Saturday 26 May 2012

A little work goes a long way...

   




     I just love the feeling of everything coming together. It takes a lot of work, but the reward of feeling like your efforts have paid off is awesome. After a couple of weeks of working on my report cards every night after Mya went to sleep, they're pretty much done (hallelujah!).

     We then successfully moved everything out of our office to be able to transform it into our little boy's new room. We sold our desk (thanks Emily!) and his room has already been painted and is quickly transforming into a real nursery.

      Mya decided to get a few more minutes of hide and seek in before we took the desk apart.

P.S. I love curl mullets. Curly in the back, straight in the front. Awesome.


     We've already bought and re-invented this baby boy's dresser (found for $40 at a thrift store!) into something much nicer than we started out with (pics to come soon) and his crib is ready to be set up this weekend.

      This past week (and a bit) has been so busy. Terry and I have had a million things on our to-do list, and we've been steadily checking them off daily. We tore up almost half of our backyard lawn to sod it (and by 'we', I mean Terry, Jeff and my dad)--and today will be another day full of dirt, sod, trailers and dirty boys.

     My dream of having a piano in our home also came true last weekend as our new-to-us piano (that we found free off of Kijiji!) was carefully carried into our living room by a bunch of our wonderfully strong friends/family. After recruiting our mover buddies (thanks Tyson, Matt, Chad, Jeff, Terry and dad), our babysitters (thanks Jen and Amanda) a lot of organizing, planning, phone calls and texting, we ended up with a piano sitting in a rented trailer being driven back to our home (where baked goods were provided for the movers)--that was my contribution as I could do nothing but organize the details of the move and then stand back and watch these guys carry this beast into our house.

     I grew up playing the piano my whole life and being in a household where music, singing and piano playing was just part of our every day life. My grandma was a piano teacher, my dad plays beautifully and Jen and I were raised to practice, play, perform and enjoy the piano. And I do. I love it.

     I can't even tell you how excited I was to finally see that piano sitting in our living room. I've been playing it every day and I love watching Mya put her arms up to me as I'm sitting there, wanting to try her little fingers out on the keys as well. A huge part of my reason for wanting a piano was that my dream of our children's childhood included a house full of music, singing crazy showtunes together at the piano and waking up to the sound of little fingers on the keys in the morning. Oh, and don't even get me started on how wonderful it is at Christmas time. There's something magical about a piano--and I wanted to provide that same feeling to our kids. And although I realize that the potential is always there that they might decide that they don't want anything to do with playing it in the end, I want to at least provide them the same opportunity that I had. And so far, the excitement over the piano is definitely there for these two little cousins. They're already playing duets together.


     Another item on my to-do list was to get Mya a kitchen set. It's always something that I just expected that our kids would have (maybe because I have so many memories of playing with my own kitchen set when I was a kid), but either way, I just couldn't imagine our house without one in it. I knew I wanted a wooden one, and when I found the most adorable little pink set I just couldn't resist. It's really super girly, so I did hesitate about ordering it once we found out we were having a boy...but I just put aside my practical thoughts and decided to go for it regardless. With all of the furniture that I've painted and transformed, I figured once this little boy becomes old enough to play with it as well I could always paint it and transform it if he's turned off by the mass amount of pink. It was just too cute to pass up.


      OH...and let me mention as well...I put this thing together ALL by myself. I won't tell you that it took me 3hrs to do. But after a million screws, a billion parts and a booklet of instructions that made no sense, I did it. Terry was totally willing to do it for me, but he was busy digging up our yard the night that I wanted to put it together, and I have no patience when fun things arrive. So he came downstairs to find me surrounded by pink wooden parts, pink handles, screws, and instructions all over the floor. It was totally worth it though...Mya was beyond thrilled when I brought her downstairs to see it for the first time.



      All of a sudden I completely forgot about how time consuming and frustrating it was to put this thing together as I watched her become instantly enthralled by every little part of that kitchen. I resisted pointing out to her each screw that I screwed in the night before and refrained from telling her that little microwave took me almost an hour to put together. I just watched her and smiled, and realized that this is why parents do these things for their kids.



     It was my mom's birthday last weekend too (and although she tried to convince us to just let it pass without any fuss), we made her dinner (or, Jen and Jeff actually made her dinner--an incredible Chinese meal that was just fantastic) and Mya got to stay up past her bedtime to enjoy every moment of her Nana's birthday.

      Apparently staying up 1/2hr late and all the partying tuckered this little one out---she crawled under the table and curled up on wrapping paper before we took her home to bed.


     Even though we`ve been working hard tying to get everything done over the past couple of weeks, we`ve also made a point of making time for fun--because balance is everything.



Trips to the park with friends are always in order with this kind of weather...


I decided that we should send this pic below to the Baby Trend company so they could include it in an advertisement...all four of us have the same brand of stroller.


     And here is beautiful Andra, smiling through painful contractions, as she was actually in labor as we were at the park...what a trouper. Nothing like running through the park to get labor moving along quicker! Her sweet little boy was born that same night.


     Last weekend my parents surprised both Mya and Oliver each with their own little kiddie pool for our backyards...so we've been spending almost every day splashing about, keeping cool and enjoying random drop-by's by neighbour kids who were not shy about jumping in the pool the moment they saw the water. We couldn't stop laughing.
  

     Thanks mom and dad for the hours of summer time fun to come with these little pools!!


And to finish off...a few floor cuddles with her daddy.


     With a day full of yard work, laying sod, running some errands and I'm sure splashing about in that little pool...we're looking forward to a night away tonight to go to our friends house for a bbq. I'm sure a lot of eating, hanging out and relaxing with friends will happen tonight. I just love weekends. Have a good one!

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