Posted by miriam on Jun 21, 2008 in
General So I think a miracle has happened. Olivia has taken 2 naps a day for the past 4 days. It has been amazing. I never thought this day would happen. She naps better now at 16 months old then she did when she was a newborn. I had a to wait a long time, but it finally happened. 95% of the time she doesn’t even cry when she goes down for her naps. We have about 1 month to go before the second baby arrives so her timing is very good!
Posted by miriam on Jun 12, 2008 in
General So we have not ever taken Olivia to get her pictures taken and I finally decided it was time. Today however did not go so well so maybe there has been a good reason why I did not take her before. This week she has been struggling with her nap so I had been worried about how the session would go. Today however she slept like a baby:) When we arrived at Target she was in a good mood, but she just did not want to smile at the photographer and she really did not like the bright flash. She showed her frown face quite a bit. The one thing good is that I did not get sucked into buying all kinds of pictures since most of them were not good. I did find 1 good 1 and so I just purchased that pose in many pictures sizes. Only $8.50 can’t beat that! After we left Target we went to the grocery store. She was smiling away at just about everyone we saw. I think there should be a photography service that just follows you around throughout your day to find the best pictures of toddlers 
Posted by Andy on Jun 1, 2008 in
General 
It’s been a long time since I have written last. Before Miriam went to Iowa to visit her parents 3 weeks ago we noticed our tile below the window in our bathroom was separating from the wall; so we decided it was a great time to remodel the shower area of our bathroom. After much work we were able to find a neighbor who would tile the room for us and we were off to the races. Miriam left at 7:30 am on Wednesday morning and after much thinking, I decided I could actually do this and I began Thursday morning before work (Click here for the link to bathroom progress pics). I soon realized it was a good thing we were doing this. The outside wall tile came off with little problem (As a matter of fact, I barely had to touch the tiles and they fell off with ease) and there was a great deal of mold behind the wall. It was great fun ripping off the sheet rock and tile. It opened up an area of dead space to the right of the bathroom that I found to be uninsulated, letting huge amounts of hot or cold air into the house. This added to the work load as I now had to insulate this space, but it also allowed me to add a light over the shower and the stairs that lead down to the basement. Thursday and Friday nights I worked until 10 or so and was able to get quite a bit torn out. Saturday and Sunday were interesting days. I think home depot has a time warp around it, as I lost at least 2 to 3 hours both days procuring the tools and items I needed to finish the job. So Sunday was the longest day. I was under a time crunch as I had committed to my tiler that I would have the room ready Monday morning and as evening was approaching, it was apparent I was not working quickly enough. I don’t think I really cared at that point as I was tired and starting to work on my second wind. Well, 2 am rolls around and I am still not close enough to quit so I said the heck with it, I am not going to get that much sleep anyway so I might as well stay up all night and finish the job. Needless to say I finished at 8am Monday morning, but wait…..I couldn’t put in the new tub because it was too heavy and awkward to do by my self so I had to wait for the tiler to help me put in the tub. Well that didn’t go exactly as planned. We got the tub in place and it turns out that American Standard changed the tub since they wrote the directions. The stringer (the back support brace) had to be moved down from where they said it should be by about 3/4 of an inch. In process of leveling the tub, I forgot to remove the blanket, which I had placed on the floor to protect the tub, so as soon as I finished leveling, I removed the blanket and the tub was out of level. Well… I did this twice. Do you think I would have learned from my mistake the first time…..NO! Well, after sleeping 7 hrs on Monday I finished the bathroom around 11pm and the tilers could do their job. It was a lot of work but in the end I am very satisfied with the work I accomplished.
