Today's Nick's birthday. He's 28. For a month and 4 days, I get to be younger than him. Last night, we said farewell to 27 with an outdoor concert and our first baby-free night (what-what? and also, thanks Granny!). This guy and I have 10 years under our belt and a whole lot of great memories. He's a pretty special guy and I'm pretty lucky that he's mine. Nicholas: Thanks for filling up my gas tank, getting me fridge water-with ice!, making me like chocolate (a very recent development), giving me silly nicknames, never questioning my Anthropologie purchases, being such a great daddy to Hayden, and loving me the way you do. You're the best- happy, happy birthday! xoxo
So... this has been hanging around in our house since Saturday morning:
That's what 700 sq. feet of cork flooring looks like, all boxed up. We finally made the jump to update our floors after living with our increasingly gross parquet/rental-grade carpet for well over a year. The parquet is original to the house and its age is showing. It might not be so bad if there weren't huge sections of water damage, where the tiles lift up and apart. Weaffectionatelycall them our jenga tiles. It's less funny when Hayden realized he could pick them up and started playing with them...
In addition to the less-than-stellar wood floors, the house was re-carpeted right before we moved in by the bank that owned it. They chose probably the cheapest carpet out there. It's a tan-ish white that is no stain master. If you even think about walking on it with a touch of dirt on your shoes, a dark spot appears and doesn't go away. (Despite a professional carpet cleaning and multiple spot treatments.) Henry doesn't help matters, as he has scratched the transition from carpet to the parquet:
So, it was clear to us that we needed to figure out some new flooring for our downstairs. (We haven't figured out if what we want to do upstairs yet, and that carpet is in much better shape so we're holding off on that decision for now.) We looked at hardwood, bamboo, tile, and cork. Our favorite was cork, which we loved for it's eco-friendliness and uniqueness. Also, we like that it has a little more give to it than hardwood, is easy to install (so they say), and it takes on the temperature of the room, so it won't be cold to walk on in the winter. We chose this cork from Lumber Liquidators and we bought it a couple weeks ago when it was on sale for $3.19/ sq. ft. We have to let it acclimate to our house for at least 48 hours. So our plan is to start and finish the install next weekend... We'll keep you updated on our progress!
Today is our fifth wedding anniversary and I can't believe how far we've come in the last five years - from our first struggling days in our new apartment to becoming parents and homeowners - we're like real adults now! (Yikes!) This year has probably been the most challenging for our marriage, but also the best year by far. Having a baby changes everything (everything) and going through labor and delivery, weeks (months?) of sleepless nights, and the stress of "are we doing this right? is this normal?" makes you survivors and makes your relationship more real than anything else. There's no one I'd rather go through real life with than this guy! Nicholas, thanks for being my best friend, biggest supporter, a great dada, and for working so hard for our family! I love you a million billion!
This little kid is 11 months! I can't believe how fast this year has gone, although at the same time I can remember being sooo pregnant at this time last year! Hayden's emerging personality is the cutest. He is a little mischievous and thinks the word "no" is pretty darn funny. He loves loves loves Lucy and climbs all over her all the time. (She tolerates him for the most part...) He is a busy boy and is always on the move, crawling all over the house (including up our entire flight of stairs the other day), pulling up, and cruising around. His favorite toys are of course non toys- cell phones, remotes, spoons, bowls, hairbrushes, cups, and boxes. He likes to sit and listen to stories without trying to rip books out of our hands now. His appetite has grown a lot this past month. The other day he ate 10 (!) strawberries in one sitting (in addition to the rest of his dinner). His words this month are "Mom" (not Mama), "Dada", "yeah", and we're pretty sure he can say "Hayden." In these hot months he's been spending a lot of time in the pool and loves the water. He's a great napper (which is good news for my new jobs!) and a decent night sleeper, though we have our off nights here and there. He's cheerful most of the time and loves to laugh. We can't believe our sweet little boy is going to be one in just a few weeks!
Annnnnd for an added bonus, there's this:
Nick and I really like using instagram to document the ordinary moments in our daily lives. In fact, lately we've been using instagram more than our actual camera to take pictures. Every once in a while, I decide that I need to print some of these pictures out. There's lots of sites that do this now, but I particularly like Social Prints Studio. They are fast and efficient and it connects right to your instagram account so that you don't have to do any uploading. The prints usually ship quickly too. Since we had acquired quite a collection of instagram prints, I decided to "wallpaper" our fridge with them. I bought this roll of magnet tape and stuck a strip of magnet on the back of each print.
Then I just stuck them to the side of the refrigerator in a grid. I tried to space out the Hayden pictures (which obviously made up the majority of our shots) with our other pictures.
In the end, we have a fun, memorable collage to look at, instead of a big grey box.
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