random stream of consciousness

i haven't blogged in almost a week so this is going to be wordy and long. eek! i've been busy but not anymore than usual.

sissy seems to be going through a growth spurt and has been waking once in the middle of the night to nurse. not that that is bad, but it's an adjustment. especially when i don't usually go to sleep til midnight/1am. what can i say? i'm a bit of a night owl and i enjoy having a couple hours in the evening when it's just B and I, relaxing, watching hulu and mindlessly surfing the internet. she sure is growing. we took her to the doctor today to get checked out {we felt a lump under her nipple and wanted to get it checked...when you find a lump on your 4 month old's breast, your first reaction is to FREAK out but alas, it's just a breast bud enlarged due to hormones and while not common, it's definitely not unheard of. he warned us that she may even lactate a little but it's harmless} but my point is that since her appointment on feb 4, sissy has gained 9 oz and grew 1/4 of an inch...that's half a pound in fourteen days ya'll. she's growing like a weed!

we also took peanut to the orthopedic doctor today. he woke up looking like this:

and by lunchtime...tada:

his fracture is completely healed and the little guy is now cast free! yay! you would think that he would be running and jumping and totally out of control. quite the contrary. he is still not walking on his leg. most of the time he still keeps it bent at an angle. dr w. said that it's completely normal. his knee and ankle are quite sensitive and stiff. walking on it now feels a bit painful and sore but he should be back to normal in a few days. if not, we need to take him back but after supper he was crawling around putting weight on his knee so i'm not too concerned. thankfully he also went to bed easily, i was afraid that he would resist and realize that he can get out of his bed but he snuggled right in and went to sleep.

his and sissy's room is coming together nicely. last saturday we made a jaunt up to IKEA and got him a bed. we ended up purchasing a different one that we had planned {i'll be honest $179 vs on on clearance for $59--wasn't a hard choice!} but we like it. it's solid pine but unfinished. B assembled the whole thing in less than one hour. i love me some ikea! his wall decal from decomodwalls arrived on valentine's day and i got that all put up. i was a wee bit nervous at first but it was actually very easy, only took about an hour and now he's wall isn't so plain. plus he likes it! we still need to paint/finish his bed in a matching white but for now, it's coming together nicely.

 

 

it ain't easy doing a gender neutral room so we opted to do garden/butterfly for sissy and cars/trucks for him but keeping the color family as chocolate brown, orange, teal, green and a touch of pink. i realize that the pink dresser isn't helping with the neutrality issue but again, $34 at IKEA and i don't really care! the bonus is B doesn't forget which dresser is sissy's! i still need to figure out something for the empty wall between the two beds but i haven't given it much thought yet.

the big boys room, while i don't have pictures, is almost all finished. lightning mcqueen is the theme and they love it. i need to order some posters for their walls but i haven't committed to that yet. i need some nice (but fairly cheap) poster frames, otherwise they get excited pointing at the posters and accidentally rip them. (go ahead, ask me how i know!) i keep thinking i'll get over to hobby lobby and look there but really when you have four kids under the age of five, taking them all to hobby lobby isn't high on the priority list. the fake grapes everywhere? well they don't look fake to toddlers. so peanut is pretty much screaming for grapes the.entire.time. even though i've shown him how fake they are, it's like he can't quite process it. so eventually, i'll get those up. i might get them each a poster for their birthday, make it a bit more special and go from there. i'm not in a rush, they love their room as is.

speaking of crafts, my next 'to do' craft is making some curtains for my kitchen. i want to go with a 70's-ish vintage theme so i chose this fabric:

i just pink puffy heart the colors! it's paired with a chocolate brown with off-white polka dots. in my head, it's really cute. my idea is to make them similar to this. with the polka dots at top and bottom and the apple pear fabric in the middle. let's hope i can pull it off! i intend on making the curtains and then hopefully i'll have enough fabric leftover for a matching table runner or placemats, heck even a potholder set? jo-ann's only had 5.5yds left on the bolt and i bought all of it so let's hope it's enough!

to go with the vintage theme, i very excitedly won an auction on ebay for ''vintage'' tupperware canisters. it cracks me up that this is a collectible and people go nuts over it. {although me buying it only fuels the fire} i won't even mention how much i paid...i know you can find a ton of it at goodwill, estates sells, etc but again, those four loveable children stop me from going to auctions, know what i mean? so i willingly purchased a near mint condition set on ebay. then i mentioned to my momma and she went to her local salvation army and found a matching piece for $1.99. yay!

i already have this cute little cookie jar, whose colors tie in nicely:

i really just need to find a vintage wall clock and i think i'll be done. i'm hoping i can find an old dr pepper clock or sign but those go for the big bucks so we'll see. i'm just super excited to have a kitchen that is open and big enough to decorate; previously that wasn't really an option because in my prior kitchens i could literally touch every single appliance while standing in one spot. i'm trying to decorate cheaply; hence making my own curtains and then not feeling so bad on the little splurges {like the tupperware}.

well this post is already super long, and it's now past 1am so i need to head to bed. tomorrow we are taking the kids to the town carnival. they are actually bringing in a snow machine and making snow for the kids to play in. they have tubes to go ''sledding'' with and ''loose snow'' to play with, plus hayrides, face painting and bounce houses {which we will OBVIOUSLY be avoiding for the time being} but it's free and i'm sure the kiddos will love it. until next time...

The many faces of Maggie-Moo

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

Last year on Valentine's day we discovered that we had a little one on the way. That was the best Valentine's day ever. Until today. This Valentine's day we spent it snuggling, loving, and spoiling all of our kids, and unexpectedly, our daughter. I love our big little family!

In the eyes of a two-year old...

Tonight I was nursing Sweetcheeks while cuddled up in Peanuts bed reading him his bedtime story. Being two he frantically picks out the book but then only half listens. I'm reading while he is playing with his stuffed animals next to me, giving them voices and having them talk to each other. I continue reading and next thing I know he's smashing his 'Sheepy' up against my boob going ''gulp gulp gulp!" then Sharky...''gulp gulp gulp"....so I ask ''Peanut what are you doing?"

"Da're firsty mom...day need milk''

"Hon Mommy's milk is for babies, not for animals"

"Da're baby nan-i-mals mom and ewe got da milk...[shoves sharky back up against me] "gulp..gulp..gulp....awww. sharky says tanks mom."

Sure. No problem hon, glad I could be an open milk bar to all your animals.

Lunchdate

Brown bag popcorn, big boy beds and bouncy frogs

How is that for random!?

A few nights ago I was up late, blog hopping {does anyone else do that for hours..click on one link, hop to a blog, click on another and keep going until you can't remember what you were looking at first?!} and stumbled upon a blog (sorry but I can't remember which one) that talked about making popcorn using a paper sack, in the microwave.

I know you're thinking '' Um, yeah...it's called microwave popcorn" but it's not that. You literally use a brown paper lunch sack, a 1/4 cup of popcorn kernels and your microwave. That's it. Top it with whatever you like; butter, salt, cheese, bacon salt, ranch dressing seasoning...whatever fits your fancy. It's obviously much much healthier than the butter-lovers, chocked full of preservatives, store bought stuff that could sit on a shelf for 3 years and not go stale. Here is my super self explanatory ''tutorial'':

-Measure out 1/4 cup of popcorn kernels. Pour them into the brown paper bag.

 Fold the bag's top over a few times, tightly. Push out most of the air.

Place the bag in your microwave. I used the 1.7 oz popcorn button/selection but just listen until the pops are 1-2 seconds apart. {Like when you would normally make popcorn}

 And in my case, less than two minutes later....Tada!:

We then poured the popcorn into a bowl, sprayed with a touch of ''I can't believe it's not butter'' spray, shook some Parmesan cheese on it and the boys inhaled it! {ignore the above pic that has cooking spray in it...I had a brain fart moment and got the wrong thing out}.

Peanut's look of approval ;)

So easy, much cheaper and healthier and honestly, a heck of a lot more fun. Maybe I am totally lame, maybe everyone else already knew you could do this but I thought you had to have an air popper or pop it on the stove if you wanted to make popcorn yourself...not true at all!

So now that I have that craving planted in your head....on to big boy beds!

You may remember in my last post {you know the one that involved vomit} that I mentioned moving Peanut to a twin sized bed. Well due to unforeseen illness, we didn't get it picked up til Tuesday evening. Every other time I've transitioned my kids to a bigger bed, I've always made the move at naptime. Well that wasn't going to work because B couldn't even pick up the bed until after work. So instead I opted to not let Peanut nap yesterday. He stayed in the living room with me, playing with puzzles and reading books. My hope was that by the time we got the bed set up and he finally got to sleep, he'd be too tired to fight the change.

I'm a bit of genius, if I do say so myself.

By the time he was in bed, he fussed maybe 25 minutes before heaving a huge sigh and crawling into bed. Literally B and I could hear him at the door {we put up the baby-gate so he can't get out and wonder in the middle of the night but we can see in} and he was saying/yelling/whispering/yelling ''Mommy's bed" then ''Dad....DADDY!". This went on and off a bit but overall he didn't protest near as much as we thought he would. {Just in case I hadn't mentioned it, he's been sleeping in our bed since he got his cast on} And in case you were wondering we opted to switch him now, using the injury to our advantage; he can't climb the gate or get into Sissy's crib, etc with a cast on!

Anyway, I had also mentioned trying to find fabric to make his quilt but yesterday while at Target I found a twin sized thick fleece ''PolarTec'' blanket on clearance for $6.98. Hello, cheaper than 2+ yards of fabric and the color matched Sissy's bedding set so, viola super easy blanket! This weekend {if it doesn't rain} we are going to Ikea and most likely getting him this bed in white. So, please disregard that his mattress is currently on the floor:

Don't mind his giant Sealy pillow, it keeps him from banging his cast on the tile when we crawls in/out

You can't tell in the pic but his sheets are these from Target. They are stripes with vehicles in them. I also ordered this for his wall...from etsy shop Decomodwalls:

But, I ordered it so the alphabet is a deep brown and the vehicles are in lime. Ideally, they should nicely coordinate with Sissy's butterflies and wall hanging of her name...

In my mind, it looks really great, lol! Making a boy/girl room match isn't easy. Especially since I made all of Sissy's stuff...I'm not about to go out and re-buy or re-make all of that!

And speaking of Sissy; she finally has enough upper body control and is alert enough to play in her jumper. She absolutely LOVES it. Her feet don't touch the bottom yet but she loves the teether, the big froggy eyes and how her brothers can gently make her spin and they also bat at toys for her.

 

 In the next pic, she looks like the frog, lol

and a little bit like another kiddo of ours...

 but can you guys which one???