Sentimentality At Its Finest

This year, excited to be in our new home, I've been able to decorate for Christmas a little.

And it's been nice. The bah-humbug in me has been chased away (to an extent) by the big blue-eyed boy in our home that says "Ooooo...oh wow!" every single time he sees our Christmas tree. Every time.

Wouldn't it be wonderful if we as adults continued to get excited by the things that excited us as youngsters? Driving through neighborhoods after dark in search of "good streets" with lots of lights, Mr. Wonderful and I beam every time we hear "Oh wow!" coming from the back seat. Having ridden back there with him during one of our Christmas light outings, I can tell you that the "Oh wow!"'s are accompanied by an outstretched little hand--pointing out the lights to me with an amazed expression that says "Did you see that?!"It's pretty spectacular. Sometimes I think my heart will burst just from joy alone.

                                                Mr. Wonderful's too.

However, given the extremely sad and horrifying events of this past Friday, I've had loss on the brain too. Obviously my main thought has been that I couldn't imagine going on without Junior, and how very badly I feel for the parents of those 20 babies that went to be with the Lord last week. But as I was reminded by a random person I met in Macy's immediately following the Aurora, Colorado shooting, loss is pretty much loss. Whether someone's lost their baby or their mother, grandfather, etc...it all hurts. And as I continue to try to keep bah-humbugs (long ago put to use as a defense mechanism...who am I kidding?) at bay, and continue to pull out the decorations and put traditions into play...I realize this will be my third Christmas without the someone whose loss has meant the most to me.

The things I do to be "Christmasy" were her things. Even as I write I am sipping the Friendship tea she made during the holidays--the super-yummy kind with Tang in it that tastes like Christmas in a cup. I just finished making the dough for the sour cream twist cookies she made by the gallon every year (largely because my dad and I consumed them in such large quantities that I don't know how we didn't get sick). My Christmas tree--my beautiful, brand-spanking new 7 1/2 foot tree that I adore (thank you very much, Wal-Mart!) is covered from tip to toe in ornaments that she made by hand, including the angel perched up top. These are the ornaments that are particularly attractive to both my son and my dog. There is, consequently, a lot of "NO!" and a lot of "uh-uh!" being delivered from the couch and recliner lately. At this point, the dog is listening better than the boy. The boy, however, will very delicately and very gingerly return the ornament to the tree when busted asked.

Things have changed so much since she left. I became a good wife (I see no shame in voicing that out loud--it took practice!) a homeowner, but most of all, a mother. I think that would've surprised her the most, as I was so anti-child bearing while she was here that she once asked me, as a favor to her, to never have children. Ha. Guess I showed her. All I did was to have the sweetest, most beautiful little boy I could imagine. Somebody she would've shoved me out of the way to get to, to hold and snuggle and admire. 

So much of who I am now she is responsible for, and it's this time of year, when I am even more surrounded by the things that just seemed to be her, that I am reminded of it, thankful for it, and so very sorry that she isn't here to see it. 

                            Exhibit A: I sewed my own burlap tree skirt!

With any luck my boy will not destroy the ornaments on this tree of ours, because one day, I would love to see him guarding them on his own family's Christmas tree from the grubby little fingers of his own little ones, and explaining to them, as I do with him now, "Great-granny made these, so they're very, very special..."

Squeeze your loved ones with all your might this Christmas. Thank the Lord for the time you had with those who are already gone and shoo away the bah-humbugs at every turn. (Friendship tea helps!)

Friendship Tea Recipe:

1 Cup Instant Tea (unsweetened)
2 Cups Tang
1 Cup Lemonade Mix (Countrytime, etc)
1/2 tsp Ground Cloves
1 tsp Ground Cinnamon

Mix well. Add 2 tbsp to a mug of hot water and stir. Be sure to deeply inhale before drinking--the scent is half of the experience!

What A Difference A Boy Makes

We have been taking breaks from working on home improvements to enjoy the fall. The trees here "peaked" last weekend, and have been beautiful (for this neck of the woods, anyway). We aren't talking Connecticut beautiful, or Virginia beautiful, but nice enough for the midwest. A couple of weeks ago we took a trip to one of our favorite local places--Weston, MO. Mr. Wonderful has many childhood memories of going to an apple orchard there, and picking apples, eating apple cider donuts and drinking apple cider slushies (and probably having a stomachache on the way home). We took Junior with us, and made an afternoon of it.

We bought mums and donuts at the apple orchard and made innocent bystanders take our photo, above.

Junior had a terrific time on an antique tractor...with his dad's help. When one is this wiggly, one never knows what may happen to one if left unattended on farm equipment.
As you can see, Junior's hair has gone from brown to blonde in the last couple of months. But I have a feeling he'll come back to the "dark side" like his mama--I was blonde when I was little too.

Then we took Junior to this massive playground downtown, before we hit up a wonderful little hole-in-the-wall for lunch. As usual, he enjoyed himself. :)

This past weekend we took Junior to Caroline's Country Cousins...a pumpkin patch in Liberty, MO. A.K.A., the middle of nowhere.

But it was SO MUCH FUN. For all of us. The place was huge, and booming. There were 60 acres of pumpkins that you were given a ride out to on a wagon. There was a train that was a replica of a train from the 1880's. (Junior loved riding on that, of course.) He got very excited, and very intense:

                                Mr. Wonderful and Junior, waiting for the train

      Eyeing the goats. This was definitely an activity to do with daddy. Mama's afraid of goats.

      My handsome little farmer. He wasn't too cooperative with photos at the time, so I just continued to snap away, hoping to catch a good one.

I never liked the fall very much before I had a little one. All it meant to me was that winter was coming up, which is the absolute worst season God decided to make, in my opinion. But everything this fall has been exciting, and interesting and just plain fun with Junior around. When they say children change your life it's true, but more importantly for me, they change your perspective on life. And what a blessing that's been.

Have a wonderful Autumn season!

Birthday Roundup

Since it's obvious I haven't drummed up a blog post since May (good grief!) I thought it only fair to share with you what I've been doing for the last 4 months that's taken up so much of my time. First off, I knew we were going to host Beau's 1st birthday party here at the house, and would follow that up with a housewarming gathering for friends, family and neighbors. All in the same evening. Bam. That meant that there were about 1,000 things that I wanted to accomplish in regards to the house before anybody saw it. That amounted to:

Painting 7 rooms
Touching up existing paint in the upstairs bathroom
Painting fixtures in the downstairs bath
Painting the upstairs hall chandelier
Refinishing two pieces of furniture: a blanket chest and a table
Furnishing the living room
Dying and repurposing old curtains to use on the window on the landing
Repainting the spindles on the stair railing upstairs
Attacking old paint and spackle on baseboards, in the stairwell and crown moulding with denatured
     alcohol
Fitting the living room with roman shades
Putting up sheers in the dining room
Putting up sheers in the master bedroom
Selecting drapes for the master bedroom
Creating a decoupaged 1800's map of Paris to hang in the living room

I'm quite sure there's more, but this, coupled with hanging out with Beau and making sure he doesn't burn the house down, has been enough.
Planned projects for the month of October? 0. I need a break. I intend to sit in our new recliner in the evenings and casually work on an afghan for the living room that I've started crocheting. The next real project I take on will be to change the color of our guest room from lizard green to a nice, soft, pale blue. Something that doesn't knock your eyes out when you walk into the room.

Here are some highlights from Beau's cowboy-themed birthday party this past Saturday night...

And lastly, my favorite:

My two favorite boys. A good time was had by all, Beau especially. He loves getting passed from family member to family member, friend to mom, mom to dad and back again. It's his style of "visiting". :) Halfway through the party we had to move it inside because it got chilly, but our large back deck was covered in all things western. Western signage, hay bales, cactus balloons, a 3 ft. inflatable cactus, cow print tablecloths, cowboy boots as centerpieces--you name it. And in case you were wondering, yes, everyone was supposed to dress in their western best, and yes, I was the only one to do it. Oh well--you only turn 1 once!
Currently Beau is enjoying his brand new basketball from Uncle Brandon and a dump truck from my friend Sarah. We're also working on learning how to use the new straw cup given to him by his wonderful babysitter and our friend, Caitlyn.
Thank you to everyone who came out for Beau's big day! We love you.

Renovating or Remodeling or Redecorating?

Since I often find myself in the middle of doing something for either Junior or this house, the house is beginning to feel like just another of my children. It is needier than Junior, however, and much more expensive. Currently, if I was given a lump sum of money that would either make over our backyard or finish our master bedroom...my brain would go in circles trying to make a decision. Our bedroom has only received some paint and a new chest of drawers. I'd like to add curtains, shades, rugs, bedding, a dresser, two nightstands, a bed and a vanity table. However, you must walk through our back deck area to enter our house (if you're on a first-name basis with Mr. Wonderful or me) and therefore, lately I find myself 51/49 in favor of finishing the back yard and deck as soon as possible. Here are some minor improvements we made over the wonderful holiday weekend we just had:

                            Trailing petunias...5 of them hanging on hooks around the deck's perimeter

                                Mr. Wonderful seeded our back lawn

                                       Fenced off these beautiful hydrangeas to keep the dog from destroying them

                                     Mr. Wonderful pressure-washed the deck and fence in preparation for painting

                            This arrangement is in the rain room, over the area where the outdoor sofa will be.

                                                     The interior of the rain room roof--love this ceiling fan!

Not everything was work this weekend, however. On the same day Junior decided to pull himself up to a standing position for the first time, he also had his first experience splashing swimming.

Junior is an excellent reminder to his parents not to work too hard, to take the time to have some fun and to just enjoy being a family.

Junior: Growing at Breakneck Speed

The past couple of months have been some of the most wonderful, albeit most exhausting of my life. Getting moved into our new home was only the beginning. I have now painted 3 rooms in our house (they all desperately need it--had help from my Dad on our bedroom). I had to take a break from painting because it was putting me somewhere in the realm where a nervous breakdown was a possibility--ha! I am not a painter, don't enjoy it, and I usually approach it with guns blazing, just wanting to get it over with. The interesting thing I've found is that, looney-tunes as the previous owner may have been, her interior paint colors were pretty much what I'm choosing as well. The exterior is an entirely different story, and we'll tackle that next summer by letting the professionals do it. So now that I'm finished with the living room, I stand back and see that although she'd done a faux finish on the living room walls that involved several different colors, the overall effect from a distance looked very much the same, color-wise, as what I've done. However, the main reason for painting is that the paint in every room looks as though it were just slapped up on the walls. Can't stand it!

So much has changed with Junior I hardly know how to process it sometimes. He sits up, he crawls, he stands on his hands and feet and he's getting his first tooth. He now has an outdoor swing:

And a swimming pool, which he will get to use for the first time tomorrow. He also has had his first illness, this past week. That was an experience I'm not anxious to repeat again any time soon. He had a lowgrade fever and a horribly painful sore throat--pharyngitis, the doctor said. He was miserable, poor guy, and like his mother when she's under the weather, had no qualms about letting everyone know how miserable he was.

Junior can also now feed himself--crackers, cheerios, etc.

And no more do I have to make minimal little shopping trips because I have to stuff everything in the bottom of his stroller. Junior sits up in shopping carts now, happily kicking me as I stroll through the grocery store or these days, my second home--Home Depot. 

We've just purchased a "Friends of the Zoo" membership, a family premium pass for the year. We were so late in getting to the zoo the day we bought it that we were only able to spend about an hour (there was a torrential downpour anyway) but Junior did get a kick out of watching the flamingoes with Mr. Wonderful.

Lastly, I've been pretty excited for Junior to meet someone that meant an awful lot to me when I was a child (although much older than Junior is now). They certainly hit it off, and a fast friendship has been formed. Every day now these two get together and roll around in the floor, alternately wrestling and snuggling.

It isn't exactly the best picture of Junior's new friend, but it's Barney, a huge stuffed bear (much larger than Junior) my Gran had made for me when I was a kid. My own little one has completely claimed Barney as his own, and it makes me pleased as punch to see it. So far his only complaint with Barney is that when he chews his nose (hard plastic) it doesn't have any "give" to it. 

It was necessary that this post focus largely on Junior, as so much about him has changed developmentally in a short amount of time that it's mind-boggling. My next post, which should be very soon, will include home improvement pictures as well as our current backyard/deck makeover.

I have to conclude with this: God is blessing us more every day, it seems like. I had occasion to hit my knees in the kitchen this morning (avoiding discarded Cheerios as I did so) and thank Him all over again for His tremendous blessings. They are flowing like water. 

Next Week: I begin teaching 4-year old Sunday School at church--may I not only survive the 13-week class but may I also help these little ones develop a further understanding of Jesus!

Closing, Closing, Gone...

Tomorrow's the big day! We close on our new home tomorrow morning, and we're making it a family event--Junior's coming along with us. So far I've packed up Junior's bathroom, half of our bathroom, most of my closet, and about 1/4 of our kitchen. Written out like this it doesn't seem like much. :(

In the past month our adorable little monster has started eating fruits and veggies (tolerates veggies, hates fruit and yogurt) and has developed a fake cry and a fake cough. The fake cry I understand has a manipulative purpose but I have yet to discover why he thinks he needs a fake cough. That being said, manipulative or not, he's pretty darn happy these days.

Happy and exhausting. He even wears himself out.

We are hosting Junior's Grandaddy and Nino in about a week and a half, and we're both quite positive that Granddad has no idea what he's getting himself into. This boy is constant energy, requires almost constant attention and fights his mama on every single nap I put him down for. But almost on a daily basis we take a walk (or stroll, I should say) and we love it. It's been great for both of us. I get him ready to go and he's all set for sight-seeing.

This past Sunday was his first time in the nursery at church. We dropped him off, lingered, pointed out his toys and diaper bag to the caregivers about 3 times, then started off to the sanctuary. Mr. Wonderful was fine and I was bawling smiling. Still sniffling once we were asked to turn and greet our neighbors during the service, a lady mistakenly thought I had allergies. When I said "No, I just dropped my little boy off at the nursery for the first time" she said she understood perfectly--she'd done it four times, with four girls! It did feel like I'd just taken him to his first day of school. The second they took the offering at the end of the service, the two of us cut out, skipping the last vocal performance and almost running to the children's section. We get there, peer anxiously in the doorway, and there was Junior--happily lying on his tummy, kicking and smiling and surrounded by girls. He was the only male baby in the room that day and was apparently quite popular with his classmates. He was sharing a toy and playing nicely with a cute little girl in a pink dress, began to fuss for a moment, then heard his daddy's voice and looked up and saw us. I ran an obstacle course of little girl babies to get to my boy, and as soon as I reached out for him he gave me a gigantic smile. That buddy of mine melts me every time.

In the next couple of weeks I hope to get a Junior-sized pool for our new backyard so he and I can make a big mess and soak everything around us practice our backstrokes. I'll be sure to keep you updated as we go along!