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.

One...TWO!

 

The last post must have jinxed us because not a week later Jackson got a cold from a baby at a playdate which of course turned into an asthmatic episode (he doesn't actually have asthma but his symptoms are the same).  The weight he put on in January came back off so his pants are a little droopy and he has quite the cough but you can't really tell he isn't all the way up to speed other than he slowed down a little over the month.   It's given him a chance to perfect his Mandarin babble.  He says about 40 real words.  Yesterday we were leaving Steinmart and as we went out the door he told me "push it".  He hasn't learned to say "no" but I'm guessing by this time next month it will be his fav...he shakes his head at me for now!     

We had a Valentine's Craft party at our house.  11 toddlers came and made heart sun catchers.  It was a blast.  We'll be finding tissue pieces for weeks to come.  After it was all over the family room looked like Times Square on Jan 1. 

If it isn't too cold we spend as much time as possible outside.  Jackson can run now- usually away from me when it's time to get dressed, of course.  He loves the slide and will go down the big corkscrew all by himself.  He insists on swinging on the big kid swing most of the time and grunts when he wants to get down.  If there's something to climb on he's going to find it.  Matt and I bet on when he would climb out of his crib.  Matt took 16 months and I took 18.  We'll see at the end of this month...   

Blocks are a big time favorite but he only wants to pull them apart or clean them up.  He cleans up everything and loves to run around with the Swiffer.  Doing laundry takes forever because it is his job to put each thing into the dryer (only I hang most of our clothes so he tries to pull everything off the rack and rush it to the dryer to "help").  He routinely unloads the silverware for us now even if it is dirty :) Meals are a pain because he dumps his plate onto the tray and eats like a barbarian just to get a reaction.  He can use his fork and spoon but prefers to fling them to the ground until you take them away and just let him be an animal. 
 

In the last month I started counting to get his attention when he's doing something he shouldn't be doing.  That was great until he learned to say TWO.  Now he says THREE.  It's impossible not to smile when he looks so proud of himself.  I count in Spanish now when he needs a reminder to behave.  I can't wait to see what he learns next month! 

He's a Growing Boy

Helping mom make applesauce cranberry oatmeal muffins- his favorite!

 The most important thing this month is that we FINALLY got Jackson's test results back and everything was perfectly normal.  After months of waiting and being concerned it was a major relief to know that everything is just fine.  His doctors think that the combination of switching to just formula, starting a preschool, and a record cold/flu season caught his little immune system all at once back in October.  He's been 100% healthy and put the weight he lost with the pneumonia back on over the last month.  We aren't doing the nebulizer treatments at all and hopefully we won't have to again.
  


Now that he's feeling back up to speed the things he's learning are happening so fast I can barely keep up.  He's great at kicking a ball and chases it all over the house.  He can catch pretty well and throws a ball- always left handed.  He feeds himself with a spoon and fork for the most part although if he's really hungry he just tips the bowl back and "drinks" whatever is in it.  Grace has decided that he's not all that bad now that she gets to enjoy the falling food at every meal.  She even lets him pet her on his own and hardly ever bolts to the baby gate so she can be safe on the other side (except when he's chasing her which I try not to let him do!).  He helps fill up her food bowl in the mornings and gleefully adds handfuls to Grace's water dish if he gets the opportunity. 
   

DJ Jackson

Oh look, a skateboard!

Two nights in a row he teeteed on the floor while the bath was filling up so I decided to move a little potty into the bathroom.  The very first night he actually went both and I was so unprepared there wasn't a treat or anything available.  I cheered and danced around and that seemed good enough.  He sits on his potty every night now and usually goes right away.  Now he knows he gets a smarties so he's pretty motivated.  We sing two songs and if he goes great, if not we get in the tub.  Some mornings I sit him on it when he's getting dressed but for right now this is enough for us.  He's still not that great at getting on and off the little potty himself so once he gets that part down we can do a little more. 

Although we don't teach him sign language, he learns it at school so we have a handout to teach us the signs he uses.  He signs please, more, drink, dad, and elephant.  If he knows more I don't but those are the ones I've learned... I'm working more on teaching him Spanish and he recognizes quite a few words but doesn't say them yet.  He learns a new English word just about every day and his vocabulary is 25-30 words now so we don't have much need for signing- he says "more", "milk", "up" for upstairs, "ball", and "shoes" so he gets his point across most of the time!

We've reached the "I love helping" stage even if it is more unhelping than helping.  He puts the silverware into the drawer (not necessarily the correct drawer), helps take laundry out of the dryer (even if you are loading it), picks up and puts things into drawers (so you can't find them ever again), closes any door that dares to be left standing open, puts his shoes away, turns all the lights off (holding him up), and is obsessive about brushing his teeth.  Speaking of teeth his premolars are coming in the last two weeks!  Slowly but surely.  Maybe he will have all his teeth before they start falling out?

I can't wait to see how he changes over the next month :)
   

New Christmas

The original plan was to spend Christmas with my family in Florida and New Year's (aka New Christmas) with Matt's family at our house.  Aunt Erin and Erik made it into town midweek so Erin rode out with me to collect the Gracedog at the strategically picked outlet mall exit above Atlanta.  Since we were gone to FL for five days and Gracedog doesn't board well (that is an understatement- her vet file has a huge DO NOT BOARD stamped on it because she will not eat or drink and ends up needing an IV and becomes the most pitiful dog you've ever seen) we packed the dog off to stay with Grandad at the lake for a few weeks so she would be happy.  Poor Grace came home not only to a tormenting toddler but also to Lane the Loving Goldenpoo, who Grace would rather not love.  I'm pretty sure she's wishing she was still at the lake.   

Jackson loves Lane.  She lets him pet her unlike his own dog.

Sadly for us all, on Friday morning Grammy woke up sick as a dog and was so sick she was afraid to come share her germs with all of us.  Since we'd been holding out for Grammy and Grandad to arrive we changed up the schedule a bit and decided to hit the Pelham Road Warriors hockey game.  Neither Matt, Erin or Erik had been to a game!  They even got to see a pretty decent fight which I missed while in the bathroom.  Of course.

A friend told me about a neat place downtown called the Palmetto Olive Oil Co that does tastings so we checked that out on Saturday.  So cool!  They give you a bowl of bread and little cups to taste all the different oils.  Then you try the lighter balsamic vinegars.  At the end they give you a dish of vanilla ice cream and you get to try the dark balsamics.  Who would have thought that pomegranate and dark chocolate balsamic vinegar would be so delicious on ice cream??

We also checked out the Shoeless Joe Jackson museum.  I'm not a baseball fan.  It was eh.  Matt enjoyed it and his dad would have really liked it.

Since we still hadn't opened any of our presents including Santa's presents we did that for New Christmas :)  Jackson got a train that does all kinds of songs, letters and sounds from Santa and a wagon from us to use to roll up to the pool this summer.  His favorite gift from Florida was a DJ stand that has a microphone.  He sits in a box and plays with that thing constantly- although he thinks you have to put the mic in your mouth and talk for it to work.  I hate this toy.  It is soooo obnoxious.  Of course it is his favorite.  Thanks, Nana.