Painting the Bathroom!

Our downstairs half bath is painted a wimpy pale minty green. It's very blah, but not as AWFUL as some of the other paint colors the previous owners chose. So it didn't get changed in the first rush of homeownership adrenaline. I'm starting to hate it enough to expend energy to change it. Oh, and the toilet is having issues and needs to be replaced, so we might as well beautify the room in the process!

So I am feeling inspired by this blog, and I decided to pick something for the walls before anything else. We bought this painting on ebay several years ago while buying other paintings from the same seller, and haven't ever framed it. I pinned it to the wall to get the idea of how it'll look. I really like it!

So I played with photoshop a little, and used the eyedropper to select colors from the painting. Here are a few ideas I came up with. Please vote for your favorite and/or leave a comment! It'll probably help to know I am planning on doing white wainscoting, so the dark colors won't be as intimidating as they'd be on a whole wall!

Current color, boring minty green

Color #1

Color #2

Color #3

Color #4

Color #5

Color #6

Sleep barfing?

We've noticed many times how the kids don't remember what happens during the night. David gets up to go potty and comes to see us, acting funny (we call it the wiggles...we'll have to upload a movie sometime if we can get a better one than the one we have now), Ryan gets taken to his bed from ours, also acting funny, etc. No matter what, they never remember in the morning.

Last night somebody got up and threw up all over the bathroom. It got on the beautiful white cupboard, the shower curtain & side of the tub where the curtain wasn't covering, the wall & baseboard facing the front of the toilet (so it should've been behind the barfer), and of course all over the inside and outside of the toilet bowl, the top & bottom of the seat and the lid, and the floor. It was everywhere!

Nobody will own up to it! What the heck? I think it's possible that he (it's gotta be one of the boys) remembers but doesn't want to admit to making such a giant mess. But I think it's more likely that he just doesn't remember!

I didn't discover the vomit until after David was already at school, so I called and had his teacher ask him, and he said it wasn't him and he felt fine. So he's staying at school unless I hear otherwise. Ryan is home today anyway, and he's acting totally normal. I called and cancelled our two fun activities though, just to make sure. So we're stuck at home, I had to clean a nasty bathroom that had been wiped down just yesterday, and nobody is claiming responsibility. Nice.

Being 2 is frustrating. So is being a 2 year old's mommy!

Katy has entered that beautiful time of life where she wants to do everything for herself, but can't quite do a lot of those things! I have no problem with her doing the things she can when I have the time to let her do it (which is a lot of the time, one of many benefits of being a full time mommy). It's a good exercise in patience, taking deep breaths and all that.

However, there are two times I just can't let her do things for herself:

• When I need her to hurry for an important reason (usually when I need to take the boys to school or be home from errands before the bus drops them off, or sometimes if I'm cooking dinner or something)
• When she truly doesn't know how

The above picture was clearly one of the latter. I was getting her ready/helping her get ready for bed, and I had just put her diaper on. That made her mad, so she removed the tabs and repositioned them herself. Sorry Katy girl, you are welcome to choose the diaper, choose your jammies, and put your jammies on, but I need to put the diaper on for you. I won't even touch your legs if you want to do "bum up" and "bum down" for me. But haven't a poorly positioned diaper is just not an option, especially at bedtime!

She was not pleased with me for redoing it, and refused to pick her jammies. I tried to help her choose for a little while (I tried giving her two options and I tried letting her pick from the whole drawer), and she refused (she didn't want to get in jammies!). So I chose for her, and put them on for her.

And she SCREAMED for quite some time.

Interestingly, she wanted me to hold and snuggle her while she threw this huge tantrum. So I rocked with her in her room, trying to be comforting and sympathetic. She seemed to calm down a bit (down to normal crying rather than loud hysterical crying). I had the boys get Book of Mormon Stories to read in her room instead of everyone going downstairs. I started reading, and the screaming started again! So finally the boys & I went out to the loft to read, and I held Katy's door closed and told her she could scream all she wanted in her room, but needed to be calm to come out and be with us.

And guess. What. It worked! Within probably 3 or 4 minutes, she finally understood what I had told her about 5 times, and she calmed herself down! She stopped crying, and I opened her door maybe 15 seconds later. She came out and was pleasant for the rest of Scriptures, prayer, and her stories!

It's sad to see my Katy Princess turn half angel/half demon, but after going through this stage of life with two other children, I have a bit more perspective. It really is indicative of a good thing: learning to be independent and learning how to handle strong emotions. I just wish I still thought the terrible twos ended at three. From past experience, three is just as bad & often worse. Deep breaths, deep breaths, we'll all survive.




Oh, and there's an interesting thing that I suspect may be connected. Katy & Ryan have playdates with Natalie & Peter almost every Tuesday since the beginning of the school year. The boys are absolutely adorable, really well matched friends. They're only about two months apart. The girls are about a year apart (Natalie is older), and Katy hadn't really gotten into playing with her yet. She loved having playdates, but just hadn't reached the "play together" developmental level yet. She was still doing the "play alongside" thing. Yesterday was the first time we've played in 3 weeks due to illnesses, and Katy & Natalie played together really well! We were at a park (it was a beautiful day!), and they kept running around together, doing the slide at the same time and stuff like that. Once I even saw them holding hands while they ran. :-)

Now I'm no human development expert, but to me it doesn't appear purely coincidental that Katy developed the "I do it or I throw a tantrum" and the "play together" mindsets at the same time. I'm not sure how those could be connected, but both are fairly noticeable milestones, and both have been reached within the last few weeks.

My baby is growing up. :-)

Bathroom Fix-up, Mostly Done

I wish I had thought to take a "before" picture to fully appreciate the transformation. We had white walls, not great wood cupboards, yucky looking vinyl floor, and nasty, nasty toilet and caulking. And not just because we have a few boys here who lack the ability to aim. And no amount of scrubbing made it look clean. Ick.

Now we have fun green walls! I wanted to go fairly bright to make it work with the shower curtain. It turned out a bit brighter than I thought it would, but I think it looks good as a kids' bathroom!

We will be changing the countertop at some point. It isn't too ugly, but it doesn't quite fit the colorful room! And Dan wants to do a granite tile countertop in the kitchen, so we're going to have him practice in here. Better to have the learning done in the kids' bathroom!


I painted the cupboards and baseboards white. I will probably be doing the door at some point if I decide I like it enough. At this point I'm a little concerned about the ability of the white paint to withstand usage. I cleaned this bathroom this morning (hence my willingness to post pictures online!), and I noticed some dings and scratches in it. Maybe we'll need to figure something else out. Again, good to practice in here!

And Dan did the beautiful tile floor back in November, but I never thought to post pictures of it. Maybe because I didn't do the hard work! Anyhow, I really love the tile we picked, and Dan did a great job with it. See Honey, it was worth it to learn how in our old house!


I've been thinking about keeping a house clean vs. decorating a house lately. I'd love to have a super cute house like what you see in a magazine. But first of all, I am not so great at keeping it clean, so I should probably tackle that issue first. And second, I really just don't know how. All the little extra decoration-y things just seem unnecessary to me, but they're needed to get that look! I just can't feel good about spending much money on things that are entirely un-functional. I'm still torn about the whole issue. The bathroom looks nice, but unfinished. But does it really matter?