Make It Work

So now that I have confirmation of 3 people reading the blog (yay!), I'm going to put you to work. We're expecting a little girl as you all know. Although Anderson's room is pretty neutral, we'd like to priss it up a bit and make it a little more girly. We'll move Anderson out to his own big boy room and move the little one in. Currently, the room is painted green, almost like a pear green. We intend to keep it that way because it's just less work for us and....we're going to make it work. So what goes with green? PINK! I spent a lot of time and money on the bumper and it's going to stay. I was thinking that I'd just make her a new crib skirt and new curtains to bring in some pink (or other colors) to make it more girly.



The bumper looks like this (with the wall color very similar):





We also have a yellow glider/recliner with dark colored crib and dresser in the room.

So now I just need to find fabric from a crib skirt and curtains. I'd like the curtains to have some green in it to help pull everything together. I think it would be weird to have a mostly pink fabric on a green wall. In my head it would look weird. I'd need some touches of green in it to pull the room together. The crib skirt could be pretty basic to me since it probably won't be used for very long. Once we lower the crib it isn't even seen. I would like the curtain fabric to last a long time since I have to spend more money on it (only because it's more fabric) and I don't want to have to spend time and money making new curtains 2 years from now. I guess I mean I'd like it to be able to grow with her so that even though I change her bedding once she moves to a real bed, I won't hae to change her curtains (but I guess it would be okay to do so. It would be nice to not have to.) So...what are your choices?? Some are in my price range, some aren't. I'm mainly going for a "look" or direction. I could always look around to find something similar that IS within my price range or try to find it on a different site/discount site. So, just give your opinion on the look.

Option 1:

(May be too busy)

Option 2:

Option 3:

Option 4:

Option 5:

(Probably for a crib skirt)

Option 6:

(I actually wouldn't mind this for either curtains or a crib skirt)

Option 7:

(Not sure if I like the unevenness of the dots)

Option 8:

(Hmmm..I think this pink is too bright. But I do like the pattern)

Option 9:

The more I look at this, the more I really like it. Plus, it could help tie in the small amount of blue that is on the border of the crib bumper.

Option 10:

(I think it's a cute fabric, but not sure if it's really curtain material. Plus, since the bumper has animals on it, not sure how cherries would fit in)

Option 11:

(Again, more for a crib skirt that curtains. I don't want stripes for curtains)

Option 12:

(I like the pattern and the pink and green but the background looks a little yellow to me. Not sure if I like that)

It's actually nice for me to see it all like this since all I have are links in one of my emails. So, what do you think? All comments and suggestions are encouraged and welcome! And get your friends to voice their opinion too.

4 Jangs and a Dog

Hmm...My new year's resolution of blogging more has not been realized quite yet. Guess I better work on that. But it would be nice if someone held me accountable for keeping this blog up to date (hint hint...It would be nice to get some comments from people other than my mother).

Ok, so I'm still trying to catch everyone up and I left off on Halloween. Well, it was around this time that we got some big news. BIG News. And I'm guessing you've figured out from the title that I should have rethought the blog title name a little more and would have thought that some day in the future that our family might grow from 3.

Well, that day is here! Around October we found that our family of 3 is going to be 4 sometime around June 12, 2010. And not only are we expecting another child, but we are having a girl!

As of today, I am 22 weeks and some change, which means that I a little halfway through. Anderson was a little more than 2 weeks early and I'm hoping that this little girl will follow in her big brother's footsteps. It still blows me away that we're having a little girl. We've had to switch gears from all things boy to now trying to conceptualize the thought of buying little dresses and all things pink.

We've tried to explain to Anderson that mommy is carrying a baby and for awhile we thought that he might understand, but now he is going around lifting up daddy's shirt looking for his baby. And then he lifts his shirt up showing us "Anderson's baby." We've told him that only mommy has a baby and he seems to now say "Mama's baby." We'll see. We know the transition is going to be tough. Real tough. At the sight of us holding or playing with another child, he always comes running over either whining or crying. He's a jealous kid. A friend gave us a doll to mimic as a baby so that he gets used to the sight/idea of us holding another baby. We have yet to try it and I don't know how well it go over. I guess there's only one way to find out....

Mirror Mirror On the Wall

I'm really liking this mirror from Ballard Designs. I see it above a console in our entry. What do you think?

Halloween

For about a month before Halloween, Anderson and I went to try out different costumes. We tried a dragon, bumblebee and a spider. We settled on the bumblebee because that was just the cutest one. It did worry me that it might be construed as a little feminine, but I didn't care. He was cutest darn bumblebee at Old Navy. We actually tried to borrow a friend's bumblebee costume but by the time Halloween came around, he had outgrown it. So, the Old Navy Bumblebee it was.

Sadly, the day after the trip to the pumpkin patch and two weeks before Halloween, Anderson came down with the swine flu. Yes, the dreaded swine flu. It was pretty tough there for a week. A week of super high fevers, making sure he was comfortable, him coughing himself awake and not sleeping much through the night. Wilson actually slept in his room that whole week. It was rough. But, he's alright and it was much less worse than we were anticipating.

Luckily, it only lasted a week and he was all better by the time Halloween rolled around. Yay! Because I had been waiting all month to get him in that costume and parade him around. First, there was the school party:




I wasn't about to waste his cuteness on just the school and neighborhood, so I took him to my work's Halloween party! Here they had pumpkins laid out for all the kiddies and Anderson was really into lifting them and hoarding them.


At least he's using good form. Lift with your legs buddy!


Ahh....these are all mine.


The next day, we went trick-or-treating with our friends and their daughter Kyra who was dressed as a monkey this year. Unfortunately, Anderson was too young to say "Trick-or-treat." We left that up to Kyra. But he sure got the hang of it! He's very into buckets and any sort of containers. So when he figured out we were going from house to house and people were putting things in his bucket, he was loving it! He was SO into it. After two houses, he was running from house to house wanting to get more. He has no idea what candy was (mom and dad ate all his loot) but he was thrilled to be collecting this to put into his little felt Frankenstein bucket I got from the $1 aisle at Target. Before we could go, we needed to get the kiddies lined up for their Halloween 2009 picture. Unfortunately, that took a little while.

First, Anderson wouldn't have any of it. He did not want to stand and take a picture.


Then after a little coaxing, he looks at me and says "Awww...mama, do I really need to take a picture?" Yes son, you really do.

Yay! Picture finally taken!

Once that was done, Anderson was outta there....

First house. He hasn't quite gotten that the candy goes in the bucket, so when the person handed it to him, he just took it and bolted. I later had to show him that the candy goes in the bucket. He was thrilled.

Here's a nice shot of the little stinger :)

Catch up

One of my New Year's Resolutions was to take more pictures to document the life of my family and to blog more. So far, not doing so great on either of them. But I'm trying to catch up now. Imagine my surprise when I opened the blog for the first time in quite awhile and saw that we left off in October! Yikes. So, I'm going to attempt a whirlwind of posts and pictures while I have an evening off to myself. Anderson is sleeping, Wilson is at a football fantasy pizza party collecting his hard earned winnings (he didn't win the whole shebang but got third, but it still pays out!). A lot has happened in the J household and unfortunately I haven't really documented them much through pictures, but I'll do my best to have part narrative and part pictures.

So I think we left off in October. I only have a few pictures that are good enough to share from the pumpkin patch. We went to Bishops Pumpkin Patch this year with our friends Stan, Yvonne and their daughter Kyra. They are actually expecting their 2nd daughter on Feb. 5 so it could be any day now! This pumpkin patch is probably the biggest pumpkin patch we've ever seen. It was like the state fair. There were hay rides (which were free so of course we went on one), corn maize, fair food, petting zoo, train rides, pig races, super slides, bouncy house, etc...The works! Anderson was still a little too small to do much of it but he did enjoy the hay ride and pig races. For the pig races, he actually raised his arms and screamed "YAY!" Unfortunately it was about 30 seconds after the crowd did it but it was still super cute.

You all know how much I love sticking my kid in these cheesy cutouts:

Don't these kids look like they are having SO much fun?

Anderson discovering hay for the first time, and really liking it.

Which pumpkin should we get? Hmm....we ended up just getting three small pumpkins.

"YAY!"

And our best attempt to take a family picture. Definitely not our best.

Kauai

Warning: This post is very picture heavy. But that's what you wanted, right?

Okay, I do realize that we're on the brink of December and we took this trip to Kauai in the beginning of October. I went back and looked at these pictures today and it seemed as though we took this trip eons ago. It seems as though so much has happened in the past 2 months that I can barely even remember what went on during that blissful week in Hawaii. I had this grand idea of doing a total trip recap, with what we did everyday, where we ate, etc... We sadly, that did not happen. So I'll do my best to recall what happened. I'm not sure if I can remember the order, but this is my best shot.

Oh, I'd also like to thank Julie for some of these pictures!

First off, let's start with the flight. For any parent of a child at ..... any age, this is the most frightful part. Seriously. To the point that Wilson and I have been strategizing for weeks. We had agreed that we would ween Anderson off his pacifier at 15 months, but then realized that it coincided with our trip to Hawaii. Would we dare enter a 5 hour flight with a child that was just been weened off his paci. No way! We are not that stupid. But, it actually ended up being quite uneventful and Anderson is a great traveler. He's already traveled to Chicago, Seattle and Hawaii and he's never really had problems. (Well, except for the one leg in to Chicago, but we're trying to forget about that one.)

We arrived in sunny Kauai, picked up our rental car and headed to the condo. Our little family of 3 was on our own for a little while before my brother, Julie, and my parents arrived later that night. We didn't do much. Just explored the resort, bought some food, and hung out at the pool.

The next day, we again headed to the pool (which Anderson loved) and then attempted to find a local farmers market. On our way, we stopped by a small waterfall. (I couldn't upload ALL the pictures from the trip so sadly there is no picture of the waterfall. But here is one from that day)



The next day, we went to a local beach and tried snorkeling. Only the water was pretty chilly and since it was a little cloudy, not so warm. I think only Asher (my brother) and Wilson actually went snorkeling. Julie and I did go into the water eventually, but I was not up for snorkeling that day. Anderson was not a fan of the waves in the ocean. I think he much prefered the calmer waters of the pool. But, he did become a fan of sand. Well, moving sand onto a bucket. My mom found an old plastic spoon and gave to Anderson to use as a shovel and he had a grand ol time moving sand onto a small leaf.



The next day, Wilson, Anderson and I were awake early so we headed out to the beach to get a glipse of the sunrise.





Later, we all headed towards the South and West shores of the island to visit Waimea Canyon. It was a pretty long drive since we were staying on the East shore, but it was worth the drive. It's hard to look at these pictures and truly understand how amazing this place was but we were all in awe at the beauty of this place. Many people call this the Grand Canyon of Hawaii.








I think this is the only picture of all of us on the trip:


Afterwards, we headed to Jo-Jo's from some Hawaiian shaved ice:


Mmmm...good.

Anderson got a little taste too:


"Yummy! This stuff is good! Outta the way grandma. I can handle this on my own!"



"They cut me off Uncle Asher! You wanna give me some more?"



I think you've had enough little guy




The next day, we decided to go on this hike. It didn't seem to bad. Just a 2 mile hike along the Napali coast to this beach that was supposed to be gorgeous. Everyone did mention that it was strenuous, but we thought that since it was just 2 miles, it wouldn't be that bad. Ummm....we were wrong. We didn't even make it the 2 miles. Anderson was having a serious meltdown (he was in a baby carrier) and we figured we had to cut our losses and just head back. I think we made it a little more than halfway there (at least that's what some random guy told us) and it took us 3 hours for that round trip. The hike was brutal to put it lightly, but it was beautiful.

Wilson took on Anderson in the carrier. And you see that banana on the side of the picture? That's me trying to appease the little man.


This was the "trail" for most of the way



And some of the beautiful views on the hike




On our last full day in Kauai, we again headed to the North shore where Asher, Julie and Wilson had surfing lessons. My mom, dad, Anderson and I hung out on the beach under a tree. This time, we bought Anderson a sand bucket and shovel and sat him next to a big pile of sand. He was happy as a clam :) Here's daddy catching a wave



And after a long day at the beach, another order of Shaved ice was needed. This time, from the Wishing well where I encountered a mean old lady who questioned whether or not I ordered an paid for the condensed milk that I was requesting. I did. But she probably spit on my shaved ice later.


And of course, when we get shaved ice, Anderson gets shaved ice



And after all that hard working digging in the sand, it was time for a nap


Our last day in Kauai was filled with some small sightseeing. Some waterfalls and blowholes. But nothing outrageous since we all had a flight later that night.



The flights home were pretty uneventful. We took the red eye to LA and had a layover there for 3 hours. Anderson was awake for some of it, but later passed out



We did have TWO celebrity sightings at LAX! We saw Catherine Keener (actress from "40 Year Old Virgin") and Chuck Liddell (UFC fighter).

Well, that's about it. There were many more highlights (including a seriously fabulous buffet at the Marriott) but there is only so much I can post about here. Hope you enjoyed this brief glimpse into our vacation!

One last picture of the pool at the Marriott. Everytime there was a pool, Anderson would head straight for it and either yell "Pool!" or "Water!"