Before and After: Back of the house

I feel like I'm cheating with some of these pictures, especially in the post I just did. The "before" ones were taken in the gray, cloudy mud season and make the "after" shots look practically jungle-like with all the spring green! Not my fault, before pictures, not my fault.

So where we last left off, the deck was in progress. I didn't really realize how much work was left, but Jason has now added the spindles, the railing, and finished the lattice work underneath. While we are on the lattice, we chose to do a dark gray to match the foundation (I chose Hearthstone by Benjamin Moore). Well, the foundation ended up a light gray, and the lattice, although called "dark gray", ended up almost matching the house. Which is neither here nor there I guess. So here is where we are at!

OVERALL:

DECK

And a few others

I don't have a true garage before so it gets just an after:

And based on where the sun is right now it's a little dark but oh well. 

I have just had to start typing with one hand because my situation is now this, literally right this moment:

Whereas before he was asleep in his swing. Sorry blog readers, you are getting bumped for my baby :) 

2 Months Old

This post is pretty self-explanatory :) Alex had his 2 month pediatrician appointment yesterday and he is as perfect as perfect can be.

Weight: 12 pounds 15 ounces (75th percentile)

Length (height?): 23.75 inches (75th percentile)

Head circumference: 16 cm (85th percentile)

Diapers: Size 1

Bottles: Only a couple so far. I need to give him more so he can practice, he's not great at them yet.

Clothes: 3 months

Favorite pastime: Walks in the carrier, batting at the squirrel on his playmat

Eyes: Blue

Hair: Strawberry blond. This is true, folks. His hair has a reddish tint to it on the sides (?)

Looks: Like me. Well, people either say that they don't know who he looks like or that he looks like me. Which is fine in my book :)

He got a couple shots yesterday at his appointment and was a little cranky but who wouldn't be. Sleepwise, he is a dream. He goes down for the night anytime between 9:15-10:15 pm and usually gives me a stretch until 4 am on average. He eats and goes right back to sleep until 6:30 am, at which point he usually wakes up grunting/gassy but when I bring him in bed with me he calms right down. When Ashton was this age he was already in his own room but I just am not ready to kick Alex out yet. I'm in uncharted territory as far as this goes because Ashton was used to sleeping swaddled and flat on his back from the very beginning. Alex is not used to either of these things. He sleeps on an incline, in the rock n play, with his arms free. So I'm worried about the transition from his cozy little nest to the vast flatland that is his crib. Just like with Ashton starting potty training, getting rid of his paci, and getting him a big boy bed, I have no idea how to do it and therefore am avoiding it altogether. Great parenting, I know. 

Alex is smiling, gurgling, cooing, and overall a super calm baby. So sweet, quiet and happy. Jason and I have already joked that Ashton is going to be bruising it up out on some kind of sports field and Alex will be in the library. Do you think you can tell how a person is going to turn out based on how they were as a baby? I do. 

Anyway, I'm soaking up my time with him as my maternity leave comes to an end in a few weeks. My start date had been set for June 4, but then I looked at the calendar, counted the weeks, and the full 12 that FMLA gives you would put me back June 11. So I'm waiting for confirmation that I can have one more week. Both boys are going to be at the home daycare that Ashton has been going to a couple days a week since last August. They will go together on Wednesdays and Thursdays (the two days I am working) until the fall, when Ashton starts preschool. I have yet to figure out anything past the end of August but feel good about the summer at least.

The weather is getting warmer, sunnier, brighter and everything is well (except Ashton's knees, they've already taken a beating and it isn't even Memorial Day). Happy 2 months Alex! As soon as I post your pictures I am coming to scoop you up and kiss your face. So get ready :)

Before and After: House Exterior

This is one of my most exciting posts to date! Well, besides our kids being born. Haha. We finally had our house painted, something that was #1 on my to-do list since we moved in. The main body of the house was a faded green, and then on the front bump-out was this awful fake siding. I was hoping we could take it off and there would be shingles underneath that would match. Not so. Can't remember if I told the blog this yet or not, but soon after we bought the house, I was talking to our neighbor across the street who has lived here 50 years. A long time ago, there was a family here whose mother or grandmother got sick. They built the front foyer with the large picture window as an addition so that she could rest in her hospital bed and look outside. This explained the cable and multiple electrical outlets in this space, and also the siding. I did NOT ask if she died here.

Anyway, the two different sidings, off-colored shingles and faded green were begging to be made over. Once we decided to go for it, I had the hardest time picking a color. It's not like a bathroom, people. Our roof is orangey-brown and very limiting, so I had always thought a midnight blue would look sharp. I had several pints mixed and had little squares of all these blues all over the side of the house. I thought I had decided on Hale Navy by Benjamin Moore but once our painter started I was like, "STOP!! That's not it!" and went back to the drawing board. For a couple weeks we had a half painted house and a back wall that looked like this:

After the dark blue fiasco (even though it was navy, it seemed far too royal blue once on the house), I thought, maybe tan? Maybe just refresh the green? And threw those colors up there too but nothing spoke to me like the dark blues did, even though all the ones I tried were too black, too gray, too purple. Our neighbors totally thought we were crazy. The days passed and I was beginning to think they were right. I had in my mind a midnight blue and just couldn't find it.

So then one day, I'm sitting there at the island flipping through the paint deck yet again and there it is: MIDNIGHT BLUE. What? Come on now. How did I never see it? It was on the bottom of a strip and then two strips over, a very close cousin called Westcott Navy. I'll save the rest of the boring story, but after a few more pints (of both paint AND beer) and a few more blue squares on the side of the house, Westcott Navy won. 

Without further ado...

BEFORE - FRONT

AFTER - FRONT 

(we never put the shutters back on)

BEFORE - LEFT SIDE

AFTER - LEFT SIDE

BEFORE- RIGHT SIDE

AFTER- RIGHT SIDE

Overall glamour shot:

While I'm here, how about a little bonus before and after: our front door! I'm obsessed! Don't think I didn't overhear the painters laughing about the color I chose (Amarillo by Benjamin Moore). I told them that yellow front doors are the new red front doors. They responded with blank stares. It's okay, I didn't need them to get it.

So the existing color was a dull, scuffed brown and in desperate need of some cheering up.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

One thing that made a huge difference was spray-painting the existing door hardware an oil-rubbed bronze. So here's Jason doing that once the door was primed.

So now our front entryway looks like this and it makes me so happy every time I come home :)

We still need to re-paint the stairs, put the exterior light up and I think I'm going to DIY something with our mailbox as well. Back of the house pictures will come when Jason is finished with the deck, but for now, we are living in a whole different world as I said. A world made possible by Westcott Navy. Thanks Benjamin Moore!

Mother's Day

I'm afraid this post will be short. Absolutely nothing happened this past Sunday that is worth blogging about. Jason worked all day, our weekend visitors (Grandma and Aunt Lizzie!) left first thing in the morning and even now, two days later, I'm trying to think what on earth I did. Picked up the house, did some laundry, and went for a walk with my two boys...it was a perfect 10 of a day, I do remember that. Jason got home around 4:30 pm which was a nice surprise and, just like all other Mother's Days, I insisted on a picture. These were the best ones. Please excuse my hair, I have not had it done since 3 weeks before Alex was born and it's looking pretty, well, non-blond on the top haha. My appointment to take care of that problem is finally this Friday. Anyway! Me and my boys:

After our little photo sesh we hopped in the car and went to Home Depot. My favorite place on earth. Not. But this trip was all about me so it was much better than usual. I got to pick out new exterior lights for the front and back of the house, look at kitchen faucets, and get paint swatches and check out new hardware for our front door. Yay! Our house is being painted as we speak (literally he is outside right now) and sprucing up the overall exterior has me really excited. Before and After coming next week if the weather cooperates and we can get all the projects finished. 

Happy Mother's Day to all the moms out there, whether they have little kids, big kids, grownup kids, furkids, or kids-to-be :) xo

Birth Announcement

It's kind of ironic. My last post was all about how I'm managing with two, how it's not that bad, etc. And that is true. But they are very time consuming, these two boys of mine. I get a free minute here and there, but certainly no big chunks of time to, say, address 75 envelopes for Alex's birth announcements. And I'm just not committed to doing one at a time, whenever I get a chance.

This post is going to drive Jason bananas. You see, I did design birth announcements. I did order them. I even went so far as to complain to Shutterfly that their formatting was messed up and they needed to reprint them, which they did. Weeks ago. But now that I have the final product, I just can't prioritize actually getting them in the mail. Poor Alex. So begins a lifetime of being the second kid: his whole wardrobe is hand-me-downs, I don't take his picture that often, and once he wore the same diaper for 7 hours because I forgot to change him. While we're on diapers, he wears the cheap kind. And now, an e-birth announcement. I fear he will end up therapy, and soon.

So here is what the perfectly cute (and Jason would add "and perfectly PAID FOR!") cards that are sitting in my basement look like.

Like most things, they are better in person. My "right-click, copy, paste" didn't produce a very good photo at all. But isn't there kind of a statue of limitations on birth announcements? Like, it's getting too late to send them out anyway? Maybe it feels like that because I've already had them for so long, and Alex at 8 weeks old looks really different than the Alex at 3 weeks old in the above picture. Anyway, sorry Alex (most people do know that you were born) and sorry Jason (at least I'm saving money on postage).

Today is also Mother's Day. I do not have much to report on this so far. Jason's working, Ashton's napping, and Alex is on his playmat (another hand-me-down, I don't think he knows). It's beautiful outside, there are a couple lawnmowers going, and oh, the laundry just beeped. Happy Mother's Day to me ;)

How is it having two?

Is probably my "most asked" question. And my honest answer is: I like it better! So far, anyway. It's not that it's easier with two, but because they are my only full time job right now, I have enough time to manage everything. This will likely not be the case when I go back to work, and I expect my stress level to go up considerably for many reasons, but for the moment, things are good.

My day begins around 5:30 am, which is typically when Alex is waking up for the second time to eat. He is usually fussy afterwards, so he comes into our bed which seems to soothe him. Often times I prop myself up on pillows and he snores away on my chest. I close my eyes but never fall back asleep. Ashton's up around 7:30 am and we all come downstairs for breakfast and cartoons. After Jason leaves for work, by 9:30 am, I put together a plan for the day which includes either a morning adventure/activity or errands, lunch, naptime for Ashton from 2-4 pm, and then whichever we didn't do in the morning (activity or errands). Dinner is at 6:45 pm, tubby/stories at 7:30 pm and lights out (for Ashton) by 8:15 pm. My day ends around 10:30 pm which is when Alex officially goes to bed.

My main problem is when Ashton acts like the toddler he is ;) I feel like I do a lot more policing and a lot more yelling, unfortunately. "Ashton, you can't paint with the jelly!" "Ashton, stop throwing rocks at my head!" "Ashton, the back of the couch is not for climbing!" "Ashton, don't step on your brother!" What makes it worse is that my desperate pleas usually result in maniacal laughing and repetition of the behavior I've just condemned. Obviously. I think I would be running interference on just about everything at this age even if Alex were not here, but he does take some of my attention which Ashton is extra desperate to get back. Even if it's negative, which it often is. So, at the end of some days, I don't usually feel like Mom of the Year. But that's not entirely a byproduct of having two, that's just having a 2.75 year old boy (ha! today actually! Ashton is 2 and three quarters just today. Wow...).

But then I have moments when the stars align and both boys are sleeping at the same time (like right now, hence this blog post). I whirl around for an hour and get the laundry finished, emails written, dishes done, and toys picked up and in those moments I feel like I can do this "having two" thing. Keeping up the house and keeping things clean is important to me and if I am organized in that regard, I am much happier. As I said, when I go back to work and I don't have time for all the behind-the-scenes extras, it will be different. But for now, I can sum up by asserting that going from 1 to 2 kids is not the same challenge as going from 0 to 1. With the latter, you are learning how to care 24/7 for someone other than yourself, someone who is impossibly tiny, who can't tell you what they need and who deprives you of so much sleep you don't even know what day it is. You also struggle with the huge identity change of  becoming "mom". With the former, you already know how to breastfeed, pack a diaper bag, the estimated time it will take you to leave the house and at precisely which intervals to have another coffee. It's a much smaller learning curve. You're also used to your life revolving around an "offspring" so adding another isn't a huge deal. In fact, I rather enjoy that I get a two-fer when I'm reading stories or going out to the park.

I have no idea if I answered the question that I initially named this post. Basically, it's great to have two little boys. I couldn't imagine loving another one like I love Ashton but Alex is so calm and easy (two words I would NOT use to describe Ashton haha) that I sometimes think I love him more. Don't tell Ashton he has competition on this blog ;)