To keep you in the holiday spirit, print out these handy to do lists while you compete your holiday tasks, courtesy of Tricia-Rennea over at Trillustrations.
If you're like me and want actual notepads instead of loose paper laying around, Skip to my Lou has a very helpful tutorial on how to make your own. One thing to note about the tutorial, it says that you need C clamps for the paper but if you're like me and don't have them handy, a few binder clips will work just fine.
Has it really been FIVE years already? I can't believe it. I have to pinch myself sometimes to make sure that yes, it has been five whole years since I gave birth to the most unbelieveably amazing daughter in the world.
Five years ago today I was at home alone when I received a phone call from my doctor who was a little perturbed that I wasn't already at the hospital waiting to be induced. I was already two days overdue and he wanted to induce me. I, deciding that I wanted my labor to start naturally, didn't go to the hospital but after the phone call I couldn't say no to my doctor. {Side note: with a doctor looking like a young Rob Lowe, who could really say no?}
At lunch Lucky came home and we packed up to head to the hospital to begin the nerve-racking process of giving birth. After being administered pitocin, the drug that is supposed to help start labor for all you no-children people, I didn't actually start going into labor until after 1pm. Then it was time to wait.
And wait.
After a while the nurses decided that it was time to stick me with an epidural so that when the real fun begins I would be prepared. Thank god they decided to do it then because that anesthesiologist must have been new as it took him OVER AN HOUR to stick my back with a freakin' needle. An hour. And I was already having contractions. Do you know how long an hour feels when you are having contractions? THREE YEARS. AT LEAST. I'm sure I was breaking Lucky's hands by now because they only thing he could do was hold my hands and hold me up straight enough for that stupid guy to get to my lower back. Little did I know that this guy was just a moron and I could have layed on my side and it should have taken no more than a few minutes but alas, it took having a second child to figure that one out.
After seven hours of labor, with all our friends and family kicked out of our room {into the waiting room where my brother had overtaken the tv and hooked up his XBox} it was time to start pushing. 7:45pm I started and 8:08pm is when Kate came out. The first thing I said after she came out is that she had huge feet. Yes, that is a Cardwell trait. The second thing I said was giving birth was a lot easier than what I thought it was going to be. Lucky looked at me, laughed, and said I just screwed it up for every other pregnant woman. If giving birth was so easy, would others still get away with screaming bloody murder? The ones without drugs would. :D
Here, on my chest, was this precious little baby girl and I couldn't look away. She was ours and so tiny and so perfect. Well, not really TINY, she weighed 8 lbs, 6 oz, and was about 21.25" long. But close enough.
The days in the hospital were a blur, people coming in and going out, I never got to hold Kate longer than 45 minutes before someone else wanted a turn. No worries, though, Lucky and I both were completely at ease and it felt like this was baby # 9 in regards to being stressed. That part was really weird. At no time in the first couple of months were we stressed and wondering what we were going to do. I've heard of subconsciously knowing how to raise a child but we had unknowingly taken that one step further and were completely at peace with this change to our lives.
Now, over the next five years it wasn't all rainbows and butterflies all the time but it was pretty close. Kate is too smart for her own good AND KNOWS IT. She seems like she's 9 or 10 and it still frustrates me that she throws little kid tantrums - which is what she's supposed to do as a little kid.
What's really weird are those times I have to catch myself from getting upset with her because she can't peel a potato or how to press the menu button on the DVD player. What???? Four-year-olds aren't supposed to know how to do that?
She can, however, count to 100, pour her own milk, break Oliver out of his crib, take care of him so much better than I ever took care of my little brother, count to 10 in Spanish {that darn Dora!}, draw better pictures than I can, be the life of the party, ignore the sound of my voice better than Lucky can, and too many other things I can post here.
Instead of talking any more I will post some pictures.
Kate, you will be our little princess forever and I thank God every day that you were born. I love you.
I have to show you some shots that I took this last Saturday for Bill and Jo's wedding. Lucky was the best man, Oliver was a ring bearer, and Kate was a flower girl. That left me able to play around with the camera.
The wedding ceremony was beautiful, the reception was fun, and we were so honored to be a part of Bill and Jo's special day.
There was one teensy, tiny, little thing we didn't plan for.
That Bill and Jo's wedding would fall on the hottest day this year for the Seattle area.
Anything over 75 degrees in Seattle is considered hot.
I have never been quiet about my lack of pleasure in our apartment. It’s a dark cave with hardly any natural light; the natural light we do get is indirect light coming from one of our three windows which just so happen to be on the northeast corner of our building. With another apartment building to the east of us that means that we don’t get any direct sunlight during the day. For two people that originally hail from the Sunshine State the indirect sunlight means more Vitamin D and possibly more therapy to work on our patience skills. Well, the fact that we live in Seattle might also have something to do with it but that’s another post for another day.
The lack of sun has been like this for all three years we’ve lived here. Yes, we’ve been living in this dank apartment for three years but with new babies, new businesses, and loads of travel we haven’t had the time or fundage to get into a new place.
After spending months perusing crafty, DIY home, and home design blogs, I’m finally coming to terms with my dank apartment and realizing that I need to embrace its crappyness and do something about it. (Queue music from 2001: A Space Odyssey)
I have decided that I’m going to take my time, find furniture pieces that fit us instead of fit our budget, add more organization to the mix, and maybe hone my DIY skills a little bit. (DUH, DUH! Drums beating in the background)
First, let me go over the style of our apartment before the projects begin. (One thing I haven’t done yet is take some pictures of our craptacular apartment for the Before portion.) Our apartment is a hodgepodge of furniture that Lucky and I have carried around since before we were married and pieces we’ve picked up at IKEA over the years. Individually the pieces are practical and they (sort of) get the job done but I’m tired of nothing being cohesive and everything looking like it was thrown together. (Which it was but not in the cool thrown-together-but-not-looking-thrown-together type of way.)
The living room is the most cohesive room in the place.
The kitchen is a free-for-all, full of items we’ve picked up or have been gifted to us over the years and the countertops are getting a little cluttered. On top of all the kitchen accessories, there are papers stacked with nowhere to go and some of my crafting supplies are sitting out waiting for my next project. I hesitate to put them away because I know if I don’t see my supplies I will never use them again. Lovely. More clutter.
The dining room, at the moment, is just a space filled with cookbooks on the floor stacked along one wall, a toddler Tinkerbell table with two chairs in the middle of the space, and Oliver’s high chair. We used to have a nook table with the cookbooks hidden inside the bench storage but the nook has found a new home in the back room of the tattoo shop.
You might be wondering how we eat dinner as a family if all we have is a Tinkerbell table and a high chair. Yeah, eating together is not in the cards at the moment. Because Lucky is doing a masterful job as co-owner of the tattoo shop, he is normally not home for dinner and it’s just me, Kate, and Oliver using the dining room area. Kate will eat her dinner at the Tinkerbell table while Oliver looks down from his perch in his highchair. I end up just standing at a kitchen counter eating my dinner ready to take muffins out of the oven or grab some water for the kids.
OK so not very family-like.
Our lack of style and direction is where the DIY attitude started. Throw on some craft, DIY remodel, and house design blogs and you’re got yourself some DIY motivation!
I’m going to call this motivation the Crappy Apartment Revolution.
I have decided to start the Crappy Apartment Revolution in the dining area because we don’t have any large furniture in there at the moment and would be the easiest area to spruce up. I have already envisioned what the room is going to look like when I’m done and I just so happened to have found the perfect dresser for cheap on Craigslist. I couldn’t pass up the $30 cost of the dresser and although one would think that any sane person would start with finding a table what is the fun with that? So the dresser has become my starting point.
From Craigslist
The number one factor to this dresser I found, besides the price and style, was the size. It need to be large enough to have storage for all of our craft products and extra kitchen items. It also NEEDED to be small enough to fit in the back of my Subaru. I was crossing my fingers as I took the tape measure down to the car and sure enough it would fit like a gem. Of course that size is with the back seats folded down which means no little monsters would be able to come along for the ride. Luckily the dresser was up on Capitol Hill so I was able to drop off my rugrats with their daddy before heading over to pick up my newly acquired purchase.
After some wrangling, we got me, the dresser, both monsters, and Lucky home safely. As I sat back and looked at this dresser I thought, “Holy crap, I’m really going to restore this sucker into a hutch!” Then I chuckled to myself wondering if a.) the project will ever get done, or b.) I’m going to accidentally rip a piece off or get in over my head and it will cost a lot more than what I was originally thinking.
All skepticism aside, I’m super excited to begin this project, yet kind of wary at the amount of tools I lack and will need to purchase before this project is done. I think if I take it slowly, keep on moving forward, and keep posting updates on my blog I’ll get it done in no time.
This last weekend was unusually warm in the Pacific Northwest and everyone seemed to take advantage of the nice weather. Including my lovely plants.
This is the scene I walked into this morning at my desk:
I *may* have kept the blinds open all weekend to leave my lovelies in the scorching sun.
HOWEVER
I practically soaked them with water first thing this morning and they're doing much better! I've been keeping a close watch on Harry, Sally, and Betty and things started to look up around Noon.
Well, I haven't killed Betty and Sally yet. Actually, I left them on Friday to fend for themselves over the weekend and when I came back this morning they grew! By a lot!
OK, truth be told that I forgot about them over the weekend but when my cubie came back from DC and mentioned it this morning I was surprised to see them. Alive! HALLELUJAH!
I did forget plant food but that is on my list of purchases for this week. And possibly a bigger pot.
Look at these blooms! If things go well I'm going to get quite a few tomatoes. Knock on wood.
