hand him his 'wa-wa' and walk out. This did NOT go over well at first, the blood curdling screams told our neighbors we were sleep training again, I guess. But then he only cried for maybe 3 minutes after that and then passed out. I did this for maybe two nights and then he figured out that I was not giving him a bottle, so now he sleeps all night again. Sometimes he likes to wake for the day around 5:30 am which seems too early but it's actually not awful since he does go to bed at 7pm most nights.



We are working on dropping his morning nap, but I really think he is a happier guy with two. It's just so inconvenient to ME and our schedule to make him nap twice and he usually puts up a valiant fight when attempting the morning nap, so it's easier to just skip it and deal with the fussiness in the evenings instead. Usually he naps for about three hours total a day, and I try to time that with Cecelia's 1:00 nap, obviously. Kindergarten pick up at 3:00 means I will bump the naps to noon to allow P and C both sleep for a solid 2-3 hours, but many times I've had to wake both of them in the name of getting big brother from school. I really hate waking Porter from his naps and lately he's been waking on his own in a pissed off mood regardless. Very serious, this one.



The other day I was tickling him and saw this white thing in the very back of his mouth, thinking it was food. But upon closer inspection, I see that he freaking cut a MOLAR somehow even though he hasn't cut a regular tooth in months and month. He still just has the same six teeth and now this upper left molar, which is random, right? I do claim he is 'teething' though with the upped fussiness and anger at sleeping, and maybe he will cut another four simultaneously like last time. Molars have to hurt real bad, too, and I will blame that bad boy on his fussiness in the past month for sure.

(see it way back there, poking through?)


Ha, ha, ha, mom, why are you taking so many pictures of my mouth?


I saw this face a lot this month. I am sure he was mad that I took away his milk after he threw it down a hundred times.


Porter is obsessed with all balls and will go to great lengths to play catch with us. He loves to dance and dance and dance and dance with a slinky/hilarious patented move. He loves to climb on top of the dishwasher no matter how many times I have to physically remove him, he loves to be held when he's in a cuddly mood, he lays his head on my chest and gives me open mouth kisses on command, and he lights up when he sees his siblings. He's the sweetest baby, but he's the most opinionated, and he's at a challenging age for playgrounds since he wants to be with the big kids but can't hang just yet.



Cecelia helps when we are at playgrounds by doing this:


We love this munchkin more than words, he's becoming such a little man and it's the greatest being his people. Really could not be any more smitten with our Porter-P!







Love you, boo.
xoxo Mommy

Home Projects | Updated Bathroom

The upper bathroom renovation is complete and beautiful and one million times better than it was a few weeks ago. Nate even said to me, 'the bathroom is so awesome, it just makes me want to smile when I walk in there.' This is saying a lot since Nate was the one who did a lot of the intense, manual labor with his dad while I took care of the children over at my in-laws for three days. I'm not sure which part of our deal was more challenging but we all survived and got a new bathroom out of the chaos, so it's a win. And isn't it a pretty transformation??



Things we updated when we first moved into the house: we replaced the sink and console cabinets, replaced the medicine cabinet and mirror above the sink, updated the laundry chute and shelves to be white and less hideous, and painted all of the trim white instead of the horrifying creamy yellow that screamed at us from every square inch of this bathroom. I had originally painted the walls a light blue and found a shower curtain that sort of pulled together the creams, browns, and blues together. It worked, it was 'fine' but the speckled tile ate at my soul a little bit every morning. We talked about just re-glazing the tile, or paying for a gut job but both options were super expensive, and we really do enjoy the DIY process.

I mean, this tile and these towel racks...


Also, there was just entirely too much tile in this bathroom, not sure why it was necessary to have a renovation sometime in the 1970s that included tiling all four walls? We are also assuming they did the floors then, too. I wish I could have seen the original 1920s tile floors, I bet it was amazing! We left the 70s speckled floor alone with this renovation since going on top of it would make the floors way too tall and tearing it out would be a ridiculous headache. We just hoped that removing the speckled tile walls would make the floors look less ugly somehow. Because really, here is the 'before' in all of it's glory. The old lady grab bar will not be missed.



So what did we do this time around? Number one, we tore out the god-awful speckled yellow tile and replaced it with white subway tile. THIS PART IS MY FAVORITE. Nate and his dad started by pulling off all of the old tile on Friday 8/21 around 1:00. This is when I took the kids over to the duplex, along with an obscenely full van packed with 1/2 of our belongings, and we began our weekend-o-displacement so that the dudes could work late into the night without waking the children.    They tore down all of the tile pretty quickly and then started scraping off all of the nasty glue that was under the tile. This is the part that really sucked, I guess, and it was so so so messy and dirty. Some of the walls were in really rough shape and this is when they had to tear out the plaster walls inside of the shower all together. Always odd to see inside of walls that were put up ninety years ago, a little eerie or something.

It really scared me to see it like this. Walking up to the bathroom to see it in person after this part was also horrifying, the mess was all the way up the stairs and all of the hallway. Nate could tell I was freaking out and later did a great job cleaning everything thoroughly but yeah, pretty horrid.





Sometime on Friday afternoon, Nate texted and asked how I felt about wainscotting for the lower half of the walls outside of the shower, since there were a lot of cracks that would probably not ever look good painted even with a lot of patching. I was into it since we added it to the lower half bathroom and it looks really good, so that saved them some time with the scraping and patching. But they still had to add cement board to make walls in the shower, Tony had to re-do some of the plumbing (I know, right?!), scrape glue, and patch the heck out of the walls. Nate ended up coming over to the duplex around 11pm that first night to sleep, and so did Tony, because we didn't have running water at our house by the time they stopped.

The guys went back over fairly early on Saturday and Tony kept working on the plumbing while Nate   continued to work on the walls. So much prep work before it was ready to tile, but eventually Nate primed the walls and ceiling with Zinsser. Our ceiling was pretty nasty with some mildew from the shower that just wouldn't quit and a big crack, but both were fixed with scraping, patching and Zinsser stain blocker. Once the plumbing, new walls, scraping, patching and priming were done it was time for the actual tile!

Saturday after dinner they started tiling the shower. Nate thought it would take 'a few hours' which means at least a day, obviously. After I put the kids to bed at the duplex, I asked Lois to listen for them and I went to Home Depot to pick out wall paint. Nate thought I could feasibly start painting the walls that night and I was skeptical, but figured it would be nice to have the paint on hand in case. We discussed gray paint but couldn't decide between my favorite light neutral gray (Behr's Dolphin Fin) or something a little darker. I couldn't even find the card for Dolphin Fin at the store and took that as a sign to go a little bit bolder, so I picked a new gray: Pencil Sketch, and bought a gallon of the high-end Marquee paint in satin finish. The guy sold me on upgrading to Marquee in the hopes that I would only need one coat and I prayed that I liked this fifth shade of gray in our house. Cue the jokes about Fifty Shades of Gray...we are getting close to that around here!

I got to the house around 9:30 armed with the paint. The tiling was going well but was slowing down significantly as they had to make more cuts for the side walls. Tony was the tile cutter with his station set up outside on the airing porch, and Nate was the tile layer. The two guys work really well together even though Tony is much more patient and methodical with projects like this. For instance, Nate didn't use the little tile spacers for this project and I could tell it was driving Tony nuts but they managed to work together without damaging their relationship. I think any DIY home project can be a critical point in marriages and personal relationships, so coming out with ours in tact is a big plus. There was not space for me in the bathroom with them tiling, so I headed back to the duplex that night. I hear the guys stayed up until 1:30 am tiling the bathroom, determined to get it all done before bed. Yawn. But I applaud their work ethic here!





Sunday morning: Nate started grouting the tile right away and Tony headed back over to help a bit, and they returned to the duplex victorious around 9:30. We had chocolate chip pancakes and a big eggs/bacon breakfast to celebrate the huge achievement of the weekend. The bathroom looked so stinking good already and the grout made it even brighter somehow!



After breakfast they spent the rest of Sunday adding the new hardware for the shower head, faucet, and handle which took longer than expected. Nate also pray painted the radiator, since I bought six more cans of the paint we needed on Friday and dropped it off on one of my numerous trips back and forth to our house. He and Tony had to unhook the radiator and take it outside to our upstairs airing porch so they could pull the tile off behind it, so spraying it when out of the room was SUPER easy for him. I wish they could take all of the other radiators out of the house so I could spray them easier but apparently they weigh hundreds of pounds or something, blah blah blah.


New shower hardware!


So beautiful to me. And you can see on the left side of the shower, where the guys had to cut the tile super tiny. I love how old walls in old houses are never quite level and make projects like this incredibly easy.


Radiator! Come to mama. Wainscoting looks so good behind it, too.



After the radiator was sprayed, the brought it back inside and hooked it up again. The grout was finished and once the hardware was installed in the shower, they caulked all around it and the edges of the tile. They hung the new shower curtain rod which is AMAZING, since it bends out away from the shower stall to make the whole thing seem ginormous when your showering. Take my word for it, pure luxury.

Next came time to start on the wainscoting for the walls and the baseboards and I know the men were getting really freaking tired at this point, but they plowed through until Sunday evening when they just had to stop. BUT! We had a working shower which was the main goal for the weekend, since Nate was leaving for Chicago the next day and I did NOT want to extend my stay the duplex into the week. I was so proud of the guys for doing this mammoth project in a weekend and also so happy to be back home.

The displacement was fine and kind of 'fun' in a way, but I hated feeling like we were inconveniencing Lois the entire weekend by wrecking her pristine house and increasing the noise factor by about a hundred. She said she had a ball though, and didn't mind us crashing her pad. We stayed really busy too, having a big pizza dinner on Friday night with the guys, too. Saturday I walked with the kids to a nearby playground and then we walked straight to McDonalds for lunch (treats abound!). After naps that day we went to a birthday party, which took up our entire afternoon and dinner time. Sunday I went grocery shopping with just Cecelia and Porter while Truman stayed back with Lois, and then after naps we had another get together with friends out at a family farm. So lots of solo parenting by me but it was totally fine, the kids did sleep fair away from home, and we didn't drive Lois too crazy.

Oh, and if curious, my in-laws have three spare bedrooms in the duplex: Truman and CC slept downstairs on Tony and Lois's level, one kid in the bed and one on a twin air mattress. Then upstairs, I slept in a bedroom and put Porter in the other one, in a pack and play. All kinds of emotions and reminiscing going on for me this weekend, since living in the upper flat was a huge part of our lives as newlyweds and when we only had Truman. So surreal to sleep in that same bedroom, then walk to the same 'nursery' where we brought Truman home from the hospital....but to see Porter's smiling face instead. Deja vu, memories, all of the above.

But back to the bathroom, here is what it looked like Sunday night after 2.5 full days of work!


So we moved back home on Sunday with the bathroom in a functional and improved state. Then Monday night I painted the ceiling white with a satin finish. The next weekend Nate and I painted the walls our Pencil Sketch gray, and throughout the week Tony and Nate worked more on the wainscoting. I bought a new shower curtain from Deny Designs and it's definitely a favorite part of the room for us now. If you haven't been on that website before, watch out---there are about 9,000 options to choose from. I finally settled on the Gabi Into the Blue design, and each of the pieces can be turned into phone covers, throw pillows, blankets, prints, clocks, etc. Like I said, DANGEROUS!!



Porter approved:


Painting process during the week, aka my contribution besides spending money on finishing touches:



I hate painting ceilings so much. But hi, shiny white tile behind me!


Wainscotting:




I bought new brightly colored towels from Kohls which felt amazing, since our old ones were from our wedding and did not age very well at all. I bought a new throw rug, some hand towels, and Nate hung the towel hooks in respectable locations (high above the radiator so the towels don't always plop on top of it, next to the sink so you can actually dry your hands without reaching over the toilet, a towel on the side of the sink console so the kids can reach it without using our bath towels). The previous bathroom remodel included absurd amounts of tile AND towel racks, so it was very freeing to pick the hardware and locations for our towels this time around.







The only thing left to do in the bathroom is for me to select a print to frame above the toilet. I have lots of ideas but can't quite decide between a quote or a photograph. I might just design something in photoshop and print it myself but we'll see. So glad there isn't any tile on this wall anymore!



Other than that? It is finished. And glorious. And no, we didn't plan for our shower poufs to match the new curtain. That's just fantastic luck, I promise I'm not that psycho.



Wall with the sink:


Floors that stayed and don't look too bad anymore without the wall counterpart.


So welcoming and modern now. I just love it.


I did take videos before and after the renovation if you are interested. But hopefully pictures do the change justice. It's like a brand new bathroom and suits our style so much better than before. Major check mark on the House Projects list, complete!