Christmas 2013

Christmas was as always, a whirlwind of fun this year.  We left out cookies for Santa on Christmas Eve at my aunt and uncles house but returned home to our own to wait for Santa Claus.  

Christmas morning brought the opening of presents and stockings at our house.  

 

 

Ben was thrilled with the gifts Santa brought.

 

Then we headed over to my Aunt and Uncles for more Christmas fun.

Finally we headed home again,showered and ditched our PJs and headed back to L&Ps for Christmas dinner.  We desperately tried for a nice family photo but had to settle for a montage.

 

September update

The past six weeks have been long and stressful but I’m learning, what isn’t long and stressful?

I returned to work and Emmy started daycare. She is thriving with all of her new friends but that isn’t surprising. Emmy is the baby I pictured when I dreamed about what uncomplicated pregnancies produce. Happy, smiley, easy going. She is a good eater and a good sleeper. She is the least stressful thing in my life right now.

Work is work. They asked me to give back one of my work from home days so I am commuting into the city four days a week now. Not my ideal plan especially returning from maternity leave with two munchkins now at home. My commute is almost two hours door to door each way. It’s a lot of time spent on a train that could be spent watching my babies grow up. My work from home days allowed me to be more present and active in their lives. I could meet their teachers, drop them at school, make them breakfast… And yet still start working on time. Losing one day of that has been really hard. Also, Metro North was broken for two weeks which turned my two hour commute into three-ugh. Luckily that is back to normal (for now!).

Ben started kindergarten and has had a very hard transition. It still is day to day with how he behaves. We have actively fought to get him some support from the school and were successful in getting him back on an IEP. ( he lost his IEP at the end of last year because he tested out of the services at the time. We weren’t happy about it but didn’t pursue fighting it. Unfortunately, what we predicted then is now happening. Luckily his current team reacted quickly and he is again getting the services he needs). We still have a huge learning curve as to how to help him be successful ( from a behavior standpoint) in the classroom but we will get there.

My grandmother is very sick. After being mostly healthy during her 88 years, she was diagnosed with leukemia. She tried a brief round of chemotherapy but it really was just too much for her. We are now trying to make her as comfortable as possible and spend as much time with her as we can. Emmy and Ben are always a bright spot when visiting her so we try to see her as often as possible. They are both lucky that they have a set of great grandparents that were able to be so involved in both of their lives.

I’m about to embark on a month long Paleo challenge with my gym and I better lose the rest of this baby weight! According to testing at the gym, over the past six weeks I lost 12 lbs of fat and gained 10 lbs of muscle. Which in theory that is fantastic, the net difference on my low tech scale is 2lbs down and that just isn’t cutting it! We shall see where I am in the next month…

So, this turned into a downer of an update but good news is coming soon. I promise 😉

Basement Transformation

When we bought our house, the basement was already finished as a playroom.  The original plan for us was to convert the space into a living space for my father.   This was actually one of the main reasons we bought this house, there was an ideal set up for a basement living space.  We did the whole conversion and then my father decided not to live with us.  The space sat vacant for the past year, until we decided to get an Au Pair.  Since this would be the perfect space for her,  we hurried to complete the renovation.   Overall, this presents as a large studio apartment with areas for a bedroom, living room and kitchen.

Originally, the basement was set up as a playroom/game room. (previous owners set up).  The door you can see in this picture leads to our electrical box.  Not super exciting, I know.

This space became the bedroom.  You can see that we added a closet on the right side.

This dresser was a consignment store find that I transformed with some paint.  The mirror we have been lugging from city to city with us but I realized, we had never used as there was nothing to hang it with!  I gave it a quick coat of the dresser paint, added a wire in the back and now we have a dresser set.

In front of what is now the bedroom used to just be space.

We converted this into the living room area.

We added a full bathroom where there previously was a utility room.  This is probably the biggest improvement in terms of re-purposing the space.

The door behind Ben was bi-fold and led into this…

Oh lovely.  A shot from a different angle (and way better lit)

Yup.  Utility room.  We retained part of the utility room, the part that housed our heating system.  We added a washer and dryer to that part (sorry no picture.  I’m sure you can visualize.  It’s a washer and it’s a dryer.  But the front half of the space we transformed into this:

We also upgraded the door 😉

Finally, we tackled the kitchen space.  We took a space that formerly housed a ping pong table.

And created this (you can use the window for spatial reference):

And the dining nook at the far end:

Josh and I painted everything ourselves.  We used some furniture that had been left behind combined with a few pieces additional pieces we picked up over time. The kitchen is Ikea and I am forever grateful to a local handyman who helped us put it together with missing pieces and virtually no directions (thanks Ikea-ugh).  Pictures on the walls are Homegoods, my favorite store. The most expensive single piece is the sconce in the bathroom which is from Restoration Hardware.  I purchased it as a splurge to create a look we had been coveting, but it may be a bit out of sync with the rest of the setup.

Overall we are really happy with the transformation.  What do you think?

PS.  I just realized the previous owners and we both have the same grey Ikea rug in the space.  I guess the basements screams “Put an Ikea rug on me!”

A whole new house

When we moved into our house a year and a half ago, it appeared to be white on first glance.  As winter came and with it snow, it looked dirty to me.  Not surprising as the previous owners had only owned the house for two years and I don’t think they did very much in terms of upkeep in those two years.  All the trim is stark white as are the casings of the newer windows we have (they are vinyl) so when you really look, the dirt is the only thing you see.

(House pre-us)

(House after we ripped out all the bushes in the front so we no longer lived in Jumanji)

(Close up of the color of door and shutters)

We ignored it last summer as we had a million other projects we were trying to complete but at the start of this summer we decided we needed to power wash the house.  I did some research and realized, we could really do this project ourselves and not hire a professional.  With some price comparison, we ended up buying a power washer rather then renting because we can use it on our stone walks and brick both of which get mossy in the damp area we live in.  So, about a month ago, Josh set out on the power washing project and let me tell you, power washing is so satisfying.  YOu can see the line of dirt as it comes off the house.  If I hadn’t been nine months pregnant, I would have been up on a ladder power washing everything.  For safety reasons, Josh convinced me to wait to find my power washing glory next summer.  In the meantime, while the dirt was flying off the house, the actual color of the paint wasn’t changing.  It dawned on me, someone had intentionally painted the house dirty white.  Are you kidding me??  I’ll give you maybe they thought it was cream at the time?  Off white?  WHo knows.  What I do know is you don’t do any off shade of white when all the trim is white!  So now we had a dilemma.  When you power wash, loose flakes of paint come off the house and need to be touched up.  We had a fair amount come off and while Josh was prepared to touch up, why are we touching up a dirty looking house!?

I’m sure you know where this story is going but this led us to our next project…painting the house.  Whoo hoo!  (that is not my bank account whoo hoooing…just the decorator in me).  We got bids, blah blah, and realized it wasn’t as expensive as we thought it would be so we just did it.  The end result?  Please see below.  A whole new house!

First Day of Kindergarten

 

 

It is hard to believe, but Ben went off to Kindergarten today!  He goes for a full day, 9a-330p.  I can’t wait to pick him up to hear all about day 1!

Smiles!

We officially have smiles!

It may have been at the fan, but still…smiles!

Time for a new car

We have had a very eventful past 3 days.  Our au pair arrived (yay!), my grandmother was hospitalized (boo) and we got into a car accident (double boo). 

Friday night we visited my grandmother in the hospital and luckily, our au pair decided to stay home rather than come with us.  Since we were already out, we grabbed dinner at a local restaurant then headed home.  While waiting to make a left hand turn onto our street, Josh shouted something out that I didn’t understand.  Later I learned he had shouted “Brace”.  He had seen a car come up behind us and knew there was no way to avoid getting hit.  I am guessing we were hit at about 30-40 miles per hour.  The impact was loud and jarring and both kids immediately cried out.  Josh pulled us to the side of the road and I was able to jump out and immediately yank open the back door.  Emma was hysterical, but Ben was able to be calmed down with some reassuring words.  I didn’t want to move either child from their seats before an ambulance arrived.  I had no idea how to assess them for any potential injury and didn’t want to make it worse by trying to extract them from their car seats.  Several other cars stopped to offer assistance but by this time, Josh had checked on the other driver (who had both of her air bags deploy) and called 911 to get assistance. Parts of both of our bumpers were lying in the middle of the road.  The road is very dark and has a speed limit of 45 which doesn’t lead to a fantastic situation.  The other driver seemed very out of it and kept trying to introduce herself to me and hold my hand.  While I realize that nobody intentionally hits you from behind, my first concern was making sure the kids were okay and I had no desire to meet the other driver nor hold her hand. 

Within about three minutes, volunteer firefighters has started to arrive on the scene.  They came to assess the kids and Emma promptly started vomiting.  While this isn’t totally out of the ordinary for a six week old, the decision was quickly made to load both kids (and me) into an ambulance and bring them to the hospital to make sure they were okay.  To not create any suspense, both kids were okay.  Josh and I are very sore but that is a much better outcome than anything happening to the kids.

The car was not drivable so it was towed away.  We are still waiting to see what the prognosis for the car is.  This is how it currently looks. 

What we did realize was, we need a new car.  Had the au pair been with us, she would have been sitting in the middle of the two car seats with it being near impossible to buckle in.  Had she been unbuckled in this crash, I fear she would have hit the windshield.  There is no way we can continue to drive like that after having this accident.  So now, we are in the market for a car with a third row of seats.  I would love for anyone to pass along suggestions!