Saturday, March 16, 2013

Birthday Party!

Today was Luke's 3rd birthday party.  It was held at the Imagination Island in Plymouth.  Cool place--like a big indoor playground with playground-type structures, bouncy houses, and themed playrooms (pirates, kitchen, school room, music room, etc.).  This was the first birthday party that the boys went to that they could actually participate in.  (They went to Luke's birthday last year, too, but they were only a couple months at the time!)

They had a blast.  Sebastian in particular loved it--he was all over the place touching everything.  Adrian was tired before we even got there because we woke him from his nap early and then he didn't sleep in the car.  He seemed a little overwhelmed.  He definitely is the shyer, more calm of the two, but he's never so withdrawn when I see him at daycare.  I'm not sure what was up with him today.  I think he had a good time exploring, but he just wasn't himself.

The highlight of the afternoon for the boys was the cake.  They've never had cake before because they didn't like it when they had it for their first birthday.  Oh man, did they go at it...

Adrian on the left, Sebastian on the right.  I'M SO EMBARRASSED OF THEIR MESSY, LONG HAIR.  We just haven't had the time to take them for a haircut.  Yikes.  Poor things can't even see..






What a face!



The highlight was when Adrian started feeding Sebastian.  It was like a married couple feeding each other wedding cake...





I didn't manage to get many good pictures of the place and the boys playing.  Too bad.







Thursday, March 14, 2013

Dinnertime at Our House

Oh my goodness.  We are going to need loads of baby wipes...


Adrian



Sebastian

Wednesday, March 13, 2013

House Update and Pictures of the Boys

The update on the house is that there haven't really been any updates, except maybe in the living room.  I've been waiting for my spring break, which starts this Friday afternoon at 3:45, to do a lot of stuff around the house.  Of course, I pretend that the house will look totally different after I'm off from work for two weeks, but it won't.  I will likely end up working quite a bit from home and planning projects instead of actually executing them.  We still have to go to my Nana's and get the rest of our stuff, too...

I do hope to paint at least one room, though.  I would also like to do some major organization projects in the basement.  For example, the laundry/cedar closet and garage.  Then I can finish unpacking the rest of the boxes, too.  My problem is I'm not exactly sure what to do first because it's like a giant puzzle.  To do one task, I have to make space, which means doing a different task first.  On the other hand, I haven't wanted to paint yet because I'm not sure of the colors.  I think I want to keep things very neutral because I like to switch out accessories pretty often.  Oh well.  I hope things will look a bit more organized after my break.  



All that stuff still needs to be put away.  And that ugly area rug has to go. 

This area is a disaster.  The boys like to roam around and touch everything.  If I can get this stuff organized and put away, it will make our job with the boys so much easier! 
This area is usually much neater (except for when the boys are in it playing).  They had just gone to bed and we hadn't straightened yet.  Those toy bins are the best thing ever for "cleaning up."

The huge mess from another angle!
 I hate this kitchen floor, but the boys are so messy when they eat, that I'm actually grateful for it for now.  Once they aren't such messy eaters (and we have a budget to remodel the kitchen), we can replace the floor too.  For now, I don't feel too badly about them messing up the linoleum "stone" floor.

This room will look great with crown molding.  I want to replace the curtain rods, too, which are perfectly fine, but they don't extend beyond the windows.  She had stuff draped over the rods, like swags.  If I want drapes/curtains that hang, it will look funny with these rods.

I had hoped to strip the wall paper and paint before I unpack all the boxes of stuff.  A lot of it is stuff for our bar that will be in the living room.  But the bar set up involves shelves hung on the wall, and I don't really want to hang shelves until the walls are painted.  But it's going to be quite a task to strip the paper and paint a room of this size.  I don't think I'd finish over the break.  So I may leave it until summer.  But if if we leave it, we're going to have to hang shelves and unpack boxes now.  I can't stand the mess anymore.  The starburst thingy will be hung over the fireplace.


So we bought the couch and arm chair and ottoman thanks to my mother-in-law.  We used the remaining money she gave us to buy the accessories: pillows, lamp shades, lamp bases, an end table, and the fire place decoration thing.  The movers broke one of the shelves to the hutch when they were bringing stuff into the house, so we have to have a piece of glass cut for that before we can unpack a lot of the boxes.  The bar I referred to above is on the right.  Eventually, we hope to have TWO (count 'em!) bars in the house:  one here and a huge kick-ass bar in the basement.  I firmly believe you should never have to walk to far to find a drink in your house! ;)



Boys' room.  I don't think I want to decorate any further right now.  There are still shelves and pictures to hang. But, they will be in big-boy bed relatively soon, so I might wait to paint etc. until they move into their beds.  I'm thinking Milton colors: blue with orange accessories.  We bought cool 1960s beds at a thrift store a few weekends ago.  Can't wait to refurbish them for the boys!!!

If you look closely, you'll see the boys were asleep when I took this picture!  I snuck in in the dark and used the flash...

 We saw a cool project on the blog Young House Love where they put board and batten on the walls in their hall.  It looked great and seemed pretty simple to do.  Eventually I think we'd like to do that in our hall.



Now, on to bigger and better things--like my boys!

MEDUSA!?!?!?!




Instagram shots...

Sebastian loves his milk!

And Sebastian LOVES to read

Adrian

Look at those curls!!!!!!!  I'm in love with their hair (although it's too long right now), particularly Adrian's though.

MORE Ear Infections

Last Friday we had anothe rmajor snowstorm--except that the weather men all said it would just be rain.  Milton didn't even call off school (we had a 2-hour delay)!!!  The traffic and the driving was terrible from what I heard...I ended up not going in to work because BOTH boys had fevers in the morning.  Oh boy.  Carlos was able to work from home, so that was good for him.  The boys started off the day acting ok, despite the fevers, but by bedtime, Adrian was not himself.  He clung to me for over an hour, reluctant to be put down or to let go of me.  It was some nice bonding time with him, but I didn't like the reason for it!  I suspected an ear infection...So Saturday morning, we went off to the pediatrician AGAIN--both boys in tow.  Adrian had a raging double ear infection.  Sebastian nothing.  We put Adrian on Augmentin.  By Monday, Sebastian still had a low-grade fever.  We sent him to daycare, and when I picked him up, he also had a rash in his diaper area that didn't look like normal diaper rash.  So we went back to the pediatrician again...this time Sebastian had an ear infection in one ear and a yeast infection in the diaper area from the last antibiotic he took.  So we put him on Augmentin too.  Then the pharmacy wouldn't fill his prescription because for some reason their coding is wrong and it was showing up as Adrian's prescription, and since we had just filled a prescription and gotten him the same drug a few days before, they denied Sebastian's.  We ended up paying out of pocket for it, and we are STILL trying to resolve the coding issue with BCBS, Express Scripts, CVS, and the pediatrician.  What a pain.

But the real question is this: how many more ear infections can these poor boys have before they have the tubes put in on April 5?  I don't really want to find out!  I hope this is it....

On a positive note, the boys are in their second week of transitioning to the toddler room, and they are doing so well with it!  I'm so proud of them!  They love, love, love being there!!

Monday, March 4, 2013

It's March!

Well, I'm glad February is behind us.  It's the absolute worst month of the year--short days, bad weather, cold, and spring still seems so far away!

I just discovered picmonkey.com....wow!  It's like Photoshop, but for dummies like me who don't have the first clue how to use Photoshop...easy!  I can't wait to play around with it!  Maybe I'll make that this month's project since I've been so bad at starting all the things on my list of things I want to do/learn...I have such inertia lately.  There's so much I want to do, but I can't seem to get myself started on anything.

This weekend we went to visit Nana.  It was such a nice visit.  I brought my camera but didn't take a single picture, which was dumb.  It just takes so much energy to watch the boys EVERY SECOND these days that I guess that's why we didn't take any pictures! No time!!  But it was so nice--as always--to see Nana with the boys.  She's so good with them.  While we were at her house, Auntie Mimi stopped by with her friend Lucas.  Then we loaded up a few things into the van (Nana has a bunch of our stuff at her house.  We hope to rent a U-Haul in the next few weeks to go pick it all up.) and took Nana out to lunch at Wendy's.  She had a bunch of coupons so the whole meal for all of us was only a couple of bucks...not spending money makes Nana happy.  And that makes us happy.  When we were leaving, Nana was holding Sebastian and when Carlos took him, he didn't want to go with him--he wanted to stay with Nana.  It was the cutest darn thing ever.  Can't wait to see Nana, Auntie Mimi, and Lucas again at Easter!

Last Thursday the boys had their 15-month check up.  It was fine--nothing to report, really.  Today we had a visit with the ENT doctor for both boys to see about tubes...and he immediately agreed that it was a good option.  Then, the pediatrician called tonight to say he'd received a letter from the ENT doctor saying that he'd recommended surgery and we'd consented.  He wanted to know if we had any concerns or questions, but told us that he agreed tubes are the best option.  Nice of him to call.  So I think we'll go ahead with it as soon as he has an opening.  His surgical scheduler will give us a call.  I am so upset about the idea of them going under, but at the same time, I hate the thought of them having ear infection after ear infection and being speech delayed (potentially), hard of hearing, and in pain all the time.  

The boys are ready to transition to the toddler room at daycare!!!  They started the transition today.  It will take 2 weeks before they are fully there, which is good because they ease them into things.  Today it was 9-11 in there, tomorrow it's 11-4, and it alternates like that this week.  Next week they are there from drop off-11 and then 11 to pick-up, alternating.  Then by the 18th, if all goes well, they will be in their full-time.  They had a blast today, I guess, and did really well.  They were out on the playground with the big kids running around!!  They were exhausted after coming home today, but some of that may also have been due to going to the doctor.  But the teachers did say that after lunch they conked out for almost 2 hours!  They don't usually sleep that long at daycare!!!  I'm so proud of my boys!  :)

Here are some random photos.  I think I will try to edit some photos and get good at Picture Monkey and take more pictures this month.  In the meantime, here are more blurry photos.







I love love love this picture of Sebastian with his mad face!


The boys have an OBSESSION with hats!
















The boys used to be afraid of this tunnel that came with their tent.  But they were having fun with the tunnel at daycare so we pulled it out again.  They LOVE it!!



Sweet!  This frog from Christian (which was a gift from Lei Mei) is like a bean bag for the boys!  They love it!!  Thanks for sharing, Christian, now that you're almost 14!!

He loved this pink princess chair.  He loves any chair, though.


Not a good example, but I did this with Picture Monkey.  I was simply experimenting with effects, text, colors, etc.  I don't like how this came out, but I'm fascinated with the options!


Sebastian likes to wear the buckets on his head

Another experiment with Picture Monkey.  I don't love it because I don't love the pictures. You can't edit the pictures in collage mode.  (You have to edit the photos first then make a collage.  Pain.)  I didn't bother doing one for Adrian since I have to redo this one anyway.  But I love this website!