Distractions

Today my littlest started preschool. It will only be 2 mornings for 2 1/2 hours and considering pick-up and drop-off, more like 2 hours alone but this is still more than I've had in almost 6 years. Some mamas might crave this. I thought it was productive yet all too quiet. I wanted to stop and watch the forklift at the hardware store but realized I didn't have a little buddy to watch with me. With both my boys starting school within 2 weeks of each other it's been a big adjustment.

So instead of crying and wallowing, I figured I'd fill my time with projects to distract myself from the silence. Day 1 project was: project under kitchen sink. It turned out just as I wanted! My mom would be so proud. :)

Sweet Boy

So much has been going through my mind the past year regarding my big boy. Because of our infertility problems, I have found myself wanting to stop his growth and maturity perhaps more than most other parents. I remember my father-in-law talking about parents that cry when their first-born goes to preschool or Kindergarten and how he thought it was ridiculous because they should be happy they're growing and progressing and that is the point of life. I nodded in agreement at the time. My, how things have changed.

I love that my boys play and imagine all morning long together. I love that we eat lunch together, often outside, enjoying our conversation about what trucks are strongest, what cars are fastest, and who was eating their lunch the best. The other day he said, "Mama, did you know that grasshoppers are plant-eaters and are very destructive, eating everything in their path?" quoting his encyclopedia book. In the past few months he has changed so much: learning to read, swapping his naptime for quiet time, learning to swim with his face in and arms and legs moving, and outgrowing all his church pants.

It is a double-edge sword because while I love seeing him learning and his mind blossoming, I find myself craving his little 8-pound self. We watch movie clips of when he learned to walk, when L was born and he met his best friend, his first day of preschool, and I find my heart overflowing with pride, contentment, fear, and the strong desire to keep him home in his innocent sweet state forever.

I considered homeschooling for kindergarten because I couldn't bear my little 5-year old going to school for 7.5 hours every day with only 20-minutes to run and play; I couldn't bear having one seat empty at our lunch picnic every day; I couldn't bear having kids make fun of him. Yet at the same time I saw his eager eyes excited to meet new friends and try things on his own so I decided to send him. The day the teacher letters came gave me such relief: he got the teacher that we heard so many great things about and would be with our neighbor, the sweetest little playmate ever.

We went a few days ago for his 5-year checkup and our amazing pediatrician casually conversed with him as she discovered his developmental progress. "What do you want to be when you grow up?" she asked. "Um.... a zookeeper," was his response. "And what do you like to play with?" "Hm... I like hide-and-go-seek. That's pretty much it." "Do you like to play pretend?" "No, not exactly." Then I interjected with, "Oh. Tell her about the volcano you found in our living room yesterday." He then proceeded to tell her of the maps they drew and the volcano they found and she smiled, nodded, and continued typing her notes about him. This went on for about 15 minutes and as I observed and chuckled, I realized he is ready. No matter how much I want him to stay my baby, he is ready. No matter how I wish I could snuggle him and keep him in my grasp forever, he is ready. And no matter how much L and I will cry when we realize for the 50th time that day that he's not here, he is ready. Ready or not, here he comes.

Mending Days

We are currently on day 7 of L's stomach virus. Yesterday he was finally able to keep down 1 oz of pedialyte without immediately throwing it up. Hallelujah! But with all this home time it did give me the chance to make a dent in my mending pile. Now Boozle's pants drawer has more than 1 pair of jeans and various track/sweat pants. I found this tutorial and loved the look of it more than a traditional patch.

One tip: green thread looks rather like a grass stain from far away...

Roman shade lessons

The moulding in our new/ancient house is all original to the house, including original color (i.e. never been painted). While my modern aesthetic yearns to paint it, the history and cost have prohibited us from doing so. In the main living spaces we've made it work by using light greige almost white paint and using color in accessories but in the bedrooms it just felt so dark. So I decided to make light roman shades for the boys' room and to make them outside-mount to cover most of the trim. It was quite the project. Every tutorial I read said it was a cinch and maybe if you have an ideal sewing room/workspace, lots of free time, and sew a lot it would be, but for me it took many evenings. I love how it turned out though and that's all that matters, amiright?

Mostly I used this tutorial and thought it was fabulous but I did end up using velcro up on the mounter board instead of more eye rings for ease. So far it's holding up great.

Here are some of the lessons I learned while constructing:
1. It's very hard to cut a perfectly straight line when it involves fabric pieces bigger than 4"x4".

2. Use a huge workspace. Otherwise it's nearly impossible to fudge your not-perfectly-straight lines to match up.
3. So much measuring to so little sewing. Very tedious.

4. When marking for dowel placement, start measuring and marking from the bottom. (unless you like to erase many errant pencil lines)

5. Hand sewing the rings after a long horrible day is therapeutic. (it also means you're almost done!)
6. If using a cord clamp, install before the shade and header board are hung.

Friday

Here are a few more updates with some more details. This is how it looked on Friday:

This is the the view standing in the new laundry room and looking into the new mudroom. They closed off the old window, put the new door in which is 3/4 windows so lots of light!

This is the sewer pipe in the basement which may seem unimportant to some but the previous pipe was most likely from when plumbing was first invented and had a hole plugged with a clothespin! It was on its last leg and the plumber replaced all the plumbing in the whole house in one single day.

Here you can see the new sewage pipe connecting to a piece of the old. Quite a difference.

This is the view from the laundry room and into the new bathroom. Next to that new window will be a pocket door closing off the bathroom and to the right of the laundry plumbing will be a 30" closet/cabinet.

This is the new bathroom and the new plumbing in the corner. Amazed and thrilled at how quickly it's all coming together.

Framing!

First update in photos of many.

It's Begun!

It's been over a month since we closed on the new house and since then, T has been very busy every single evening ripping up flooring, taking down wallpaper (with huge help from Jim & Deana!), demolishing plaster, repairing cracks, etc... After all that, today was the big day and the contractors started working. I can't wait to get over there and see what they got done today. They said they should be ready for inspections by Monday so it's really happening! Hard to believe. I'm the spending committee and so far I've bought a vanity, a kitchen, all the appliances, a shower, faucets, and more. Today I ordered the flooring for the mudroom/laundry room as well as for the bathroom and we're excited about what we went with.

For the mudroom/laundry room we decided on honed travertine tile. It's gorgeous! Then for the bathroom we looked at many many options but decided on the classic 1" hex carrara marble tile. Also gorgeous. And last night I started packing up our house so it's starting to feel official. Hard to believe that in 3ish weeks, we will no longer live here. Such good memories here but we're excited for the next phase!

Best $7 I ever spent

I should have known when I bought these Ethan Allen chairs that everything would be very well-made (read: complicated to disassemble). The seat is bolted down to the frame with a screw with a square head. So off to Sears we went to find a Robertson screw driver to take off the seat. While we were there, after we took a few "rides" on the ride-on mowers, of course, I also spotted a tack remover for $7. Seemed better than my butter knife that I had been using to remove the 7,000 staples. Needless to say, it's going much quicker now.

Presenting: 13 Kenmuir

Here are the photos of our house pre-renovation. To quote Alitris, "It's like a time capsule." Indeed, it is. Original woodwork (which I am hesitant to paint but I just can't find a single room that I like with dark woodwork so most likely it will be painted white), original floors which will be sanded down and stained dark brown, original electrical which will be torn out and updated, etc... Without further adieu, here she is:

front

living room

reading nook

kitchen

Let the reupholstery fun begin

Since T is over at the new house every evening ripping up 50+ year old linoleum, demo-ing kitchen walls, etc... I decided I'd start on my contribution to the new house: style. And the first thing needing some style are the Ethan Allen chairs we scored from Craigslist a bit ago. So armed with blogs, YouTube clips, and a singer upholstery book, I began the job. So far, so good.

The only problem so far is this crazy fabric is so rough, it literally sands my skin off. No wonder it has held up so well! Can't wait to see the final product

Ethan Allen Chairs Part II

We are almost ready to close on a house aka our large reno project. It's a late 19th- or early 20th-century (we've seen a few different dates for when it was built) colonial/victorian-style house and as Lis put it, "It's like a time capsule." If anyone is in need of a 1940s-styled New Jersey house, we got you covered. It's got it all: original woodwork, a butler's pantry, and even a furnace that has a door that you could put coal in (luckily it's been converted over to gas). Needless to say, it needs a LOT of work. So while our attorney, millions of inspectors, mortgage peeps, realtors, etc... are doing their stuff (which takes at least 2 months here), we're busy trying to design a new kitchen, new floors, color scheme, decide which walls to knock down, etc...

For the living room, the inspiration is this color scheme:



source

And for the kitchen, we're going for this type of look:


source

So I'm leaning towards reupholstering these vintage Ethan Allen lounge chairs in the Waverly dark charcoal print above and doing some chartreuse accents in the pillows and maybe in the rug. Fun/stressful times ahead!

Sounds of play

Almost every afternoon, around 4pm after naps and after snacks, I prep and cook dinner while listening to glorious sounds of play. Today it's coming from upstairs as tigger and baby roo ride the tractor around the little town we built yesterday. It is as I listen to this that I consider homeschooling for the first few years. Next year would be the last year boozle can do preschool before starting full-day kindergarten! I can't stand the thought of full-day kindergarten nor can I stand the thought of him being gone next year for preschool. He's still learning how to be the best big brother. He still craves hours to run around and tell story after story to anyone that will listen. He is still perfecting how to build the train track and the street together. To preschool or not to preschool: so many decisions for a mama to make.

Ex.haus.ted

When I accepted my per diem position at the hospital it was with the understanding that I didn't want to work more than 10 hours/week max. I didn't want it to take away from the time I have to nurture, teach, and learn from my babies. In the past 2 weeks I've worked 34.5 hours. Yes, if you divide that by 2 it's definitely more than 10. And it's amazing how much of an impact it has made on me. A coworker was out of town for a month so we all took a few of her shifts but it has definitely taken its toll. I work until 11 pm, come home, get to sleep by midnight, and the past 2 nights have been awoken at 2:22 am with reports of wet sheets and pajamas. So after changing the sheets, cleaning up my big boy, and re-tucking him in, I go back to bed, only to lie there for close to an hour as I try to get back to sleep. 6:45 am the day starts all over again. On top of that there have been big changes happening here with our landlord getting ready to sell our house, us trying to decide what to do, etc...

I've never been a night person. Even in college I was the one that would go to bed early, mid-party or not. I love sleep. I think I always have. And up until now I've never had a problem getting to sleep nor falling back asleep. So the 5-ish hours of sleep I've been getting a night have been slowly but surely wearing me down. All to come to their peak this evening. After a very long day, the boys and I came home at 7:15 (usually their bedtime) and they were instructed to take their clothes off, put pajamas on, etc... After a few tantrums, some whining, and some arguing, I gave the ultimatum that if they couldn't cooperate, they wouldn't get any books. Some more orneriness followed so they were both put to bed without books; Boozle was sobbing and Lincoln singing and talking to himself. I felt so bad that all the stress and exhaustion had led to me depriving us all of our best time of day. It's the time we snuggle together and read books and where I am most grateful to be a mama. I went back upstairs to his room about 3 minutes later to apologize that I was so stressed out and that we couldn't read books because he didn't obey, but we still could snuggle for a bit and he was already asleep. Apparently boozle was also exhausted.

When I have days like this, I always look back and realize I didn't go running today nor did I take any time to breathe deeply. For me, these two things make it possible to be a patient mama. And when it doesn't happen, I feel terrible. Instead, tonight I'll go to bed early, wake up early and go for a run, and pray for two sweet little forgiving boys to greet me in the morning.

Welcome home

Last week we proudly welcomed 2 of these into our home.

Two midcentury Ethan Allen vintage chairs, courtesy of our local Craigslist. They are extremely comfortable, well-made, and the perfect size for our little cozy house. Can't wait to learn to reupholster them and unveil their fabulous potential. I've definitely got my work cut out for me with these.

Can't Believe I Made It

It seems like today was a very hard today for a lot of my fellow mamas. For some reason, today was not a hard day for me because my boys were such sweet boys and because of this, I feel very blessed and reflective today. At one point today, we were at playgroup and I looked over and my boys were sharing crackers while Boozle had his arm around L. Such a tender boy.

If you would have asked me a year ago if I ever thought the day would come that my day would glide by and be filled with playing, fun, creativity, and sharing, I would have said no way. When L was a little baby, I was so completely overwhelmed I felt like there was no light at the end of the tunnel. Two babies under the age of 2 was just too much for me on many days. Luckily I have a dear friend that came to my rescue many times, watching them while I took a shower and cleaned the bathroom, taking them to the park so I could run two errands on the same day (!!) etc...

Today I got a text message from a first-time mama friend with a newborn baby saying, "Thank you so much. I hope you don't take this the wrong way because I don't think you're old, but you've been like a mom to me." It made my heart swell and it made me think of that dear friend was like a mom to me when I had Lincoln. Everyone living far from family needs that "mom" friend: the one that offers the exact bit of advice you need that day, the one that gives you a breath when you feel you're drowning. I recently read this article and it brought back so many memories. I absolutely love the line that says:

"When I had only one child, she was so heavy. Now I can see that children are as light as air. They float past you, nudging against you like balloons as they ascend.

Dear mother, don’t worry about enjoying your life. Your life is hard; your life will be hard. That doesn’t mean you’re doing something wrong—it means you’re doing it right."

And, although not every day by any means, today I feel exactly this: my children are floating past me with their strong spirits leading them along and I am extremely grateful to be able to watch the ascent.

Extremes

How is it that in one day my babies can be stealing every possible toy from each other and fussing about it every time and 10 minutes later can be hugging each other in a box, never to let go? It's the latter moments I hope to remember and the former I hope to forget.

A Bit of Cheer

To quote Boozle, "A flower needs 3 things: sun, water, and soil," which he learned in our seed plant class at the Frelinghuysen Arboretum. And today we put that fact to the test as we filled my new Mothers Day sunny window boxes with soil and flowers.


Then, after we were done, Boozle loved dumping the water on them and watching it run out the bottom. Thanks to the green thumb of Oma, I think they just might add a bit of cheer to our porch.




So so happy that spring is here!

Happy Easter

Blue was the theme of the day today: crystal blue warm skies, Reese's peanut butter eggs wrapped in blue for Boozle to devour, a new blue and white Easter shirt for Boozle, and of course the knitted blue owl vest for Big Baby. I always love Easter Sunday. Spring is in the air and the Easter hymns and messages at church spoke to my soul. What a glorious time of rebirth and renewal and what a gift Jesus Christ gave us all. For this I am introspective and thankful today.

happy easter!
love,
the nilssons

Goodbye Creaky Old Floors

Tears welled in my eyes as I walked through the 91-year old hardware store for one of the last times. The floors creaked as I pushed the babies through one of Boozle's favorite stores in Morristown. It will soon be gutted and turned most likely into another restaurant. Just what this town definitely doesn't need one more of. Moore Hardware: filled with antique tools, an old fire engine pedal car (hence, Boozle's favorite), and the nicest store owner around. Today as we bought our last purchase, I felt completely comfortable leaving my perfectly content babies with Howard, the owner, while I ran next door to get cash from the ATM to buy our rake, shovel, and umbrella. When I came back he was telling Boozle tales of his grandsons playing at the shore and asking him who his favorite Thomas engine was.

I expressed my sadness about the store closing and Howard said, "Yep. It is sad. But it's also a new beginning. The end of an era, but the beginning of things for me, too. And this is what really counts," as he pointed to the cash register. "People just do their shopping out on the highway and they just want specialty stores here in town." I then told him about how one of the reasons I love Morristown is because we can literally run our errands. Other than the post office, the double jogger fits into every store and we love to jog to pick up our diaper spray from the health shop, our books from the library, and our picture hangers from Moore's. Now we'll have to join everyone else in driving out to the highway to the big box aka local- and history-crushing stores. Sad, indeed.

Check out more about it here.

Bathtime Baby

One of Big Baby's favorite books says, "Bath time baby, sit and think, while you soak in this green sink." And the other book in the same favorite series says, "Bath time baby, splish splash in bubbles."

Bath time synonyms: fun time, crazy time, scream as loud as you can time (the boys, not me), try not to get paraben- and phthalate-free (free of those but unfortunately, not tear-free) soap in babies' eyes time, try to prevent Boozle from pouring water on Big Baby time, try to get the soap out of Boozle's thickest ever hair in a timely manner time, try to prevent too much bath water consumption, and try to prevent Big Baby from standing up in the bath time.

Usually bath time evenings = early bedtime for Mama.