Proud attachment parents

I say this with the disclaimer that all of what I am about to say could also just be my baby's personality. I am SO not judging, but I feel so proud of what we've done.

Attachment parenting is HARD work. Especially for the mama. Feeding on demand, waking up for every cry and comforting, being aware and listening to his every move. I also realize that its just not possible for some people and that in order to save themselves, they have to choose other styles.

This morning when I realized that we are pacifier free without any work, dude's sleeping through the night without crying, and happy and healthy - I finally feel like it is all worth it.

There were weeks when I would feel like I was going to crack after all night nursing sessions, working, and dealing with cold after cold.

But we powered through and I feel like our relationship is solid and dude's paci free!

Torture the stuffed up baby

I never knew how horrifying a stuffed up nose could be.
(I snapped this pic when the boys were reading a book and Tim had NO idea this is what was sitting on his lap :)

My poor babe has (another) cold.

Symptoms: Stuff nose.

The advice nurses at kaiser always recommend just doing saline drops.

This is what it looks like:

Mama: (pretending to squirt it in Daddy's mouth) Ooh - daddy - in your mouth! (pretending to squirt it in his nose) now in daddy's nose.
Daddy: (laughs hysterically) Ooh that feels good!
Mama: Now in daddy's other nostril! (pretending to squirt it in his nostril.

Turner laughs hysterically while we do then and then gestures that he wants it too.

We do it to him and he laughs until he realizes the cruel trick and starts to crawl away thrashing his head from side to side.

This solves the problem for the first day of the cold - when its minor.

By day two we really make him scream:
We do the saline solution role play (above) and snork him (with the nose frida - watch the video - its magical). He HATES it and he screams bloody murder. It breaks my heart to have to hold him down.

When he wakes up in the middle of the night screaming because he can't breath, then we know its time for the shower. This sucks, but its always better to do it before we go to bed than in the middle of the night.

T actually comes in the shower with us. We both get naked then we bring him in the shower. In our old house the flow wasn't so harsh and he would put his head under and watch the water drip off his face.

In our new house the shower BEATS down - so he's a little more hesitant, but its a guaranteed way to get the juices flowing (ew). He's getting a little too wiggly for me to feel safe holding him, but Tim and I always take turns because it is a sucky job.

Then we have to torture him some more by putting more saline up his nose.

Poor boy can't sleep unless we totally torture him. I hate snot.

I hate snot.

I hate snot.

Tim just handed me this catalog that arrived for us (by the by - WTH is with all the home decorating stuff we get - someone bought our names and we are getting SO MUCH JUNK MAIL).

Yup - those are curtains that I hunted high and low for.

To be fair, I did see that fabric and it only came out a couple weeks ago. I decided to design my own and I saved about 100 bucks. But it KILLS me that it is on the front of this catalog! I guess my creative ideas are really not that creative after all!

The Dark and Stormy Poetry Corner

We dropped the boy off at daycare and raced home to hang up some of our art before work. The corner of art in our bedroom was starting to bug me.

We're not nearly done yet, but here's a quick shot of the "dark and stormy corner of poetry". Which I realize is far from dark and stormy - but a quick joke has turned into a forever name.

Open foot, insert mouth.

Twice, yup, twice, I have totally stuck my foot in my mouth with one of our couple friends.

I sort of realize I'm doing it as the words are flowing off my tongue and try to save it or move on quickly, but I have no idea why they keep coming over when I seem totally insensitive, judgmental and cruel. Which I don't think most people think I am.

Rather than address it, like my shrink might encourage me to do, I'm going to ignore it - keep inviting them over and watch what I say.

But, man oh man, did I step in it yesterday.

But - we successfully put on a brunch with my new favorite cheap easy makeitthenightbefore strata (a delicious savory bread pudding), and my other favorite totally impressive and easy (if you have a good knife) fruit salad. For the strata I follow recommendations from the reviews and cube the bread and for the fruit salad, I do the same and cut the fruit into teesy pieces. I usually just omit the simple syrup and do whatever herbs I can get my hands on. Yesterday I did basil and cilantro and it was FANTASTIC.

One of our guests brought an AMAZING coffee cake apparently from the Amy Sedaris cookbook - which I'm getting - or not since I ate the other half of the coffee cake by the end of last night.

Our dining room was beautiful and the babe sat patiently eating cheerios for 75% of the breakfast.

I could do that again.

The view from my perch on the sofa into the dining room...my vision is appearing! Now for some rustic looking floating shelves...

That is Tim's poetry corner. The chair is black, the teeny table is black and his new itty bitty lamp is black. It's the dark dreary poetry reading corner. That's HIS space.

Best Picture Ever

Butter and Egg Days

We drove up to Petaluma today for the Butter and Egg Days parade.

The theme? The Centenial of the first airmail flight out of Petaluma. Yeah. What?

It was a beautiful day with cousins and friends and fish and chips.

My beautiful boys.




(protecting the boy from the firetruck sirens)


eating his dad's pizza crust

Yellow and Turquoise Bedroom, oh my

I'm a little freaked out about my new bedroom idea.

My last bedroom was brown and white.

Here's what we have so far:

Laundry Solutions

I'm going to try to see if we can

1) fit my entire family's laundry in this laundry basket



2) do laundry every day so my entire family's laundry actually fits.

I can't figure out what to do with that vanity space...Roll up our towels and keep them there?

Installing a fiberglass door

Doors are expensive to put in, time consuming, labor intensive and there are tons of ways to TOTALLY screw it up. When we needed it done I asked Tim why he couldn't do it himself. He said it was hard and now I'm really glad we hired someone else to screw it all up.

We've found out several ways to mess up the doors - we found out the hard way.

But its in and it adds a TON of light to the house.



I'm sure I'll figure out either frosting or those stick on frosted designs so our view isn't of the ugly stairwell.

Mid Century Modern FIND

We SCORED on craigslist.

$125 for this fantastic chair and ottoman. It's my hubbs' poetry reading chair.

Dining Room Table is Done!

We finally finished painting the dining room table and chairs. Okay - we're not quite done yet. We still have to touch up the corners and eventually do a coat of polyurathane. But - we can sit there and it LOOKS done to the naked eye.



Now for the rest of that room...

(please ignore the dead orchids. One is starting to come back. For now they live in the stick garden)

Diy drapes

My diy no-sew curtains!!

Yay

My beautiful curtain fabric is here!!  Spoonflower.com rocks!

please excuse spelling and punctuation - sent from my phone

conflicting fabrics

I've never been very secure in my abilities to match things. I think I'm an okay decorator - but I tend to play it safe.

Our last house had NO color in it, but lots of varying texture. Wa hoo.

So, here I am with one dark blue dining room, fantastic fabric on its way for our blinds (see the sample hanging by a chip clip
And I HATE HATE HATE the fabric I bought to cover my dining room chairs. I wanted a burlap type fabric, but everything I saw was too scratchy. So I bought this basket weave type vinyl which just looks stupid. 50 bucks down the drain.

I need something that:
will look okay with the white mod chairs,
will not be too busy with the large bold blue and white curtains, and
will not show stains too much or be too delicate (the muffin is dangerous right now and everything has to be indestructable).

Here's what I love, but am afraid to pull the trigger on for fear that it will be too much with the curtains and look crazy



(all from etsy)

Pot rack with lid organizer

Our rental before this house, had a LOT of storage. Even in the kitchen. This house has close to none. Even before we moved in we knew we would need a pot rack.

While Tim was sending me craigslist posts with HUGE metal ceiling-mounted pot racks, like this


I knew we needed something smaller (our kitchen is teeny) and I wanted something to organize the lids. The worst thing is to be digging through lids and lids under a counter when the baby is sleeping. Try it - I dare you.

So, after a ton of searching, I found this one on amazon. It is handmade by an actual person (OMG). Only 40ish bucks it was a great deal (plus a good bit of shipping for VERY slow delivery). I may still buy another one to mount right next to it, but I'm waiting to see what we put next to the stove first.