Last year or so we did quite a bit with our daughter's bedroom. It's been tons of fun to do projects in there - big ones & small ones. A quick rundown of projects - built out the closet, painted, new trim, created a memo board, and other stuff. It's not done either (nothing ever is LOL), but it's time to shift our focus a bit.
Poor Chris. He's suffering as the second child (not really). His bedroom used to be Sarah's room, so when she moved out into her big-girl bedroom, the walls were princess purple. And they have remained princess purple ever since. Painting it wasn't the highest priority because of a few things, not the least of which was that Chris was an extraordinarily destructive toddler. I didn't want to scrub, patch and paint walls only to have them dinged, scratched, and scribbled on immediately.
Well, the time has come! The room has been adequate but a bit sparse in furnishings (but safe for his whirlwind lifestyle). He's grown up a lot though in the last year and a half and now that he's approaching his fourth b-day, I think we can safely bring a few things back for him!
The first thing we need to do is take a look at what we're working with - BEFORE PHOTOS!! Jason already started patching up the holes & imperfections in the walls so that's what all the white stuff is :)
ENJOY!
The room is long and somewhat narrow. Plenty of space for everything we need - bed & dresser (we are keeping what we have for now), toy storage, book shelf, and plenty of space to play!
I'm not one of those bloggers who spends their days coming up with unique/cheap/sensory games for their kids. My kids play video games. They play with legos. They play with my phone. Every once in a while though, I come up with something a little different. Today it was an inspirational bag of mixed beans from the grocery store!
I hate beans, so when I saw this bag of beans, it looked more like arts & crafts materials than food, but it can be a sensory toy too.
It's a pretty simple idea - dump some mixed beans onto a tray or bin (or onto a table if you're brave) and have your preschooler sort them by type, size, color, shape... it's up to him & you.
We sorted into an ice cube tray because I had one handy, but you cold sort into an egg carton, a muffin tin, little bowls, or even just piles. The idea is to work on concepts like big/small, same/different, colors, shapes. And it's fun for kids to play with them. They have a nice tactile feel, too.
With the stormy, snowy, icy, cruddy weather we've had, this was a fun and easy indoor activity for a bit.
Well, we've had some fun around here in the last few days.
Friday morning the cabinets were delivered. I should have taken a picture because it was a really impressive stack of boxes in the garage. See that word "was" in that last sentence. Yeah, the stack of boxes is gone. I know what you're thinking, "boy that was fast!" and it totally was because Saturday morning Jason's brother, Kevin came!
Cabinet weekend was 2 long days of cabinet hanging excitement here. Kevin, who is a carpenter and has done this stuff before many times, was able to lend his expertise. We'd have been up a creek without his help.
At the end of the first day they had all the wall cabs and half the lower cabinets hung on one wall, including the crown molding. One thing to note (that I didn't know before) is that if you're doing crown on your cabinets, you probably need to add a nailer to the top of the cabinet boxes so you have something to attach the crown molding to. Once the moldings are in place, you won't see the nailer at all.
Here's a progress pic from early on Day 1:
And at the end of the second day they were done! The days were long (Sunday night ended at 10:30 PM - sorry neighbors!) but in just 2 days, the two of them completed work that would have taken WEEKS with just Jason and I to work on stuff on Saturdays and Sundays.
Before I show you how it's looking now, let's take a look at what it looked like when we bought the house...
And here it is now...
Note that none of the doors are on right now - we decided to leave them off until after the counter tops are done. I don't want to risk a ding/scratch in a door during that whole process.
I'll have more pics once things are more done (counters & doors & drawers and whatnot).
Side note - if you do find yourself with a lot of boxes like we did - you may want to also get a big roll of tape and let/help your kids to build a cardboard castle.
I'm not quite sure how we got to the 12th of August before I realized, but wow it's been over a month since the last post! Typical for this time of year, things at our house have been busy with the pool and a trip to the beach. All in all I was there for about 2 weeks with the kids. Here are some highlights!
We are big fans of south Jersey and the beaches there. In addition to days on the beach we made it to mini-golf, the zoo, out for ice cream and the boardwalk to ride some rides.
The best part of any vacation is coming back home feeling refreshed and, for us, refocused. We're recharged and ready to rock and roll on the kitchen. Look for updates soon!
Year three for Chris was a tough one. He seemed to take "terrible twos" to new heights in terms of shenanigans, difficult behavior, and meltdowns. He destroyed furniture, drew on walls, smeared poo, screamed, ran around like a lunatic. He threw food, dumped cups of ice water, and generally caused chaos wherever he went. He pushed us to our limits on many occasions. There were times when I just walked into the bathroom, closed the door behind me and burst into tears. How could this little person push me over the line?
I read books and sought advice from friends. The more I read and talked, the more I felt as if it was my fault that things were like this. I was told that he wouldn't do this stuff unless I was "letting him get away with it" or that we "need more rules". I felt hopeless and miserable.
I started to wonder what exactly people thought was happening in a house like mine, where there's a wild one. Do people think that I sit back with my eyes shut and let the walls crumble around me? Do they think we equip him with sharpies and scissors and let him loose? The truth is that even if there are rules for behavior, some little ones will challenge them and a time out isn't a deterrent. He just wasn't connecting the behavior with the time-out in a cause & effect way.
Over the year we got better at being his parent. We turned around his dresser so he couldn't climb the drawers or empty them out. We took the shades out of the windows so he couldn't pull them down and took all books from the room to prevent shredding. We installed gates EVERYWHERE, bought cups with lids for us and put knob covers on any door we didn't want him to open. Yeah, it might sound like lockdown, but we turned our home into a place that would reduce his temptations so there would be less frustration for us (and more sanity) and more days where we had no time-outs or yelling. We were ALL happier with things this way. It's not pretty, but it's not forever.
Somewhere along the line things started to change. I'm not sure when exactly, and I honestly didn't realize how much things had changed until a friend who I rarely see said to me "From your posts on Facebook, it sounds like things are getting better". And I thought....yeah, it had been a while since there was an "incident" so extreme that the world would be amused at hearing about it. I started to think about my little boy (who was now 3 years old) and how far things have come in the last 6 months and it's remarkable. He's still him but he's a better listener, time-outs ARE an effective deterrent for naughty behavior, and we even put the shades back in his bedroom. He's not a perfect child, but his behavior is so changed that we feel hopeful for the future.
So what was it that helped? I think setting him up for success by extensive childproofing his spaces was really important. But the biggest factor was just him growing up. Maybe his behavior was related to the frustration that comes with limited verbal communication, maybe it was impulsiveness, maybe it was lack of cause & effect understanding. I don't really know for sure, but things are better and I'm thankful.
To parents of a challenging child, who are at their wits end, who are in tears, or finding themselves saying "NO", "Stop that", "Don't touch", "Put it down", "Let go", or "Please do not eat that" more than they say anything else, please know it won't be forever. It's not like a light switch. The change can sneak up on you, and one day you will find yourself in a much calmer, happier place and wonder how the heck that happened.
