currently | Little Stinky Feet Theater

Currently is a weekly link-up with the lovely ♥ Randalin of Harvesting Kale and I am her happy co-host each week. I hope that you can participate by writing your own Currently post (using the provided themes or your own) and please join us by linking up. What have you been smelling, wishing, loving, pouring, talking this week? Over here, we have been...

Smelling myself. I was gifted with some lovely Aveda products when our friends visited and the smell is so dreamy! Just the right mix of earth and sweet and spice - I smell fantastic. The smell is also reminding me how much I love Aveda's tea blends and that Rob got me a gift certificate to the local Aveda way back in May and I need to book a massage for myself. Yip! We have all also been smelling Etta's feet all week and saying "P.U!" and making crazy anime faces of near death. She loves it! She holds her feet out to us over and over for a Little Stinky Feet Theater. It's the sweetest. 

Wishing summer would never end. How is it August already?! Unreal.

Loving that I finally finished Omnivore's Dilemma as part of my long distance book club. It took my friend and I about four months to read this book because we have a Forgiveness Always policy for pushing our book clubs dates back due to anything (we are moms with full time jobs, yo). It was a great book - educational and thought-provoking. I loved the journalistic parts of it most of all and I want to learn more so I ordered myself two additional books on the subject of modern food culture: Food Rebels, Guerrilla Gardeners, and Smart-Cookin' Mamas and Farm City. And I'm loving that my friend and I are starting a new book club book soon and this time we are picking a new topic - her choice this time and I can't wait!

Pouring coffee on my head Flashdance style. If the government ever decides to use coffee as a mind control delivery system I am doomed.

Talking with Otto at bedtime and cherishing every second of it. He has moved back out of our bed and into his big boy bed this week (ps there are some pics of the kids' room here). So far he's doing great (last night being Night 2 of this experiment). Me, I don't know if I am doing so very great. I miss having him there through the night and was really nervous that having him sleep elsewhere would ruin our amazing bedtime routine that I pretty much live for. So far it hasn't. We've been doing our daily recaps in my room and then just when he's about to drift off, transitioning over to his own bed. This all came about kind of out of the blue when Otto spotted a Darth Vader quilt in my PB Kids catalog and was like, "Whoa." We told him if he is ready to sleep in his own bed at night and has seven nights in a row that we would get it for him (he doesn't have a comforter currently so it's not that extravagant of us although holy lord Pottery Barn charges a premium for their bedding, eek). Anyways my brain knows this is a normal transition and ultimately a good thing but my heart is really heavy. He's just getting so big and independent you guys. All the sighs!
     

That was this week. Here are next week's themes: 

spending, saving, speaking, going, sharing 

so funny

At bedtime last night Otto told the funniest joke in the world.

We've added don't laugh contests to our nighttime repertoire of discussing the day's best and worst events, reading, thumb wars, and no blinking contests. Last night we were having a don't laugh contest and we were both playing for keeps. No one was gonna give. I said, in a sad, serious voice of drama, "you should think of the saddest thing you could ever think of like a sad sad little fish swimming alone and crying and another mean big fish swims up next to it and farts and laughs and swims away." Otto laughed... I won!

sidenote: I know. I KNOW, but I wanted to win.

So we had another contest and we were making the most serious, meanest, saddest, squished up faces ever and Otto said in a very very sad, serious voice, "You know what I'm thinking about?"

"No, what?"

"I'm thinking about the saddest thing I can think of in the whole world... and it's an elephant pooping on a worm."

And then I died laughing.

He is the funniest person in the world. Bedtimes are my favorite favorite favorite. The end.

i LOVE having a family bed

Otto goes to bed in his room around 7:30 and then around 1am crawls in with us. i usually lay down with Loretta anywhere between 7:30 and 11:00 and pass out - probably in full makeup without brushing my teeth - while nursing her. throughout the night i change her diaper with supplies kept in her bassinet (<-- handy) so i don't have to get out of bed and we switch sides each time she wakes to nurse. absolutely sometimes i wake up sore because the situation can get cramped and Otto is a ruthless bed hog. and yet, and for reals, i really really really LOVE having a family bed.

see what i get to wake up to every morning? the three people i love more than anything in the world. yes, Rob's in there, see his hand? :)

i don't have deep seated beliefs about co-sleeping. i think everyone should do what's right for their family.our sleeping situation evolved over time. Loretta is *just* about ready to crawl and when she does we are going to have to rethink the co-sleeping for a while. i am a light sleeper but still, i wouldn't want to risk her quietly crawling to the foot of the bed and falling before i noticed.

as of today, we don't have room in our home for a crib, much less a nursery (we have a corner though and it's pretty cute), but we are moving into a much bigger (and prettier! and more light-filled! with a lovely fenced yard! and big kitchen!) space at the end of August and at that time we'll be setting Loretta up with her own room. i look towards this with excitement (decorating rooms IS FUN) and a little sadness because i know i'm going to miss our little family bed that we've settled into this past year.

when we moved Otto out of our bed and into a crib right around this same age (5 months) i slept on his floor for a month. major separation anxiety on my part. him? after a few days of gentle encouragement he rocked the crib like a boss. he didn't know it was weird for mommy to be laying on the floor with her fingers between the slats so she could be touching him. moms do all kinds of weird things. he didn't start crawling into our bed again until after we'd transitioned him to a big boy bed. now it's a 5-6 nights a week guarantee and i love it.

here are some drawings i made of our bed most nights...

it works for us :)

our new house has four bedrooms. we haven't toured but we've peeped in the windows and i believe the 3 main bedrooms are upstairs and then there is a tiny bedroom adjacent to the sitting room on the first floor. my plan is to turn the small downstairs bedroom into a toyroom and then to have the kids' rooms crisp, tidy, pretty, and functional with less fuss and mostly just a bed, bookcase, dresser. here are some rooms i like...

Julian's room from Miss James' Bleubird blog
Any of these Swedish kids rooms from Feather and Nest blog
The bed/chair/suitcase/bookcase area of Isobel's big girl room from Little Big blog

i like the clean, peaceful look of unused space and the delight of fun found objects but all with simplicity and thoughtfulness. each of these rooms has personality, you couldn't just buy them straight-up, they had to be put together over time. also, here is my dream crib from Pottery Barn for Loretta's room i am only hoping i can find it or one like it on Craigslist in the next month!

that was rambling but there is so much going on in my life right now. did or do you co-sleep? did you find it to be a great experience or frustrating? why? do you hate me for co-sleeping? haha! actually if you hate me don't bother telling me. what about these kids rooms? amazing right? i hope i can do something just as cool for my kiddos. i think the toy room will go a long ways towards that by minimizing the clutter in their sleeping rooms.

hope you all have great weekends!

Here's to Big Boy Beds! Smooth Transitioning From the Crib...

We recently decided to take the plunge and get rid of Elliot’s crib in favor of a toddler bed. Elliot has slept through the night since he was 2 months old, and up until recently had very consistent sleeping patterns. Just before his second birthday in April, he became more reluctant to fall asleep, and night after night he would cry and scream at bedtime. We decided maybe what he needed was a “big boy” bed.

Finding the right bed took some time; I spent a few hours looking at different beds online trying to get one that was cute but practical. We bought one at IKEA and after assembling it realized that you have to buy an IKEA-sized mattress to fit it; the crib mattress was too small, grrrr! Damn you, IKEA and your Swedish measurements! Finally we settled on a bed from good old Babies R Us.

"How do you get a toddler to sleep in a toddler bed?"

I wasn’t sure how to proceed….how do you get a toddler to sleep in a toddler bed? I had my husband assemble the bed and we left it in the living room for a day or two so Elliot could sit, lie, and play on it without feeling that it was a “threat” to his enjoyable crib life. Then I moved it into his room but didn’t insist he sit on it, I just wanted him to get used to it being there. Surprisingly, he took to it happily. He was very proud of his toddler bed and asked to sleep in it. So that day, at nap time, I went about our regular nap-taking routine and simply put him in his toddler bed. He was absolutely tickled about having the freedom to get in and out of it. He came out of his room a few times with the biggest grin on his face! He was so proud of himself! He said, “I’m supposed to be napping mommy!” Trying to hide my laughter I told him he needed to go lie down and take his nap. After two or three times of coming out to show me his cleverness, he finally fell asleep….in his toddler bed…..just like that.

It has been three days now, and we have taken apart the crib and put it in storage. He never asks about his crib or complains about his new sleeping arrangements. It is such a delight to wake up to his little face in mine, asking me to “wake up mommy!” I think that when it’s right for them to transition from a crib to a bed, they’ll let you know in their own special way, which is crying and throwing a fit at bed time; aren’t they little darlings? Our sleeping routine has become a lot less chaotic, and even though it takes a few times of turning him around and putting him back into it, the toddler bed has been a huge success in our family! Here’s to big boy beds!

-Megan