Party Girl

Don't you want to invite this baby to your next birthday party? Look how much fun she's having, and she didn't even get to bowl.

We went to our friend Ivan's birthday party today. Ivan associated being a 'big boy' with bowling, and now that he's three, he's a big boy. So, there we all were bowling on Memorial Day in honor of Ivan's third birthday. No tears were shed until 1 hour and 40 minutes into the party when one of Ivan's friends tried to open one of his presents and he firmly told her, 'No, No, No'. I considered it a very successful afternoon.

Lucy has officially moved out of her infant seat, and into the big car seat. That means I don't get to lug her around in her little bucket anymore, even when she's sleeping. It's been a hard few days for us all. Lucy does not like to sit in the grocery store carts. I don't like having to wake her up every time she falls asleep in the car. Neither of us like this 97 degree weather. I know, at least it's warm, right? But couldn't we ease into this whole summer thing. Two weeks ago I was painting the house with a wool hat on. Yesterday it was honestly 97 degrees.

P.S. Note the tooth. Do you see the tooth? There are two now, but you can only really see the one.

New photos

While we've been painting the house, Grandma has been working equally as hard taking care of Lucy. We've been busy, but I've gotten enough grief about Lucy's Shriner photo, that I had to take a break and put up these new images I took yesterday. Lucy has a new smile, that shows off her new lower tooth. You can't see it, but we don't tell her that.

Photos of the house will come in time. I'm waiting until we are completely done, for the full drama of the before and after image. But my first words of wisdom on painting a house are - RENT A PROFESSIONAL GRADE SPRAYER. Best $100 we've ever spent and we painted the entire house in one day. The trim is another story. Taking the trim from black to white has required three coats, and that equals three days. The house certainly is yellow. I'm not sure if the old school neighbors appreciate the brightness we have brought to the block. They've been living with drab white/off white/dirty white on this street for more than fifty years, so it might take another fifty for them to appreciate color.

Shriner

The final decision for the house color is yellow. We both actually came to this decision together. The exact shade of yellow is slightly different than the one listed below. I went to a yellow house in our neighborhood to ask the color/make/model of the shade on their house. No one was home. Backup plan was to pick up rocks from around the garage that had been splattered with paint. We took these to the paint store and matched the color! It was a genius day. Only problem now is that it's STILL raining. No painting happened this weekend, nor do we see it happening in the next couple of days. Instead, we've been torturing Lucy with her toys. She doesn't seem to think becoming a Shriner would be a good idea.

House VOTE '06

This weekend we are taking on yet another home renovation project. This should be it until we decide to do something with the basement. Everything else is pretty much done. And when I say everything, I mean everything. But, this is a big one and we need a bit of help. No, I’m not begging people to come lend a hand (although that would be a nice unintended outcome of this posting). I just want your opinion as to what color we should paint the entire outside of our house. Just typing that daunting task makes my body shiver at the impending dread of this project. Grandma is coming to town, so we’ve got Lucyland covered. Last weekend we ‘prepped’ the house. Now we are just waiting for it to stop raining and to make that one last final decision – color.


It’s really down to just two. The baby shit brown color is out. Partially because I think it’s ugly. But also because when people come to our house for the first time, I don’t want to have to describe our house as baby shit brown, or a browny sort of green, or that brown color you’d see on some HGTV sort of show. I just want to be able to say, we live in the yellow house, or the gray house. So the color on the left is out. The trim color is going to be white. We have these stylin’ fancy white windows (aka vinyl replacements), we want the trim to match. So white trim, and YELLOW or GRAY? I like one color, and you know who likes the other. Your vote could be used as ammunition for either one of us to persuade the other onto our side. So vote carefully.

And no comments on our gorgeous siding, please. I already lost that battle.

Baby loves grass

We've investigated every inch of this house with Lucy as a distraction from the monotony of baby life. Toys are different toys in various parts of the house. Songs have a different ring when sung in the bathroom (duh), vs the kitchen. Every book has been read, every item shown to Lucy with glee in hopes she'll take to it like a new toy (and she does). Hard to believe, but I almost felt like I was running out of tricks to entertain. Kind of pathetic, I know, with an 7.5 month old baby. That's why we are all so thankful we can now go outside on a regular basis. If Lucy is in a bad mood, all we do is take her outside and her senses are bombarded with stimulus. Trees, birds, wind, sun, flowers. And today, I introduced Lucy to mother nature's trump card, GRASS (the legal kind of course people). She played with that stuff for a LONG time, but not too long, as to lose the novelty. We'll make sure to use that distraction up before she starts eating the great green blades, which could be soon. Lucy's starting to sprout a little tooth! Stay tuned for photos of the big entrance.