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. Without my handyman I – the surface pretty maker – could not have done such serious handy work as installing lights and new drywall. Looking back, we actually accomplished a lot more than I dared to hope for in my original post about the basement plan. Here is the gist of it.

Just a reminder – this was the colorful craziness we had bought into a year ago:

And this is the new toned down guest oasis:

On our way to the final result we encountered many tedious tasks, such as removing wall paper with lots of water, vinegar, and persistant scraping.

Priming the walls with No-VOC primer because there is not much opportunity for ventilation down there and we did not quite want the baby to be born a natural paint addict.

Splitting the room’s lighting from the overall basement circuit and installing two new recessed lights instead of the one dim boob light.

For the sake of installing the new light switch in the room we also decided to take down the bead board paneling on one of the walls which we had never quite understood why it was there.

After taking it down we realized why it was there: Because the previous owners installed the wall framing flush with an existing corner and putting up drywall would have made for an ugly overlapping edge.

Which left us with the exact same problem – how were we gonna accomplish a smooth wall with drywall. Our solution: Using extra thin drywall and extend it to the part around the door over the existing drywall. Not exactly the Holmes-on-Homes way to do it, but good enough.

 

The trim and doors in this room were wearing many different shades of yellowed old white, so they got a fresh white coat as well .

I didn’t even have to bother with taping off the door hardware because on my mission to de-brassify this house and bringing it entirely to the 20th century I also switched out all the door knobs and hinges for brushed nickel ones.

On the final stretch I got sick and my awesome hubby had to paint the room all by himself with the perfect shade of light grey that I had found on the oops-paint rack at Lowes for $5 (and even No-VOC!). It’s amazing what a difference No-VOC paint makes. It might take an additional coat, but the smell during application is minimal and the next day the room is absolutely smell free.

It is actually a little lighter than shown in this photo (more like what you see next to the door above):

Finally, we cleaned the carpet and filled the room with all the existing stuff from the old guest room, plus a yard sale chair and a free dresser.

We are gonna hang some more framed postcards to fill the back wall, add a bookshelf and wall art to the reading corner,  and eventually also have to find a prettier solution for the electric box and modem corner:

But so far it is the most finished bedroom in our house and I am seriously worried that I won’t ever see my husband in our own bedroom again.

A male baby to be more specific. There you go. So much for my planned big reveal of the new baby’s sex. Sorry for not coming up with a super creative photo post, I already channeled all my energy into finishing the guest room before our first guests will use it this weekend, being sick, and caring for a sick child again. A child, that also just discovered the joys of fully blown temper tantrums. Ah, the joys!

It’s gonna be interesting to see how this next little boy is gonna differ from Milo and in which ways they will be able to connect. We are really hoping that in about two years they will be fully compatible play buddies that can entertain each other for hours with only minimal supervision.

My next couple of days will be spent designing a completely new nursery for baby nummer two. And we could really use your help to come up with a cool name. Milo was kind of the only name ever Linc and I really loved, so it will be hard to find an equally cool brother name.

My criteria for a name are pretty ambitious anyway and I’m gonna tell you right now that I usually have to reject about 90% of all suggestions that are given to me. Not to discourage you, but to set a challenge, this is what the name should be like:

• Uncommon. As much as I like the name Noah, I don’t want him to be one of three Noah’s in his class.
• Not too crazily unique
• Easily pronounceable in English and German. We don’t want the poor kid to have to spell out his name everywhere he goes.
• Short. If everyone calls the kid Alex, then why name it Alexander?
• Not easily to abbreviate or made into weird nicknames

Ready? Set. Go!

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 dark evenings down there anyway, so it didn’t really bother me too much what it looked like. What can I say – I am done ignoring that wallpapery mess down there. And we have to make some room shifting happening this year to fit in another child.

So here is the plan. The baby will move into the current guest bedroom, the guest bedroom will move into the playroom in the basement. We don’t have guests all year round anyway and for those few weeks the basement should not be too uncomfortable. The room is actually bigger and more isolated from noisy kids, the only downside is that it doesn’t have a window. But since it is mainly for sleeping anyway, I think everyone will be okay. This is what the playroom was styled like when we moved in and all we had to do was adding a few toys.

Looks totally appropriate for playing, but not really like a calming retreat for people that need to recover from touring DC all day. So, the blue, the wallpaper, and at least half of the toys will have to go.

In the main part of the basement things aren’t as colorful, but it looks even crazier. There is stuff everywhere, an oversized couch occupying half of the room, and Lincoln’s work stuff spreads out wherever there is still space. Currently he has a photo studio set up on one side of the room, his extended desk area on the other side, and garments anywhere in between.

 

The master plan for the big room is huge. And will take some time. And might have to wait until after baby a.k.a next year. Check out here the before and planned after of furniture arrangements:

The main goal is to separate work area from living area and confine work stuff to the area that it belongs in. Of course that also requires a comprehensive desk and storage solution that Lincoln has been planning passionately and might share in another post.

These floor plans were made with the free online software homestyler and they even let you shoot a cool 3D panorama view of the designed space. Of course all with limited design options, but this is an approximate idea of what the space will look like. The shelf will be built in as a closet with sliding mirror doors. The desk and work area will be on one side of the room and the lounging area on the other side. Milo will get a small play corner for his train table and other supplies as well.

Phase 1 of the project will be to neutralize the play room due to the urgency of impending baby invasion. We already started stripping down the wall paper and priming the walls. More on that soon.

Phase 2 will be to fix the lighting situation. Currently all lights in the basement are hooked up to one switch, so if you want light in the big room, you are necessarily gonna wake up the guests in the other room or vice versa. We have to separate them into two circuits and will also upgrade them to recessed lights with brighter shine power. The current boob lights are just too dim and won’t fit any bigger light bulbs.

Phase 3 would be to tackle the walls and closet building-in in the big room. But as I said, let’s stay realistic here and see when we actually get to it.

Oh yeah, in the above floor plan I also made the laundry room a little bigger, but that is not really gonna happen. Unless we decide to build a small bathroom in the basement at some point, then we would need the additional storage area.

Okay, enough of unrealistic dreams for now and back to finishing the new guest room.

The most frequently asked questions from people when they realize that I am pregnant are:

1. Is this your first? (unless they know)
2. When are you due?
3. 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 so you know, there will be no answer here today. Our anatomy ultrasound is in two weeks, but I get this question so frequently that I can’t help but have sort of an answer as to what our preferences are. Lincoln is hoping for a little girl. And I honestly don’t care at all. I always wanted a girl, but now that I have Milo I think it totally doesn’t matter what sex the baby is. Therefore I see the date in two weeks pretty pragmatically. I don’t care what the result will be, but I do want to know so that I can plan ahead. I need to know if I have all the clothes or should buy some girls stuff. And starting to look into names will be fun too. The biggest reason for me to find out though is so that I don’t have to call the baby an “it” anymore.

Whenever I have to decide about which option to chose I make a pro and contra list of the options. Not that I have any choice in this particular matter, but if I had to determine what my preference is, here are my considerations:

Pro boy:

+ We already have all boy clothes

+ It would probably be nice for Milo to have a buddy to ramble around the house with

+ I don’t really like pink. Actually I hate pink. The bright girl clothes kind of pink at least. I can deal with a pale muted pink, but not with all the girls stuff that is on the market. I know, I know – I wouldn’t have to get any of it if it was a girl, but honestly it is really hard to find anything without cars on it that is not pink and also I am pretty sure all 100 relatives here wouldn’t care what my color aversions are and buy right into the mainstream girl stuff.

+ I am actually not so much a girly type of person. I have always had plenty of guy friends, played soccer on the street with them, and got dirty in the woods rather than getting a manicure.

Pro girl:

+ Girl names are way easier to find

+ If a girl was anything like Milo, the cuteness would probably be tripled.

+ Supposedly girls tend to snuggle more than boys. And I do need my regular cuddle time.

 

So, what do you think it’s gonna be? Any wild guesses out there?

Not in Milo’s tummy. Although he might begin to think that that’s what is in bellies because we started preparing him for some major expansion and eventually a baby coming out of mommy’s tummy. Of course Milo has no plan what that means until the new baby will actually steal a good chunk of attention from him, but we are pretty sure that underneath it all he will eventually be thrilled and thankful to have a sibling. He is just a people person and needs his own little play buddy always available.

Now, considering that we are doing him a major favor here, Milo didn’t make it very easy to make baby number two. Seriously, once kids turn 1, they switch on some natural birth control mode that makes it almost impossible to find time to do what you gotta do. There is teething, sicknesses, and other random night wakings that set off a second round of sleep deprivation that not only leaves no time and energy for parent time, but also makes you seriously doubt that you want to go through this whole baby thing again. Against all odds we were able to make it happen somehow, but trust me, it was hard work.

Little Tran number two is expected to arrive on the same due date that Milo had (August 15th), and hopefully he or she will not come out three days early so that both kids can have their own separate birthday. Six more months to convert the basement into a guest room and the guest room into nursery. After three extremely tired, mildly sick, and lazy months, the home makeover blog will be back full force very soon!

If I ever said before that Milo was becoming a big boy I was lying. Because he is a big boy now! I mean, look at this kid. He is not even 18 months old and totally keeping up with all his older buddies. He is running, climbing, jumping, doing forward rolls, singing, dancing, and talking non stop. While I am writing this I absolutely realize that it is pointless describing all of these cool things when I could just post some self-explanatory videos instead.

Unfortunately it isn’t quite that easy, cause that kid has a serious iPhone addiction and as soon as you pull the phone out to shoot a video Milo just drops whatever he is doing and there is no way captioning anything but a kid running towards the camera with both arms reaching for the magical device. Of course it is our fault that this mini person has the iPhone completely figured out by 17.5 months of age. It’s the curse of the clever telephone. Instead of reading a newspaper, we read the news on it. Instead of calling up friends at unsuitable times, we just post something on Facebook. Instead of getting a book at the library for advice, we google the heck out of the phone. So there we are – a really bad role model for Milo showing him that phones are the most desirable toy in the world.

Anyway, we still limit Milo’s phone usage to half an hour of videos and half an hour of games a day and so far it doesn’t seem to have any negative effects on him (except for his addiction problem). He is still developing ahead of his age group, has way more fun playing with older kids and talking the days away. Lately his words have become more defined. Instead of just doubling up the first syllable of every word (wa-wa for water, ba-ba for bath), he is now very clearly saying “water”, “juice”, “car”, etc. He understands pretty much everything we say in any of the three languages and communicates clearly what he wants. I gotta admit that I am guilty of letting him go through with things I should probably say no to, just because I find it so cute how he communicates them.

So, tomorrow I will attempt another video shoot of all those fun things he does and then hopefully update with some footage here.

Cheers!