Before and After: Back of the house

I feel like I’m cheating with some of these pictures, especially in the post I just did. The “before” ones were taken in the gray, cloudy mud season and make the “after” shots look practically jungle-like with all the spring green! Not my fault, before pictures, not my fault.

So where we last left off, the deck was in progress. I didn’t really realize how much work was left, but Jason has now added the spindles, the railing, and finished the lattice work underneath. While we are on the lattice, we chose to do a dark gray to match the foundation (I chose Hearthstone by Benjamin Moore). Well, the foundation ended up a light gray, and the lattice, although called “dark gray”, ended up almost matching the house. Which is neither here nor there I guess. So here is where we are at!

OVERALL:

DECK

And a few others

I don’t have a true garage before so it gets just an after:
And based on where the sun is right now it’s a little dark but oh well. 
I have just had to start typing with one hand because my situation is now this, literally right this moment:
Whereas before he was asleep in his swing. Sorry blog readers, you are getting bumped for my baby 🙂 

2 Months Old

This post is pretty self-explanatory 🙂 Alex had his 2 month pediatrician appointment yesterday and he is as perfect as perfect can be.

Weight: 12 pounds 15 ounces (75th percentile)
Length (height?): 23.75 inches (75th percentile)
Head circumference: 16 cm (85th percentile)
Diapers: Size 1
Bottles: Only a couple so far. I need to give him more so he can practice, he’s not great at them yet.
Clothes: 3 months
Favorite pastime: Walks in the carrier, batting at the squirrel on his playmat
Eyes: Blue
Hair: Strawberry blond. This is true, folks. His hair has a reddish tint to it on the sides (?)
Looks: Like me. Well, people either say that they don’t know who he looks like or that he looks like me. Which is fine in my book 🙂
He got a couple shots yesterday at his appointment and was a little cranky but who wouldn’t be. Sleepwise, he is a dream. He goes down for the night anytime between 9:15-10:15 pm and usually gives me a stretch until 4 am on average. He eats and goes right back to sleep until 6:30 am, at which point he usually wakes up grunting/gassy but when I bring him in bed with me he calms right down. When Ashton was this age he was already in his own room but I just am not ready to kick Alex out yet. I’m in uncharted territory as far as this goes because Ashton was used to sleeping swaddled and flat on his back from the very beginning. Alex is not used to either of these things. He sleeps on an incline, in the rock n play, with his arms free. So I’m worried about the transition from his cozy little nest to the vast flatland that is his crib. Just like with Ashton starting potty training, getting rid of his paci, and getting him a big boy bed, I have no idea how to do it and therefore am avoiding it altogether. Great parenting, I know. 
Alex is smiling, gurgling, cooing, and overall a super calm baby. So sweet, quiet and happy. Jason and I have already joked that Ashton is going to be bruising it up out on some kind of sports field and Alex will be in the library. Do you think you can tell how a person is going to turn out based on how they were as a baby? I do. 
Anyway, I’m soaking up my time with him as my maternity leave comes to an end in a few weeks. My start date had been set for June 4, but then I looked at the calendar, counted the weeks, and the full 12 that FMLA gives you would put me back June 11. So I’m waiting for confirmation that I can have one more week. Both boys are going to be at the home daycare that Ashton has been going to a couple days a week since last August. They will go together on Wednesdays and Thursdays (the two days I am working) until the fall, when Ashton starts preschool. I have yet to figure out anything past the end of August but feel good about the summer at least.
The weather is getting warmer, sunnier, brighter and everything is well (except Ashton’s knees, they’ve already taken a beating and it isn’t even Memorial Day). Happy 2 months Alex! As soon as I post your pictures I am coming to scoop you up and kiss your face. So get ready 🙂

Before and After: House Exterior

This is one of my most exciting posts to date! Well, besides our kids being born. Haha. We finally had our house painted, something that was #1 on my to-do list since we moved in. The main body of the house was a faded green, and then on the front bump-out was this awful fake siding. I was hoping we could take it off and there would be shingles underneath that would match. Not so. Can’t remember if I told the blog this yet or not, but soon after we bought the house, I was talking to our neighbor across the street who has lived here 50 years. A long time ago, there was a family here whose mother or grandmother got sick. They built the front foyer with the large picture window as an addition so that she could rest in her hospital bed and look outside. This explained the cable and multiple electrical outlets in this space, and also the siding. I did NOT ask if she died here.

Anyway, the two different sidings, off-colored shingles and faded green were begging to be made over. Once we decided to go for it, I had the hardest time picking a color. It’s not like a bathroom, people. Our roof is orangey-brown and very limiting, so I had always thought a midnight blue would look sharp. I had several pints mixed and had little squares of all these blues all over the side of the house. I thought I had decided on Hale Navy by Benjamin Moore but once our painter started I was like, “STOP!! That’s not it!” and went back to the drawing board. For a couple weeks we had a half painted house and a back wall that looked like this:

After the dark blue fiasco (even though it was navy, it seemed far too royal blue once on the house), I thought, maybe tan? Maybe just refresh the green? And threw those colors up there too but nothing spoke to me like the dark blues did, even though all the ones I tried were too black, too gray, too purple. Our neighbors totally thought we were crazy. The days passed and I was beginning to think they were right. I had in my mind a midnight blue and just couldn’t find it.
So then one day, I’m sitting there at the island flipping through the paint deck yet again and there it is: MIDNIGHT BLUE. What? Come on now. How did I never see it? It was on the bottom of a strip and then two strips over, a very close cousin called Westcott Navy. I’ll save the rest of the boring story, but after a few more pints (of both paint AND beer) and a few more blue squares on the side of the house, Westcott Navy won. 
Without further ado…
BEFORE – FRONT
AFTER – FRONT 
(we never put the shutters back on)
BEFORE – LEFT SIDE
AFTER – LEFT SIDE

BEFORE- RIGHT SIDE

AFTER- RIGHT SIDE
Overall glamour shot:

While I’m here, how about a little bonus before and after: our front door! I’m obsessed! Don’t think I didn’t overhear the painters laughing about the color I chose (Amarillo by Benjamin Moore). I told them that yellow front doors are the new red front doors. They responded with blank stares. It’s okay, I didn’t need them to get it.

So the existing color was a dull, scuffed brown and in desperate need of some cheering up.

BEFORE:

AFTER:

One thing that made a huge difference was spray-painting the existing door hardware an oil-rubbed bronze. So here’s Jason doing that once the door was primed.

So now our front entryway looks like this and it makes me so happy every time I come home 🙂

We still need to re-paint the stairs, put the exterior light up and I think I’m going to DIY something with our mailbox as well. Back of the house pictures will come when Jason is finished with the deck, but for now, we are living in a whole different world as I said. A world made possible by Westcott Navy. Thanks Benjamin Moore!

Mother's Day

I’m afraid this post will be short. Absolutely nothing happened this past Sunday that is worth blogging about. Jason worked all day, our weekend visitors (Grandma and Aunt Lizzie!) left first thing in the morning and even now, two days later, I’m trying to think what on earth I did. Picked up the house, did some laundry, and went for a walk with my two boys…it was a perfect 10 of a day, I do remember that. Jason got home around 4:30 pm which was a nice surprise and, just like all other Mother’s Days, I insisted on a picture. These were the best ones. Please excuse my hair, I have not had it done since 3 weeks before Alex was born and it’s looking pretty, well, non-blond on the top haha. My appointment to take care of that problem is finally this Friday. Anyway! Me and my boys:

After our little photo sesh we hopped in the car and went to Home Depot. My favorite place on earth. Not. But this trip was all about me so it was much better than usual. I got to pick out new exterior lights for the front and back of the house, look at kitchen faucets, and get paint swatches and check out new hardware for our front door. Yay! Our house is being painted as we speak (literally he is outside right now) and sprucing up the overall exterior has me really excited. Before and After coming next week if the weather cooperates and we can get all the projects finished. 
Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms out there, whether they have little kids, big kids, grownup kids, furkids, or kids-to-be 🙂 xo

Birth Announcement

It’s kind of ironic. My last post was all about how I’m managing with two, how it’s not that bad, etc. And that is true. But they are very time consuming, these two boys of mine. I get a free minute here and there, but certainly no big chunks of time to, say, address 75 envelopes for Alex’s birth announcements. And I’m just not committed to doing one at a time, whenever I get a chance.

This post is going to drive Jason bananas. You see, I did design birth announcements. I did order them. I even went so far as to complain to Shutterfly that their formatting was messed up and they needed to reprint them, which they did. Weeks ago. But now that I have the final product, I just can’t prioritize actually getting them in the mail. Poor Alex. So begins a lifetime of being the second kid: his whole wardrobe is hand-me-downs, I don’t take his picture that often, and once he wore the same diaper for 7 hours because I forgot to change him. While we’re on diapers, he wears the cheap kind. And now, an e-birth announcement. I fear he will end up therapy, and soon.

So here is what the perfectly cute (and Jason would add “and perfectly PAID FOR!”) cards that are sitting in my basement look like.

Like most things, they are better in person. My “right-click, copy, paste” didn’t produce a very good photo at all. But isn’t there kind of a statue of limitations on birth announcements? Like, it’s getting too late to send them out anyway? Maybe it feels like that because I’ve already had them for so long, and Alex at 8 weeks old looks really different than the Alex at 3 weeks old in the above picture. Anyway, sorry Alex (most people do know that you were born) and sorry Jason (at least I’m saving money on postage).

Today is also Mother’s Day. I do not have much to report on this so far. Jason’s working, Ashton’s napping, and Alex is on his playmat (another hand-me-down, I don’t think he knows). It’s beautiful outside, there are a couple lawnmowers going, and oh, the laundry just beeped. Happy Mother’s Day to me 😉

How is it having two?

Is probably my “most asked” question. And my honest answer is: I like it better! So far, anyway. It’s not that it’s easier with two, but because they are my only full time job right now, I have enough time to manage everything. This will likely not be the case when I go back to work, and I expect my stress level to go up considerably for many reasons, but for the moment, things are good.

My day begins around 5:30 am, which is typically when Alex is waking up for the second time to eat. He is usually fussy afterwards, so he comes into our bed which seems to soothe him. Often times I prop myself up on pillows and he snores away on my chest. I close my eyes but never fall back asleep. Ashton’s up around 7:30 am and we all come downstairs for breakfast and cartoons. After Jason leaves for work, by 9:30 am, I put together a plan for the day which includes either a morning adventure/activity or errands, lunch, naptime for Ashton from 2-4 pm, and then whichever we didn’t do in the morning (activity or errands). Dinner is at 6:45 pm, tubby/stories at 7:30 pm and lights out (for Ashton) by 8:15 pm. My day ends around 10:30 pm which is when Alex officially goes to bed.

My main problem is when Ashton acts like the toddler he is 😉 I feel like I do a lot more policing and a lot more yelling, unfortunately. “Ashton, you can’t paint with the jelly!” “Ashton, stop throwing rocks at my head!” “Ashton, the back of the couch is not for climbing!” “Ashton, don’t step on your brother!” What makes it worse is that my desperate pleas usually result in maniacal laughing and repetition of the behavior I’ve just condemned. Obviously. I think I would be running interference on just about everything at this age even if Alex were not here, but he does take some of my attention which Ashton is extra desperate to get back. Even if it’s negative, which it often is. So, at the end of some days, I don’t usually feel like Mom of the Year. But that’s not entirely a byproduct of having two, that’s just having a 2.75 year old boy (ha! today actually! Ashton is 2 and three quarters just today. Wow…).

But then I have moments when the stars align and both boys are sleeping at the same time (like right now, hence this blog post). I whirl around for an hour and get the laundry finished, emails written, dishes done, and toys picked up and in those moments I feel like I can do this “having two” thing. Keeping up the house and keeping things clean is important to me and if I am organized in that regard, I am much happier. As I said, when I go back to work and I don’t have time for all the behind-the-scenes extras, it will be different. But for now, I can sum up by asserting that going from 1 to 2 kids is not the same challenge as going from 0 to 1. With the latter, you are learning how to care 24/7 for someone other than yourself, someone who is impossibly tiny, who can’t tell you what they need and who deprives you of so much sleep you don’t even know what day it is. You also struggle with the huge identity change of  becoming “mom”. With the former, you already know how to breastfeed, pack a diaper bag, the estimated time it will take you to leave the house and at precisely which intervals to have another coffee. It’s a much smaller learning curve. You’re also used to your life revolving around an “offspring” so adding another isn’t a huge deal. In fact, I rather enjoy that I get a two-fer when I’m reading stories or going out to the park.

I have no idea if I answered the question that I initially named this post. Basically, it’s great to have two little boys. I couldn’t imagine loving another one like I love Ashton but Alex is so calm and easy (two words I would NOT use to describe Ashton haha) that I sometimes think I love him more. Don’t tell Ashton he has competition on this blog 😉

Before and…In Progress: Back Deck

One of the things we knew we were going to have to replace when we bought our house was the back deck. The wood was extremely weathered and splintering, some of the spindles were loose and in general, it was old. We solved the problem temporarily last summer by putting down a big outdoor rug that covered a lot of the area:

It made it so we didn’t have to worry as much about wood spikes in bare feet. But as spring approached this year (actually what spring? It’s 40 degrees today!) we knew it was time to tackle it. Luckily, my handy brother-in-law (of kitchen fame) and my dad offered to come down from VT and help. If you ask me, it was really that they were looking for an excuse to use their tools. Same with Jason. But anyway, we picked a weekend in April (which was last weekend/Easter weekend) and Jason started the prep.

The week before, he and Berg tackled the demo.

All ready for new planks.

One of the nice bonuses of this deck project has been that it has turned into a complete backyard makeover. You can see Jason is taking down the old swingset that came with our house. We originally thought it would be great to have but parts of it were broken and it wasn’t in great shape. So, buh-bye swingset!

Just yesterday Jason seeded and watered so hopefully that backyard will be green in no time. In his words, “I’m going to grow grass back there if it’s the last thing I do!”

Where was I. Oh the deck. After the demo, Home Depot came to deliver the wood. We went with the pressure-treated stuff vs. composite, basically because it was half the cost and we don’t plan to be in this house until the end of time.

Jason moved all the wood into the backyard until build day. Which looked like this, in no particular order.

 So where does all this leave us. It’s not quite finished – Jason needs to put the spindles up and we want to lattice the sides (not pictured). We also have to wait to stain it or paint it for, like, months. Until it has had enough exposure to the elements or something? I could look up the reason but don’t care enough. So without further ado…here is where we are at.

BEFORE

IN PROGRESS

BEFORE
IN PROGRESS

And some stairs shots, not the same angle but you get it.

A couple other highlights besides the death of the swingset. Behold, this awful picture from before we moved in.
Arrow denotes the “Before” area. It looks like this now.
Jason used the old weathered deck wood to build up a bed, plant trees, and mulch it. We are thinking about doing this around the perimeter of the entire yard to hide the fence instead of replacing it (it’s in worse shape than the deck was). But it’s a significant investment in trees so we will see. 
Jason also repurposed the old deck wood to add some character to the back basement entrance of our house. He laid the planks over the existing bumpy cement to create a new walkway.

It looks pretty neat and we talked about chipping all the moss out and painting the little stone retaining walls on each side. 
So the moral of this post is, we’ve done a lot but there is still a lot left!

6 Weeks PP

Well I am officially 6 weeks PP (that’s “postpartum” for the layperson). I motored on over Newton-Wellesley this morning for my final followup appointment. Honestly, I was feeling pretty good about myself. I’ve been in non-maternity jeans for awhile now and even though things are still pretty squishy under there, I get a lot of compliments at how I look considering I’ve “just” had a baby.

Not so fast, Kristen, not so fast.

So there I am in the waiting room and my name is called. They take my blood pressure and ask me to step on the scale. I said, “You really make women do this after only six weeks?” like half-jokingly. I wasn’t worried until the scale registered my poundage. 140, which is still a solid 10 pounds from where I started. Hmmm. This was…unexpected. Listen, I have the sense to know that the reason some of my old clothes don’t fit isn’t because they shrunk in the dryer. But I didn’t think I was that far off.
I glanced over at the nurse who was looking at my chart, comparing the numbers and realizing what I had just realized. 
“You’d be surprised how many women at back at their fighting weight by this appointment,” she said. It should be noted that “like you” or any other words that would imply my inclusion were not added. Humpf. I could say that I came home and did not have a brownie after lunch, but that would be a lie. I guess I’m hoping the last 10 pounds will magically take care of themselves. Because that happens, right? 😉
Alex is about 80% better that he was last week. He still has trouble with mucous sometimes and it drives me crazy because I just want to say “Cough!” so he will clear it. Instead he just rasps and I find myself coughing FOR him haha. Poor baby. He also still keeps me up all night with his grunting and farm animal noises. Jason finally slept in the guest room last night because I told him at least one of us should get some sleep. What else…results from dairy elimination are unclear. This is likely due to my relapse when we were in the hospital so I’ve had to start all over. But is this the reason for the nighttime discomfort and resulting noises? According to my baby sleep book (Healthy Sleep Habits, Happy Child – I swear by it), fussiness and crying peaks at 6 weeks of age. So the answer is, who the heck knows. But also at this age, I should start to get four to six hour sleep stretches at night from Alex so anytime he wants to show me this is fine. Anytime at all, really 🙂

Easter Weekend (aka "My kids just looooove to get sick")

We did not have a traditional Easter. No we did not.

It did start out that way. It started out great, actually. The weather was gorgeous, we had the VT crew in town to re-do our deck, and it was my sister’s 30th birthday. I had been looking forward to the visitors and the long weekend for awhile. On Saturday morning, Ashton, Kari and I went over to Belmont for their annual kids’ egg hunt. I use the word “hunt” loosely as the eggs basically formed a carpet over the field. Impossible to “not find” 😉 Thankfully they had a toddler-only area in the fenced playground because those big kids meant business.

The hunt began at 10:00 am. It was over by 10:06 am.

Ready, go!

At approximately 10:04 am, we hit a small speedbump. A little girl picked up Ashton’s basket. 
You can actually see him saying, “Nooooo!!” 

When 3.5 seconds passed and she was still grasping the handle, he ran out to find me. Emotions were high.

He walked around for awhile, blinded by his tears. Little did he know, there were more to come: the egg limit per kid was 10. He had collected at least 40. The return process was not easy.
= more sobs.
But once I persuaded him to open the eggs he still had, things were better.
Mini tootsie rolls to the rescue! So that was the egg hunt. It was a cute event, they had balloons, music, facepainting, etc. and any parent within a 5 mile radius was there. That’s a lot – we live a family-dense area. But it was a good way to spend 6 minutes so we will likely do it again next year.
We got home and had lunch on our new deck (not quite complete so I’m not ready for my before-and-after post on that) and Kari and I went off to get pedicures in honor of her birthday. When we got back, I scooped up Alex and he felt warm to me. I took his temp, it was 100.2. 45 minutes later, it was 100.4, which is the magic fever-number for babies and I called the pediatrician’s answering service (these things always happen on nights, weekends and holidays!!). By the time they called me back, it was 100.5 and before I knew it, I had been referred to the emergency room. Luckily Newton-Wellesley has a phenomenal pediatric ER so, off I went with Alex. How could I not? But it was JUST when it was time for cocktails on a gorgeous sunny afternoon. Sigh.
I could make the next 48 hours into a super long post in and of itself, how we were admitted, the tests they ran (OH the tests!!), the ups and downs, but basically, for two days they monitored Alex’s temperature and oxygen levels, and we waited for blood cultures to come back to make sure whatever was making him sick was not bacterial and therefore would require antibiotics. It was a long, long wait. This is the room that Alex and I lived in:
He had a little baby IV and spent most of the time sleeping.
But when he was awake, he was mostly his happy little self. Doesn’t he look so big??

 At one point, Alex was really alert and kept glancing around so they brought in a mobile for him to look at.

I don’t know why but this made my emotional-basketcase-of-a-self cry sooo much. For my own situation but also for so many other parents whose kids are way sicker and who have to stay in hospitals way longer. It’s almost too much to take.
Anyway, so that is where I spent my Easter. Once they were certain the cultures were negative and it was a viral respiratory infection (which I knew it was – Ashton coughed right in Alex’s face every chance he got), we got to go home. It was Marathon Monday, Patriots Day in Massachusetts and the 7 year anniversary of my first date with Jason 🙂 It was another beautiful day and a reminder that while my life had virtually stopped for the past two days, the world had gone on like it always does. 
Today, two days later, Alex is actually sicker, his cough has worsened (like I was told it would) and he struggles a lot with mucous. He doesn’t nurse that well so I’ve been pumping and in general, just anxious for this to pass. Ashton, for his part, was so glad to have Alex home that he piled toys on his head the first time Alex made the mistake of taking a nap.
I can’t tell you how many calls, texts and emails I’ve gotten from people who are worried about Alex. It really helps to know he has so many people that love him and are sending him good thoughts! Thank you so so much. xoxo

One month old

Alex is, like, a month old! Whoaaaa. We had his well-visit this morning and he weighs 10 pounds 7 ounces, which is 60th percentile and almost exactly what Ashton was. Oh and he is 21.5 inches long, which is 50th percentile. I didn’t ask what his head measurement was (how’s that for second child syndrome) but was told it is 80th percentile. So, all good except…he has tons of little baby acne. The breakout is official. It spreads from his cheeks down to his shoulders and arms so while I still think he is adorable, I’m probably the only person on the planet that does haha. But that’s ok 🙂 There’s not much to report, lately I have been feeding him around 10 pm and putting him to bed by 10:30 pm, he is up for one feeding at 3 am and then again at 6-6:30 am, at which point he usually sleeps on my chest or next to me in bed because he is at his gassiest (haha) at that time. He still is so grunty but not like he was before I gave up dairy so…maybe it’s working? I’m going to give it another few days and then gorge myself on some cheese or something and see what happens.

Things have been much more eventful with Ashton, who ALSO had a pediatrician visit this morning. It was a followup to this past Tuesday, when I was forced to take him in for the same respiratory illness he had three weeks ago. Another two hour afternoon, missed nap, two nebulizers, oxygen tests, etc. before they sent us up to Lexington Children’s Hospital for a chest x-ray. They were worried about pneumonia, which thankfully he does not have, but we’ve been on four nebulizers a day with a steroid inhalant plus albuterol and well, Ashton has been the tasmanian devil. It’s been a really trying few days, he literally spins around destroying the house. And of course it hasn’t been above 40 degrees since Monday so we’ve been inside. But today was much better and we are going to scale back the nebulizers (“tubes”) as Ashton calls them, and hopefully be outside a lot this weekend. We have quite a team coming into town to rebuild our back deck so watch for that before and after post next week!
Besides the pediatrician, we’ve had some better outings. Last week we went to Drumlin Farms to see the baby animals with my friend Kathleen and her twin boys Jackson and Adrian, who turned 3 in January (fun fact: Kathleen’s husband is the chef at Anthem, where Jason worked for a couple years before the Lenox, which was before Brae Burn). They live in Watertown too. So we packed up and it was a beautiful day. You can imagine with three boys that never stop moving, you don’t get great pictures. These were my best shots.

While we are on animals, Jason had the Barnyard Babies at Brae Burn last weekend for their annual kids’ Bunny Brunch (whoa how is that for some B’s!). It was pouring and a crappy day but Ashton Alex and I made the trip over and the babies were so cute – weeks old, just like Alex 🙂 

The Easter Bunny was also there, Ashton was not so into that. I find that most small kids aren’t. Those costumes are scary! 
In between all the animal action in the past week, there was some gardening…
Some living room picnicking…
Outdoor napping…
And general brotherly love.

I also have some really good news…I was officially approved to go back to work part time, two days a week, once my maternity leave ends (June 2) through the end of the summer. I am breathing a big sigh of relief! More time at home with Alex and also more time to figure out what our full time childcare situation is going to be. Lots of options (and lots of $$$!) but I’m so happy and reminded how lucky I am to have such a great job.
Let’s see what else…Jason and I are taking the plunge on some big house projects this month, so hopefully that will make for some good posts! And of course we’ve got Easter on Sunday, the Marathon on Monday, and lots more fun things on the calendar. Busy busy busy…should be a good Spring (ahem, Mother Nature, that was a hint – please raise the temps, I’ve got boys that need to get outside)!