F.I.V.E.

So the news on the street is we have a five year old now. Excuse me while I lock myself in my room to cry. We had kindergarten night Monday night. Kindergarten night! I can't can't can't believe it.  If this child turns out to be a girl I don't know what I'm going to do with them because I put together legos all day and point out garbage trucks while driving whether Reagan is even in the car with me or not! I had to convince him this week that he couldn't bring a 3-foot wooden sword to Sofie's volleyball game. Last night he asked us what bad guy heaven is called? Zach said hell, then he asked what they do all day there and we were stumped. (Burn in a pit of fire? Sit alone in darkness? Hell is not as fun to explain as Heaven.)   
   

We decorated his bedroom the night before, then waited in the hallway outside of his door the next morning so we could see his reaction when he woke up (nerds.) After that I took him to Krispy Kreme The Doughnut Factory to watch donuts being made on the assembly line (so cool!) and then we took them into his class for snack (birthday treats are hard to come up with when they eat them at 9:30 am.)

We had a mac n cheese bar (per his request and thanks to pinterest) that night with buffalo mac n cheese, beer mac n cheese, and then plain with add ins like ham, bacon and hot dogs. Then he asked for a vanilla cake, with vanilla frosting and vanilla ice cream. I made some marshmallow fondant and then gave him food coloring pens to draw on the top of it with.

Thank you to everyone who wished him a Happy Birthday!!!! He had a grrrreat one.




I also need to make myself a note to reread the end of this blog on raising boys like twice a day. And this one too.

Fun morning

We went this morning for our biggie ultrasound, everything checked out just dandy. 

Cletus the fetus at 21 weeks....

And nope, we didn't find out the gender =)

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still on subject but from a while ago...

once upon a time, i was feeling very chubby. my regular pants were too tight/uncomfortable and so I succumbed to the pressure and busted out my maternity pants. Trying them on did not make me feel any better but I decided to make due with a pair of flairs that hit me at or slightly-above the ankle. Not attractive. I was also feeling lazy so I just turned them inside out, put them on, pinned on down my leg (starting a little above the knee,) took them off, and sewed on down the pinned area.

See I told you I was being lazy, I didn't even bother to change the thread color in my machine. Meh, it'd be inside out anyway is what I reasoned.

Then trimmed the excess...

And voila, skinny pants. Literally took me 15 minutes. 

(me- 15 wks) My hair only has eyes for you Sam.

Life with Reagan

I forgot to include Zach in my last update, so let me slip in a quick one... work and working on the house pretty much occupies alllllllll his time. He starts a new job at SF next week, he's looking forward to that. I don't know if this is a testament to our oneness or a new low but we definitely ran into each other in the McDonald's drive thru this morning. Judgment free zone in this case then?

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We had our first big snow of the season this past week. Jeez, about time! Reagan and Petey l.o.v.e. playing it... but Reagan might equally love getting the hot chocolate afterwards.

After spending a week at the lake with Grandpa Meiner he developed the habit of saying "oh dear" when something goes wrong. He says this like 15 times a day.


Today, he came up to me and said "You know what my favorite part about you is?" ... "sometimes you let me have food."



Last week was an eventful week at preschool. One of the days they had a field trip where they went bowling and another day was "pancake & pajama's day" (see picture below.)

Sometimes the words he uses makes me do a double take at who I'm talking to. He woke me up last night and said "may I have a refreshment please?" And the other day, we were having dinner with Luba and he asked her "is your car electric or gasoline?"


His favorite books in the entire world are his Busy Town books. If you've ever read them then you know why we refer to them as the long-busy-towns. They've taught him a lot of things. 
A. what hobos are 
B. that lawyer's settle arguments. So now if someone disagrees about something with him he threatens that he's going to get his lawyer. 

Petey finally got a tag, watching it being made seriously made Reagan's morning. He is such a machine/tool man. 

If you ask him if he's going to be a brother he'll tell you I'm "president" not fat.


The biggest number he knows is "69" so he's constantly saying things like "I love you 69 miles" or "I am going to eat 69 jalapeño cheetohs."


I asked Reagan a few questions about me:

1What is something Mommy always says to you?
 to listen
2What makes Mommy happy? when 
I listen



3What makes Mommy sad?
 when I don’t listen

How does Mommy make you laugh? "What’s there on your shirt?" game ( he means when you trick someone to look down then then tap their nose)


How old is Mommy?
 12



6How tall is Mommy? 
50 inches
What is Mommy's favorite thing to do? 
to play with me
What does Mommy do when you're not around?
 clean the house and make dinner
What is Mommy's favorite food?
vegetables
What makes you proud of Mommy? When she parks straight, daddy too (he thinks I am totally awesome if I pull straight through a parking spot when there's not a car parked in front of me)

1 If Mommy were a cartoon character, who would she be?
 Belle from Beauty and the Beast
What do you and Mommy do together? 
play
How are you and Mommy the same?
 we both have butts and same skin (he's become very observant of people's skin colors)
How are you and Mommy different? 
I have a peepee and you don’t
How do you know Mommy loves you? Because Jesus made me for you


Announcement

Reagan received a "lizard egg" from Emily and Ryan for Christmas. We "laid" him in his water the next day and waited very very patiently for the next couple weeks. Checking it daily, replenishing its' water as needed, and contemplating performing a cesarean when the 72 hour timeline had passed. But we stuck it out and we are very pleased to announce the arrival of Lizardy the Lizard at approximately 8:02 this morning!!

Lately

Our Christmas' were awesome! Unfortunately I didn't really take any pictures to document. =(

Finished this book, loved it. Saw the movie, both are really really good but as usual- book is better. And I'm not just saying that because I'm a mom and I'm supposed to.

I've been working for the Vericella's at the boutique two days a week (it's really fun, I love the way it's decorated in there- i just want to live in it) and usually Reagan is at preschool while I'm there. Over his break he tagged along with me... I could not ask for better people to work for, I hesitate to even call it "work" more like play with pretty things/talk to fun people/read a good book.

18 weeks

Petey is doing well, I even took two pictures of the dog without a person in them! I swore I would never do this and now look at me, even posting them on the blog and everything!

I've been eating a lot of avocados. Like cut it open and spoon it straight out of the shell into my mouth. This is embarrassing to admit but I even had to call Sam for her to walk me through cutting an avocado open ("do they need to be steamed first?")

I developed a couple of theories:
1. Girls don't shower as much as they claim to.
2. You can tell how old someone is by whether they like their pizza with thin crust or thick crust.

A few things I'm good at:
1. Eating breakfast everyday (bewildered as to how people don't do that!)
2. "Forgetting" to turn the fan on while taking a shower (but it makes it so warm when I get out!)
3. Timing it so that my gas light dings while Zach is driving my car.

Look what Santa brought....

Reagan was very quick to clarify he wanted a real dog for Christmas whenever someone asked. Pretty lucky boy he is!

Found out the gender pretty quickly....

Already bff's! Reagan promptly/thoughtfully named him Jingles. Then with some urging renamed him Petey the day after Christmas. Petey he shall stay =)

Grandpa Dr. Meiner came to trim his nails today. He had just had his eyes dilated but luckily there were no amputations. (Petey is 12 weeks old, from the Humane Society. Big shout out to my in-laws Luba and Victor for keeping Petey in hiding until Santa could deliver him.)

So far so good!

One month later...

So we've been in possession of the house for a month now. Considering our main labor sources (Zach and his dad Chris) also work full-time jobs, we've made a lot of progress! Warning, this is about to get real wordy and long up in here. 

ATTIC

The biggest change so far has probably been the attic. It wasn't insulated or anything so we were constantly losing heat to it while trying to heat the rest of the house. 

Zach and Chris framed, ran electrical and cable and insulated it up there. It was definitely not the easiest task because, as you can see with how Zach has to stand, the ceiling is pretty low up there.

Then the drywall went up.

Then Zach's mom Kristi & his grandma Darlene painted everything in this ostrich feather color I picked out, ooh la la. 

My Grandpa Meiner put the sconces up last week and then came back to take down a few light fixtures in the main areas so we can paint the ceilings. We thought sconces would be better with those low ceilings than anything hanging overhead.

Zach and Chris added the trim the night before the carpet was delivered last week. Still needing to be done: trim around windows and railing on stairway.

TRIM

Speaking of our paint slaves, Kristi & Darlene have also painted pretty much ALL the trim in the house as well. Yeah, they are amazing. Their plan of action is to do the ceilings next, then the walls.

All this trim was freshly painted, but nothing done to the walls. See the huge difference???

BACK STAIRWAY

My Grandma Shadoan is our resident wallpaper expert. When they decided to come up from South Carolina for Thanksgiving I planned to tackle the back stairway around their visit. This stairway goes from the kitchen to the basement and then at the landing it also goes out to the backyard/garage/breezeway. The previous wallpaper had been up for roughly 50 years so we ordered some fresh stuff to replace it (oh we had to replace it with more paper instead of tear it down and paint it because the plaster underneath was in super poor condition.)

Then Zach and Grandpa Shadoan took down the railing and coat hook. We scored, and sprayed, and peeled, and sized. And Drew shop vac-ed up all our mess.

And then Grandpa puttied and sanded.

And then the three of us hung it allllll up. It wasn't really a lot of paper but because it was a stairway there were lots of odd angles we kept having to cut. This hallway is really hard to get pictures of. I promise better ones when it's all said and done. Still needing to be done in the stairway: replace carpet, paint ceiling and below chair rail. 

YARD

Since it took two months to close on the house (September - November) and no one lived in the house for a bit before that the yard had not been raked all fall. We have a few mature trees in the front, so the leaf situation was a mess. Reagan and I worked a couple hours a day for a week to make a decent dent in it. Then my parents helped out a few times too. The best part of yard work is that our neighbors stop by while we're outside to introduce themselves. Everyone has been so awesome so far!

DINING ROOM

This has probably been the third largest endeavor. The ceiling was in bad shape so we did dry wall up there. Then the plaster walls also weren't the best so Zach came up with the idea to add the wainscoting. Zach and Chris meticulously measured everything and hung it all. 

Chris added grooves in the top piece of moulding for plates and such!! 

 Darlene, Luba (more for pictures sake) and Victor caulked their little hearts out.

Chris & Zach putting up the crown. Everything from the plate rail down will be painted white and a different color painted on the walls between that and the crown moulding. 

(if it helps it'll look kinda like this when it's all finished)

Still needing to be done in the dining room: finishing crown moulding, painting moulding, ceiling and walls, and hanging chandelier. 

Upstairs stairway

You can see the bottom of this stairway when you walk in the front door. The plaster here wasn't so hot either so we decided to keep the same look from the dining room up the stairs and to the landing. As I type, Zach & Drew are working on finishing cutting and putting up the rest of the moulding. It'll be capped at the top like the dining room and then obviously painted white from there down, with another color above.

Still to be done here: finish wainscoting/trim then caulk it all and sand, paint the bottom half (and doors) white and the top a color. Replace carpet on the stairs.

KITCHEN

This has probably been the second biggest challenge so far and I'm sure once it's fully underway will rocket to the #1 position. Originally we were just going to replace the 1950's countertops, maybe paint the cabinets and replace the hardware. After pulling the countertops off to measure for the new ones, our handymen (z & chris) noted a few cabinets were rotted as well as the floorboard. Dun dun duuunnnnn. We couldn't just replace the damaged ones because they don't make those beaut's anymore. We juggled finishing unfinished ones from Menard's or Lowe's ourselves. Then a customer of Zach's that manages a cabinet store offered him a great deal and we jumped on it. I think Zach and Chris will lose a lot less hair by not having to do yet another project themselves.   

(when disconnecting the drain, Chris found a bevy of silverware in the pipes)

Another customer of Zach's who owns a flooring company offered us an amazing deal on flooring. A little tit for tat aye. The carpet in the attic and other stairways are included in this deal and so is this tile that will go in the kitchen and bathrooms (that Zach will lay.)

And so in it's current state, this is what our kitchen looks like right now. Daunting much?

The pink toilet and vanity Zach ripped out from the bathroom next door in order to lay the tile. Oh our pink bathroom is just fabulous... this won't be a project for a while down the road however =) I actually don't mind it because my great-grandma's bathroom was pink just like this so it's fine by me if it stays for a while.

still to be done in the kitchen: everything under the sun and then some.


whew!!! sorry that was so long-winded! I really need to work on taking better pictures to document things, the camera phone isn't technically high-def.