kitchen smitchen

And now, for the longest time between before and after photos. Lets all remember that we have two children with a long list of needs, so we did this remodel to the best of our ability. I painted the cabinets fairly quickly, remember those photos? It took quite sometime to install the bead board on the ends of our cabinet. It required a lot of measuring, sawing, nailing, re-measuring, re-sawing, and re-nailing. We learned a lot along the way, you know, just in case we ever do this again (we won't). As with any project we complete, one should never look too closely, but from a far, I must say we can pull off quite a lot. 

Here we go.

Before refreshers: 

And, after: 

I think this project will keep me held over for a while. I am happy that we did it all ourselves, but it did take longer than anticipated. I love how much the color brightens up the space and decreased the amount of differing wood colors our house has. 

twelve months

Looks like we made it a year! I could go on and on about the passage of time and how fleeting it all is, but lets just all agree that time passing is something no one can completely comprehend. Measuring time by your child's life makes it even more difficult to understand. I also struggle with the phenomenon of my child changing right before my eyes. I mean I was with her every moment of every day and yet each month she has grown different. Lets not even attempt to rewind time back to the fact this child began her growth inside of me. I really thought I would have a better handle on all of this the second time around, but it just leaves me even more perplexed. Enough, enough! Here we are one year with Eliza Lynn!

At twelve months:

-Eliza is still fussy. She has had some wonderful moments, particularly when we have gone out of town recently. She leaves people asking, "Is she always this happy??" and we just have to laugh. Her crying has been the one constant this past year and that aspect of her has contributed most to the difficulty of transitioning to two kids. 

- She is sleeping mostly all night. She wakes up, but we just leave her alone. She has been boycotting naps recently and has had her fair share of screaming protests to sleep, but overall much better. I guess it just takes our children an entire year to figure it out. 

- We may have inadvertently weaned her of the pacifier. We were down to only one and yesterday she seems to have misplaced it. She was just throwing it out of her crib anyway, so I am assuming no pacifier will not be too painful. 

-She is mimicking a lot of our behaviors. Puts the phone to her ear, puts purses on her shoulder, holds her shoes up to her feet,  and copies sounds of words. I can see glimpses of toddler hood in her. 

- We have tried to give her whole milk, but she is still not the biggest fan. Hopefully, she can be drinking it in the next month or so. 

-She is getting about six teeth right now. I am sure this contributes to her fussiness. She will soon have all her top teeth peeping through. 

- She is an expert straw drinker. She much prefers to drink water out of a straw than anything else. 

- We got her ears pierced when I went to Texas this past weekend. I had planned on doing it when she was nine months old, like Madison. However, with her temperament, I kept putting it off. She did not seem to mind the actual piercing, but now she screams in frustration when I try to clean them. 

- No signs of walking yet. I have a feeling she will not walk until 15 months or so. She has figured out how to climb stairs, but not how to climb down. This has proven to be a bit of an issue at the park. Trying to keep my eye on children that are going separate directions, is a bit tiresome. 

Her birthday is actually tomorrow, but had to take advantage of the time I had. I am still trying to find time to at least bake her a cake. We decided we would just have a family celebration tomorrow. I feel a bit guilty because we had a party for Madison and Eliza's birthday seems to be just another day. 

I would recap this year in one word, "survival." We have been stretched and pulled more than we ever anticipated with the birth of Eliza. I think we will spend the remainder of this year trying to recover. I wish that I could recount this year with fluff and wonder, but we are still trying to find our rhythm. Just when we think we are turning a corner, something else will happen and we are grasping to get a grip again. I am thankful that we made it through this first year and also thankful we do not have to go through it again! 

Despite all of the struggles, Eliza Lynn has made her mark on all of us. We feel like a complete unit now with her here. I love that she is completely her own person and has little resemblance to Madison. I love that she has required us to always take notice of her, she did not just blend in. The comfort that she finds in our arms has given us a chance to spend countless hours holding her tight. Her mannerisms leave us laughing and giggling often. The way she adores Madison has given us the ability to witness a sibling relationship unfold. I can tell that this little girl will leave us on our toes constantly. I am convinced she will continually surprise us and leave us shaking our heads in disbelief. I look forward to the future with my Eliza Lynn with great excitement. 

Here is how my petite peanut has grown, simply amazing! 

a two week recap

Will says that I set impossible standards on myself, but it has been bothering me I have not had a chance to write a post about some of the things we have been doing these past two weeks. 

Two weekends ago, some of the girls (or are we women?), went away for the night. One of them has a family house in Silverthorne on the golf course there. It ended up being so much fun. I had decided at the last minute to go and it was worth it for me to get away. We did not do much except shop at some outlets, but it was still a nice change of pace. 

We then had a week of wonderful weather. The good thing is that now I am pretty sure the beautiful weather is here to stay. So I spent the week trying to do as much yard work as possible for Will. We have high hopes for our backyard to be ready for outdoor events. I pulled a lot of weeds, dug up piles of dirt, mowed the lawn, put down landscape fabric, and so much more! We have nearly everything prepped for the huge delivery of rocks we should be ordering soon. I am excited to have nearly all the areas of weeds on our property taken care of. Landscaping work is so much more difficult than what it seems and requires more work then I ever imagined. My advice for home buyers, put a lot of emphasis on whether or not the yard is landscaped because it will require a lot of money and work to get it manageable. 

We then packed up and headed to Bozeman a week ago. I was really nervous about the whole driving ten hours in the car with two kids thing. The drive ended up not being terrible and I found great relief by driving and allowing Will to entertain the girls. One of us sat in between the car seats in the back nearly the entire time. Once we got to Bozeman, it was really neat to be back. Unfortunately, we picked an odd time to visit and none of the fun community events were going on. We did get to catch up with some friends and explore downtown a bit. It was really fun to see family as well and makes me excited for the new addition that Aunt Erin is busy growing! 

Now we are back at home. I am trying to catch up on school work that I have I did not have time to work on while we were away. We will also be finally finishing all the projects that we recently started. We are also dealing with a certain 11 month old who is rebelling against sleep.