Crib Sheets

I've mentioned how much I love our Clouds and Stars zipper crib sheets before.  I just got an email today with a coupon code for $20 off of a $100 purchase (SAVE20) until July 13.  I assume it will work for anyone and sent it to a few new and expecting moms I know, but I thought I'd share it here too.

I know these sheets are kind of pricey, but I think these babies (the sheets and my kids!) are worth every penny. 

I felt very secure with Michael and Sophie in their cribs from their first night home with no worries of the sheets coming undone.  They are also a dream to clean.  Michael and Sophie spit up A LOT in the early days.  Between that and the occasional diaper blow-out...times two, we found ourselves changing sheets once or twice a day.  I would have lost my mind wrestling with the crib mattress and traditional sheets, especially when changes had to happen in the middle of the night.  These sheets also make me slightly less nervous to see potty training on the horizon.

I wish they sold this style of zipper sheets in the regular baby stores so I could buy them for new moms and they could be easily returned if necessary.  I'm usually a stick-to-the-registry gal, but I'd break that rule for these if I didn't think it might make me a major pain in the butt.

Anyway, sorry if that seemed like a commercial. I got absolutely nothing for posting this. I just felt the need to share this again.

Date Night

Photo by Bryan Mitchell

Sushi + Moonrise Kingdom + kids who slept well for Grammie and Grandpa + handsome husband = the perfect recipe for a sixth anniversary.

Big Kids

It seems to be about once an hour that I'm taken aback by the little kids that Michael and Sophie are becoming. I'm not sure if it's because I've spent so much more concentrated time with them that I'm seeing it or if they really have been developing rapidly over the last couple of weeks. Maybe a little of both? They follow multi-step directions, engage in conversations with sentences and joking, gestures and expressions. It stirs and amazes me to see my little buddies emerging more and more into themselves.

Getting dressed Tuesday morning the two of them put their own pants on with minimal assistance, got up on their tippy-toes to close the bedroom door again and again, and for the first time Sophie opened it back up herself. Sophie also allowed me to put pigtails in her hair ("two ponies"). With minor distractions in the few minutes after when she likes to pull out all barrettes/bows/bands, she even left them in. They both walked out the door with me when it was time, stayed by me on the deck like I told them while I locked up, held my hands down the stairs, and climbed into the van and into their carseats themselves. All of those behaviors are relatively new for my big kids.

These pictures were taken the next day at a 4th of July parade.  It turns out if you follow the first rule of pigtails, which is the same as that of Fight Club, Sophie will leave them alone.  Don't even say they're cute.

Michael's thing this summer is to wear his Detroit Tigers hat allllllll the time.

That Tuesday morning we went to a weekly concert series for kids in a local downtown. We did this last summer with my then newly-walking toddlers loaded into and out of our big ol' stroller to get into and out of the event. Tuesday I decided to leave the stroller in the van.

Leaving the stroller behind feels like a big gamble with little twins. What if they both melt down or try to run off? I can't scoop them both up and cart them off to the car, at least not easily and without an obnoxious scene.  Over the last few months the kids have done really well at drop-off and pick-up from the child care center and on short shopping trips without the stroller. They hold my hands in parking lots, stay right by my side as I secure their sibling in a carseat, and listen to me right away when they need reminders. The more I see they can do it it, the more I am willing to give it a go again next time. I've found it works best if I tell the kids what we'll be doing each step of the way and what's expected of them, and I load the diaper bag with lots of snacks. When all else fails, "Let's go to the car and eat crackers!" is my escape plan.

As we sat listening to the entertainment warm up that morning, a black storm cloud rolled in, and the band and crowd packed up and relocated to a local restaurant with a small theater space. Sophie and Michael rolled with it, groaning only for a moment when I had to stow their snacks in my bag for the journey, but even that protest was minimal. They ran, ran, ran holding my hands and giggling as the sprinkling started and waited patiently at the restaurant as the rain location got situated.

During that wait we we ran into one of Michael and Sophie's infant caregivers who is now a nanny for a local family.  She had those girls with her for the concert. Ms. Kim recognized us right away, told her girls who Sophie and Michael were to her, that she used to be their teacher. It was funny that the kids she nannies for didn't totally get what her job was, that she's working when she's with them, that taking care of kids and babies is what she does. : ) Sophie and Michael both nodded shyly when I asked if they remembered Ms. Kim, and it seemed like they were trying to process it all. They spent a lot of time with her as babies, but who knows how those memories surface in their little toddler minds after over a year has passed.  Later I noticed Sophie turning to look behind us at Ms. Kim whenever she spoke to her girls. I'm pretty sure, if nothing else, her voice struck something in Sophie's memory.

Watching Michael and Sophie during the music really showed me they are far from the babies they were in the infant room, Sophie especially. Michael didn't like the theater style seats that threatened to eat him up, so he sat on my lap. Sophie, on the other hand, looked like a preschooler, partly due to those pigtails, as she sat in the seat next to me the whole time, fully engaged in the show. The group sang oldies for the most part, cleverly incorporating puppets. They had a little Elmo sing the falsetto "laaaaaa-la-la-la-la-la" parts of "Crocodile Rock" and an owl for the "hooooo" in "I Saw Her Standing There." Michael loved the puppets, and Sophie participated in all the songs like "If You're Happy and You Know It" more excitedly than I've ever seen her do before.

Because the rain delayed the show a bit, it ran late. As it started encroaching on lunch time, Michael got a little antsy and complained that the music was too loud. He's been saying that a lot since he learned the phrase after the fire trucks scared him at the Memorial Day parade. What he's really saying, even if he doesn't know it yet, is that he's getting tired and/or hungry and therefore a bit grumpy. I tend to grumpily tell Mike to turn the TV down when it's getting close to my bedtime...it's hereditary. When the music became "ooo loud," I asked both kids if they were ready to hold my hands and go home in the van, and thankfully Sophie was also in agreement.

It wasn't until we were back home, lunch was done, and both kids were down for their naps that I remembered proudly that we did that all without the safety net of a stroller. It hadn't occured to me once after making the decision to leave it in the van.  Perhaps next week the morning won't fill me with as much confidence, and we'll roll into the concert in City Mini style, but I'm hopeful that more and more successful big kid style outings are in our future.

Freshened Pantry

Back in March I tackled reorganizing the pantry. Now that the fix-up is underway, I asked Mike to give the pantry a new coat of paint, and I added some DIY basket labels for our produce and bread baskets, freshening up the pantry nicely.

I hunted around my Michael's craft store to see if they had chalkboard basket labels like the $8 ones available from Pottery Barn. They didn't, so I bought some small wooden boards ($3 for four), cut some chalkboard vinyl that I already had from the pantry jars, had Mike drill a two small holes at the top of both (I could handle that, but he's faster at it), and threaded some wire through.

I also bought a white fabric-marking pencil to use for all those chalkboard labels. It's much easer to write with than chalk (although I should be skilled at that, right? I'm not) and wipes off easily with a wet paper towel.

Fresh Paint

The pantry today!

Built-in Playmates

One of the advantages of having twins that gets pointed out a lot is that the kids both have a "built-in playmate."  These days that benefit really is proving to be true. 

While I was checking my email in the kitchen this morning, I heard this horse riding/basket bouncing game going on behind me for several minutes.  We had been using those toy baskets for a game of basketball (of course), but Michael and Sophie started pretending they were horses and would get in and out and in and out and giggle all the while.  As always, once I pulled out the camera, the neighs and bouncing and giggling  slowed considerably.

Don't you love Sophie's "I don't know" shrug?  She's been doing that a lot which makes me ask her a lot of tough questions.  : )

Anyway, while it lasted, emails were answered, a few were sent, and the kiddos were perfectly occupied.

I can't stay out of my kitchen.

The other night the kids were in bed, Mike was busy in the basement, and I was trying to relax on the living room couch, but I kept going back out to the kitchen.

Can you guess why?

I couldn't stop looking at the practice door Mike has been working on with the gel stain!  I'm so excited!

In case it's not obvious, the practice door is leaning against the refrigerator in the picture above.  The left side has two thin coats of General Finishes gel stain in java, the right has three, and both have one coat of General Finishes gel top coat.  We're going with three coats of gel stain (with two coats of top coat), and I'm tempted to say go four.  I'm loving the richness!  The thin strip down the middle is the original color--so light and orangey in comparison.  Eeew.

For their part, the kids have broken in the kitchen floor, given it a good durabiltiy test with trucks and blocks and even a lap or two around in my heels.  The entry closet where I keep my shoes has no door at the moment, so it was only a matter of time.

Read on for the rambing thoughts behind my design choices...

Like this inspiration kitchen on www.decorpad.com from Toronto Interior Design Group, the look I have in mind for our kitchen fix-up includes grey walls, espresso cabinets, light countertops, and a light colored tile floor. Here's why:

• Our home ownership circumstances are the greatest influence (home value below what we owe, likely renting out in a year or so, currently saving for a down payment).
• We've chosen to work with what we have as much as possible while making the house appealing and durable for renters. This is all in the hopes of maximizing what we can ask for rent, getting renters in here quickly, and saving us from having to make updates later when we have a new house on our hands. However, this is also all without draining too much of our down payment savings.
• Doing nothing is an option, but I know I wouldn't want to rent a house with a discolored and damaged kitchen floor, and I want reliable, respectful renters like I was.
• Porcelain tile is a durable, affordable flooring choice. We seriously considered cork as well but felt the tile would be more universally appealing to renters and buyers down the road.  And if we're doing the floor...
• I've wanted a grey room for about a decade now. I've offered numerous versions of the color as a choice to Mike for every room he's painted in this house (which is all of them at least once), but he has always prefered one of the other options. This time, I didn't lay out options. I wanted grey. He was cool with that.
• The countertops are already beige. While I would love an upgrade, these neutral countertops that are in perfectly good shape remain. I'll save my white marble and butcher block dreams for another home.
• While I'll admit to scouring Craigslist and our Sears appliance outlet (via website) for a deal we can't refuse, Mike and I are sticking with our mix of black and stainless steel appliances.  It's not ideal, but the appliances are in full working order, and this isn't meant to be anyone's dream home. 
• Our cabinets need to look good with those existing countertops and appliances. With them in mind, I considered three main options for our cabinets: keep them cherry, paint them white, or gel stain them darker.
• The current cabinet color is looking a little flat and faded these days.  As much as I'd love that clean look of white painted cabinets, I've been lured by the look of espresso cabinets with beige counters. The contrast is appealing, making the cabinets look rich and the counters creamy--makes me want some chocolate mousse. I'm also hoping that darker cabinets will work better with our black stove, microwave, and dishwasher, kind of like this kitchen from Chatting at the Sky. So gel stain it is! If I hate it, we can always paint the cabinets white later, but the reverse is not possible.

I would love to add more personal style, take more risks, and just play a little more with our kitchen choices, but again, with renting out on the horizon, we have to play it fairly safe to save ourselves work in the future. For that reason, I'm going to have some fun with the less permanent aspects of our kitchen. I'm looking forward to sharing those ideas later on!

Ice Ice Babies

They don't know what they're missing, and that's fine by me!

The Third Summer

The first summer was an extension of my maternity leave, an ongoing cycle of eating, playing, and sleeping that now leaves me remembering that time primarily as a joyous hibernation.  I started this blog that summer to help me take it all in.

Last summer we had one-year-old walkers.  With official toddlers on our hands, we played outside more, became brave enough to vacation, and worked to transition out of breastfeeding and down to one nap. 

When they return to their child care center in late August, Michael and Sophie will likely go into a transitional (gulp) preschool classroom. Seriously, that made me take a deep breath.  As they continue to grow from toddlers to little kids, there are a couple changes that we will embark upon in the remaining eight weeks or so of this third summer: potty training and ditching the pacifiers. 

I know it's getting way past time to have tossed the paci's already (they're two--26 months old), but since the kids only use them for sleeping, it just hasn't seemed worth the trouble of upsetting bedtimes just to meet some expectation of what is "normal."  Still, I do have the goal of getting rid of those suckers (pun sort of intended) before late August.

As far as the potty issue, we have two matching potty seats that the kids have sat on a few times without diapers but that are mostly stacked, unstacked, and stood on when Micheal and Sophie come to the bathroom with me.  We also have a toilet seat with a little one on the inside on the real toilet.  Michael has sat happily on there as well, but Sophie is not a fan.  Throw in the collapsable step stools (love those) that we currently use for brusha-brusha time, and we're...almost prepared.  We need some training pants, eventually big-boy and big-girl undies that I plan to have Michael and Sophie pick out, and maybe a chart and stickers.  But even once we have all the stuff, are we all reeeeeally ready?

Based on this article from the Mayo Clinic, Michael and Sophie are pretty much there.  However, I have yet to have seen a dry diaper in the morning, and there have been a few poopy ones recently.  I feel like I should wait for that before I give this a real go.

I'm also not certain of my method.  Will we just go to training pants and set a timer for every thirty minutes?  I've heard one mom say calling the timer the "potty fairy" worked pretty well since then it's not just mommy saying it's time to put down the toys and sit on the potty...again.  Maybe we should do that 3-day naked weekend potty training thing?

I don't know.  I do want to start this summer since I'm home with the kids, and playing outside makes accidents less of a thing, but obviously I still have some homework to do.

If you have any advice, as always, feel free to share!

And what a Great Lake it was.

My last day of work for the school year was on a Friday. On Saturday morning I woke up miles away to the sound of Lake Michigan's waves just steps below the lake house we rented.

My parents, Mike, the kids, and I spent a week on Michigan's west coast.  The house itself was just what I needed--slightly rustic (one-lane dirt roads, no cable, wide plank wood floors, a stone hearth on the fireplace) but also luxurious (gourmet kitchen, master suite, enormous windows, lots of space). 

The best part of this place, without a doubt, was the private beach.  Look straight out to the west, look north, look south--all the eye can see is lake.  The water was clear and cool but nothing we Michiganders couldn't handle. The beach itself was like many on that side of the state that tend to land on "best beaches in the world" lists like this one in Travel and Leisure. 

We felt very, very spoiled.  Surely we could have roughed it a bit, but we figured the cost of this rental was equivalent to two quality hotel rooms and most meals out at restaurants for a week.  We went that route last year for a long weekend.  This year's vacation was far more rejuvenating than any trip of that sort that I've taken.

The kids' favorite parts of our accomodations, aside from the beach--a word they can now say without sounding inappropriate--would probably be the "round-and-rounds" and the owl.  Every bedroom had a ceiling fan that amused them.  Coupled with the lake breezes, the "round-and-rounds" also made the a/c only necessary when a couple of storms rolled in and forced us to lock up.  But what an amazing experience storms are in that environment!  I almost wanted more.

Yes, I did mention an owl.  Ok, there wasn't a real owl.  There wasn't really a fake one either, but there was this fella:

Michael spotted him out the landing windows halfway down the main staircase after his first nap.  Every morning after that we would hold hands and count nine stairs down, say hi to "Owoll," and then count the remaining nine steps to breakfast.  We did the reverse at nap and bedtime, of course.  So yeah, we greeted that stump well over 25 times.  I kind of miss our watchful buddy...and the deck, and the occasional boats, and the mudroom.  Oh, how I would love a mudroom.

This trip was slightly disorienting for my parents who spent much of their lives on the Michigan's east coast, but after watching the sun set magnificently into the lake a couple of times, I think they got their bearings.  I have to say, I've never seen my dad--a man who has spent his adulthood in Army and now security guard uniforms--look so dang relaxed. 

I mean, who is this man?

Who was that man who said the cold water of Lake Michigan felt good, swam out into it, and returned with a smile?  Was that the guy who spent another chunk of his life living in Georgia and has always longed to return to balmier weather?  Was that my dad? Well, no, not exactly. 

That was Sophie and Michael's Grandpa.

Like grandkids tend to do, Michael and Sophie seem to have given their grandpa a slightly different demeanor these days.  It's been a joy to witness.

It was also wonderful have my mom, essentially one of the kids' child care providers, with us on this trip.  She knows them and they know her in a way that allowed Mike and me to let our guards down.  When we're on our own with one kid per parent, that's not so easy.  Mom also made stuffed cabbage and Hungarian chicken (chicken paprikash to the rest of the world), which made that lake house really feel like ours for a time.  On this trip, we were able to reeeelaaaaxx. 

 

We did leave this beautiful home a few times to visit nearby towns.  We had a nice dinner in Pentwater on Tuesday night on the deck of Gull Landing and grabbed some sloppy soft-serve before heading back for the night. 

On Thursday morning in Ludington we avoided some rain by exploring Sandcastles, a children's museum (kind of a mini version of the one in Grand Rapids).  The kids were very patient later as we perused various antique stores, and I enjoyed the best brewery lunch I've ever had, a beef tenderloin wrap at Jamesport Brewing Company.  It's making me salivate thinking of it.  The beer was good, too.

On Friday afternoon in Grand Haven we checked out the shops and ate lunch on the patio at Porto Bello.  We could see kids playing in a fountain by the water and decided to let Michael and Sophie do the same.  It was well past nap time when we suited the kids up, but they enjoyed getting their feet and their parents all wet before we hit the road for home.  The real one.  The one without his and hers vanities in the master bathroom.  Or a master bathroom. Oh, how I would love one of those in real life.

My one regret for this trip was not making a stronger effort to bring more family along.  Maybe next year!

Kitchen Update: The floor is done!

Below is how the kitchen looks today after the first phase of our fix-up which included painting the walls and replacing the vinyl flooring with porcelain tile. 

This is our kitchen as it had looked since we moved in seven years ago:

Notice the vinyl flooring, celery green walls, laminate countertops, black and stainless appliances, black light fixtures, and worn cherry cabinets.  All of those details are ones we would love to change, but to do it all would be too costly of an investment.  In the next year or so we plan to rent this home out and buy another slightly larger house to live in.  In the meantime we do want to make the home appealing to renters, durable for the long term, and more pleasant for ourselves.

It's not obvious in the before pictures, but the vinyl flooring was discolored, peeling up on some edges, and had holes. Seven years ago, we put replacing that floor on "the list," and it finally reached the top.

Although he had never done tile before, Mike did an incredible job with this project and reminded me of his offspring with his "I do it myself" approach.  Aside from making design decisions, my role was just to keep the kids out of the way and prepare meals without stepping on wet grout.  Mike enjoys this kind of work, hopes to do more of it in the future, and wants to get the full experience of each new project.

When the removal of all the previous layers of flooring took much longer than anticipated, complete with a hazmat scare (I'll explain below), we embraced the fact that this fix-up was going to take weeks rather than a long weekend--weeks of Mike still working full time and then some, parenting twin two-year-olds, and a vacation in the middle of it all. 

Below is a picture Mike took that reveals several of the layers he had to pull up.  After spending hours and hours and hours pulling up vinyl and plywood and vinyl and plywood in order to get to the subfloor, he was faced with a layer of black foamy goo.  Under that was a layer of harder tile.  He was about 2/3 of the way through the black goo and hard tile layer when I looked out into the kitchen and recognized the tile as the kind you see in schools and basements built in the 1950's, the kind that often contains asbestos and that is best to leave alone.

In a panic, we Googled like maniacs and found that we were right to be concerned.  We bought an air cleaner, plastic sheeting to cover the doorways to the kitchen, a full-body jumpsuit for Mike, and an air mask that looked like it would protect him on a World War I battlefield, all just before Home Depot closed for the night.  Mike worked until with wee hours of morning ridding our house of the remaining flooring of doom. 

Still, we were terrified for our family's health, and following the hugely precautious advice we found online, we took samples of our tile and that black goo to a lab for testing.  To our relief, there was no asbestos in the material.  The home improvement lesson we learned from this was if the floor was put down before the mid-1980's, get a small sample tested before you begin any removal.  Although it wasn't part of our project, we also learned that popcorn ceilings and insulation are even more potentially hazardous than tile and should also be tested and probably removed by professionals only.  There are laws about this that we could have been breaking had our material tested positive. This kind of thing is apparently a common mistake, but that didn't make us feel much better.  Happily, that is all behind us now.

There are certainly more projects to complete in this kitchen fix-up, but as of this morning, the floor is officially done!

Before:

After (with other phases on the way):

Still on the kitchen fix-up to-do list:

replace crown and floor molding

gel stain the cabinets darker

replace cabinet handles and drawer pulls

paint an old round kitchen table and small cabinet for the eating area

decorate with midcentury-modern and aqua details

sew patio cushion covers

The floor was really the only improvement to the kitchen that we felt we must do, but while we're at it we figured we would do a few other things.  The poorly installed molding that had been in the kitchen has always bugged Mike, and I love a chance to pretend I'm the next HGTV Design Star.