NILL FAMILY news

After 16 days off, I have welcomed the return of our routine since the new year hit. There are exactly 9 weeks until my due date (March 12) and I intend to enjoy the last bit of what I know to be our “normalcy” before everything changes once again! We have been keeping busy with our usual activities by…

    

Happy New Year! As some of you know, I get a very long time off from work this time of year. I have been on Christmas vacation since December 20 and when I’m not in a work routine, I typically take an overall computer break. Hence, no new blog posts for you. But that is about to change! Without further ado, I give you…Christmas 2013.

It all actually began on December 24th. We did our own little mini Christmas at home before heading to Long Island to see Grandma, Grandpa, Uncle Chris, Aunt Lizzy and cousin Owen later that morning. Ashton got his long awaited kitchen 🙂

He opened some “food” and utensils…

And Jason was feasting on some Corn a la Christmas in no time.

I feel like everyone who reads this blog probably knows Ashton pretty well. And Jason to some extent – I drop in some tidbits about him every now and then. Recently I’ve seen that thing go around Facebook where people share some perhaps unknown facts about themselves according to what number they are assigned by their friends. I’ve decided to do this for myself in this blog post, even though no one has given me a number or really even asked me to. But, it’s MY blog and I am hereby deeming myself the subject of this post. I will try to get to 15 things. I’m kind of interested to see what I write.

1) Well, first, I don’t understand people that don’t floss. It is the easiest, quickest thing in the world to do, prevents bad breath, keeps your teeth white, and in general is just a nice habit to have and yet, so many people don’t do it. It blows my mind.

2) I loathe the idea of baths and sitting for an extended period of time in your own dirty water as it gets progressively colder. You’d literally have to hold me down to get me to stay in one.

3) I believe one should always drink Diet Coke out of the can because plastic bottles just don’t get as cold (unless it’s an emergency, in which case, a bottle has to do. Sometimes a bottle just has to do).

4) I love Ashton with every fiber and every cell of my being, but I don’t always love being a mom. It’s hard!

5) I’ve never smoked (or even tried) a cigarette.

6) I still miss Tate and think about him a lot.

7) If I could change something about my body, I’d have a thinner waist so I could wear cute belts and dresses would look nicer. I don’t have much curve at all and sometimes feel “boxy”.

8) I can’t read stories about animals or children being mistreated. I won’t open the links or read past the headline. It is physically painful for me and I’d rather not know, even though it’s not lost on me that if everyone said that, we’d have a huge problem on our hands.

9) If I could choose to have an extraordinary talent or skill (besides blogging, duh), whether it be art, dance, what have you – I’d pick singing. Not to be famous or on a TV show, just because singing and music moves people in a way that a lot of things can’t.

10) Pinterest makes me feel inadequate and reminds me all the time that I never do the things I’d like to (thanks PINS).

11) I won’t make a recipe if I don’t have all the ingredients (including fresh herbs. Even if I have the dry spices, I will either go to the store to buy fresh or pick something else to cook). I have to have everything exactly as it’s listed. I do not “wing it” and have been known to quit in the middle if I think it is coming out bad.

12) Jason and I rarely watch movies and haven’t been to the theater in years. It’s too much of a risk to waste 2 hours of perfectly good time when most movies don’t end up being worth it.

13) I used to drink my coffee black, but ever since that fateful day when Jason put milk and sugar in it for the first time…well anyway, in my head I still drink it black and would tell a stranger that.

14) I love to buy wrapping paper. If I see a cute roll of it somewhere I always have to get it. I have a big collection and there is no greater compliment than when someone tells me they know which of their gifts is mine just by the paper.

15) I have no urge to travel. I like my own bed and access to all my stuff whenever I need it.

16) Now that I work at a university amongst so many intelligent faculty and staff, I frequently feel silly that I never got a Masters degree. It’s just that I never had a strong enough interest in anything to send myself to grad school. I feel silly about that too, but it’s the truth. I’m intellectually lazy.

17) I donate $2 to the Ride to Give causes whenever I get the chance and remain completely obsessed with Tripp Halstead.

18) I am funny about sponges. I buy them in bulk and change them out regularly. My sponges have their own special holder and they are not multipurpose i.e. the dish sponge does not double as the counter sponge (shudder).

19) We moved into our house almost a year ago and still, every day when I come home I am reminded how much I love it and how grateful I am to live there. Jason and I say all the time how we can’t believe it is ours and we never take for granted that we have good jobs, can provide for our son (and future child) and never forget to appreciate what we have and the happiness it brings us. Especially this time of year when we are sitting in front of our warm fireplace with our Christmas tree nearby.

Wow – 19 things! I guess I could have stretched it to 20 but I think that is enough self-indulgence for one day. I’m going to get a cookie.

I have been, like, shockingly busy this week. I hope our Christmas tree will forgive my delay in posting about the most important day in its life, EVER. The story of its rite of passage from Canadian tree farm anonymity to revered holiday symbol. Its response to the call of duty heard by evergreens the world over. The time-honored tradition! The bejeweled transformation that lights up the world! Christmas tree- this post is for you.

So as I previously documented, our Christmas tree was living at a Home Depot when we decided it should come home with us. It sat in its stand for a couple of days so the branches could fall and spread out. Then, Saturday morning came and it was D-DAY (D for decoration).

Jason and Ashton conducted the opening ceremony by creating an artistic interpretation of our tree with crayons (this is officially called “coloring”).

After breakfast, it was time to untangle the lights, string them up, and place the Santa hat.

Phase 1 complete. Ashton launched Phase 2 with the first ornament- the softest, most non-breakable one we have.

The first one took awhile. He was very concentrated and not sure what to do. But eventually each one he placed was followed with an “I did it!” and a big smile. It was really, really cute.

If I had to evaluate the overall result, however…let’s just say it was easy to spot the ones Ashton was responsible for. They were on the very tips of the longest bottom branches, one pine needle in. These ornaments were literally hanging for their lives.

Many fell and we suffered one fatality. Overcrowding was also an issue.

One thing I will give credit for – Ashton is an equal opportunity employer. He wanted to make sure everything in our ornament bin got a shot.

But, he drank on the job. Straight out of the shaker! No manners whatsoever.

Other than that, smooth sailing.

I’d be lying if I said we didn’t move some around after Ashton went down for his nap. We also realized just how many of our ornaments are glass. Like, 95% of them. So we installed one of those invisible electric fences around the tree so Ashton can’t get anywhere near it (when he’s wearing his collar at least). It’s remarkable, you can’t even see it.

Haha jk.

And that’s how a humble balsam fir became our glorious, shining beacon of Christmas! Maybe it should have a crown on top instead – something more regal. Christmas tree – I’ll look into that. You deserve it.

p.s. I am pretty sure my mom is the only one that watches the videos I post on YouTube, but I like to link them from here anyway. This is with a little help from Daddy, and this is all by himself 🙂

Well it’s December which means…it’s the MOST wonderful tiiiiime, ooof the YEARRRR! The last time I posted about the holiday season, Ashton was all smiles when we kicked off our festivities and went to meet Santa.

I’m happy to report that this year, nothing has changed.

Nope Dad, our tree is not down here either.

I fear I’ve missed the boat on posting about Thanksgiving because we are already well on our way to prepping for Christmas. But for historical purposes I feel like I should document something, and this Thanksgiving shall be dubbed THE YEAR OF THE SCOOTER. Some background: my mom (GG) had come down to watch Ashton about a week before Thanksgiving and they had run into a little boy in the park that had a scooter. Given Ashton’s tendency to be obsessed with anything that is not remotely his, he stole borrowed it and rode it around for an hour. GG sent me several videos during this time and I admit, Ashton was pretty good for being 2.3 years old.

We drove up to Vermont for Thanksgiving a week later, walked in the door, and there was a shiny new blue scooter waiting for him (and a nice big helmet 😉 ). When Ashton laid eyes on this thing…well it was love at first sight. Luckily it had rubber wheels because he rode it around and around the house.

 Not even pausing to eat.

Actually even the adults took turns despite the 44 pound weight limit. It was the toy du jour.

The last day I was there we decided to take it outside. Honestly, he should have had his helmet on but I did not think he would ever get going as fast as he did! GG and I took turns spotting him and he just rode and rode. He was sweating he was working so hard haha.

Thanks GG! I think Ashton would take this to bed with him if he could 🙂

Now, Thanksgiving itself. There were 10 adults, 1 kid (Ashton) and 1 baby (Woody). In fact here are said kid and said baby sizing each other up:

The funny part is that in that picture, Ashton has Woody’s snacks and Woody has Ashton’s train.

Anyway, I had brought my big-girl camera so I could attempt to get something cute and christmas-card worthy. I put Ashton in front of the fireplace and prayed. After a minute or two, I was the proud owner of these:

Nothing says “Happy holidays from the Nills!” like a box of Town House crackers. I naturally did not use any of these. At least his shirt was cute though.

So what else? Oh, the eating part. Duh. My mom’s table was beautiful:

Ashton helped with the cooking:

Overall, a wonderful happy Thanksgiving 🙂 We missed my brother Erik (Hi Erik! Shout out!) but he was in California with some other family so that was ok.

On to Christmas!!

I don’t know what prompted me to look up the definition of this word, but I did and it means “a meddling or prying person”. For the sake of this post, pretend it means something along the lines of “one that never sits still”. Literally, busy body. Because that’s Ashton. Except if Mickey is on. But most of the time, I have to stay a step ahead of him and keep him entertained. If I don’t, he’ll do it himself, and a lot of the things that he finds fun I do not find fun (like picking up a hundred matchbox cars because he has just dumped them out for the 17th time (you know, for the crashing noise). Last weekend Jason did not have his typical day off (and was home after bedtime both nights), thus I was on mostly on my own and dubbed this free time “Operation Occupy Ashton”. It had three parts.

The Alpha Initiative: Friday night. We went to the Inside Playground in Watertown. This is a giant warehouse type place with bouncy houses, ride-on toys and everything in between. Kids can run around and they have good chairs set up for bored parents. To visit a place like this is to play roulette with your child’s health. Same goes for any indoor play space where drooly kids share toys and germs. But to stay home is to play roulette with your sanity which is also tremendously valuable. Ultimately, my mental well-being won out and off we went for about an hour and a half.

Ashton hit the ripe old age of 27 months earlier in November. But truthfully, we’ve graduated from counting in months. We are now at the point where we begin with decimals. So 2.3 means 2 years, 3 months, 2.4 means 2 years, 4 months and so on. This could easily lead to mix-ups because even though he is “technically” 2 and a quarter, you’d write it as 2.3, not 2.25. Similarly, 2.5 looks like it means “two and a half” but really, he’s one month shy. So this is just a little public service announcement; DON’T LET THE TODDLER AGING SYSTEM CONFUSE YOU.

I know I’ve mentioned here and there what has been up with our little blog star lately, but I wanted to do an official post on his milestones and all that so I have it to look back on some day. Without further ado, an “Ashton State of the Union”:

Speech: Coming along every day. We met with our new speech therapist this week and I can tell she is going to be fantastic. She has two young boys and I absolutely think is going to connect really well with our family. Allison mentioned that she is quite happy with Ashton’s noun vocabulary and we are now going to focus on verbs. For instance, if he points and says, “Ball!” or “Bird!” we are going to say, “Yes! Balls BOUNCE” or “Birds FLY”. This will help his sentences to grow. Right now his longest one to date is “One more cracker please” but usually they are “Mommy up!”, “Ashton do it”, “Come sit”, “Oven hot!”, and the ever-popular: “No.” Pretty basic sentences but he is good at getting his point across one way or the other. His new thing is saying “Ja” for “Yes” (I guess he IS part German) so I am working on correcting that. Also, counting. Earlier this week he counted: “Onnnne, twoooo…six, seven, eight….six!” and then clapped. I kissed him and told him that was exactly right 🙂 He knows all of his animals, lots of foods and almost every day surprises me with another word. We were reading “Biscuit Gives a Gift” last night and the last page is a christmassy scene by the fireplace. I pointed to the fireplace and said, “This is a…” and he said “Fire! Hot! and then above that on the mantle I said, “What are these?” expecting to answer the question for him but before I could, he said “Stockings!” It always surprises me even though we read the same books over and over, I point out the same things in the pictures and say the same words every time, I guess it shouldn’t. But it’s always such a treat when my “teaching” pays off and he learns to say things on his own.

Size: At the ENT a couple weeks ago, he weighed 35 pounds and was 3 feet, 2 inches tall. He is now in a size 4T for pajamas! In shirts and pants he is either 2T or 3T (usually 3T) but depends on the brand. He’s just super tall for his age. Helps with his basketball. Shoes are an 8.5W.

Food: His next food allergy appointment will be when he is roughly 2.6. Referring to my explanation above you should conclude that this is age “two and a half”. He is mostly a good eater, dinnertime can be a little dicey though. I let him choose what he wants and he helps to “cook” it, but often times when I get him in his highchair he has changed his mind completely and refuses what he originally picked. “No!” is heard very frequently during this time. Anyway, what I am always hopeful he will eat is veggies and some protein. What he ends up eating most nights is Kix. Can’t win’em all. Fridays nights are pizza and that is usually successful.

Potty training: HAHAHA. No.

Other age-appropriate (more like inappropriate) things: This is tough to admit… butashtonstillgetsan8ozbottleofmilkbeforebed. AHHHH I know, I know. It’s just part of our routine after tubby and he drinks it while I am doing his lotions and pajamas before storytime. My goal is to get rid of it on January 1. He also has a very intense relationship with his pacifiers. We are mostly successful in limiting them to when he’s in his crib, but if you were to look in there you’d see about six. At bedtime he reaches through the slats and tries them all out before picking the one he wants to go to bed with (they are all EXACTLY the same, by the way) but it’s like his Goldilocks routine. The thought of getting rid of those pacis is downright terrifying. I have no idea how we are going to do so and therefore I’m ignoring it.

Toys and entertainment: What does Ashton do for fun? Usually things that I don’t want him to do. He loves to climb up on the coffee table and launch himself onto the couch into the pillows. These are called “the slams”. He’ll do this repeatedly and after each one will laugh, say “One more slam!” and start all over. The slams only happen with close supervision. Playing with his trains is much easier to manage, which he also enjoys. Lastly, he adores “cooking”. Both Chera and his daycare have play kitchens and Santa is planning to bring one so he can have his own.

Sleeping: He’s usually up between 7:30 and 8 am, goes down for one afternoon nap, usually 1:30-3:30/4 pm and bedtime is at 8 pm.

Are the two’s really terrible? No, of course not. They are terrible. One of the things I’m working on is getting Ashton to listen to me. I know he understands but he’s an attention seeker and when the tantrums hit, look out. He starts screaming for fruit snacks. He wants the top for his untoasted english muffin. He wants a time out. He doesn’t want a time out. He is desperate for his paci. He dumps his toy bucket. He throws himself on the floor. It’s not pretty in so, so many ways. I find especially after his daycare days, we come home and he will just sit in the middle of the kitchen and cry. So I hug him and tell him it is so hard to be two and it’s okay. I turn on Mickey Mouse and that usually helps to cheer him up – Mickey is his favorite. Which brings me to…

Screentime: Now that Ashton is of TV-watching age, he usually gets one episode (maybe two) of Mickey every day. He also knows how to use the iPad and my iPhone, which is quite scary. But apps are limited usually to weekend mornings when we take him out of his crib and bring him into bed with us so we can keep our eyes shut a little longer.

That about covers it for now. I could write a lot of little one-off stories but I was mainly interested in documenting the highlights (if you can call them that haha). If Ashton were a weather forecast, I guess he’d be “mostly sunny with an outside chance of hail, high winds and short, violent thunderstorms in the early evening”.

Which means that overall, it’s a pleasant day 🙂

p.s. I’m so mad that the picture on the right is blurry. I had high hopes I could salvage it for my Christmas card but nope. That’s a whole other story…

This was a very big weekend for our kitchen, a very big weekend indeed! My sister Kari and her husband Ben came down from VT (where they now live! Much closer than CO! Woo!) and boy did they hook us up. Ben is even more handy than Jason is (sorry honey) and between the two of them they put up my much awaited backsplash and pendant lights over the new peninsula.

But as they say, begin from the beginning. I guess you could describe our kitchen as galley style. You walk in from the living room and there is one long row of cabinetry/appliances on left:

Straight forward faces double doors out to the deck:

And the right side has another little area, fridge, dining room access and then a half bath:

Other direction:

When we first moved, we immediately took care of two big things: appliances and lighting. After the new fridge and range were in, our electrician installed both under and over cabinet lights, which made an incredible difference in warmth and ambiance. And then I said, “You know, I feel like our cabinets would do much better with, like, bronze knobs instead of silver.” A quick trip to Lowe’s and we were in business. I don’t have any real before and afters of this but trust me, it was genius at work.

So those changes held us for awhile but we always struggled with the big blank wall on the right that seemed to be such a waste of space. Well besides the nice comfy home it made for Ashton’s highchair.

Surely we could find some way to get a couple stools and extra counter and cabinet space, but there was no doubt that our kitchen was too narrow for an island. So, we constructed a fake peninsula out of a wardrobe box and Ikea countertop to make sure it functioned well and didn’t block the entrance to the bathroom because this was not going to be a small expense. We lived with that for awhile, decided we were 100% sure and then…

We went for it. Ordered the cabinets and granite, scheduled the install, and voila!

Now, enter Ben and Kari this past weekend. I’m getting to my point I promise. The project still was not finished. The lighting was now really off-balance being mainly on the left side and I have been wanting needing pendant lights. Short story: I ordered some and Ben hung them for me this weekend! Afterwards, my little DIY project went up on the wall (I found some cute dish towels at HomeGoods that I cut up and framed) and here is the finished product 🙂

There’s still a little hole in the wall near the ceiling we need to fix. Ben opened it up to do the wiring and discovered that the contractor who refinished our kitchen simply put more drywall up over the old stuff. UNEARTHED: This lovely wallpaper of yore.

Drumroll please…My favorite part about the new peninsula:

Double bins for trash and recycling! This little baby is also known as my anniversary gift haha. It was an add-in that I couldn’t live without so I invoked the nearest occasion Jason owed me a present for. I’m nothing if not resourceful.

Oh, but we are only half done my friends. Let’s turn our heads to the other side of the kitchen to the wall that so desperately needed a backsplash. I picked a mid-sized subway tile in natural stone. Neutral. Non-threatening. No fancy patterns or inserts. But, um, tile that turned out to need monstrous amounts of grout due to beveled edges and to be more porous than coral. I was not Jason’s favorite person during the grouting process, not at all. 14 pounds of it went on and then about 13.5 pounds had to come right back off in scraping. Whoops.

But what’s really the most important thing here? Jason’s tired arms or cracked fingertips? No. It is how beautiful it came out 🙂 Little right side area next to fridge:

Left side:

Oooooo! Ahhhhhhh!!

Here’s the down and dirty with what happened in between all the befores and afters:

In between all this they cut down a fallen tree from our back yard using rope and chainsaws and also switched out our old gold grimy firebox for a new sleek black one (part of the upcoming fireplace makeover). They made quite the team 🙂

So this is officially our new kitchen (minus my dish towel frames).

 I am IN LOVE! A huge thank you to Ben and Kari for coming down and making this all happen. I can’t wait to return the favor once you move in to your new house in a couple weeks xoxox! Oh and thanks of course to my husband who always asks me what I want and (almost) never tells me no 😉

It occurs to me that it’s been a couple weeks since I updated this blog. Even though I’ve had it for a couple of years now, every post I put up feels like a big task so once I hit “Publish”, I tend to rest on the laurels of my accomplishment for a few days. Is that even a saying? Well in this case it’s been a couple of weeks so I’ll fill you in on the mishmash that has happened since Halloween.

First, Ashton had his first appointment with a pediatric ENT. He has always been a drooly kid and as he has gotten older and more active, things are just very wet all the time. Oh to have a picture of him without a bib or a saliva-soaked shirt! Besides that (and really the impetus behind his appointment) is the fact that he is in speech therapy and having difficulty making proper sounds. I wondered if perhaps his perpetual inability to breathe through his nose might have something to do with it. Just to rule out any larger medical issue (like adenoids), I made an appointment and off we went. The doctor was really nice and used an endoscope to take a peek up Ashton’s nose. It was very thin with a little light on the end.

I really should have known.

It took three people to hold him down – he was petrified. I don’t blame his little 2 year old self one bit. It turns out his adenoids are quite large, which was both good and bad to hear. Good in the sense that I was right to bring him in, bad in that he has had legitimate trouble breathing 😦 He also has rhinitis, which, given his allergic nature, definitely factors in as well. So the plan is to have him on Flonase for 4 weeks, see if it helps with the inflammation/breathing and if not, adenoids will come out. The Flonase does seem to be working so I’ll have another update on that in a month or so.

Back to speech therapy. We have Early Intervention on Wednesdays at 8 am with Fran who we LOVE, and we started speech therapy with Shelby on Tuesdays about 2 months ago on Fran’s recommendation. Shelby didn’t quite hit it off with Ashton in terms of being able to fully engage him/control him, and Jason and I were worried that we weren’t making much progress. We had asked if maybe Shelby and Fran could come together so Fran could teach Shelby some tricks to be more effective at winning Ashton’s attention. But we recently found out that Shelby is no longer with the group (we don’t know what happened) so we are starting with a new speech therapist next week. I hope it’s a better fit!

What else. Oh, we took a long weekend last weekend for Veteran’s Day and traveled to NY to visit Jason’s parents and hit the Giants game on Sunday! This has become a yearly tradition whereby Grandma and Grandpa get to watch Ashton allllll day while Mommy and Daddy tailgate with their friends 🙂 It’s about a 2-2.5 hour trip from their house in Hampton Bays to MetLife Stadium so it makes for a long but super fun day. We met up with Jason’s best friend Evan and Kaelyn and also Chera and Eric, who you guys all know. Evan and Kaelyn are recently engaged and Chera just found out she’s having a baby GIRL (due 3 weeks after me, April 1) so we were all in great spirits!

The next day we attempted to get a christmas card picture of Ashton and my nephew Owen. It did not go so well.

A preview of what was to come. We traveled home on Monday and rolled in around 6 pm. I wasn’t feeling great and went to bed early, which proved to make no difference because that famous 24 hour bug had bitten me. I was up all night and woke up Tuesday, November 12, my 33rd birthday, feeling terrible. I had already called out from work and expected to sleep in peace all day when we went in to get Ashton up and lo and behold, he had gotten the bug too 😦 Poor baby needed a bath and all his bedding, pajamas and his rug… it all needed to be cleaned and scrubbed. I felt so awful I hadn’t noticed he had been getting sick too. But he hadn’t made a peep! 😦 Anyway, my planned day of rest went into the wash with everything else. We spent Tuesday at home together in our sweats and watched an ungodly number of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse episodes. We have seen finer times, him and I. Jason came home around 5:30 pm and made me french onion soup for my birthday dinner, which I didn’t want any part of, which sucked. What I DID want a part of was my present which was the new iPhone 5s! Woo! Jason used his upgrade with AT&T to get me this very coveted life-altering device 🙂 I told him that was true sacrifice and a sure sign that he must love me very much. I went to bed happy and things have been on the up and up for the past couple of days.

And that’s about it since Halloween – although speaking of Halloween, Chera has a blog (link above) and I stole this picture she posted because Ashton and Owen were just that cute together 🙂 Be back soon!