Talking

Each day gets more exciting because little by little Aiden is saying more words. Hard to keep up with all the new ones introduced! This makes me very excited to see his vocab grow to other than just saying "No!" all the time haha. We now get a "Yes" too. YAH! Not all the words are clear so you have to listen really hard. For example More sounds like "mOR". The m is sometimes faint and I just hear or. But that is better than his old way of just grunting or saying "Ugh Ugh" ummm what is that?! I don't know what Ugh Ugh means. Do you mean you want MORE?! haha

The other day when I went to get little man from Preschool his teacher also confirmed to me how much he is talking now. And that she can pretty much understand him 100% now. YAH! Go Aiden! He even is saying his classmates names. Especially when he's able to tell on them. Yes, my son is a taddle tell. lol He even does it to Murphy...."Bad Murph!" haha. But hey we will take what we can get. So proud of him.

He still doesn't tell me 100% what he wants all the time, but we are getting there. Practice makes perfect. Now our reading time in the evening is not really what you call reading but more flipping through the pages and him trying to tell me what the picture is. It's quite funny because goats, sheep, and horses are always dogs. haha I correct him and he gives me the funniest look like "Really Mommy? Because that sure looks like a dog to me." haha

Not sure if y'all know what Little Bear is, but its a show on NickJR that we watch every night during his breathing treatments. He is OBSESSED with it! We ask if he wants to watch something different, nope "Lil Bear". Not complaining because he will sit there for his 15 minutes and not move, plus it's a really cute show with great lessons. Just like books he likes to point to things and tell me what they are.  "Lil Bear" "Duck" he calls the hen a duck too. "Cat" "Bird" is the owl. Eventually I'll get the books for him, but they are a 4+.

Another issue we are having that we've always really had is his eating habits. He is VERY picky and I constantly worry about him getting all the nutrients he needs. He does like to eat don't get me wrong but it's all the bad stuff that I want to limit. He is his mother's son after all. lol This kid really prefers not to eat meat. Yesterday I called his pediatrician to talk about it because for the past 3 days in the AM. he's been eating half of his breakfast, all of his lunch, and for dinner almost nothing. Enter freak out mode because I know he isn't getting every part of the nutrition triangle. Is there something wrong? Is he sick and not showing any signs? etc. So she recommended that we start giving him PediaSure for those times he prefers not to eat food. It's like a pint size protein shake. And THANKFULLY Aiden loves them. So I can rest a little bit but I'm still going to try to expand his taste.....the eating in front him doesn't work anymore. I used to be able to get him to eat if we all sat down in front of him eating the same thing, but not anymore....so I'm gonna be looking for new techniques...

I mentioned yesterday how we are going strong with no wake ups. Well this morning he woke up when Wes was leaving for work (apparently I was passed out because I didn't even hear him babbling on the monitor). Wes said he wasn't crying just sitting up in bed and playing with his stuff animals. I will take that! And it explains why he was still sleeping hard when I came in there during his normal wake up time. As long as he's not waking me up and crying/screaming at the top of his lungs I will take it!

Other news, this week at his preschool they had their Scholastic Book fair, great prices on the books. Walked away with 3 new books for under $20. Aiden was very excited about all of them and we were contributing to the school. Win Win!

Tomorrow we are for real starting potty training....so wish us luck! So wanting this to go successful because we are up to size 6 diapers now! Same price as 5, but about 30 less. EEK! Must get out of these things.

Bit of a random post.

Cards

With another birthday under our belt we have even more cards. Currently they are all in an envelope in our filing cabinet. Well from baby showers, Christmas, bdays, other holidays that file is getting full. Insert solution.

First declutter the pile. I kept all the ones from our family members and dear friends. The others leftover I tossed if they didn't include a little note aka just signatures. Now I have a more manageable pile.

Find a binder and make a cover page. check. Punch holes in all the cards check.
Now we have the perfect storage of all our cards! YAH! I know I will appreciate this alot more down the road. I need to do this project with our Christmas cards too.

Other news. 4 nights of solid sleep for Aiden. Knock on wood this continues!!

Even more exciting news......as I was chatting it up with Lowe's paint people trying to see what the difference is in all the exterior paint and telling them how sad I was I had to paint our vinyl white I learned something. Valspar has speciality formulated colors that allow you to paint outside your color card on your vinyl. UHHH WHAT?! Repeat that again. I was only expecting like maybe 5-10 different colors....nope like 30! Shut Up! Totally made my day! So if you have vinyl look for the "Valspar Vinylcolors" handout. AMAZING! So gitty after this trip!

So here's what we are thinking........if we don't have to paint the brick we are going to paint all the vinyl  on the house "Chipped Ice". It's kind of a tan/gray. Since our mortar is gray I think it will look nice.

But if we have to paint the house I want to paint the brick (Area 3), Hardy board trim (Area 2) and the siding on the side of the house the "Chipped Ice" and the siding roof overhang (Area 1) "Mystic", which is darker version with more brown in it. I think if we painted all of that the same color it would look weird. (PICTURE OF THE COLORS DONT DO THEM JUSTICE). But I really don't want to paint the house anymore....haha probably because I don't want to paint it. (We'd have to do it ourself because paint alone for our size house 200 bucks and that's only for 1 coat. SHESH! And then renting a sprayer ontop of it, the materials to mask off all the things not to be painted, etc. Cost just adding up. I'd rather put that money in our back porch in a nice patio set. Plus I don't think we see that investment value returned whenever we want to sell.

The contractor came out yesterday to take measurements and get the list of everything we want quoted, so please cross your fingers it's reasonable because I REALLY don't want to go back on the drawing board to find another contractor.

Recap

Well this weekend didn't go according to plan. One we didn't start potty training because on Saturday Aiden woke up at midnight stayed up till 4am. Finally got him to go to sleep in our bed...woke up at 8am with him, almost 40 pounds, on my back (I sleep on my tummy). Needless to say my back was killing me ALL weekend. Bummer! But maybe next weekend. I think my lack of sleep and soreness should have been a sign to stop but I wanted to at least get some things accomplished and not be a complete bum.

Saturday: Bye Bye ugly death trap of a security door. I swear I never open it because everytime I change out our wreath I'm running away in horror because I see wasps. They love to hide behind it. Well NO longer my friends! It feels so good!

Fill up the holes in the frame while I started on the door. Prep. Clean Clean Clean. Scrap Scrap Scrap. So gitty to start. Bye Bye ugly gray door.

Hello beauty! It's bright and cheery and will look even better once we have my hydrangeas near.

Now what went wrong?!?! Do you notice the big blue spot on the concrete?!?! Yeah...I'm painting next thing I know Murphy has knocked over the can. WTF!!! Could have killed him. Oh and other causuality? My birthday wreath! UGH! Had to take out half the balloons..Just another project on my list again.

So did you know that a security door weighs like 5 million pounds?!?! OMG! I about died. Where you see it in the picture above is as far as I could move it. The goal was to move it in the garage on Sunday and resell it. Well the wind had other plans...while I was cleaning the living room on Sunday I hear a loud crash and shatter. Open the door and the security door is on the ground. Glass EVERYWHERE! Took me half an hour to clean. FML! I was put way behind schedule on Sunday and didn't get half the things I wanted to get done because of it. Living room is still a wreck.

Since we are ripping up the concrete I'm not even bothering with pressure washing it. Guess it was a sign to get rid of it. Because of all this missteps I didn't even get to replace the exterior light! UGH!. On my list for next weekend. Bye Bye ugly rusted brass light. Hello beauty!

But with all that good/bad news I will share some more good news! We completely finished our bathroom! YIPPEE! I was in love before, but now I love it even more! No pictures yet I still have a Pinterest project for decor item but once that is done, pictures galor. (Note: I hate painting! Just doing our small bathroom was a pain. Back when we moved in the house I was still pregant with Aiden so my mother-in-law painted the whole house. Ceilings, trim, walls. I don't see how she did it without going crazy! Appreciate it even more now!!)

Next painting projects: The white trims around the house, the siding, and our kitchen ceiling. Taking a few weeks off before I start any of that.

Found a hook for Aiden's "message center". Now everything is off the table.

Friday night I headed up to Macys with my MIL since they were having a blowout sale on mattresses. She was getting my neice a twin set for her bday present and I was looking for a trundle mattress. Man was I glad we went! She found a set that was originally 400something for 169 and I found a mattress originally 200something for 89. SCORE! Originally my FIL was going to build Aiden a trundle for his birthday but they found one that matches his bedset pretty good on LandofNod for about the same price it would cost to make. Even better! Can't wait for it to get here. Let the sleepovers begin! I'm going to make natural rope handles for the outside to make it easy to pull out and keep with his nautical theme.

Leaving with a picture of Aiden. Caught him trying to sneak out of bed during nap time. That little chair of his is multi purpose. Used for reading and as a climbing stool for him. His bed is quite high off the ground.

Weekend Projects

A lot is going on this weekend. A lot of painting...Finishing up the bathroom (just need to do the entry way.)

Picked out our kitchen ceiling color. Lovely Buff. Amazing how colors look sooo different on the ceiling. This is nap time project.

Got the "dream" light to replace our pos one in our kitchen. EEK! Hope it looks as amazing in our kitchen as I'm thinking....

The next project we decided on was to paint the front door. We decided to go this route  instead of shelling out $400+ for a new door. Currently the door is an ugly gray and the trim work around the window is like yellow. Yucky! So I'm going to paint the trim work white. and the door.........Lyndhurst Duchess Blue. Definitely bright, but the color chip looks good next to the brick.....so crossing our fingers!! I wanted a color since we don't have shutters to give it a pop.

Don't worry I'll take pictures during the project. I might do some more painting outside (The trim work at the top of the brick and the siding.) since it's so pretty and Aiden is obsessed with playing outside.

But more exciting news....Tuesday the contractor is coming to talk about our plans for the removal of the sliding glass door and sidewalk. EEEEEK! So excited to get that started. Hoping to have that done before planting season. Hydrangeas here we come! Bonus found a nursery less than 5 miles away that will give us a "local" discount. Yeah buddy!

On a different unrelated topic. We are having some major trouble with Aiden's sleeping patterns. We used to be on a 7pm-6am schedule. Now it's 7:30/8pm-12am. WTF! Then he stays up till about 3/4am. I've been trying everything in the book to get him back to normal (Even gave his paci back). Giving him shots of benadryl before bedtime....and that only pushes it back to 2am wake ups. He doesn't do it everyday like every other. But enough to drain me. And he seems to only do it on the days when Wes has work so as Wes is getting ready for work I'm having to get up with him only running on about 3 hours sleep. DRAINING!!! Those are the days I hate when Wes goes to work at 2am. But luckily he takes over in the evening so I just cook and relax.

Some days Aiden is wide awake wanting to play. Some point between 2am-4am I pass out on the couch and wake up to find Aiden sleeping ontop of me or at the end of the couch. Which scares me....because what if he gets into something during that blurry unconscious time and I'm so out of it I don't wake up! Freaks me out. Or I love when I do fall asleep and he hits me saying "Mommy play!" and hands me a car. haha The days he does sleep in it's only till 5am, but I'm like HALLELUJAH! because at least then I'm getting my 7/8 hours of sleep. REALLY looking forward to this stage going away......for my sanity.