Double Happiness

Out with the old and in with the new

Since Michael took his bed to his new apartment, his old room was almost a blank slate.  In the picture on the left, his room looks pretty small but that's only because the ceilings are 10 feet high.  The room could easily accommodate a king size bed -- or two twins. With so many possibilities, it's been hard to figure out exactly what to do with it!

We know the girls won't be in their cribs forever so we'll eventually need beds for them.  It seemed pretty safe to get the beds now and use them in Michael's old room until the girls are ready for them (then we'll move them into the nursery). 

So, there's the question of bedding.  We wanted something that would coordinate with the colors in the nursery since we've already invested a small fortune to decorate that room with Pottery Barn Kids window coverings (green gingham panels with pink/green butterfly sheers underneath).  The new bedding needs to be in that color family.  But not pink.  So that leaves green.  This was starting to get pretty easy....

I found the green French Rose bedding at PBK and it was reasonably priced so I tossed two of everything into my online shopping cart and tried not to fall out of my chair when the price (with tax and shipping) topped $600.  That's *only* $300 per bed so I guess it's not too bad but I still had to swig a glass of wine to work up the nerve to enter my credit card number and click "submit".   

Eventually, we're going to buy the white bed you see pictured (with the bedding we bought) above.  But they are $1500 each (with trundle for fun sleepovers with friends) and the girls are still happily sleeping in their cribs so we think we have some time before we'll need that.  In the meanwhile, we'll buy the mattresses and box springs and the room will function as a 2nd guest room.

So, what do you think?  Should we paint the walls yellow?

Michael's new apartment

We used the van to move the rest of Michael's larger items into his new apartment tonight so we had our first chance to look around at his new digs.

The apartment complex is in a nice, clean, part of Saratoga and is walking distance to just about everything.  It looks like lots of young families live there.  The pool was full of happy splashing people and a table was set up outside where two young women were playing a board game.  The walkways were uneven and the landscaping consisted mostly of patches of dead grass and dirt but it looked like a good (ie safe) place to live.   

Michael's apartment has 2 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms with two 19 year old boys in each room.  Yep, you read that right -- there are 4 of them in this apartment.  I can't help but imagine the smell of all those socks.  If anyone has a teenage male still at home, they know what I mean.

Their mattresses are sitting directly on the floor.  I'm sure all of them could have brought the frames but thought it was more stylish to be on the floor (Michael did: we're storing his frame in our garage).  There were several laundry baskets, obviously used for moving, overflowing with household items.  There were boxes everywhere.  Something tells me this is cleaner than we'll ever see this apartment again!

They're using paper plates and plastic cups and don't have plans to change that.  They have one pot and one pan.  We offered to give them some of ours but they didn't think they would ever need more.  I was just dying to open the fridge and have a peek inside but was afraid I'd be haunted by what I did (or didn't) see in there.

In the living room, they have two comfy looking hand-me-down sofas and a 36 inch TV.  Behind one of the sofas, and dividing the room, are two long folding tables set up side by side to accommodate four computers, keyboards and mouse pads.  Andrew laughed and said the room looked like an India call center.  Two of Michael's three roommates were playing an Xbox video game when we came in.  A fan was moving hot air around the room (saving on air-conditioning expenses, I'm sure).  The third roommate was stirring something on the stove and I'm pretty sure I recognized the smell of Macaroni (right before you add the cheese powder).  Gawd, it smelled GOOD!

There were colorful, abstract, odd art/paintings leaning up against the walls in the hall.  Gwen grabbed a hammer out of Michael's laundry basket and looked like she was going to get busy hanging something (or destroying something).  I stopped her. 

There was a 9 week old kitten playing with a shoelace.  He has a long tail which fascinated Maddy since our cat doesn't have a tail at all.  There were guitars here and there and boxes everywhere else.  In the breakfast nook of the kitchen (aka the Dining Room), I saw a small kitchen table but no chairs.

Oh to be 19 again!  This looks like incredible fun!

Michael said he's having a good time living with his friends.  I asked him how he's doing at work and he said he was Employee of the Month this month.  He's been promoted to Shift Leader.  Not too bad considering he's only worked there for two months!  He's still committed to trade school (eventually) but having fun living with friends and working.  For now, I think this will suit him fine.  But when the bills start rolling in, he's sure to see how hard it is to stretch his meager paycheck to cover everything. 

Hopefully he'll be ready to go back to school pretty soon.  Whatever path he chooses in life, I'm sure he'll be incredibly successful.  I just want his path to be as obstacle free as possible.  And, of course, I hope his path crosses ours very often. 

Love

Family FotoFun Friday Challenge #35 
Post your pictures on your blog and leave a link and a comment here before 6/22/07. 

This week's photo challenge is "Love".  Want to play?  Here are the very simple rules.

I got the idea for this week's FFFF from M3 over on the Salsa in China blog.  She wrote about how her twin cuties (Rose and Marie) totally "heart" one another and that made me think about Sisterly Love in our house.  Thanks, MMM!

My girls really do love one another even if they don't always show it.  But here they are showing it!

Family FotoFun Friday Participants

1. amy heymann 2. Our Adoption Trip in China-Mei Jun Qian-Mia Kennedy Gifford 3. Just Another Family 4. Just Keep Swimming 5. Elena Manubens 6. Cannon Fishbowl 7. JourneytoAnnalisa 8. Sophia\'s Journey Continues 9. My Chinese Dream 10. The Princess and the Pea 11. LadyBug Journals 12. Table for 5 13. Journey with AnnaClaire 14. Zoe\'s Place

15. [email protected] 16. G.B.J. Lambooij 17. Journey to Miah 18. Life & Times of Chloe & Pearl 19. Raising Cami Rose 20. Search and Destroy Twins 21. Chopsticks and Tabouli 22. Oohs and Aahs 23. Ally 24. season star 25. Nobody said there\'d be days 26. Rachel Grace Li 27. MississippiZen 28. Life with Emilia

29. Eliza\'s Story 30. mexican chopsticks 31. Mountains and Mountains & Oceans and Oceans 32. She\'s a-DORI-ble!!! 33. Journey to Sarah Lu 34. Our Maddenclan 35. christina 36. Angela Bean 37. Diana\'s Twins 38. Gogoz Place 39. with six you get eggroll 40. The Ghelerter Twins 41. MakandJack

Baby birds always leave the nest

Fifteen minutes ago, the pickup truck containing my son and all of his things backed out of the driveway.  It was 11:50 PM on June 12th and I watched my first baby leave my nest.  Tonight, he'll sleep in his very own apartment for the first time.   

As I waved goodbye and came back into the house, I paused to look at the bird nest in our wreath on the front door.  It's empty again.  The babies that were tiny just two weeks ago grew up and left home.  It made me wonder if their mother was proud of them but just a little bit sad too.

Good luck, my darling baby.  You know our home will always be your home too. 

The Blue Crib or the White Crib?

Maddy wakes up several times per night.  This is nothing new - she's done it since the first day we came to be her family (Aug 2006).  She doesn't cry - she mostly just whimpers and whines for a minute or two and then goes back to sleep.  It's as if she's grumpy about being awake and has to voice her disapproval before falling back to sleep.  Gwen is a really sound sleeper (thankfully!) and manages to sleep right through this. 

But, lately, Maddy's grumpy little whines and whimpers have morphed into something much harder to ignore and I often have to go into the nursery and talk to her to quiet her down.  Anyone who knows me or follows this blog closely knows how I feel about going back into the nursery after lights-out!  For those who don't, let me explain:  The problem with doing this is that it feeds on itself and, pretty soon, you're expected to come running for everything or the screams and cries get more and more desperate until you can't tell what's a trivial situation and what's life-or-death. 

For example, a few nights ago, Maddy screamed and screamed and screamed because the snap on her PJ's came unsnapped.  Before that, she was screaming hysterical bloody murder because her blanket came untucked at the bottom of her crib.  Several times, she screamed because she wanted a toy that she angrily evicted from the crib earlier.  Or, worst of all, she just screams and screams for no reason at all (so you can't "fix" the problem).

What's Gwen doing while this is going on?  She's laying quietly in her crib with her big brown, wide awake, eyes staring up at the ceiling.  She never complains.  She doesn't say anything until you leave the nursery then her sweet little voice calls out "Nite nite, Mama".  This makes me feel sad because that little baby girl likes to sleep.

Out of fairness to Gwen, I've started responding to Maddy's nocturnal scream sessions by removing her from the nursery to spend the remainder of the night in the spare room in the Port-a-Crib (aka "the blue crib") she uses for naps.   I feel bad about this because it's a little crib and her full sized crib is beautiful and big and comfy.  And, best of all, it's in the pretty nursery that she and Gwen share and I like to think that they enjoy having the company of their sister at night.   But Maddy hasn't seemed to mind being exiled and spending the night alone in that tiny crib.  And Gwen doesn't seem to mind that Maddy is being exiled!

Last night, after bedtime stories, I asked Maddy if she wanted to sleep in her white crib or her blue crib and, to my amazement, she picked the blue crib!  I thought she might have not totally understood the question so I wasn't going to force her to accept her choice but we put her in and she got kisses and was tucked in and zipped in and she went right to sleep.  She slept the whole night without so much as a peep and I kept checking the monitor to make sure it was working.  She's normally awake by 6:30 AM but, this morning, I actually had to wake her up at 8:00 AM!

At 12:30 PM, she went back into her blue crib and slept for a record-breaking 3 hours!  Then, she woke up more cheerful than I've ever seen her!  It's 5:30 now and she's still all smiles and is actually letting me sit here at the computer and type this!

I'm happy to let her sleep in her blue crib forever but there's one little problem:  She's almost longer than the mattress!