These are a few of my favorite things

Jackson had some pretty big news to share this past Easter :)  Yep, he is getting a brother or sister in early November!  He wore his new shirt to tell everyone.  Aunt E and Erik hid eggs all over Grammy and Dad Dad's house.  We took him to a big Easter Egg hunt, but getting to find them over and over again was much more fun.  He even got to sit in big church and lasted for most of the service.  He claps and cheers at the end of every "song" which is cute at Easter, but not exactly appropriate all the time.   

 For Mother's Day we went out to the airport for lunch.  Our regional has a great little place to eat called the Runway Cafe.  Small planes come in and out every few minutes and they are putting in a nice playground. 


There is always something fun going on in Greenville.  One of the best loved events is called Touch a Truck.  They had about 25 different kinds of trucks that all the kids could climb in, honk the horns, and explore.  He and Dad had a great time. 

We've been working on our yard.  He's quite the little helper.  He has his own shovel and rake and loves watering all the new plants. 

This year Nana and Grandad invited us to join them and Aunt Rachel's family for a few days in Monteagle, TN.  It had been six months since the cousins all saw each other so they were very excited the whole time and really loved getting to play non stop.  Jackson and Meredith wore each other out.  By next year James will be running around too and all three of them will be unstoppable!   

We are really, really fortunate to live in the upstate.  There is pretty much something ready to be picked all year long within a half hour drive.  We missed the blueberries because I just didn't feel well enough to go and it rained every day for two months, but we did peach picking twice.  Sooooo delicous.  

The little engineer is at the stage where he loves stacking, sorting and organizing his toys into lines and groups.  He's obsessed with airplanes and trains.  He jumps all day long and never walks- he runs.  If I only I had half his energy. 

 


Potty training is going really well for now.  We go on short trips to the store with no diaper and he doesn't wear one at home.  He's getting pretty good about letting us know when he needs to go instead of just making him try every 25 minutes.  He doesn't like when we put a diaper on him so that's a good sign! 
 

Helping Mama at work

We are getting him ready for his big bed so we converted his crib about a week ago.  Most of the time he stays in it but every so often at nap I have to turn it to face the wall if he's just too rowdy and bouncing all over his room.  He likes being able to get in and out all by himself.  We could probably put him in the bed now, but I like being able to trap him instead of having to go lay him back down every 10 seconds for an hour on the days he isn't cooperating.  It's staying like this for at least two more months until we take it down completely and move it back into the nursery for #2. 

School is out the month of August so we've gotten to spend a lot of time doing fun things.  Sometimes we just go to the pool, sometimes we make crafts, we go to a lot of play dates, hit the zoo, and have taken a lot of little weekend trips while Dad works on projects around the house.  I'm enjoying my last few months of one on one time with my little Penguin!   

Little by Little

It has been exactly a year since we moved into our house in Greenville, SC so I thought it would be nice to share some before and after photos of the changes we've made in the last year.  We just do things little by little and it seems like something is always a work in progress, but we've really gotten a lot done when you look at it like this! 

This was our house when we first moved in.  We took out three huge gum trees in the front, pressure washed, repaired the window trim and painted it, added carriage detailing to the garage, expanded the beds on the lot line, and got the landscaping started in the front yard.  It got too hot to finish completely so come September we will be adding a few more plants.  The new plants are little but hopefully by next summer most of them will be a decent size and not look so puny.

August 2012

March 2013

July 2013

The kitchen has seen the most drastic improvement so far.  It started out with emerald green walls, white counter tops, chrome door knobs, yellow brass hardware on all the doors, really bad yellow brass light fixtures, and a mismatch of hardwood/cheap laminate.  Now the entire downstairs is Benjamin Moore Gray Cashmere, we painted all the door hardware and electrical sockets with Rustoleum Oil Rubbed Bronze, put in granite counter tops, took out the mini blinds and put in wood blinds, and updated the lighting.

Breakfast nook before

Breakfast nook after

Whew, all that white. 

   

The den attaches to the kitchen, which we love.  Since we have no houses behind us, we took down all the blinds on the back of the house so we can enjoy the trees.  My philosophy is that if someone is back there looking in at me in my underwear we have bigger problems than "what if someone sees in".

Our painter always tries to get us to paint the shelves black.  So far we are not on board with that suggestion. 

Clearly rubber gloves were the best choice for the job.

Hello light! 

We haven't really done much to the dining room other than paint.  The material for curtains has been sitting on the buffet for ohhhhhh, probably 11 months.  Maybe one of these days.  The chandelier kills me.  I try not to notice it.  We haven't actually ever used the dining room (who does???) so it is pretty low on the totem pole.  Not as low as the formal living room, which is still empty a year later and I'm not even putting on the blog this time around.

The other major renovation downstairs was the guest bathroom.  It had some lovely ruby red wall paper with a very bold floral border and an ivory pedestal sink.  Honestly it wasn't thaaaat bad but it definitely wasn't our style.  Learned a valuable lesson on this one- a neutral wallpaper with a big pattern is really hard to put up when you've never wall papered before.  It turned out alright but Matt has officially announced that if we ever want to wall paper again someone else is doing it or I'll have to get a new husband to help.   

Why did we need a cabinet here?  Why?

A lovely old lady bought the sink and was so very proud of herself.

All in all we have really done a lot in the past year.  Now we can get to work on the upstairs.  I can't wait! 

Spring is in the air (almost)

Maybe spring isn't in the air yet but it is April 3 for the love of the Easter bunny and still having highs in the 50s has seriously got to go.  At this rate all of us will be albino, not just Matt and Jackson.

 We've been increasing the time he spends on the potty.  He thinks this means take your potty wherever you go even when you have all your clothes on.  This particular day he was busy watching the men next door install new windows.

 Grammy sent him a pair of rain boots.  He asks to wear them just about every day.  Sometimes it is the first thing he does when he gets up in the morning.  Aunt Robin sent him the next size up so he will be boot ready for as long as he wants to wear them!  Oh, and don't call his boots "shoes".  They are boots and he knows it.      

 My little bee is getting so strong.  He can climb a ladder and has no fear of any slide.  We play outside every single day and if it was up to him it would be the entire day.  His very first hissy fit was over going into the house when it was time.  I'm guessing it is the first of thousands resulting from "time to go in".  I can't believe how fast his little baby tummy is disappearing.  He's getting abs already and he even has a tiny little bicep!     

 Dad wasn't home so his first real grilling experience was with Mama.  He was very helpful with the tongs, but after it was done he wouldn't even touch a bite of pork loin.  Our former meatatarian has recently decided he prefers to be fruitatarian.  This was also the day I found out he can get on chairs and onto the couch by himself.  Now he tells himself "sit down".   

 Jackson and Matt have a little song about brushing teeth.  It goes something like "brusha brusha on the bottom, brusha brusha the on top, brusha brusha side to side... don't miss a spot".  He is obsessed with tooth brushing now that we let him have a speck of toothpaste.  He would brush all day and has toothbrushes stashed in all the bathrooms in case the mood strikes.    

He hasn't quite figured this game out yet.  Mostly he wants to ride on the golf club like a horse.  Sometimes he swats things with it- poor Gracedog.  I keep showing him but he thinks he's supposed to balance the golf ball on the club instead of hitting it.  Maybe dad will be a better teacher. 

It's impossible to know how many words he knows now.  He says about a hundred without prompting if we counted them all and is pretty easy to understand (or maybe just to me).  He follows all kinds of directions and answers questions with "i don't know, yeah, or no" and his response almost always matches the question.  When the time changed we just didn't adjust his schedule so now he sleeps 7-7:30 and naps from 12:30-3:00.  We are working on manners and he nearly always says "thank you" and "bless you".  "Please" is getting there along with "yes, ma'am".  I have to remind him about those.  He loves doing any kind of craft and helping clean.  I realized that the Swiffer can actually be made into a pint size handle so he dry mops every day while I vacuum.  He's quite the helper for now so I'm totally exploiting that while it lasts :)  He loves singing along to the radio.  Any time a song ends he claps and says "yaaaaay" (including at church hey at least he's enthusiastic).

 That's the little guy at not quite 18 months.  He'll be an official toddler in just two weeks!
 

Valentine Snow Day

The thing about living in Greenville is that we get weather for Asheville along with ours our the news ticker and they have a Winter Storm Warning just about every single day.  I get so excited every time it looks like maybe- just maybe- the snow might actually make it to our house.  It never does.  Valentine's weekend we ended up with a 50% chance of snow but Matt kept telling me, "it isn't going to snow so don't get all excited". 

That weekend all the Wolfords (and Erik who I am teaching Jackson to call "Just Erik" haha) had come down as a makeup weekend for New Year's.  Saturday morning we all got up, ate a delicious breakfast that Grammy made, the girls got pedicures, and then sat around playing for a while.  Eventually it was time for Jackson to take his nap and no sooner did he go down then the flakes started falling.  Over the next hour and a half it really came down pretty good.  I kept asking if I could go wake him up and at one point I tried but he rolled over groggily and put his head back down.  Finally I couldn't stand the excitement anymore (total Floridian it was not that much snow) and woke him up so we could go play before it melted.  He was sooooo cute running around in it!  He loved snow although he definitely didn't get it. 

 Now I really am excited for next year when he will be big enough to really play and we can take him up to VA to go sledding.  Okay, so maybe that trip is just as much for me as him but I know we will both have fun!

So not cool, Aunt Erin

Loving on Grandad

Upside down :)

Moonshine tasting.  Blech.