The Closet: Hazmat Suit Required

Phase 2 is complete: spackle and sand. Because we had to fix so much of the plaster, the sanding was quite a project. Ben dressed for the occasion:

He was fully protected! On to Phase 3: priming and painting!

Phase 1 of Project New Baby Preparation

We're starting a new home improvement project: gutting and re-doing my closet. It's a project we've wanted to do for a long time, but now that I have to consolidate 2 closets and one dresser into one closet, it's a complete necessity! I still don't know if it's possible! Anyway, stupid me forgot to take a "before" picture with all the stuff still in it - I had so much stuffed in this closet. I was finding receipts from 2006. I was a little worried about the wood mounted on all the walls, but Ben got it off without tearing off too many holes off the plaster.

See some of the other lovely hues this closet/room has been painted? We also found bright red paint under the curtain rods on the molding around the window.

This is the main wall before the wood was torn off. See the weird circular object under the 2nd row of wood? Whatever it is, it's taped to the wall and has probably been painted over about 70 times. Af first, we thought it was a paper plate, because that's what it looked like. But it sounds like metal. Who knows. And I don't really want to find out. That's the kind of stuff you get with a 106 year old house. And check out that lovely paint color and those HORRID curtains! That was what the entire bedroom looked like when I moved in. We just never bothered changing the closet.

Good riddance! Ben actually asked me if I wanted to keep these. Um, because I have lots of use for hideous pastel flower curtains?

So for now, everything that was in the closet is currently in our guest bedroom, soon to be our new master bedroom. We are picking up our new closet supplies from Container Store Monday. They helped us design the new closet. Part of it, at least. Until then, this is my closet.

Bonus points if you can find the nervous toy poodle. Poor Ace; he doesn't deal well with these kinds of things.

Hell's Angel

Sam is REALLY into motorcycles. Kind of obsessed, actually. It all started when he heard (and later saw) our neighbor's motorcycle months ago. You know how kids go through phases where they are really interested in something and then drop it? I keep wondering when that will happen, but I don't think it's going to be anytime soon. This is what I found when I came home from work today:

Ben has downloaded all kinds of motorcycle-themed apps on his i-touch. This was a new one with videos of people riding motorcycles down roads. Sam was fascinated. Almost in a trance. Another one of his favorites is an app called "Rate My Bike," in which people post pictures of their motorcycles and you are supposed to give them a rating. Sam loves to just scroll through the pictures, saying "motorcycle!" over and over again.

His first motorcycle toy was a little wind-up motorcycle that he loved. He'd have us wind it up and then he'd let it go, while he said "vroom vroom!" But that motorcycle drove off the dining room table a few too many times and ended up breaking in half one day, gears flying everywhere:

R.I.P.

Although he got a few motorcycle-themed toys this Christmas, he still holds his Spiderman motorcycle closest to his heart. He tells Spiderman, "don't fall!" because he's always falling off his tiny motorcycle.

True Love

My friend Liz kindly gives us her boys' hand-me-downs, and look what was in the last batch:

He looks really thrilled (he actually was, though)

And this last picture I just had to include because it was so cute. When we were getting ready for his bath, he took off his shirt and left it like this. Whenever his shirt gets stuck on his head, we always yell out "Sam the nun!" (It's a thing we always did with Emma when she was a baby). Sam thinks it's hilarious.

Scrapping Mania

So, I'm trying to finish the album I've been working on of Sam's first year, which is taking me over a year to complete! I'm ALMOST done...only have a few more pages and I'll finally finish it! I just finished another digital scrapbooking class, and made these 2 pages as one of my projects...I was pretty happy with it! And then I reminisced about how pleasant Sam was during his first few haircuts. The last few have been nothing but screaming, crying tantrums...

Once I get this done, I have a couple more albums I want to complete before the new baby is born in July. Think I can do it???

Snow!

Snow days are a big perk of working in education. Today was our first one of this school year. Sam's been asking us to read one of his books, "Snow," to him a lot lately, so he enjoyed watching it out the window today. This afternoon, he pulled on my sleeve and said "go play outside," which actually sounds more like "go pay a-sy," so we bundled him up and he went outside in the snow while Ben shoveled and I swept the front porch off. He wasn't too sure about it at first, but once he saw a job to do, he started to like it. He grabbed the broom once I was finished with it and started sweeping snow. He even told me "I like it." The best was when Ben started spreading salt on the sidewalk; Sam stepped right in and started helping out, sprinkling salt wherever Ben would drop it. I got it on video. Sometimes I feel like the family AV person.

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We like to put this boy to work!