Silly girl

Alli is such a fun and silly girl. We went to the sugar babies consignment and got a new to us play mat and Alli has deemed it to be her new toy. Although when I tell her that it is for her brother she will say "baby e-an" as she points to it. Below are some more pictures of her being my silly little girl!

Other touches

Here are pictures of the newest decorations for the room. Also notice that I finally finished the lamp shade trim!

Eeek! Excited!

Throughout the whole process of deciding what to do with Ethan's room, I kept looking back and asking myself...am I crazy for wanting to put red, blue and grey together? The red makes sense with a fire theme...the blue just because it was easy to find if you went with "patriotic" fabrics...but the grey - oh the grey - it had NO connection. I just wanted to grey because I couldn't have what I really wanted....a grey wall. Well now let me jog your memory. Below are the fabrics for the room.
I still love them. I love what all we've been able to make with them. I'm so tickled with how everything as turned out thus far. Recently, Marilyn found us some adorable fire theme figurines to add to the room and I just love the touches they add as well (Fire boot shaped coin bank, Engine face picture frame and a fire hose wrapped clock). The only thing I lacked was the blanket/quilt that a dear family friend is making with the above fabrics.

Today I got a wonderful phone call from marilyn telling me that Diane needed me to go on facebook and look at the fabric layout for the quilt so she could get ready to sew it. I was so excited. I quickly got on facebook and this is what I see.

Isn't it so awesome?!? I can't wait to see it all sewn together. The only thing that caught me off guard was that I didn't see my grey! So I asked Diane where the grey was and unfortunately heard she couldn't make it work with the pattern. She is going to do a white backing fabric which will be wonderful but I had to give her a hard time and suggest putting the grey on the back. I had to laugh at this point because Diane LOVES bright vibrant colors and prints. So my boring grey/white stripe fabric was not jiving with her interests. She did assure me though that she had worked the grey into the 2nd quilt...WAIT WHAT?!? 2nd quilt! I had no clue she was doing a second quilt. So after much prodding and teasing by me and marilyn, Diane laid the pattern out to show us and VOILA!!!
Now I feel so vindicated! I don't feel crazy anymore for wanting the grey. Look at the wonderful interest that it adds to the pattern! Oh my goodness I love it.

Not too much longer

I had another doctor check up today and I can officially start counting down the days until Ethan joins our family. We have set an induction date for March 13th, unless I go into labor before then. As of today I am already dilated to 2cm. This is big considering when I was induced with Alli I was barely 2cm when we got to the hospital. Dr. Riley says it isn't unrealistic to think that I could be 3-4cm by the 13th. He thinks this labor should go much quicker (as most 2nd babies do). It is nice to hear though that it hopefully won't take 12 HOURS to have this kid.

I asked what my starting weight was today and as of today I have gained 31 lbs with this baby! Thankfully the 31 lbs is all baby which explains why my hips and back hurt all the time. I just hope this baby isn't a mammoth 10 lbs or something! I really like the thought of him being small like Alli was at 6 lbs 14oz. Oh well. We will see how it all turns out.

I guess I need to take things seriously now though and get my hospital bag together!

Shock n Awe

Alli is quickly creeping up on 3 years old. We've talked about potty training a lot with her. She has never shown any interest. Every time we mention it or ask if she wants to try to go, she just shakes her head and says no. Alli has always been on her own schedule and so we've never pushed her. As much as I would love to have her out of diapers before Ethan gets here...I KNEW that would never happen.

So tonight we had a small shock and awe moment. I was getting Alli ready for bed and while changing her diaper I realize she is pushing like she might try to poop. So I asked her if she needed to go. She just kept saying poopy and would answer my question. So I just got her diaper on and went back to our bedtime routine. After getting her teeth brushed we normally let her do something fun for a few minutes. I asked her if she wanted to do that and she says to me "Go Poopy". I jokingly said to her, "Yeah I wish" and asked her where she wanted to go poopy. So lo and behold she runs into the bathroom and points to the toilet. So as much as I was disbelieving that she would even stay on the seat for a couple seconds, I went ahead with it. To my surprise again, after getting her on the seat she actually starts trying to push. She had never even tried before. She would usually just sit there so I was stoked that she actually tried. Then, to my surprise I actually hear her passing gas. Now...to Alli, this is also going poopy. So she was excited. She thought she was going poopy in the toilet. I kept encouraging her and telling her to keep trying. She stayed on a lot longer than I thought she would and really gave it a good effort. I was so excited that she tried and got so close that we had to call daddy to share the good news. So we get daddy on the phone and she told daddy she went poopy. Simple pleasures in life and we are so proud of her for finally trying with real effort! Way to go Alli!

Time for change

Remember this nice beautiful red color we have in our kitchen???....
Yeah...well, time for that color to go. We loved the red, but in our skinny galley kitchen that red color just makes you feel boxed in. It always seems so dark downstairs. We have so many windows on the backside of the house that it quickly heats up during the afternoon, so we normally leave the blinds closed. This causes our downstairs to stay dark, but I've gotten used to it and don't mind. We recently decided though that we are ready to do some updates in our house and the kitchen is due for some TLC. We wanted to upgrade our sink and put in a back splash. We've debated colors for back splash and appliances and finally settled on keeping it bright and light. So we decided to carry the cream color in that we used in the rest of the downstairs. We also took down the curtains and added some faux wood blinds. We love how it turned out. Now even when we come downstairs in the morning and all the blinds and curtains are closed, it still has a lot of light and feels so inviting!
Next up....tile back splash!

Curtains

I'm so excited with how these projects are turning out. I've taken on so many projects in this room that are out of my comfort zone. The curtains were absolutely one of these projects. I just love how they turned out!
Ben suggested doing curtains for each shelf instead of one big curtain like I had initially envisioned. I think he was right!