Our house is an 1800 (finished) square foot Cape Cod with an unfinished basement. Downstairs, we have a kitchen, dining room, living room, den, two bedrooms and a full bath with shower. The upstairs was listed at two bedrooms and a full bath, but the door from the stairs opens directly into one “bedroom” and the bath is directly off of the other bedroom, which makes the layout a little impractical for a two bedroom space. The tiny bath has a claw foot tub I adore, but is impractical in a space for adults who mostly shower, especially since the bathroom can only hold one adult at a time, unless one of them is standing in the tub.

The plan is to take the space from two technical bedrooms into a master suite, complete with shower, double sinks, and walk-in closet. Since I’ve been using part of the space for sewing and other projects, we also decided to include an office area. Thankfully, my father the architect is along for the ride, or this project would be super overwhelming.

Immediately after we moved in, my dad drew up a plan for the eventual renovation. It was awesome! But, we had just purchased a house and had no money. Then we had a kid. We still didn’t have a ton of money, but we realized we needed to re-do the upstairs to make the house work for us for as long as we planned to stay here. The time we spent living in the space was really an asset in terms of drawing up plans, because we realized we needed to tweak them so we had less closet space and some office/crafting space. The space will still be a bit “quirky” and door-heavy, but I will have a walk-in closet! And my own sink! And more storage space!

In terms of style, this was my most favorite inspiration picture:

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There’s not a gosh-darned thing I don’t love about this space. Obviously, my space is not going to end up looking like this, but it’s just inspiration. The plan for our space? White subway tile for the shower and walls, white hex tile for the floors and a white vanity.

This time, the playing field was even. Colton never spends time with boys his age (everyone I know, go to church with AND Bible Study with has girls Colton’s age. No boys.). Now, Colton loves hairbows and can play baby dolls with the best of them, but that testosterone has given him an innate love for rocks, trucks and tractors. I was super excited for him to play with Joseph and find a kindred spirit in all things boys love. Instead, I found a study in all the ways Colton and Joseph are complete opposites.

Joseph wanted to feed Colton "crackers" (Chex), which was really, really cute. And sweet.

Except Colton wanted nothing to do with Joseph's sweetness. He's covering his mouth with his hand so Joseph has no chance of sneaking that cracker in.

But then! A beautiful moment when Sarah busted out her child-hood doctor's kit.

Dr. Joseph checked out Colton's throat and gave him a clean bill of health.

Sarah also had a great train set. Joseph was about building the tracks.

He also was great at putting the trains together (they were hook and eye attachments, and not very easy to put together). Colton thought, "hmm...I don't think you're going this right Joseph."

"Here Joseph, let me sit in your lap and show you. These work much better as projectiles!"

Colton and Joseph were both in agreement that our fun birdseed craft was icky...

...but Colton grew to like it and the patting it required.

Joseph decided cake balls were more his style.

The boys were both crazy about pushing this bucket of flour all over the house.

They both also thought running through this net was awesome!

Until Colton tripped and fell and stayed down saying "Fall. Fall. Faaaall," until we all properly ackowledged his fall. Joseph just looked at him like, "what on earth are you doing kid?" My son the drama queen.

Still, they agreed this truck was fun, and that the steering wheels needed to spin!

Still, I think they had a great time together. The jury’s still out as to whether or not Joseph likes me, and since I attempted to wipe his nose, I think it’s leaning more towards not. I had an awesome time with the girls (Theresa is especially hysterical) and can’t wait to get together with them (and their babies!) again soon!

I decided to give it a try recently when I was craving my favorite salad, the Apple Fuji Chicken Salad from Panera. It is super delicious, but at nine bucks, its also a little pricy to have regularly. I searched Pinterest, and found a recipe for making your own.

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The salad part was easy. Since I was making mine as a side dish, I didn’t have to cook chicken. The part I was most worried about was making the dressing, because I’d never made a dressing before, and because the Panera dressing is so gosh-darned delicious.

I should not have been worried. The dressing was super easy to make (Colton helped me!), and amazingly delicious. The recipe made about 6 or 7 ounces of dressing, which seems like quite a lot. We’ve been using it a couple of times a week and still have some left over.

So now that I’m over my fear of making my own salad dressing, I’m interested in making more. Got any go-to make your own, so tasty you can’t stand it recipes?

Apparently, this is developmentally normal for 18 month-olds, but it sure is awful! Colton wailed every time we left him in the church nursery, so much so that he would be brought to us by the service hour because he was inconsolable. If we went into a new situation, even if we were staying with him, he would cry. I’ve been doing a ton of preparation with him, “Mommy is going to stay with you and we will have fun!” or “Mommy is going to leave you to play with your friends, but I will be right back, and you will have fun!” and it seems to be helping, as we’ve had a good week being in the church nursery, story time and music class with a little crying at the beginning, but warming up and having a great time by the end.

Ready for music class - before the tears.

Speaking of music class, Colton has been to two classes now, and seems to be enjoying it. Basically, the class is “music and movement” for toddlers. There are two leaders who sing with the kids, and each song either has motions or things for the kids to play with during the song (stars for “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star,” a marching song, bells to shake, etc.) and they listen to a classical piece of music each class. The best part? There is a giraffe puppet named GiGi who comes to visit for the second half of the class. The first class was pretty awful; he clung to me, cried, told me, “car, go” and clutched a bag of crackers like a security blanket. But when GiGi came out, Colton decided that maybe music class would be okay. When they brought out the bubbles in his second class, he was sold.

Colton’s vocabulary is HUGE. He says, unprompted, over 100 words and has a variety of animal noises. Apparently, the developmentally normal word count for his age is 15 words, so he’s well on target for verbal development. He doesn’t really talk in sentences much, and when he gets upset or excited has a hard time telling me what he wants, but the 100+ words really helps in terms of reducing tantrums and just seeing his personality.

Colton is still tiny, barely tipping the scales at 22 pounds (somewhere between the 5th and 10th percentile). He’s in the 25th percentile for height, wears a size 5 shoe and a size 4 diaper. As we like to say, all his calories go into his vocabulary.

Colton has really started climbing more this month. He’s always climbing onto our dining room chairs, and has started climbing onto the table too. Yesterday, he decided this was the best way to play with his train table:

And the next day, preferred this:

This time, he used the drawer as a step-stool.

Imaginative play has really taken off this month as well. Colton loves to pretend to feed his bear and his parents. He also likes to put bear to bed, laying him down, covering him with a blanket and patting and rocking him to help him sleep. He also recently helped me “fix” his glow-worm. That was so much fun, he went around “fixing” as many other things as he could find! The play microwave I found at Goodwill Outlet is also a big hit.

Fixing is serious buisness Mom!

Colton loves to “help” around the house. He picks up anything he thinks is trash and will proudly bring it to me. His favorite way to help, I think, is making my coffee in the morning. If he’s upset about having his diaper changed, all I have to say is, “we need to change your diaper, then we can make Mommy’s coffee,” and he’s instantly saying, “coffee, coffee, coffee!” until we make it. He makes a decent cup of coffee too!

We’ve also started time-outs recently (which is really a whole ‘nother post), and Colton is apparently in love with them. When he was trying to unplug something recently, I told him if it could hurt him and he needed to leave it alone or he would get a time out. He walked away from the outlet (yay!) and sat in the corner. When I asked him what he was doing, he happily said, “time out! Time out!” I’m pretty sure that’s not the right reaction to a time out.

Happy 19 months buddy! Mommy loves watching you learn new things and grow. I can’t believe what a big boy you’ve become!

I don’t think she means to be, she just has lots and lots of strong opinions, and she’s in her 80′s, so that makes her opinions seem even funnier. So, I’ve decided to start an occasional series sharing things she would blog about, if she understood the internet.

One of the first topics MeMe might touch on? Tattoos.

Tattoos are, under no circumstances, acceptable. Ever. End of discussion.

And I can’t figure out what exactly to do about it.

Prior to Christmas, we knew Colton would be receiving several new toys that presented storage problems. We got him a train table (he was excited about it for DAYS – best gift ever!), which thankfully has drawers for storage, but is HUGE. He also received the Little People Farm and tractor, plus Noah’s Ark. And all of those come with animals and people to add to what he already had.

Since we knew these things were coming, we made some room before the gift opening extravaganza began. I finally forced myself to pack up all of the baby toys (Sofie the Giraffe, lovies he wasn’t attached to, rattles, soft books), which helped a lot. Then, I moved his music table to the basement. He still played with this some, but I decided it took up a little too much space for the time he played with it. I also packed up a couple other toys that didn’t seem to get played with enough to justify the space they took up.

But, we still have a lot of toys to store. I’m not sure I want to go the route of toy rotation. I think it’s a good idea in theory, but I don’t think I would keep up with it, realistically. Right now, most of the toys are in our den/playroom, and are stored on an old MDF shelf left over from Hubby’s college days. I picked up two inexpensive bins from Wal-Mart to help coral some small pieces until I figure out what I ultimately want to do.

I don’t think I want to end up going the bin route as a permanent solution, since Colton is a big fan of dumping the contents of the bins all over the floor, but I do like the convenience of dumping everything back into bins when I clean up. Maybe something with drawers would be the way to go?

I love the train storage and display I found via Pinterest,

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And would love to do something similar when we finalize our den layout. Since my ultimate goal for the space is for it to be fun, but also double as guest quarters, I’d like toy storage that looks good and has some display space. I found an option that looks like it would work well for us, but at over $300, seems a little pricey.

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Have you seen any other similar options? I bet Hubby could build something similar, but it would take eons.

My other big conundrum, is whether or not to keep some toys in Colton’s room, or transfer them all into the den. He only has one small bin of plastic toys in his room (and another bin of stuffed animals), which he mostly plays when I shower. I do have a free drawer in Colton’s bookcase, and could very easily have a second, but I’m not sure I want to store lots of little pieces in his room right now.

So, any brilliant ideas? Help!

I wanted to know how much of what I was telling him he was retaining, so when he asked for his Bible one day I said, “Colton, who is the Bible about?”

“Daddy.”

Obviously, he is learning so much.

Professor X is talking to Magneto, trying to get him to control his powers. Magneto had only been able to access his powers by channeling his rage, but X suggests he finds a place “between rage and serenity” instead. Looking into his mind, Professor X pulls out Magneto’s happiest memory, a simple one where he and his mother appear to be celebrating Hanukkah. Moved, Magento replies, “I forgot I still had that memory.”

I started wondering what my happiest memory is. Is it something that I have almost forgotten to remember?

Several years ago, traveling home from college with just my dad, I asked him what the happiest day of his life was. I remember thinking it would be something like the day he got married, or when my brother and I were born, but he surprised me. His happiest day happened when I was five, my brother three, and we were on vacation in the mountains. I have a vague memory of ridding on my uncle’s shoulders and watching my dad throw a paper airplane off a mountain right before we left. It was a good, simple day.

My happiest memory? I’m not totally sure, but I know it’s not a big one, like the day I got married or the day Colton was born.

I think, maybe it’s Hubby coming home from work, packing up the baby and dog and going on walks last summer. Or hanging out at the Ripley’s Believe it or Not Aquarium in Tennessee and then getting pancakes this spring. Or maybe it’s that one night this fall when Colton, Hubby  and the dog were all in the kitchen with me, underfoot – a little crazy, but wonderful.

None of those days were perfect. When we went on those walks I was still healing, and they were slow and sometimes painful. That night after the Aquarium, Colton refused to sleep in his own room. That night, I’m sure Colton drove me nuts pulling out and throwing every piece of Tupperware we own.

But the feeling in that moment was wonderful.

Sure, sometimes the big things in life are equally wonderful, but I think these little moments we hardly know we remember are what makes life wonderful.

Hanging out with my brother.

He was so tiny! And cute! And chubby (for him)!

So, since it was the end of 2011, and Hubby randomly got off work early, we decided to bit farewell to Colton’s baby-hood and take him to get his very first haircut.  I really haven’t been wanting to take him for a haircut, but with the winter we’ve seen a serious lack of humidity, which means Colton’s front curls were always flat, causing his hair to perpetually be in his eyes. But still, it isn’t easy to say goodbye to hair this cute:

The curls! (Caroline took this - thanks!)

The haircut was mostly uneventful. We didn’t wear a cape, because Colton doesn’t allow bibs to stay on for more than 5 seconds, so I figured it was pointless to try. He was happy as long as he was eating his special snack (cheez-its, graham crackers and yogurt melts), and by the end, he looked like a big boy.

We ended up cutting more off than I originally envisioned, but I think it looks good and was for the best. Now, I won’t have to worry about getting it cut again in two weeks. We did leave the back a little longer, but his adorable ringlets are gone.

Ah well, 2012 will be the year of the big boy.

For a week, he’d been running a low-grade fever off and on, and I had been assured after a visit on Monday that it was the result of teething, vaccines and maybe a small virus. Nothing to worry about, continue with our Christmas plans. His fever got higher and lasted longer as the week went on. Christmas eve day, I called our pediatrician’s nurse line, and she suggested I try to wait until we came back into town. Colton’s fever went back down, he perked back up, and all seemed well.

Christmas Day seemed like he had finally turned a corner. We went to my aunt and uncle’s for Christmas lunch with the entire family, where Colton ate more than he had been. Hubby took him back to my grandparents for a nap, and about two hours later, my cousin answered the phone, handed it to me and said, “it’s a screaming baby.”

From the moment I touched him, I could tell he was burning up. Taking his temperature revealed a fever of 103.8, and it wasn’t quite time yet for him to take more Motrin. I relayed this info to my mom, who proclaimed, “okay, we’re going.” So, we packed up and headed to the next town over (my grandparents small town has an emergency clinic, but no hospital with emergency room. Since the clinic had closed, the ER was our only option.) and their ER.

I was very impressed with the ER. Before I even had time to sit down, we were called back for an initial exam by a very nice nurse. After taking his temperature (103.6), she gave him some more motrin, and continued the exam. She asked me to rate Colton’s pain on a scale of 1 to 10, which surprised me. I said 6, and shortly after we were sent back to a little room with a bed, where we were greeted by the nicest ER doctor EVER.

Colton also perked up around this point, eating the entire bag of Gerber Melts Santa had brought him. The doctor talked to Colton, played with him, tickled him, and proclaimed him to have a nasty ear infection. We were then released to find an open pharmacy to fill our prescriptions (amoxicillian and ear drops). We’ve been continuing with the motrin for pain and fever, and Colton seems to be mostly back to his happy self.

All-in-all, my first ER experience as a parent was not as horrible as I was prepared for it to be. And, I’ll always have a good story of Colton’s second Christmas!