It's been a busy weekend

(Quick note: if the music from the slideshow in my last post is annoying you, you can shut the sound off on the left-hand side of the slide)

Mike took off all five days this past holiday weekend - Friday through Tuesday - so we could get some stuff done around the house before I went back to work. It was nice having him home and alternating days to sleep in and get up in the middle of the night and spending some family time together.

We mentioned that we were going to make our downstairs dining room into Charlotte's big girl bedroom, but after trying to work out the logistics of having a toddler on a different floor than us, our heads exploded. Do we lock her in her room so she isn't meandering around, getting into the bathroom, on the stairs, or in the cabinets (of course, we have everything dangerous locked away, but still, nothing is ever 100%)? But what if there were a fire in her room or something and she couldn't get out? What if she needed us?

So after discussing this with my girlfriends over dinner last week, a brilliant suggestion was made to put Sawyer down here, since we can buy ourselves at least two years (in theory) without worrying about him getting out. By then, Charlotte will be 4-5 and there will be significantly less concern to have her on a different floor, and then we can switch them to keep him safe with us upstairs.

Of course with an infant, there are some nights when they are sick or they need you multiple times a night (like when they learn to stand up and scream because they haven't figured out how to get back down 89 times a freaken night. Yeah, that was the one of the least fun 2 weeks EVER. She was literally up every 30 minutes holding onto her crib side and crying. I tried to let her learn that she could let go and fall but she never did. She'd stand for 10-20 minutes. SCA-REAM-ING. I will end my parenthetical reference now. I promise.), which is why we are still going to put one of the twin beds in there with him and Charlotte will get the other one in her room. This way, if he's having a rough night, one of us can stay in there with him and not have to go up and down the stairs eleventy billion times. We can always bunk them later.

One of the biggest sucktastic factors of this whole thing is that this room we are working on used to be the dining room. A lovely little nook with all of my adult stuff and dark brick red walls. Not only did we have to get a storage unit for the dining room stuff (um, MY stuff) since our basement is finished and our garage is a little full (read: I think there's a family of pygmies living in there), but in case you didn't catch it the first time, THE ROOM IS DARK RED. Oh woe is the little family who hates painting that has to prime and paint a dark red room. We're painting it some rustic cream color so that WE NEVER HAVE TO PAINT IT AGAIN. Cream goes with everything and thanks to those peel-n-stick wall thingies, I can change the decor quick and easy.

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Thanks for all the anniversary wishes! Especially, thanks to my sister for babysitting. We went to a big fancy dinner at SeaBlue at The Borgata in Atlantic City. I lost five dollars in 12 seconds in the nickle slot machine and then quickly decided I'd rather spend our money on these bad boys at the lovely little bar with the hot waitress.

Dinner was fantastic; Mike got the lobster pot pie (yes, it's as good as it sounds and better) and I got some fish with some fried potatoe-y thingies on top (real specific, huh?). We even took a break from our freakishly healthy eating and had dessert. Of course, by the time it occurred to me (four martinis and being blond severely slows down ones thought processes) to take a picture of the pretty plate, I had already eaten the molten chocolate-y caramel-y slice of heaven.



It was a wonderful night out though and we so needed it - to talk about things other than schedules and diapers and bottles - to remember that before we were parents, we were just us. That we still are.