Thursday, April 30, 2015

Momma Mia

Yesterday was my mom's birthday, and she's here with us this week. And there is nothing better than having your mom visiting you. Something about having your own momma at your house, smiling and smelling of your childhood, helping and loving on her grandchildren. So, in honor of her birthday I thought I would make a list of all the reasons why we love having her visit: 
1. I can workout between the hours of 7am and 6pm. I love that I can go for a run during quiet time or steal away for a barre3 class after I drop of Daisy at preschool. 
2. All the laundry (including the stinky cloth diapers!) gets magically washed, dried, folded and set on my bed to be put away. 
3. My kitchen and all the dinnertime dishes get cleaned while I'm putting down Violet for the night.

4. Her favorite place to visit is the local bookstore (which is our favorite place as well!) and she buys us new books (always a favorite around here!)
5. Witnessing moments like this: Grandma and her grandgirls playing dress-up, reading stories and snuggling together.

6. She reads endlessly to my girls. And if you know my girls this is not an easy task as they could sit and listen to stories for hours upon hours. Upon hours. I am not kidding. They can read forever.

7. Date night with J.

8. Listening to her stories of her childhood, early marriage and motherhood. There is something wonderful in listening to my mom's stories of her childhood. These stories give me a different picture of my mom, all woven together with different memories that put into action the sequence of events that led to my life as I know it.

Happy Birthday Mom. We love you.

Tuesday, April 28, 2015

Blue Jeans and Clean Socks

I feel like I should probably knock on some wood or cross myself twice and throw a teaspoon of salt over my left shoulder before saying what I'm about to say next, but I think we're pretty much done with the laundry room / mud room renovation.

I haven't talked much about the laundry room renovation, right? I love this house - it has great bones, but it's in need of some serious aesthetic updates. For our first style update, we decided on creating a functional mud /laundry room. This is our entry and exit point to the house, and we were needing a place to hang purses and book bags and hats. Plus, I wanted a pretty place to fold laundry. Something cheerful and simple. So, we smashed up the linoleum and ripped up the carpet, tore out cabinets and I endured what I have since come to think of as My Dark Period, during which we had, at one point neither a floor nor a working washing machine (and for many that might not be a big deal, but with two young children who attract mud like flies to honey and a exclusively cloth diapered baby, missing a day of laundry can send me into a mild panic attack.)

Here is what the laundry room looked like when we bought the house:
Hello, the 80s called, with its muted beige paint, fluorescent light and brown lineolum, thank you very much.

So what did we do? Well, we:
We like to put our little slave laborers, munchkins to work painting. They usually make an epic mess. 

  • Took out the old cabinets, retextured the walls
  • Ripped up the linoleum laundry room and the hallway carpet and put down a sub-floor, then tiled over the sub-floor with a porcelain tile that is meant to look like a neutral sand. I cannot tell you the conversations we had about this floor: it must be the most-discussed floor in the history of the world. We talked and talked and talked about this floor: which tile should we choose? Should we choose ceramic or porcelain tile or a different version of updated laminate? Should we make a pattern with the tile? Were we choosing the right tile? Should we go back to The Home Depot for the sixty-eighth time and look at it again just to be sure? Should we also go to Lowe's and Osh and three other flooring stores and see what they have as well, you know, just in case? Should we go with a gray floor instead of a brown floor? In the end, we randomly stopped by Home Depot one Sunday afternoon to look at lighting and saw tile on sale, BAM! It was done and bought. We can never resist a good sale. 
  • Painted the walls a bright turquoise 
  • Changed out the electrical switches 
  • Installed new open cabinets
  • Replaced the light fixtures and hung hooks 
  • Painted and installed new baseboards 
I should clarify, by the way, that when I say "we" - particularly the items above that start with "ripped out or installed or painted" - that I really mean J did it. I helped, of course, mostly by keeping the girls out of his hair, providing cold beer at the end of the day and most importantly, moral support. 
Anyways, I'd say we're pretty much finished - I want to hang something on the walls, and we want to install a rod to hang clothes from and we're debating if we want to build a countertop on top of the washer and dryer. This project wasn't the piece of cake that we originally envisioned and required plenty of cold beer on hand and a handful of new power tools, but man I sure do love walking into my brightly lit, pretty colored laundry room each morning. 

Wednesday, April 22, 2015

our weekend.

yard work. cuddling. nursing. tree climbing. clean sheets. breezy days and plenty of sunshine. rope swings. a long morning run. a late afternoon family walk. good friends and fun neighbors. 
moscow mules. nespresso brown sugar cinnamon latte. long naps. sunday school. cherub choir in church. finishing a book on the back deck. family dance parties. kisses. hugs. planting watermelon seeds and red pepper plants. watering the herb garden. playing potions. belly laughs.
 reading stories as a family. Giants baseball. laundry (always laundry). bagel breakfast. grocery store shopping and weekly meal planning. smoked artic char. sunshine. grumpy mornings. bubbles.
dress up. mommy's costume jewlry. legos. freshly mowed lawn. scooter riding. roasted asparagus. family dance party. sunhats and fleece pjs. digging in dirt. composted soil. dresses. knocking over block towers. 
sometimes life can be demanding and hectic and crazy and intense. but, sometimes it can be pretty amazing too.

Wednesday, April 08, 2015

You make me happy too

You thought I was asleep. You reached over and grabbed my hand and whispered happy ten years. You reached through over one of our sleeping daughters and whispered that you loved creating a family with me, that you loved sharing your life with me. You whispered that I make you happy. 

As you started getting ready for work, another of our daughters climbed up in the bed for a quick snuggle as the littlest Rossini squawk from her crib. You shook my shoulders, "sweetheart, it's time to get up." I opened my eyes, I smiled and kissed you and we started our day.  

Happy ten year anniversary my love. I love you with a thousand beating hearts.

Friday, April 03, 2015

A another month, another list

1. They adore one another. Daisy can make Violet laugh and keep her entertained like nobobdy else. Both her and Lily keep a close eye on her, makign sure she doesn't get into anything dangerous and alerting me of her every move. The big girls sing and dance and blow bubbles around Violet, and she laughs and giggles and watches their every move. They are the very best of friends.

2. Last weekend we gave Violet a handful of blackberries and let her go to town. The mess was epic.
3. We have started working our way through the The Tail of Emily Windsnap with Daisy and Lily.

4. Now, they are sort of obsessed with pretending to be mermaids.

5. In the morning, every morning, Lily runs into our bedroom and tells me she has exciting news and terrible news. The exciting news is that one day she is going to marry Daddy. The terrible news: it is not today.
6. Daisy has been increasingly more interested in hiking. She picks wildflowers. She loves to explore new trails. J and I fell in love over long hikes, and many of our best vacations included day-long hikes. Seeing Daisy out on the trails, completeing several tough miles of trails makes my heart sing, and I look forward to introducing more and more hikes to her.
7. Violet has been entering this phase wherein she wants to spend as much time as she possibly can snuggling with J and I. I am honestly begnning to think that her idea of a perfect day includes our family spending countless hours laying around making faces and noises, but since we insist on getting up and getting showered, she just has to accept nuzzling into our chest when carry her as the next best thing.
8. Daisy, Lily and I have spent countless hours on the floor demonstrating to Violet exactly how to properly crawl. She just looks at us like we're stupid and then rolls acros the room in a flash, pivots and army crawls the last little bit to get exactly what she wants. It's usually something she shouldn't have: a scrap of paper, a permanent marker or a day-old crumb.

9. Violet has started blowing raspberries. Oh my stars, I cannot take the cuteness.

10. Where did my timid little girl go?