Disclaimer: their rooms were clean just days ago!
I have been neglecting my blog too much and want to make sure that some of our favorite everyday memories are being documented, so I decided to do a little expose, if you will, on some of the kids' nighttime idiosyncrosies.
I have been neglecting my blog too much and want to make sure that some of our favorite everyday memories are being documented, so I decided to do a little expose, if you will, on some of the kids' nighttime idiosyncrosies.
First off, the picture of the 2 doors in the hallway. We do
not have a very solid bedtime routine, but it seems like the kids have their own
little habits they get into. The three older ones all stay up reading at night
after we leave. They usually fall asleep in order of age, youngest to oldest.
Claire needs the light on and the door open to fall asleep, and if she wakes up
in the middle of the night and there isn't at least a closet or hall light on,
she'll scream bloody murder until the situation is rectified. James, on the
other hand, reads until late and then gets up, turns off his light, and loudly
shuts the door. We always know when he's going to sleep! Every once in awhile
he just pulls the blanket over his head and goes to sleep, if he's too tired to
get up. (I do that too!)
The girls' room. This is the only room upstairs that has
been painted or decorated, but we're almost done downstairs, so it'll start
happening soon. Ruthie sleeps on the top bunk and Claire sleeps on the bottom.
Ruthie. I had that big candy cane shaped body pillow for
when I was pregnant. The kids all love it, but we made a deal that when we got
the new bed for me and Dan, James would get the queen sized bed and Ruthie
would get the body pillow. We worked together on making a new cover for it. It
was not covered with fuzzy pink Hello Kitty fabric when it was in my room! I'm
not sure why she's sleeping with it, but she got a $10 bill in a Valentine's Day card from
Grampy and Oumi and there it is in bed with her! She's sleeping in her Turkey
Trot shirt and the Christmas jammie pants I made her. The quilt is something I
made for her when she was probably 3. She says she still remembers how it
looked on her bed in Whipple Park. A
theme throughout these pictures will be BOOKS. They all love to read and hate
to put books away. Ruthie even has books stacked under her pillow. This becomes
a problem anytime someone wets the bed or throws up. At the end of Ruthie's bed
is a pink armchair pillow thing that she fell in love with and bought with her
own money, more books, Frozen wall decals that she fell in love with and bought
with her own money, a painting of Jesus with a little child that used to be
Grammy's, and a shelf for her notebooks and pens but they are never put away.
The Room. The mirror is part of the dresser that I painted
for them with a bow hanger I made before Ruthie was born. Believe it or not,
their room was perfectly clean just a few days ago at the start of the school
break! The art wall we made for them when we redid the room now has favorite
posters and art. I didn't take a picture of the inside of their closets which
also has posters and art in it as well as other stuffed animals and blankets
since they use it as a fort. The white patch behind the door is where Ruthie
kicked the door so hard during a tantrum that the knob went through the wall.
Dan patched the drywall, but we still need to paint it. The butterflies are
stenciled on. The You Are My Sunshine sign is something Ruthie fell in love
with and that we basically designed her room's color palette around--we sing
that song to them at bedtime as babies. They have one laundry basket of clean clothes
not yet put away and one of dirty clothes that will be likely be full by the
time the other is empty. In the far corner is the ultra expensive Build a Bear
and American Girl toys.
Claire. Claire is the worst offender at taking tons of books
off the shelf and into bed every night. Almost without fail, we will at some
point between 8 and 10 hear some loud thuds as her collection slides off onto
the floor. There are blankets on the ground too because last night they were
hanging blankets from the top bunk to make the bottom bunk a fort. The Hello
Kitty blanket and the pink animal blanket on the ground were gifts to the girls
from my Grammy (my mom's mom). Books,
books, and more books everywhere. Again, as of Friday they were all put away.
Claire also loves to sleep with stuffed animal. This little puppy came from the
American Girl catalog which means it is the most expensive tiny dog ever. All
the girls' matching sheet sets came from a friend whose daughter had outgrown
them. Before she gave us those, we'd never used top sheets on the kids' beds
let alone ones that matched the fitted sheet!
This bookshelf is a Craigslist gem and it' is always heaped and overflowing no matter how often I organize it! Above the bookshelf are the girls' birth cross stitches. Ruthie's was made by Grammy and Claire's by me. I still need to finish Rosemary's!!
James. James' room cracks me up. We have a bedskirt for his
bed, but haven't put it on because it needs ironing. I keep suggesting ideas
for bedding for him, but he likes the t-shirt quilt I made for Dan or the fleece
hockey blanket my Grammy made for him. I think he says, if anything, he wants
me to make him a quilt. I've also suggested we paint his room, but he doesn't
care. He says I can if I want, but he's not particularly interested in being
involved. He used to have curtains on his windows, but he fiddled with them so
much while reading at night that he pulled the brackets right out of the wall.
His windows are hands down the draftiest in the house so I made sure to plastic
wrap them this Winter. The higher of the 2 windows is really drafty. The
plastic inflates and deflates as the wind blows! His room was also clean as of
Friday. The Lego table is our old kitchen island countertop on some ikea
storage drawers. The desk was Dan's and before that it was Dan's dad's. The
matching dresser is in James' closet. I love that James likes to pull posters
out of his Sports Illustrated for Kids magazines and hang them on his wall. He
also has some Amerks stuff and a moonphase poster, which is a tradition from
Dan's room growing up. James organized his own desk and I love seeing the
things that are on/around it. Going from left to right: his International Days
canvas bag (3rd grade), the poster from the Magic Attic musical he was in at
school, a picture of him with me and Dan at his baptism, a catalog of books in
his personal library that he made so the girls can check books out from him, a
picture of Christ from Andrea with an Eastman House admission tag on it (that's
a reminder about honesty--a story for another time), his Olympic Gold Heart
Award given to him by his 3rd grade teacher, a picture of me and him going down
a slide at Great Wolf Lodge pretending to sleep (it's a terrible picture of
me!), the lamp we bought for his room when he was 1 or 2, his book box from 2nd
grade on top of a globe puzzle box that has some of the puzzle pieces still in
it!
Rosemary. Rosemary sleeps in my photo studio, which is still
set up from a cake smash session I did on Monday. I should really clean that
up! At this point in my picture taking, I had some technical difficulties and
Rosemary started waking up, so I don't have much to show you, but I've taken
lots of pictures of her in bed before anyway. She goes to bed really easily and
usually stays in bed long after she wakes up, just enjoying her pacifier. I can
tell when she wakes up because she'll start pulling furntiure around if I've
left it near her crib or throwing toys out. She likes to sleep with at least 2
binkies and lots of blankets. We usually find her asleep on a pile of blankets
and stuffed animals or in the "stink bug" position like she is here.
I had just put clean sheets on her bed, so she hasn't started accruing as many
blankets and animals as usual. Between her and her siblings, she gets more and
more each day. Turtle is her favorite animal.
