The Nursery is Done!

Woo hoo! The nursery is done! It's a good thing too because the little baby girl will be here in less than three weeks! Now if we only had a name for her.....

The only thing I still want to do is to paint a quote above her crib that reads, "Love like you'll never be hurt, Sing like no one is listening, Dance like no one is watching, Live like it's heaven on Earth." This may not get done before she arrives but I'm working on it on figuring out how I'm going to do it. That's a lot of words to try to freehand in a straight line with a paint brush!

Here are some pictures of the nursery. I've tried to explain the perspective of the shot for those of you who haven't seen this room before.

From standing in the doorway, a view of the right side of the room where the crib is. The two floral shadowboxes above the crib were given to me by Mom many years ago. They had a dark cherry wood frame but that was too dark for the nursery so I painted the frames ivory with a burgundy trim. There is a small bookshelf next to the crib with all of Nicholas' baby board books and baby toys on it. He is enchanted by all of the baby toys that he doesn't remember ever having. If he gets the chance, he will always go in there and play with the baby stuff!



A picture of the left side of the room with the window, glider rocker, baby quilt and a piece of the open door.



This picture was taken from where the window/glider is located looking at the back right corner of the room at the dresser/changing table and closet door.



This room used to be our guest bedroom and as you can see we don't really have a place for guests in here anymore. For Granddad Owen and Grandmother Chance who both plan to visit at different times during October, we will move the glider into the office and set up a twin bed in it's place. The baby will be in a bassinet in our bedroom so you won't have to share the room with a baby crying at 3 am but it will be a little crowded in there for you :)

Preschool Pals

Here is a cute shot from our Monday playgroup. These are just some of the friends in Nicholas' preschool class.

Playing and Sharing with Friends

This morning we went to meet up with our PTA friends at the park. Nicholas had fun climbing on the playground, watching ants, and playing in the pine needles and dirt. He is all boy, isn't he?





When it was time to take a break, he headed over to a blanket where Mrs. Deb had laid out lots of books and games for the kiddos. Nicholas learned how to play the game Perfection and he really seemed to enjoy it (Keep that in mind, Santa Claus).



Then we found a table and got out our picnic lunch. Nicholas said he was so hungry but when his friend came over and said she was hungry, he didn't hesitate to offer her half of his sandwich and then he shared his strawberries with her. When there were only two strawberries left, Nicholas said that they could each have one and he let his friend choose which strawberry she wanted. When she picked the smaller of the two, Nicholas said, "Oh, I was going to let you have the bigger one." I'm so proud of him for being so generous with his friends and for understanding the importance of sharing.

More Jumping on the Bed?

I don't like Nicholas jumping on the beds. I don't care about the beds so much but I worry that the little daredevil will hurt himself with his lack of fear. However, as I was going through pictures on the camera I found several that Stuart apparently took of Nicholas jumping on our bed! Hmmmm. Yes, the jumping makes for cool pictures but now I'm going to be the "mean mommy" for telling him no jumping on the bed!

The Great Trash Bash

Our PTA group sponsors a trash pickup at one of our local parks. Each year we pass around a sign up sheet among the membership and moms sign up for one day to go pick up trash at the park. It's a great way to teach our little ones the importance of keeping our environment clean.

This week is our week for cleaning the park. We went to the library yesterday and found the perfect book to read before our expedition. It's called The Great Trash Bash by Loreen Leedy. In addition to teaching the importance of picking up after ourselves, it also touches on the 3 R's - Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. So we read our book last night and talked about our agenda for today.

I picked Nicholas up from school and asked if he wanted to stop at a convenience store for popsicles/ice cream to eat when we got to the park. He said no. Huh??! Whose child is this in my car? And more importantly, how can I stop for a popsicle if my four year old isn't wanting one? I finally managed to convince him that we should stop so we got our treats and headed to the park.



Yummy treats. Ok, time to get to work. Nicholas was excited about cleaning up the park although the park is always really clean so I knew we didn't have much work to do. Nonetheless, I came prepared so that each of us had a plastic shopping bag for our trash (REUSE!) as well as some disposable gloves to keep our hands clean. Nicholas loves wearing gloves so he was all excited to get his gear. We walked around a while finding little tiny pieces of trash and one piece of an aluminum can. It was so clean that Nicholas got bored with the lack of activity and ended up running off to play on the playground.





I'm not sure what these little plastic pellets are but they can be found at every single park in our area. They may be some kind of little BB gun pellet but I never see any kids playing with such a thing. Anyway, today Nicholas called them treasure and collected a bunch of them along with the help of another little boy who showed up to play.

Your Bedroom Makes a Four!

We were sitting at the dinner table tonight. Nicholas was talking about the running broad jump that he had been doing in our bedroom a little earlier. Suddenly he said excitedly, "Your bedroom makes a four!" It took us a minute to understand what he was talking about. However, if you think of the layout of our bedroom you can see that it makes the number four.



We were impressed at this. Even though he's never seen our bedroom from a bird's eye perspective, Nicholas was able to use spatial skills to imagine that looking down at the walkways in our bedroom would form the number 4. Amazing!

Loving His Baby Sister

Nicholas is going to be such a great big brother. He is always hugging on my belly and telling his little sister how much he loves her. He kisses my belly good night and prays for his sister at bedtime. I asked Stuart to try to take some pictures that captured this sweetness. He did a better job at it than I could have ever imagined.







Of course, it is tedious to try to have any sort of posed photo shoot with a four year old boy, especially when it is outside where there are sticks, bugs, and leaves all around that are just begging to be played with. All things considered, Nicholas did a great job of posing for the pictures. He seems to have fun at everything he does. Take this picture for example. I'm not sure what he was doing but he just looks so happy and carefree!



Once we got back home, Stuart and Nicholas played outside for a little while. They checked out one of my rose bushes and even picked the perfect rose for me. What sweeties!



They quickly headed back outside and Nicholas enjoyed playing with the sword he got at Six Flags and digging for worms.







When they were too hot and tired for any more play time, they made their way back inside where we made sno-cones to help cool off.



Nicholas usually gets a "cold headache" when he eats cold things like this too quickly. He always runs to me to cuddle so I can warm his head - he thinks it makes a difference. But this time, I got the cold headache so he ran over to me and squeezed me with all his might to try to help me feel better.





I sure do love this sweet little guy!