Baby Love

Right now I am sitting downstairs at the computer and am listening on the baby monitor to Audrey singing and talking to Truman. We had just finished breakfast when she heard him wake up. She immediately rushed upstairs to see her baby brother. She's been up there for about 10 minutes just telling him stories and singing him songs. I can imagine that she is standing on the glider (despite our repeated instructions NOT to stand on a rocking chair) and looking into his crib. She has probably thrown a bunch of stuffed toys into the crib with him so he can play. To her credit she is keeping him happy. I can hear him gurgling and gooing.

I love these kids.

Happy Birthday Matt!

Happy Birthday to our one and only...

sweetie husband,

playmate, puzzler, best friend, movie watcher, tickle monster,

spin around, snuggly Pops!

We love you so much and hope you had a fun birthday!

Love,

Your girls and your boy

Lessons from Painting

When we decided to buy a new house I thought it would be easy. I figured we'd slap a little paint on the walls, move in, and happily live out the next few years with no worries. But I've found that there are a lot of things we want to change about our new house. For the past two months we've been working on things but we still have a long way to go. We've got a lot of little projects left (touching up the paint in the kid bedrooms and bathroom, hanging hooks in the laundry room for the laundry baskets), some medium projects to complete (unpacking and finding a place to store our office stuff, baby-proofing our cabinets), and some big projects (painting almost our entire house, putting in a backyard and a fence, installing hardware on all of the cabinets in the house).

But before we moved in I had three goals:

1. Paint Audrey's room.
2. Paint Truman's room.
3. Paint the kids' bathroom.

So technically this post is pretty late in coming, but at least it's here. As we get our house more in order I'll post more pictures. But here is the process we went through before we moved in in order to achieve the three goals I had set for us.

Here is a picture of Audrey's room before we did anything to it. It's pretty plain and standard and looks like all the other rooms in the house. (Notice our neighbor's cute house across the street.)

We painted Truman's room a light brown and then taped and taped and taped...

Lessons from painting:

• Frog tape doesn't stop bleeding on textured walls (regardless of what the guys at Lowes may say).
• Blue tape doesn't stop it either.

• But frog tape and blue tape DO stop bleeding if you use paintable caulk! (This does work despite what the "paint experts" at Lowes may tell you.) If you look closely at the green tape in the picture above you can see where the caulk is smeared along the edge (it dries clear).
  
  Notice the razor sharp lines we achieved in Truman's room. We're pretty proud of ourselves. And I have to say thank you to Misty and Teresa. You saved us!
  

Here is Truman's mostly finished room! We plan on putting white vinyl stars on the blue stripe (one of those small/medium projects we have left).

Audrey's painted room. She wanted pink.

The kids' bathroom. It turned our really well and I love the blue! It looks especially good with the shower curtain and rug we got for a steal over a year ago when Linens 'N Things was going out of business.

I also learned...

• I do not love painting.
• Matt is a better and more careful painter than I am.
• Painting is a bigger pain than it looks on HGTV.
• The brown moulding and doors that I thought I could never live with and would replace and/or paint, don't look so bad to me anymore.
• I could never own a house that needed any real work done. I do not have the patience or energy for major home improvement projects that require sustainment over long periods of time.
• That in spite of the exhaustion, frustration, and irritation I may feel when working on the house, I LOVE HAVING MY OWN HOUSE! And I have faith that one day it will look the way I picture it in my head.

Four Months Old!

I find it a little unnerving that Truman is now four months old. Time is passing so much more quickly this time around! My pregnancy went faster and his babyhood is going faster and I hate it! I don't know if things are going quicker because I wasn't as sick when I was pregnant, he was born right before the holidays, we moved when he was two and a half months old, or because he's my second child and I'm older and things just speed up. Regardless of the reason, I would really love to freeze time for awhile. Having two kids is so much harder for me than having one. But even though there are days I long for a break, I really do feel so blessed that these two little rugrats are mine.

So here are Truman's four month stats and a few pictures just of him from the past couple of months. The BYU pictures are the most recent.

Height: 25 1/2" (75th percentile)
Weight: 16 pounds 1 ounce (75th percentile)
Head: 43 cm (75th percentile)

He's a big boy but he's perfectly proportional. And he isn't ridiculously huge; I just moved him into his 3-6 month clothes last week.

At four months Truman...

• Smiles whenever anyone smiles at him or talks to him.
• Laughs and giggles when you tickle his tummy.
• Talks and babbles.
• Takes his pacifier out of his mouth and holds it in his hand. (Unfortunately he hasn't learned to put it back in his mouth when he wants it.)
• Sucks on his fingers. Sometimes he just bites on them. Other times he sucks on them and makes the loudest sluring sound. While it's super cute, we don't encourage it. We pull his fingers out and give him his pacifier.
• Scoots himself around on the floor and in his crib. He pushes with his feet and slides, especially when he's upset.
• Is tired and ready for bed between 7:00 and 8:00 every night.
• Sleeps almost all night. He still gets up to eat sometime between 12:00 and 2:00 A.M.
• Eats about 6 times a day--1:30 A.M., 5:30 A.M., 9:30 A.M., 12:30 P.M., 4:00 P.M., and 7:00 P.M.
• Is a little bit of a picky eater. He will only take a bottle of Enfamil AR (thickened formula for babies who spit-up a lot) at church on Sunday. Most other times he will just go hungry until I can nurse him.
• Still has acid reflux and is still on medication for it.
• Is still a mad spitter. He spits up like crazy and I am constantly covered in it. We go through 2 dozen spit up rags (the big ones made out of thick cloth diapers!) in less than a week!
• Loves to be around people.
• Wears 3-6 month clothes.
• Wears size 2 diapers.
  
• Has recently started to put his lips together and blow, making a spitty sound. He does it all the time. It's his new little trick.
• Yells if he's being ignored or things aren't going his way.
• Has no teeth.
• Sleeps on his side most of the time. He started doing this in his bouncer, which he slept in until he was over 3 months old. He would wiggle and squirm until his he was on his side and the side of his face was up against the fabric and then he'd go to sleep. He does the same thing in his crib. He also pulls his arms up in front of his face.
• Is pretty bald.
• Makes us laugh.
• Is generally a happy and pleasant little man. We all adore him and can hardly remember what it was like before he arrived. As Audrey says, "I lub you, I lub you, I LUB you little Trumey!" We all echo her feelings.