Alethea’s Big Girl Room: A List

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1. Plan Layout

2. Choose Paint Color (custom mix #6) & Buy Paint

3. Take ‘Before’ Pictures

4. Find Perfectly Sized/Priced Dresser on Craigslist

5. Somehow get seller of Craigslist Dresser to e-mail me back, then buy dresser

6. Paint Room

7. Buy good quality bunk beds and mattress

8. Buy remaining furniture as cheaply as possible, then begin furniture rehab

9. Pick out fabrics/pattern so Grandma Denny can make quilt

10. Buy/make accessories for room, find/make curtains, buy blackout roller shade for window

11. Move in furniture, decorate room, move in Alethea’s book/toys

12. Convince Alethea to sleep in big girl bed so baby can use crib

DEADLINE FOR ALL OF ABOVE: January 4th 2011

The Dresser Hunt

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After looking at roughly 400 dressers on Craigslist last night, I came up with exactly one dresser that is the correct size for the space in Alethea’s new room.

However, for some reason Peter didn’t feel it was appropriate for his daughter’s room despite its low $15 price tag.  I guess I’ll keep looking.

A Little Bit of Everything

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Maybe Alethea doesn’t know Sesame Street as well as I thought she did.  Today she was looking at the Sponge Bob towel that was laying on the floor with clothes drying on it.  She pointed at Patrick (the starfish) and said “Emo!”  I tried telling her that it was Patrick, but she was very insistent that it was Elmo.  Oh well.

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I went to Sherwin Williams and bought paint for Alethea’s big girl room.  Instead of going with any of the pre-mixed options, I took my multitude of paint samples and whipped up my own color.  It only took me 8 or so tries and several hours to finally get the “perfect” gray.  Not too light, not too dark, not too blue, not too tan.  I think it’s all for the best, but the rule follower in me feels weird using an “unofficial” color.

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The baby has been moving around a lot more lately.  It seems to me that her movements are a bit less forceful than Alethea’s were at about the same age, but maybe that’s just me hoping not to have two very assertive children who are only 20 months apart.

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I know everyone says Alethea looks like Peter, and she does.  But the other day my sister-in-law Julie over at TheAnticsoftheThree22nds posted pictures of her youngest three at around 5-6 months.  I still think that the person Alethea looks most like is her cousin Roman.

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I’m super excited about our Labor Day Block Party this weekend.  We are hosting it at our house.  I told Peter that I was going to do red, white and blue for the paper goods and decorations.  He said that Labor Day isn’t a red, white and blue kind of holiday.  What color is it then?

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I’m trying to score a cheap dresser and nightstand off craigslist for Alethea’s room.  Only problem is I think I need a really narrow dresser.  The wall seemed long enough for bunk beds and a dresser, but when I actually measured it out I ended up with about 27 inches for the dresser.  I really want to keep my room arrangement how I have it planned out though, so I think I’ll keep hunting for a narrow-but-tall dresser.

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It’s All Shades of Gray

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So, I’m not actually done clearing out the debris from Alethea’s big-girl-room-to-be, but since Sherwin Williams is having a big sale starting tomorrow, I thought I’d better get a paint color picked out.

Peter didn’t like my idea for doing white/cream walls and I am absolutely set against any kind of tan.  However, we did manage to agree that we should keep the walls neutral since there are going to be so many fun colors in the accessories, and that pretty much just left us with gray.

Fortunately I was already planning on painting our master bedroom gray, so I had spent plenty of time with my deck of colors and had some idea of which samples I wanted to try.  And here they are:

From Left to Right:

Sherwin Williams Popular Gray – too light
Behr Dolphin Fin – too blue
Sherwin Williams Proper Gray – too dark
Sherwin Williams Dovetail – too prison cell

So now what?

I think I’ll head back over to SW tomorrow and see if they can make my Popular Gray sample a little darker and turn it into the next color down on the paint strip which is Versatile Gray.  I didn’t realize finding the right gray would be so much work.

Sixteen Month Update

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Today is Alethea’s sixteen month birthday.  Happy Birthday Baby!

This month has been a continuation of her growing independence.  One of her favorite new skills is going down stairs without help.  I’m really amazed that she can do this (and never let her do it unsupervised) but she can put one hand on the wall for balance and walk down the stairs in our house without any assistance from me.  She hasn’t yet mastered going up the stairs on her feet, but she’s working on that one too.

Of course she continues to babble constantly, but more and more I’m hearing her mix actual words in to what she is saying, which makes me think it won’t be long until I’ll have to start forming real responses to her continual stream of conversation.  New words this month include ‘key’ (blankie) and ‘eemo’ (Elmo).  I was sort of surprised when she said that last one in correct context.  We watch Sesame Street exactly once a week when I clip her fingernails (it’s the best way to get her to hold still).  I suppose it just goes to show what an impression TV can make on a small child.

Another new development this month is that when I am done teaching on lesson nights, she insists on coming into my studio, sitting on the piano bench (by herself) and making music.  She shoos me away from the piano if I try to play it too, but she also doesn’t like it when I don’t pay enough attention to her.  After many nights of this routine I have come to the conclusion that she feels she ought to have my undivided attention as she plays, just like my piano students do.  I’ve tried showing her a few things and she does think it is funny when I tell her ‘these are the high sounds’ in a squeaky voice and then ‘these are the low sounds’ in my very deepest voice.  The cutest part of it all is when she gets really into it and starts singing along with herself.  “Doo-dee-doo, dee-doo” she’ll sing as she explores the keyboard.  As long as she has an audience, she’ll play the piano for 20 or 30 minutes until I finally tell her that her lesson is over and it’s time to go to bed.  I guess that means that she’s either musically gifted or that she really likes being the center of attention.  We’ll be in trouble if it’s both.

Her favorite things to do (besides playing the piano) are going outside, swinging, playing with cars and balls, reading books, climbing stairs and chairs, getting things out of the kitchen cupboards, taking baths and biting the noses of her stuffed animals (yeah, I don’t get it either).  She most definitely does not ever like having her diaper changed or getting dressed.  Meals and naps are hit or miss depending on her mood.  Her favorite words to say are ball, car, cup and grandma. Her favorite animal continues to be puppies.

We’ll, I think that’s about all the newness for this month.  Thanks again for stopping by!

Sounds Like a Good Name for a Band

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A scene from lessons tonight…

Me to Piano Student: “This next piece is by Jacques
Offenbach.  Can you read the name of the piece?”

PS: “The Can-can.  Why does it say ‘Orpheus and the
Underworld’ under the title?”

Me: “Because ‘The Can-can’ is just one part of the
opera ‘Orpheus and the Underworld’.”

PS: “Who is Orpheus?”

Me: “He’s the main character.”

PS: “And ‘The Underworld’ is his band?”

Me: (Choking from laughter) “Um, not so much.”

The Grass is Always Greener

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Our lawn was pretty shabby when we first moved in.  Since our house was as foreclosure, the yard went for a whole summer without any attention before we moved in.  This summer we’ve put quite a bit of work into getting the yard cleaned up and weeded and keeping the lawn watered and mowed and fertilized.

And we are making progress.  In fact, for a while this summer we were only the second worst lawn in the neighborhood.  Granted the worst lawn belonged to an unoccupied home, but it was still nice to not be the worst.  Tonight when we were out on our walk we noticed that the house is no longer vacant and the new owner was out spraying weeds… we may shortly be back to being the worst.

Even though having a patchy lawn isn’t entirely our fault, our neighbors don’t seem to appreciate looking at it.  A few weekends ago after we were up north sailing with Peter’s family, we arrived home to find that two different neighbors had planted shrubbery along our property line while we were away.  One neighbor plants stuff and you figure they just wanted to do some landscaping, two neighbors though… probably not a coincidence.

I guess we’ll just have to make it our goal for next year to make it out of the bottom two.

What I Did This Summer

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By Alethea

This summer I gave my bunny lots of hugs…

And I played with my toys…

I went to a water park while I was visiting my Great Grandparents in Iowa…

I wore my new life jacket when I went sailing on Grandpa John’s boat…

I had a strawberry ice cream cone that was all my own…

I went swinging in the backyard with Daddy…

And I cried when I had to get off…

And just in case you don’t think I’m really writing this post, I’ll prove it to you…

I’m really good at getting into things now.  Uh-oh, I hear mommy coming down the stairs, don’t tell her about this, okay?

Why Can’t I Capture It?

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Three weekends ago Peter and I tackled a home improvement project that has been ‘in process’ for quite some time.  (‘Stalled out’ would be another way to put it.)  See, I found this cool idea online a while ago for how to make simple floating shelves using a hollow-core door.  Months before now, we bought the door, sawed it in half and then did nothing further.  At last I can say that after almost a year in our basement, the door halves have reappeared, been painted and are presently hanging as shelves in my piano studio/office.

Now that this last project has been completed, I am very pleased to announce that my office is finally done!  I have no further plans for improvements/decor, other than to someday replace the metal mini-blinds with something more attractive and maybe throw in a few more pictures or accessories (you didn’t honestly think I meant I was DONE done, did you?)

But since I am at least done for now, I thought I would mark this auspicious occasion by posting another before and after.  So, here is my office before we moved in:

And here is my office currently:

I am extremely pleased with how the room turned out, but I am very frustrated with my lack of ability to capture the room in a picture.  I think the room is well designed, cozy (it’s 10×10) and has a lot of visual interest, but after taking about 30 pictures, I still don’t have one that really feels like you’re in the room when you look at it.  How do you make a 2D image feel 3D?  I see it in magazines all the time, but I just can’t do it myself.  I’ve got some photography books on order from the library.  We’ll see if this problem is something a little ‘how-to’ help can fix.