Obsessed.

After almost seven years in our house, I am finally ready to make something work in our living room. Which you walk right into from the front door, so it's the first-impression maker of the whole house. Unless you count the yard, which I don't count because the idea of tackling it is so overwhelming I've decided to ignore it.

Back to business. When we bought the house, there was a run on older family members downsizing, cleaning out, etc., that ultimately meant we were offered ALL of the stuff they didn't want. And in moving from a one bedroom apartment to a four bedroom house, silly us thought that was great. And I guess it was, for a time. Until we realized none of it went together, wasn't our style to begin with, and trying to get rid of it would be loaded with sentiment for the original giver. Crap.

But I'm obsessed with Young House Love - does anyone else check in every day? It makes me feel empowered to tackle these projects that seem so HARD. They did a post a while back on a gallery wall, which started my dominoes falling about our entire dining room/living room/staircase/upstairs landing zone. And after a few weeks of mulling it over, browsing online, and seriously assessing my own resources - financial and time - I think I have a plan of action that will leave it all actually presentable. I KNOW.

1. Gallery Wall. Our living room already has a deep, colonial blue accent wall around the fireplace, which I love. First step will be to paint the opposing staircase wall the same blue, and then take all of the beloved pictures scattered around the house, put them in white frames, and create a staircase gallery wall. I figure it will provide a double whammy of getting a lot of clutter off our various horizontal surfaces, and remedy this big, blank space our stairs have been since we moved in. I may carry the gallery wall up to the small upstairs landing that is currently nothing more than a clutter magnet. Not sure I'd paint up there, though - might be too dark.

2. Living Room makeover. I'm going to move an antique secretary we currently have to just to the right of the front door and start actually using it as a mail zone. Right now we have a wobbly little table there (bad idea with the Lion) that is covered with PILES of mail. The secretary will help me get in the routine of sorting and throwing away every day, then coming back to bills and other things that need to be handled on a regular basis. How do other people handle this?

We have WAY too much color in the living room right now, what with the deep blue accent wall, light blue inherited sofa, green print chair, and predominately red (but does pull in the other colors) rug. The rug and green chair are getting relocated to other places. I'd like to buy two of these chairs to go across from the light blue sofa, with a small, dark wood cabinet between them.

Then I'd like a neutral rug to tie it all together, make the room brighter than the red rug does, and just generally calm things down. Something with a soft geometric print, maybe. Like this.

3. Dining Room makeover. The dining room is also really dark. There's a big, heavy rug from my Dad, which he says he doesn't care what we do with, but I do. A dilemma yet to be solved. Maybe my brother also cares about it and would like to give it a good home? :)
So I think I'd like something like one of these, so both brighten things up, make it more neutral, and tie into the adjacent living room blues. The rug on the left is probably my preference, but my husband seems to dislike the natural materials (this is jute) category of rugs, so I'm also considering a blue dhurrie like this one, on the right. While I love it, it might be too much to have it be so similar to what I'd like for the living room. Blech.

4. Spare bedroom/office. This place is a total junk room right now. When we had the basement finished, everything that was in it went into this unused spare bedroom on the main floor, and we've never recovered. Now every time he cleans up, dearest husband simply takes everything and puts it in there. Not helpful. My goal is to throw away almost everything in there, move in the living room rug and maybe green chair, and turn it into an office and functioning spare bedroom. Which we need now that our amazing nanny occupies the basement room. It needs to be emptied and painted. The previous owners left it a heinous orange color. I'll also need to take down some 70's era wall shelves. Think Mike Brady's office. Bad juju.

I may also put the green chair on the upstairs landing, if I find another place to store my bulk diaper purchases. And repair my childhood dresser with the drawer fronts hanging off the frame. Yes, I'm serious. It's all glamour here, folks.

So now I need to figure out how all this should start. I think I need to force myself to show some real commitment to this before I buy the chairs or a rug (if I finalize a rug choice), so right now I'm looking for time to paint the staircase where the gallery wall will go. Paint is also so motivating - you really can make a huge impact with not so much work, once you've gotten the hang of it.

Wish me luck, people.

This makes me feel stupid

I just bought one of these. Because I was getting tired of buying ridculous numbers of swim diapers for Lion. And since Monkey is doing "pre-team" (when you're too little for the real swim team - adorable, I know), everyone will be spending a lot of time at the pool this summer. Except me, of course. I'll be working. See yesterday's post about wanting to be my kids' nanny.

Back to the point. It came in the mail yesterday - super fast shipping as always, courtesy of diapers.com, and I have no idea what to do with it. Do it go over a regular diaper? Stand alone? Serve as a swim trunk? Go under a swim suit?

I got nothing. Anyone know how to use this?

Seriously, people, I have master's degree from a top tier university, but I'm stumped. Maybe if I'd gone for the PhD?

Baby Top Ten

The whole fam went to a double baby shower last weekend for two friends of mine from grad school who are pregnant and due within a few days of each other. Yippee!! It's baby #2 for one, but the firstborn for the other. She and I started talking about the ever-present baby 'stuff,' and while I like to tell people that all you really need are diapers and a place for the kid to sleep (empty drawer, people?), I'm just as guilty of over-acquiring stuff as anyone. And baby stuff was no exception.

My first tack was to try and give her all of the baby stuff Lion no longer needs. Swing, bumbo seat, play mat, pack 'n play, etc. I see this as tempting fate about whether we'll have another baby. (Me want, hubbie no, plus no money means Hubbie wins. For now.)

The way my life seems to work, the moment I get rid of all the baby stuff, I'll accidentally get pregnant and have to buy it all again.

But they have a small apartment and really do need to triage their acquisitions, so it did get me thinking about what we actually valued most across two kids. Here's my list.

1. A downstairs changing table. I had two c-sections, so minimizing trips upstairs was key. We used a pack 'n play, which was a little too low and hurt my back bending over for diaper changes. So no specific product recommendation here. We didn't use it for much else, frankly, except occasionally to protect the brand-new Lion from Monkey. They were both able to make clear their displeasure at being caged from a very early age. Prodigies, I know.

2. I called it the "mini mattress," but it's really the "Close and Secure Sleeper," by the First Years. I think it's intended to protect the baby when you have them in bed with you. Note - it would not have protected anyone from the way my husband sleeps. Would have taken a tank.

But I had read that babies will feel more secure and sleep better if you can mimic the closeness of the womb. And the kids looked so little in the vastness of the crib. So we used this to make their worlds seem a little smaller. It was also a convenient way to elevate their heads slightly - since both of mine had reflux (Lion still does). It was also great to travel with, since it was easy to recreate a familiar environment for them in a new place.

3. A play mat. I didn't think this was a big deal, so when I realized I had loaned Monkey's to a friend, I didn't bother getting it back for Lion. But I was wrong. It was huge to be able to lay him down somewhere with a degree of stimulation. It also helped with the physical therapy we had to do for his torticollis by making his tummy time more palatable. As long as there is some basic sound stimuli on the mat (something that crinkles or squeaks) for when they move, it helps them make the connection that their attempts at movement have outcomes. The arches with things dangling overhead are important once they get to reaching and grabbing, which was also really helpful with the torticollis.

4. Crib. Duh. Both kids got to use the same Stanley Young America crib. Went with white for gender neutrality, and it has a fixed rail. I wanted a drop side then (I'm only 5'2"), but all of the reviews of drop-side manufacturers were pretty poor. Four years later, drop-side cribs are all but extinct after several recalls, so I'm really glad we ended up this way. And I really didn't have that hard a time picking them up, even from the lowest position. Ours is a convertible crib, so when Monkey started climbing out of it we just took the front off and TA-DA! Toddler bed.

OK, my husband would be angry with my "just took the front off" bit. It took quite a bit of doing, not to mention required finding and buying a modified front with a partial rail. They made it impossible to convert the crib without spending an extra $250, and we were pissed. If you're trying to price compare cribs, be sure to ask and factor that in.

5. Bibs. Vinyl ones (so you can just rinse them clean) that secure with snaps (b/c my kids like to take them off). Lots and lots of them.

6. Diapers. Another Duh. We're Pampers Swaddlers/Cruisers fans, but I have several friends who love Huggies. Some just seem to better fit certain kids, and fit is what determines the likelihood of leaks. Do not do not do not get the ones with Dry Max, though, as whatever crap is in the absorbent section has given babies rashes, not to mention the occasional chemical burn.

7. The next set doesn't really merit long description, so it's more of a list of things to have around. Wipes (we like Pampers sensitive), diaper cream (we use good old-fashioned Desitin, but I know some people mind the smell. It just says 'baby' to me!), orajel swabs (the teething will start sooner than you think), and some sort of anti-fungal cream. Lotrimin or the drug store generic; whatever. The bumpy red diaper rashes are yeast, and they need the anti-fungal cream instead of desitin. A little neosporin never hurt, either.

8. Stroller/carseat. Stroller research is the very bane of my existence. I found the online discussion boards by the Baby Bargains authors to be incredibly helpful for toddler strollers and their various permutations, but for infants it's obvious to me. You get the Graco carseat, because it's consistently the highest ranked for safety. Then you get the stroller frame/base/basket that connects to it, because it's only $60 or so and the ability to move a sleeping child between the car an the stroller is priceless. I still mourn having to move Lion into a convertible car seat, because it lost me this ability.

I'm not going to make it to ten. Don't get talked into the rest. In particular, don't buy a swing/bouncy seat until your child has been in one and you know they like it. They're expensive, and neither of my kids was ever willing to stay in one for more than 30 seconds. Monkey screamed every time we came near it, from a very tender age. Like I said earlier, they're prodigies.