done!

& here is a bathroom project we can say: accomplished. (well, mostly. we still have to put trim around the mirror...i am sorta against this, hoping it won't look a bit shaggy around the edges, ya know. but wes can try, oh will he try.)

so wes took thursday & friday off to *do the re-do*, if you will.

here he is looking all manly trying to pull off a counter top.

when pulling it off didn't work, time to get the saw out! it does look like much fun.

& here is a mostly finished job

the changing table now has a white skirt around it to hide all the changing table nightmares

so, let's talk about this paint color...it turned out completely wrong! doi. we went to home depot planning to get a yellow-orange color (think: rubber duck) & then we were like, ah let's go for a bright purple & seriously, this is what a purple swatch turned out to be. color fail.

wes refuses to paint it again, so we just went with it, threw out the idea of a rubber duckie bathroom (which was the old decor from the upstairs spare bathroom in our house in boise). i mean, really, adeline will be in grade school in a few years so why not give them an older looking bathroom. we tried to sell it as some sort of princess kind of thing. adeline was out of sorts about the re-do for a few days but now thinks it very pretty & deserving of many *wows!*

amelia likes that two tall stools are in the bathroom; that's about all she seems to care about right now...what enables her to reach more things to destroy.

repunzel, repunzel...

...i joked over email with a friend this morning that some kid will be saying that to adeline when she turns 6. b/c until she turns 6, she is sequestered to her bedroom. b/c she has been a total grump & really, to be honest, a spawn of the devil today (GASP. THAT MAKES *ME* THE DEVIL! well...i guess tell me something i didn't already know, eh? i mean, can't we all be a bit devilish at times? fallen human nature & all?)

this, my friends, is addy's grumpy & mean face & is mostly what she has been showing us since wednesday.

there have been moments of non-grumpy face adeline. but those moments don't last so long. so as i mentioned before, she has been told to go to her room, hold her teddy bear & let the tears flow. i held her while she cried for a bit but it seems it just may be one of those times where she just has to get over *it*--whatever IT is--by herself.

then wes & i joke about keeping her there until she turns 6. then the jokes about repunzel start, b/c really, if adeline is stuck in her bedroom until then her fast growing hair just may make it at least down to the lower window in 3 years, right? ADELINE, ADELINE, LET DOWN THINE HAIR!

this is the thing. i know how terrible i feel when a virus hits me hard as it has adeline. i know i feel miserable...but how do we help her understand that she can feel miserable & hate the world YET still be kind to others? i can not even count the number of toys she has thrown or the number of times she has pushed amelia & swatted at amelia over the past few days & especially this morning. we've had it! we're up to our ears in devil-child & i can't take it anymore!

say it with me: BEN-E-DRYL. are there any other options for cold relief for 3 year olds? seriously, drug companies! do something about this!

***

what else have we been up to? remodeling the girls' bathroom! we have a strict time frame: from saturday (yesterday) to this saturday morning, when we will have guests here (wes' parents). guests use this bathroom when they are here so it *needs* to be finished by then. really, it's good that we have a strict time frame...or else it could go on & on forever, with no end in sight. like our kitchen. or our bedroom.

this is one of the glimmers of hope in our past few days: the sick, but still a bit happy, adeline. also note the two missing drawer fronts. remember me telling you how they just fall off when opening the drawer? well, here's a good shot of the aftermath: open-ended drawers. perfect for toddler hands to reach in & begin destruction of property.

so we probably should buy a new cabinet, right? but our thought is that we have a few more years of child-destruction ahead of us, with them climbing & pulling & falling into the cabinet. so we decided to just paint it & then maybe in 5 or so years, if needed, then to buy a new one. you know, when the drawers that wes is gluing & stapling & nailing back on start to fall off again.

you *know* you are envious of this light fixture. AND let's not forget to mention the medicine cabinet door! hello saloon door, what type of medicine to you have for me today? it is a great way to hang hair barrettes. hhmm. once it's gone, i will have to find a new method, drats! i bet it will look much better, though.

the person we bought this house from was a realtor. & a really terrible home-fixer-upper-person. b/c they put in all these cabinets that are falling apart & the ugly tile & the light fixtures. YES! they went out & purchased (!!!) these light fixtures! but they also did other weird things like put in toilet paper holders in dry wall that are supposed to go into tile walls (the porcelain kind, the kind that when you take them out they leave a huge hole in the wall) & then they put the towel racks about 5 feet *away* from the shower. the holes that have been spackled over are from the really super hideous towel racks that we pulled down immediately upon arrival b/c they were that ugly.

so here's our list for this week:

• paint ceiling (done)
• fill holes with dry wall & spackle mini holes & peeled drywall from who-knows-what & then sand (nearly done)
  
• paint trim & cabinet (started)
  
• paint walls
• buy new sink, medicine cabinet, cabinet for over the toilet, etc
  
• install new light
• install new medicine cabinet
• install new towel racks & tp holder
• install cabinet above toilet
• install new countertop & sink
• move faucet from the master bathroom to this bathroom (another oddity that i will explain below)
  
• install new hardware on teh drawers/cabinet doors (another story i will tell below)

*oddity: the faucet in our bathroom matches the shower faucet in the girls' bathroom. soo...they went to home depot or some place like that, purchased a new shower faucet set & the new sink faucet to match, then installed the sink one in the master bathroom. seriously, how can a realtor be so, uh, un-appealing? mis-matched? didn't they ever watch hgtv?!

*story: when we moved in, oh nearly 3 years ago, we bought a new light & then new drawer/cupboard pulls for this bathroom with the intention of remodeling this bathroom, oh, 3 years ago. we did work very hard that first 8 months...then millie's pregnancy began & voila! all home projects stopped until the play room, then our bedroom (still incomplete, that's why you haven't seen the 'after' shots yet), & yes, the kitchen will probably never be finished until we decide to completely re-gut & get new cabinets & floors (a few years away, my estimation...b/c it will shadow wes getting his old salary plus the raise he deserves with the promotion...will that ever happen? hhmm...that's why i say give us a few years). anyway, so we bought the pulls/hardware with plans to remodel this bathroom years ago. then we didn't & we put these fairly pricey pieces *somewhere*. do you know where? b/c we DON'T! we both have seen them at least once over the past 2 1/2 years but don't quite remember where. we have looked everywhere since yesterday. **we even cleaned wes' 'workshop' room in the basement in hopes that that lowe's plastic bag filled with these pulls would be found in the depths of one of the many other bags & bins & piles. nope.

i know we just have to go buy new ones, loose the reciept, & like magic the originals will turn up. in a place we never thought to look (under the couch?!)

***
so. that's the goings-on here. i'll leave you with a cute shot of our cuties.

cold summer

this week has been a tid bit chilly around ohio. but that's okay! i love it. perfect for not turning the a/c on, still needing a heavy blanket at night...& for painting your bedroom & then also being able to sleep in that bedroom. yes, wes is hard at work finishing our bedroom painting project. we are now to the closet. meaning, all of our clothes are homeless & mostly strewn about it 2 different rooms. getting dressed is like going on a scavenger hunt. you know, {heidi} 'think, where would wes place my belts? if i was wes, i would put my wife's belts *here*. nope, not there, maybe, *here*. nope...'

what is also in disrepair in our house? our master bathroom sink. it has a rusted through under-part that leaks. we can't use it until wes also finds time to fix it. so we are sharing a bathroom with the girls which really has no negative consequences at all. actually, their bathroom is closer to our bed than ours! except maybe that addy likes to take our toothbrushes & toothpaste & brush her teeth. but that's usually worse for her, who is not used to the crest-adult-style toothpaste. she smacks her lips for about 10 minutes after these adventures in adult toothpaste land.

& this is a gross story, prepare to say "ewwww"!!!!
two days ago, as i was reading something online while amelia was napping & addy was finishing her poop-n-watch tv time, which coincides with me putting amelia down for a nap. i was very interested in what i was reading, apparently, b/c addy was making some noises to get my attention & i was mostly oblivious. i heard her, but i was like 'just a second addy, mama is reading...' then she walks over to me with something in her hand: a turd! adeline had this look of 'what am i to do with this smelly gooey object that is normally in my pull up?' she had poo-ied all the way out the back of her pull-up & it fell onto the floor with a near silent *splat*...addy had maybe tried to pick it up with her book (goodnight moon, which i may never read again although i attempted to disinfect it several times already). there was poo coming out of her pull up still. i said to her "don't move & for sure don't give me that thing in your hand!" i lifted her, facing me (like i want that butt in my face as i carry her to change the butt!). it was an exercise of strength, to carry a kid at arm's length up the stairs as she is trying to investigate the interesting *turd* in her hand. looking back, i should've just made her put it in the toilet downstairs, but what fun would that have been?

anyway, amelia is a DJ! at her cousins' birthday party a few weeks ago, they were given a keyboard as a gift. the twins thought it was cool, but then moved on to opening other gifts, as all kids do. amelia was fixated on that keyboard & began playing with it. she was really quite good at creating music. so when we got home, i made a point to get our keyboard out & show her that her family is cool too & has a fun toy such as the twins. ever since i showed it to her, she goes for it several times a day, playing with all the different sounds & beats & keyboards. she's doing it right now! then she bops around a wee bit like a baby would to music & has this look of 'hhmm, maybe i should slow the tempo down a bit? add a bit more drums?' then sometimes addy will meander into amelia's dj space & start to either take it away, so she can naturally play with it, or start to dance. do they have rhythm, you may be thinking? nah, they're my girls! they look like elaine from seinfeld, just like wes & i do when dancing...we suck! but, they love to dance & i hope to never take that away from them (in fact, i do plan on sending them to a dancing class or two so they don't look sooo out of it at a large public school dance where kids can be oh so mean). so, yes, my 9 month old has talent, a promising future. i've heard that female dj's are the next big thing.

***

so, good news on the speech therapy front! addy's speech therapist called & she had a drop-out for the expressive speech delay summer playgroup (yes, there is such a thing!). her speech therapist immediately thought of adeline as the replacement...which is amazing & wonderful & answers so many prayers. i have been a bit worried about how i was to get two things accomplished: #1 find adeline a playgroup with more than a few kids her near exact age #2 find kids who will not make her feel embarrassed or odd b/c she doesn't talk (she is now starting to understand that she doesn't talk as well as other kids her age & we can see that she is getting embarrassed & sometimes teary-eyed...such as not wanting to go into the church classroom b/c she can't interact as everyone else does). anyway! we've overheard a few kids ask her, in a kid-interested-way 'why don't you talk?' & since addy can understand language better than most kids her age, she knows what these kids are asking or saying about her. it's sad, but i don't think these kids are being mean, just curious. sometimes, maybe being purposefully mean, but usually not. anyway! she's in this playgroup now & apparently there is this other girl nearly addy's exact age with about the same amount of words & the speech therapist said she would love to see addy & this other girl set up private playgroups...we shall see! it starts mid-june & goes for 8 weeks. we're stoked, i tell you. good news, good news.

***
& now amelia has found her way over to me & is holding onto my legs, crying. time for nap.