This, That and The Other

Here's the random update from this past week:

Titus no longer calls Micah's girlfriend "Chuma". He can say Kimber. Kind of sad.

Isabele can now walk all the way across a room walking between my legs holding onto my pants with both hands. She'll also walk holding onto both of my hands - or Brian's.

Our house renovation is continuing to progress. We have a new fan in the living room. A new light in the dining room and in the hall way. The new fan and lights look really good! The arches in the dining room are done - Brian did a great job with the plywood forms and then putting the drywall up! Mom's friend Juan is going to mud the arches for us as I just don't feel up to trying to get them to look good.
I have lots more mudding to do - everywhere, but it's getting closer to done every day.
The kids room is back to it's original size and I love it! I think Brian and I are going to get their dresser moved out of the closet tomorrow and maybe I'll get the rods moved around in the closet so there's more room for their clothes.
We also got a new door for the kids room and Brian re-sized an old door from Manaher's (people the live a couple doors down from my parents - they tore down their house and rebuilt and we scavenged quite a few things from them a couple years ago) for our bedroom.

I have all the wallpaper off of the kids new wall, most of the the wallpaper off in the hallway and 1 wall striped in the living room. Brian has 3 wall of bead board off in the diningroom - only one wall to go.

I have about a third of the bricks done on the chimney in the kitchen. Now I'm waiting for the next shipment to arrive at the store and the arches to get mudded.

All in all - a very busy, very productive week!! I think this next week will be a bit slower - Brian's working a lot, and the projects that make the most visual change are pretty much finished. Now it's the tedious stuff - finish mudding the new walls - and the joints between new and old; stripping old wallpaper, choosing and hanging new; a little painting; some curtains; scraping popcorn of ceilings - what a mess; and rearranging the kitchen ... Should be all completed next October, I hope.

Bedtime Conversation with a 2 Year Old

For the past several nights, Titus has had to ask me about "mooses and cowses".
"Mommy, there's no mooses in my room."
"No, there are no moose in your room."
"Mommy, there's no cowses in my room."
"No, there are no cows in your room."
"And Mommy, there's no mooses in the kitchen, and no cowses in the kitchen, and no mooses in the living room and no cowses in the living room."
"That's right, Titus. There are no moose or cows in the house. They live in the woods and barns far away."
"But Mommy, there are a couple mooses at Marrisa and Melayna's house."
"Oh, only a couple?"
"Yeah, there are only 2 mooses at Melayna's house."

At this point I gave up reasoning with him and agreed that there were 2 moose at Melayna's house. I have no idea where he got the notion that he had to make sure that there are no cows or moose in his room or his house. However, he was okay with there being 2 moose at Melayna's house. (I'm pretty sure that there are no moose or cows at the Howett house).

Sleep? Please!!

Isabele is so very different from Titus. All in all, I think this is a good thing - except in the area of sleeping. At 11 months, little Miss Isabele still isn't sleeping all night. Usually she's up at least twice, and 3 or 4 times isn't unheard of. She has been sleeping in a "pack-n-play" size crib since she moved into Titus' room months ago. It fit in the room better than the full size crib, and worked fine in my book. Today, I dug the full size crib out of the basement storage closet and put it together. Then I took the 2 kids and off we went to Wal-Mart for a mattress (Titus is using his crib mattress in his toddler bed that Brian built for him). I have high hopes that maybe Isabele will start sleeping for longer periods at night, though I'm not holding my breath.

The big crib is a little tight in their room, but very soon we will finish all of the rearranging of rooms and walls in the house and they will get another 3 1/2 feet added to their room, so the full size crib will not look so squished.

Marshmallows or Mushrooms

I bought some hot chocolate mix with the mini-marshmallows the other day. I made some for Titus, a treat when Brian brings me a mocha (decaf for Isabele) on his way home from work. Titus has had marshmallows only once or twice, and never in hot chocolate before. He's also had mushrooms once or twice. Neither are a staple in our house. So, he's sitting, quite happy with his hot chocolate at the table with Brian and I, when he says something about mushrooms. Brian asked him what he said and he repeated himself "I want more mushrooms in my hot chocolate." Hmmm. What? Mushrooms in your hot chocolate? Oh, you mean marshmallows in your hot chocolate. "Titus, can you say 'marshmallow'?" "Marshmallow". Okay - well, it's not that he can't say marshmallow, he just has the words a bit mixed up. I thought it was cute and decided not to push to hard to correct him. He'll correct himself soon enough, but until then ... we have mushrooms in the hot chocolate at our house.

Dirty kids and a couple of misc pictures

This picture didn't turn out as good as I would have liked. I made cornbread the other day and Titus helped me, sort of. I got the batter into the pans and Titus took the bowl. Next thing I know, he's been licking the bowl, with his tongue. He had cornbread batter from the crown of his head all the way to his chin and ear to ear. He nicely posed for pictures before I washed his hair in the sink.


Isabele is dancing to the music here. She was really moving.










Titus doesn't like noise. He found that the "headset" (supposed to be used when shooting) makes things much quieter. He thinks that it's a headset for flying. Here he's watching Brian use the router to make space in the new closet for the wiring for the lights in the basement stairwell.





The kids had to go to a meeting at work with me. They are always pretty good. This meeting was at 2PM and they didn't get a nap before hand. At the very end of the meeting Titus found my purse, and in it my lipstick. I knew what he was doing and frankly, didn't care. He was quite intent on putting on his lip. He even used both colors twice. He was so proud of himself, I didn't take it off. When we got in the car, he wanted to go to Bia's. He was asleep in about 2 minutes, slept in the car at my mom's for about 10 minutes, didn't wake up when we got home and I went in and got the camera and took pictures of him. He can be so sweet.













Isabele covered in dirt and sand stuck on by snot and goo. Yuck! How can she still be so cute?

Mixing Things Up and Catching Up

So between the kids not sleeping well recently and doing some work on the house - I haven't been keeping up with the blog. Maybe I can catch things up here.

Titus has figured out personal pronouns and refers to himself more as I or me than "Titus". He has also figured out how to turn the key in the truck all the way to start the truck. Luckily he can't reach the brakes and therefore cannot put the truck in gear. He is becoming more competitive with Isabele as she is getting more and more mobile. He can draw circles - far from perfect, but they are more or less round and he finishes them at the same place he started them. When he goes to bed at night he has to have his flannel blanket folded up into a square, they way I fold them after they have been washed - then he sleeps on it like a pillow.

Isabele insists on standing as much as possible. She moves her feet when she's standing, but hasn't really started walking around objects while holding on yet. She is very talkative, though nothing means much. She drinks out of a cup quite well. She has an opinion about absolutely everything and gets very frustrated when those around her cannot figure out what she wants. After a week of waking me up and keeping me awake at night more than she did as a newborn, she gone to only waking up once a night to nurse!!

Brian and I have now been married 10 years, and true to us, we didn't do any of the traditional anniversary things - instead we decided to do a little revamping of our house (the pictures from the previous post). We now have a dining room!! and it is wonderful! We have a long way to go to get everything completely finished, but we have winter coming all too quickly and will need to have something to do when we can't spend all day outside.

That's the last month in a nutshell. Hopefully I'll do a little better with the upkeep of the blog since the major construction is complete inside - now it's just finish work.

House changes

View from living room through dining room to kitchen and "hallway" to the bedrooms and bathroom.

Play area and leather rocking chair at the back of the house off the kitchen.

Flowers Titus and I picked from the garden today - on the dining room table.

Another view of the dining room - I like the sunshine on the table.

Here's the dining room from the living room arch and then on into the kitchen.