Our newest little one Evalina Gabriella joined us last week. She made it longer term than her sisters – to 38 1/2 weeks and came a day after Alex’s birthday! We had to spend an extra day at the hospital due to her jaundice – also like her older sister but she’s doing great and her sisters were so happy to meet her friday evening and dote on her all weekend!
Without further ado… here are some pics!
My little boo is 2!
She gets an even bigger birthday gift but we aren’t setting it up until Friday night (it’s an 8′ trampoline we are going to put in the cupola!). So for now she gets the bike and some puzzles 🙂 Luckily the front room is empty right now so it’s perfect for some tricycle riding!
It’s that time again – staycation! We started our vacation with a long weekend back in NY. Heading to NY Friday night, going to our niece’s birthday party Saturday then heading down to NYC Sunday morning!
We stayed with PJ and Erica in the city and on Monday spent the day at the Bronx zoo. Alex had a good time, although she was pretty tired since we skipped her nap for the day (she slept on the drive back north and then for the bedtime drive home too). She enjoyed seeing the Giraffes, Sea Lions, Gorillas, Bears and Polar bear the best probably. It was a good day and Alex really did great especially off schedule!
We got home late Monday night and Alex let us all sleep in till 9am! A great start to our staycation portion of vacation. After breakfast I took Alex to daycare (and by the way she went right back on schedule – not sure how they pulled that off!). Ryan and I got a start right away working on the outside.
We worked on the small section that has a roof to stand on outside the back bedrooms. We got the soffit all stripped down, sanded and prepped. Caulking and holes all filled, gaps filled with wood putty. Prep prep prep. Then we got a coat of primer on both the siding and all the trim/soffit! It should finish up very quickly tomorrow (or the next rain free day) and we’re on to the next part.
Once we finished that section for the day I got a coat of primer on our second half moon window our neighbor restored for us! It also came out great and he took pictures as he restored them so I’ll do a blog post on just windows soon. Ryan continued the porch painting along the outside soffit while I went and picked up Alex. Lots of outside progress since it was a beautiful day for painting!
3 more full days to go, hoping for no rain but even with rain we’ll get some work done (under the porch and tiling the bathroom). Now it’s time to relax and catch up on TV from the last week and a half!
This was one of those perfect weekends, lots of family time, lots of house progress – just perfect all around. Aimee, Jason and little Jason came up on Saturday. The guys worked on the bathroom, Jason getting the rough-in plumbing finished up and Ryan getting the cement board up and both of them installing the tub. The bathroom is really coming together quickly after this weekend.
Jason also got the rough-in for the laundry room done and Sunday our neighbor came over and helped ryan finish sheetrocking the bathroom. I think we have just 4 small pieces of cement board around the window to do, then we can red-guard the tub/shower and it will be tile ready. In the mean-time I’m hoping to have time to tape/spackle the ceiling and walls.
On Sunday I got the upstairs all cleaned up and vacuumed and then went out and got a coat of paint on the window and trim on the front. It needs 1 more coat and some sections of crown need to be touched up (filled holes) but it’s all yellow so it looks like the finished product now.
Aimee and I took the kids to the park Saturday for a long while (and again on Sunday for a short while) and they had a blast. Alex built up a lot of confidence on the structures having a kid close to her size show her how to do everything and Aimee convinced me to allow her to go down the big slides by herself – I had a heart attack each time but Alex had a blast!
To really make the weekend perfect, Uncle Pete, Aunt Erin and gang all made it out Saturday for dinner so the kids got to see more family and we got to catch up – it’s too long between visits with busy schedules on all sides!!!
Finally the rebuilding has begun. This past weekend (Saturday at least), Ryan made a couple trips to the dump to get rid of all the demo debri from the ceiling demo. We got the upstairs cleaned up more, things moved around, the saw brought up and vacuuming vacuuming vacuuming.
There is still more cleanup to do (one section of ceiling still has a lot of insulation, but i want to get the bookcases underneath there moved first (and they need to be cleaned off), so I focused on the rest saturday. Then Ryan got the first wall of the bathroom built! This was mostly during Alex’s 2 naps although the wall was built while she was awake Saturday evening. The cleanup part all happened during naps.
Sunday we had other projects to complete (work, shopping, berry picking). Hopefully next weekend we can get the other two walls up and the tub installed?
Yikes I guess it’s been a while since we did much on the house. We’ve been a little busy with traveling to NY for Easter etc. In the evenings we did manage however to get the last 2 sections off the kitchen spackled and sanded and Ryan got the long piece of baseboard scribed and installed.
We still need to finish the trim installation in the bathroom hallway on those 3 doors and the arch but this weekend it’s time to tile the kitchen! I think Ryan wants to get the plinth blocks installed tonight first but we’ll see. Depending on what is being worked on I may get the priming done, that at least protects everyone’s clothes from getting plaster dust on them when they rub against the wall 🙂
Next week is our vacation week to work on the house so I’ll try to update with pictures more often and boo boo is turning 1 year old on Wednesday – unbelievable! The little munchkin just amazes me every day 🙂
It’s been a while since we had one of those but we found ourselves home unexpectedly this weekend because Alex got sick again! This is actually a secondary illness (ear infections) so she was feeling fine mostly, just couldn’t sleep at night but with antibiotics she is doing much better.
In the meantime, rather than spread our germs to our new nephew, we stayed home and worked on the house. First Ryan finished the mixer lift (adding the shelf and adjusting the tension).
Next up he got the beam in between the kitchen and diningroom so that we can do crown in the kitchen when we have time and 2 people.
And then it was on to the back door and then trim. He got the new back door installed, the last 2 pieces of cement board in and then trimmed out both new doors and started on baseboards. The last baseboard piece in the back hallway needs to be scribed so we quit there.
It is amazing how much warmer it is in the kitchen with these doors in! And safer for Alex of course. The next big project will be tiling the kitchen floor, probably the first weekend in April. I can’t wait – soon Alex can safely crawl around the kitchen and she will be very happy to not be cooped up in the livingroom. She’s definitely learned that she can crawl out of the livingroom so we have to keep the doors shut or gate off a section of the kitchen she can play in…
And Sunday we went to our regular breakfast place and then the grocery store. Of course the time change through us off (we had no idea it was coming) so we just pretended there was no time change for the day! We ended the day with a nice walk – it was a big chilly but Alex loved it, it’s been too long since we got outside!
So Alex started crawling over the last couple of weeks. On Friday she did the official hand/knees crawl but she still prefers the army crawl she’s been doing for a while. Of course I can’t upload a video bigger than 1MB so I have nothing to share on that but some cute pics of Alex standing up.
She had a great weekend back in NY with her cousins. She played with little Jason and he found it very strange to have another baby sharing his toys at grandma’s house. He is obsessed with ‘Aahee’ as he says though, always asking where she is and pointing her out in pictures (or pointing to her high chair since they ate next to each other a lot). It was adorable!
Over at Grandma and Papa Williams’ house she played with both of her cousins who just dote on her and give her tons of attention!. She also bounced on her cousin who was still in the womb (hmmmm… maybe that’s why he came the next day!).
And Ryan took last weekend as a long weekend, taking Friday to Tuesday off. He got some projects around the house done and took a much needed break (of course we also traveled to NY and it was nice to be able to leave friday easily because he was already home!).
Ryan also made a much needed trip to the dump so the side porch is cleaned off now. We have many more dump trips needed now that the snow is melting and piles are exposed 🙂 Getting there slowly!
It’s been a while since I posted, we’ve taken quite a break from working on the kitchen. Some weekends home, a weekend in NY. Lots of time playing with Alex etc. We’ll get back to the house work shortly but it’s been a nice break after 2 months non-stop.
Anyhow – Alex is now 10 months old so I thought I would give a little update since it’s been quite a while since I did!
She’s 18lbs 12oz and 27.5″ long now.
As of today she has a tooth poking through – her first! You can’t see any white yet but i can feel the jagged tooth poking through when she lets me. Yay!
No crawling yet but she’s working on it. She can pull her knees under her pretty well and rock. She can scoot backwards and she can pull herself in circles on her belly to get toys. She loves to stand and tries to pull up to standing. She will stand up and play all day if you let her.
And some pictures since halloween since I haven’t posted many since then…
This weekend was the first in a while that we were all healthy so it was great! We relaxed, did some shopping and got some work done on the house. Saturday Ryan got all the knobs and pulls installed in the cabinets!
Then I installed the 2 drawers in one base cabinet that didn’t come pre-installed (these drawers were free so had to be installed).
And some features of the cabinets…
On Sunday Ryan hung our maps in the tvroom before Alli’s playdate (we had a couple of mom’s/babies over for alex to play with). It was a very relaxing weekend. Alex started coughing though so I’m wondering if we’re about to get another cold – ugg!