Big Girl Bed

Posted on by Jordan

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We converted Hannah’s crib into a “big girl bed” a little over a month ago. As you can probably see from the picture, she was rather excited by the change! So excited, in fact, that she invited most of her “friends” to play in the bed too.

 

The first few nights went pretty well. I don’t think she even realized she could get out of bed once the lights were off, and she was sleeping all night. As the days went on (or I guess I should say as the nights went on) she figured out she could get out of bed when she woke up. This let to us having a cute little visitor Saturday morning… a first for everyone.

Indulge a bit of a tangent for a moment here. Someone commented to me a while back that one of the many joys in raising kids was that you got to see them have first experience over and over. Every day is full of opportunities for your child to have “the best day of her life” only to look forward to another day full of new discoveries. When Hannah walked into our bedroom I realized that raising kids also provides an entire category (if I can call it that) of new experiences for myself that I wouldn’t have were it not for being a parent.

So, back to the story. Sleeping is going ok, but it appears she might be starting to get her canine teeth, and Christmas travel is upon us. Christmas was fun for everyone, but it was a LOT of stimulation for Hannah. By the time we got home I don’t think she knew which way was up, let alone what a normal day or night might be like.

Somewhere in there, she also figured out she could carry her little step-stool around and turn on lights. Previously it had just been something to stand on while she brushed her teeth. Now it has become a gateway to the power of light and darkness!

Having set the stage, I will now recount one of the first work-nights at home post-Christmas. Heather and I were kind of dragging as our bodies reluctantly adjusted back to a more normal early to bed, early to rise kind of schedule, and were probably sleeping more soundly than we normally would.

<approximately 2AM> I am woken up by a loud *CLUNK*. The first thing I notice is that there is light streaming into our room. The second thing I notice is that Hannah is climbing the step-stool  she has just slammed down below our light switch. Some quick investigation showed that Hannah had turned on every single light on the floor, except the ones in our room prior to heading in. She had also started up her toy coffee maker. I suspect she felt sure she had a great start on a new day.

We are now a few weeks past that memorable night, and things are starting to be normal again. Along with providing a number of firsts, we may have learned a little about the implications of turning a toddler loose in the house 🙂

-Jordan

 

 

Bedtime

Posted on by Jordan

As Hannah’s eighth week draws to a close a few patterns are starting to emerge. I think about these a lot, given that it is my job to put her to sleep each night.

I have thought about this enough to provide a helpful chart of the bedtime process:

bedtime

Sometimes we skip that initial “Upset” blip, but almost never do we skip the “end of the world” cry before passing out.

On a very positive note, she has slept through the night for the past three nights. We hope this is the start of a trend, but it’s too early to know for sure.

On a final note, waking up is really cute right now:

 

-Jordan

The Wall, We Have Hit It.

Posted on by Jordan

Actually… it isn’t that bad, after a ‘down’ weekend Heather and I are starting to feel like attacking the unfinished tasks again.

Let me catch you up on the past few weeks.

Two weekends ago, we were living in an apartment, and Saturday morning, the view was this:

As some short update posts already gave away, we had plenty of help and got things moved fairly quickly. What took more effort was unpacking and finding a home for everything that was in a box. We powered through that as fast as we could so that our house would be ready for company. Quite a bit of company as it turns out.

On the following Thursday, my grandparents stopped through on their way out to a wedding. That was the first night that we hadn’t both worked until midnight on something, but we still managed to sneak in a few minutes putting our house together. On Friday, Heather’s parents came into town, and they brought our favorite(only) nephew Holden.

He got the deluxe tour:

We took Holden and his grandparents down to the farmers market, and then later he did some fabric shopping with Heather and Pam. We quickly discovered that although the main area in our house was mostly put together, it wasn’t what you would call kid-proof. He kept us on our toes.

That crew headed home Saturday evening, leaving Heather and I a few hours to pull a few things together and grab some much needed sleep. Sunday morning, my parents, sister and brother came into town, just in time for church. We had some really ambitious plans to take them out to see the bike bridge I did a post on a while back. The triple digit heat index, combined with the fact that they had spent a considerable amount of time walking the previous day at the Omaha zoo put a pretty solid kabosh on that idea.

It turned out that a nap and breaking out our new copy of Ticket To Ride was about the perfect use for the Sunday afternoon. I can’t remember if I mentioned Ticket to ride when recapping our visit to DJ’s house out in Colorado, but it has quickly become Heather’s favorite game.

On Monday, Heather and I both worked, leaving the rest of my family free to head down to Pella for some touristing. They came back with some amazing pastries so I have to assume the trip was a wild success. That evening, Heather and I met up with them and headed just outside of Des Moines to where an annual balloon festival is held.

The weather was not ideal for hot air balloons, and we didn’t get to see the kind of numbers featured in the postcards I have seen of the event. That being said, it was really cool. I really don’t understand how they pilot the balloons, except to say they appeared to have more control than I would have expected.

After the balloons, we stopped and got pizza. This is noteworthy only because the local Cub Scout pack was busing tables as a fundraiser. It wasn’t the best table service we have ever had, but it was some of the best mealtime entertainment we have had… perhaps ever.

My family headed home the next day, leaving Heather and I finally home with no impending dates on the calendar. We haven’t been as productive this week as the past few. Today we finally got back into painting and may have a dresser ready to instal soon.

In hindsight, I don’t know if we would have really planned the past few weeks differently, as there were events outside our control driving each visit. All the same, I know we would have been better hosts had there been a few weeks between each event listed above.

On the other hand, we have proven that we can comfortably host three to four guests, and are always happy to have people visit!

… Just give us a week to wrap up this furniture painting 🙂

-Jordan

Like Sleeping On A Cloud

Posted on by Jordan

Or, something like that.

The really exciting news around here is that we got a new bed! This news is kind of a holdover from the weekend, but got caught behind my “get sitemeter working” project so is only getting posted now.

Heather and I held off buying a new bed back in Omaha, because we thought it would be nice to be able to transition our current bed into a guest bedroom. If you recall we were really looking at getting a house there for a while. Things changed a little over the course of 2009, and we now find ourselves in a two-bedroom apartment. It was time to upgrade from the full-sized bed we were on.

I had been hanging onto a sort of guide for mattress shopping that I found: here. With a little encouragement Heather read it over too, and we both felt a little better knowing we might have some idea what we were talking about when shopping. As it ended up, nothing we read really came into play, other than giving us some confidence we were probably on the right track. We ended up with a nice pillow-top queen mattress, that looks huge in our bedroom. We momentarily considered a king, and let me just say, it’s a good thing we didn’t do that… there wouldn’t have been room to walk into the room.

After four nights on the new mattress, I can say that we are really happy with the bed. I really don’t know how we were getting by on the old one.

This kind of puts me in an uncomfortable position. On the one hand we are excited because we have a bed in our spare bedroom, so people can come visit! On the other I have to admit it isn’t the best bed in the world.

Let me rationalize that a little… It isn’t like you get a great nights sleep in a strange place anyway. Also we did manage on that bed for a little over a year without any problems. So in the end, you should come visit us, and you will get a reasonably good nights sleep!! 🙂

Just… you know… call first or something.

-Jordan

September

Posted on by Jordan

A few days into Sep and we have skipped our morning workout two of two opportunities to try and get a little more sleep 🙂 I can’t believe how hard it’s been to catch back up these days. 

Also, today was the first day I walked outside in the morning and thought “WOW it feels like fall!”  I know it’s a little dumb to be making a post about the weather, but it seemed like an event worth remembering what day it was this year

-Jordan