Man, I feel like I am running on steroids these days. No idea where all this energy is coming from, but I take it. After we finished the new guest room it took me only 2 weeks to complete the new nursery. And now we will get started on ripping down wallpaper in the big basement room. Just trying to get as much in the house done as possible before the third trimester heaviness and then newborn craziness sets in.
Luckily the nursery wasn’t too big of a project because the walls were already a neutral tan color that anybody can live with, so we didn’t have to paint for this room makeover. It is definitely a more toned down baby room than Milo’s bright blue and green, but hey – nothing to say against saving some time and effort and working with what you got. So all I had to do was to bring in a little bit of color and some baby appropriate decor. When I found these two mustard colored metal stars at my favorite thrift store for $6 the theme was set and stars and moon and night in general.
Perfect to set the mood for a well sleeping baby, right? I decided to pair the mustard yellow with a dark night blue and found those brand new black-out curtains for $10 on Craigslist. On the wall opposite of the crib I painted a big moon in the same color as the metal stars and added two wooden stars. Milo already loves that trio, he goes over to his brother’s room every morning and says hello to the moon. There is something about murals that makes him talk to our walls a lot.
For above the crib Linc and I made this starry night sky light board. I’ll post a separate tutorial for this thing soon.
The most time-consuming project was painting all these tiny wooden stars yellow and stringing them up to hang as a mobile above the changing table.
See how Milo is thoroughly testing the new room for his little brother? I am afraid he loves it almost more than his own room right now and I really need to come up with something spectacular for his now empty wall.
Some other wall space in the baby room was filled with these prints I found and put in cheap frames from Walmart. That’s also where the $15 neutral rug came from.
Since Milo already switched to his big boy bed, we were also able to move the crib over and put the comfy nursing rocking chair in the room. Together with a new crib skirt and color matching sheets this room is officially ready to welcome baby in a few months.
So, now that the guest room moved into the basement we had an entire empty room to set up as new baby room. (More on the brand new nursery soon in a separate post.) Instead of keeping Milo’s room as a nursery and moving him into the new room, we decided that it would be better for him to stay in his old room for various reasons. First, there will be enough changes coming up for the poor little spoiled only-child. Secondly, he has grown to really love the tree I painted on the wall for him and says good night to it every evening. Thirdly, I just wanted to do something completely new for our new addition.
This is what Milo’s room looked like until now:
One change that was going to be inevitable for Milo has occurred a little sooner than expected. Since he figured out how to climb out of his crib a few weeks ago, we already had to move him to a real bed. Well, a real mattress that is. Until he becomes a less active sleeper we are keeping his new twin size mattress on the floor for safety reasons. He already tumbled out of it once, but was only startled, not hurt. Which is better than a fall from out of a crib.
The transition to his new bed went unexpectedly smoothly. Milo had already been wanting to lay down on the little pad in his play tent for the last couple of weeks, so all we had to do was slide the mattress right into the tent and he never wanted to go back to his crib. For the first couple of nights we kept the crib in his room – just in case. The good thing is that when Milo is tired, he really just wants to sleep. So all we have to tell him is to go to sleep and he will stay put on his mattress. That is still with the help of paci and blanki of course, but we will give him some more time with them. One step at a time.
Another change you might notice is that I did indeed take down the other way-to-high-therefore-useless shelf that came with Milo’s room. It has been unused and collecting dust for almost a year now, so there is my justification to get rid of it once and for all. Now the wall above his bed is kind of bland and definitely needs some nice art or other decoration bolted to it. I am thinking about a kite, bird or sun to go with his outdoor camping theme. Or I will build a bigger tent to span over his entire new bed.
Oh, and on an equally happy note I gotta tell you that the previously reported severe tantrum phase only lasted about a week or two. These days Milo is actually pretty happy and only occasionally gets upset when he can’t have an iPhone or paci. He seems to understand better what we explain to him and why he can’t do certain things. This probably goes together with his talking improving day by day and him being able to express himself better and better. I guess it still takes a lot of parental intuition and imagination, as well as English AND German knowledge to make sense out of what he says sometimes, but he just keeps happily chatting away and explaining the world to us.
Yesterday Milo and I went for our routine walk to the fire station where we usually have to wait for the fire trucks to come back. This time the fire trucks where there, but Milo still pointed to the bench and said: “Sit down wait”. Later when he wanted the neighbor’s boy to come play cars with him he said: “P(l)ay car Zach down”. Or he points at the elephant in his book and says: “Bfffff water” with a gesture of water spraying out of the elephants trunk. It’s sooooo cool to get to this stage where you can have almost real conversations and you get to actually hear what is going on in this little kid’s mind.
I have been meaning to blog about Milo’s first big Easter experience for about 4 weeks now or whenever Easter was, but life has been super busy lately. As always. So, here we go with a really short half-cheated post about Milo’s Easter 2012.
First, read and see many pictures of Easter preparations on our friend’s Kathleen’s blog.
On Easter Sunday Milo woke up to an Easter basket with his favorite new toy – a dump truck. Or “Bagger” how he calls it.
This thing came in very handy for transporting eggs during the neighborhood easter egg hunt.
Milo totally got the “search for the eggs” thing and couldn’t get enough eggs.
Hear the constant beep of his new truck in the background? The poor toy had to carry eggs back and forth for at least an hour. After using up two sets of batteries on the first day, we decided to declare his Bagger broken. Which only a few days later became true anyway because of Milo’s rough handling. Or shall we say exuberant love. Well loved lives shorter, I guess.
We did it! One day before our house was populated by some German visitors we officially finished the new guest bedroom in the basement and I have to say that it turned out great. We have been working on this for approximately six weeks and it was a real joint effort in the Tran house. [...]
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Our biggest task this year (besides pushing a baby out and taking care of a newborn) is to finally tackle the basement. When we moved in last year the lower level was sort of left alone as it was – hideous wallpaper and everything. Lincoln uses it for his home office and I spend only [...]
The most frequently asked questions from people when they realize that I am pregnant are: Is this your first? (unless they know) When are you due? Do you know if it is a boy or girl? Since question number 1 and 2 are already answered on this website, let’s get to question number three. Just [...]
