Work in progress...

Here are a few photos of our work in progress.
They are painting the kitchen cabinets white and the walls gray.

Here is The Human laying the tile.

A fresh coat on paint in the kitchen

I got a ton of packing done today. My neighbor Linda loaned us some of her plastic totes and I filled a bunch of them up. They piled up in my kitchen, there are a bunch in Amelie's room too.

I've got the UHaul truck reserved and I'm labeling all the boxes to make this move as smooth as possible. We've got the Salvation Army coming to pick up a large donation and Tyler took Friday off of work to get it all over with. Hopefully this will be the last time I have to move for a long time.

How do babies get their feet in their own mouths? That's all Amelie does now besides roll over. She lays in her crib and keeps herself awake by chewing on her toes. She also rolls over and gets stuck on her tummy and fusses. It's becoming harder and harder to put her to sleep. Last night she woke up screaming. I mean, screaming. It freaked me out. I think she was still sleeping or having a dream because I went into her room and her eyes were still closed and she kept them closed the whole time she cried. We got her back to bad but she woke up again about an hour later crying, not screaming like before. We ended up putting her in the swing and then she slept for 6 hours. I don't want her sleeping in the swing every night but she sleeps way better in the swing than in her bed. Getting 6 hours of sleep in a row is a rare thing these days.

I went over to our house today while my mom babysat. It's coming along very nicely. Almost all the walls are painted. We chose green, brown and grey. I cleaned up the bathroom and wiped the tobacco stains out of the bathroom vanity. Who smokes so much that their bathroom vanity has a layer of yellow tobacco stain ? Grody. My dad primed the upstairs stairway. It was previously maroon, with a layer of smoke stain.

Andy layed Travertine in the entryway and put in a new threshold last week. Thas is the only photo that I have of our work in process.

He was tiling the kitchen when I was over there today. It looks cool, they are big 18 in tiles. The kitchen is primed and just needs to be painted. All the bedrooms, bathroom, dining room, hallway and bathroom have all been painted. Woodwork needs to be scrubbed, kitchen finished and floors cleaned, then we are ready to move in on Friday.

I found us a stove on craigslist this afternoon and Tyler went over to pick it up tonight. Only $50 and the guy threw in one of those old fashioned push mowers with just the blades. We were looking for one of those. Plus he sold Tyler a sweet bike for $25. Not that we need another bike...

Yesterday was Tyler's birthday. I brought him and his parents a late lunch yesterday while they were all working on the house. He got fried chicken, cupcakes, and some high top Chucks for his bday. Red ones. Low key birthday this year. A little different than his 25th birthday
We took a bus to the Cannon River and went tubing. It was a lot of fun. That was a sharp mohawk he had then.

I'm going to eat a leftover birthday cupcake and go to bed.

Look at my cute baby.

I've been in a cranky mood the last few days. To combat that, I'm going to share the cuteness that is my daughter.


My darling little baby is so happy. She has really started letting her personality shine. All day long she smiles, laughs and giggles. She's rolling over all over the place and grabbing for toys. It's amazing.

I love giving her kisses because she laughs so hard.






She is wearing the cutest outfit from her auntie Beth. It is made out of the BEST material and has the cutest little ruffle butt. See below!

Today, Amelie wore jeans for the first time.
She looks content, whereas I strongly dislike wearing jeans. I prefer sweats.
And...here she is with Sam, I like to let her bottom dry after changing her diaper so she doesn't get a diaper rash. Aren't their little butts cute. We went on a very successful walk with them this day. It was HOT out. Check out Long John Silver, aka Sammy Long Legs.
He looks like a toddler already, he's not even 5 months old yet!

My dad, brother in law, Tyler's family, Tyler and Andy have been working away on our new house. So far they have the walls cleaned, primed, painted, sub-floor partially laid, travertine laid in the entry way, wainscoting and wallpaper removed and probably some other stuff I'm not aware of done. I haven't had to lift a finger. It's nice and not nice at the same time. I really want to get in there and get my hands dirty, but I've had to be home with Amelie (which I would prefer anyhow.) We are moving on Friday the 31st so hopefully it will be ready by then. If not, we'll be staying with Jeff and Tracy for a while. No offense to my parents, but I really hope the house is move in ready in time.

Homebody

Tyler's transmission went out, so we are officially a 1 car family again. The Bonnie is just chilling in the street in front of the house. What that means:

1. I stay home all day
2. I get up before 7am to drive Tyler to work and pick him up

I prefer option number 1, but staying at home all day gets boring. It is better than waking Amelie up, feeding and changing her, driving to Eagan, then hopefully getting her back to bed when we get home. Then waking her from her afternoon nap to go pick him up. Dreadful timing for something like this to happen though.

Yesterday, Abby and Sam came over and kept us company. We walked up to CoraZon, a little store near my house, and browsed around. They both fell asleep on the walk home.

They played on the floor together, Sammy kept trying to steamroll Ami. She took it in stride and just sucked on his fingers. This happened several times.

She learned to roll over from her back to her tummy yesterday. Her arm got stuck under her and she would roll back over after a few seconds, but today she figured out how to roll all the way over and get that arm out of the way. She did it twice. It was awesome. I called Tyler and he pointed out to me that she is now officially a danger to herself. Now she can steamroll Sam.


She fell asleep today while eating and I tried to move her to the floor for a mini-nap. Didn't work. I did, however, snap this photo of her stretching out after a good meal. She's so funny, always stiff as a board. I can hold her parallel to the ground, she just stiffens up her body. She's so strong. She has an incredible grip too. It's actually quite painful. She grabs onto my face, neck, hair and anything else she can get a hold of. She will probably be able to bend steel bars pretty soon. Supergirl.

Our garage sale was a success. Lots of work but worth it. We made just over $1100, same as last year. West River Parkway is the best location for a garage sale ever.

Snowsuits in July.

I woke up this morning at 6am. That is so hard for me to do. Amelie slept while Tyler, Dorothy, Torey, Beth and I set up the garage sale. I wonder how we were able to collect so much stuff, especially since we had a rather large garage sale last summer too.

It was unseasonably cold out today. I had to keep dressing Amelie warmer and warmer because it was pretty windy out too.

In fleece jammies with a hat from Grandma Ane

In her snowsuit.
I'm really super tired. Amelie keeps waking up every hour. She went to bed at 8:30, woke up and 9:30 and 10:30. I need to get some sleep now when I can.

Today, we bought our first home!

I didn't jinx us, everything worked out with our home purchase and we closed today at 3pm. It only took about 40 minutes. Grandpa Stan came down to watch Amelie while we signed our lives away (at an excellent interest rate). Here is our house. Tyler and my dad must be having a really important conversation.

It is a 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom 1.5 story home in a PHENOMENAL neighborhood. There is a fireplace, dining room, and a partially finished basement...plus, I finally get to have an alley. We live about 3 blocks of Minnehaha Parkway, 2 blocks from Lake Hiawatha (where there is a kiddie pool, beach, tennis courts, multiple playsets and a park building), 2 blocks from Minnehaha Creek, and we are within walking distance to Lake Nokomis and Hiawatha Golf Course. It is exactly what we were looking for.

Ty and Stan went to pick up some supplies to start cleaning up the place. We will start that task tomorrow. Well, I won't be there, but Tyler and my dad will. It's a fixer upper, mostly cosmetic. We'll clean up the outside a bit, power wash the exterior and do some landscaping. The previous owners of the home were big time smokers, so the walls are yellowed and stained pretty bad. We are going to clean clean clean those walls then paint. We will update the kitchen and appliances and the bathroom as well.

Andy the Human is going to help us with the tile and Ben will be over helping us with a variety of other things. We've got 2 weeks, we may have to stay at my parent's house for a little bit, but I'm hoping my dad uses that as some motivation to work really hard to help us get all this stuff done.

I love our big backyard, which is pretty much a blank slate at the moment. There are no trees, no gardens, no patio...just a really skinny walkway to the garage at the side of the yard. Oh, and a birdbath and built in gas grill. I can see a playhouse, a sandbox, a glorious garden and a tree or 2 back there in the near future.
When we get started on the work I think I will do some before, during and after photos.

In baby news, I swear Amelie is going to start crawling any second. When she's on her belly she brings her legs up into the crawling position and is able to turn herself around in circles. All she needs to do is coordinate that leg movement with the arms and she'll be crawling like crazy. Not for a while though I hope. We have some baby-proofing to do.

She is crazy strong. She was practically standing by herself today. I was holding her because she doesn't have the balance to stand on her own, but she sure has the strength. That girl can make herself stiff as a board.

Grandma Mike came for a visit yesterday, brought me Chipotle. It was the first thing I was able to eat and I almost chewed through the container to get at it.

Now we just have to finish packing a million boxes and sorting through our things for our garage sale on Saturday and Sunday. Luckily, Grandma D is coming down to help us Friday and Saturday.


Amelie's new favorite things are:

Supergirl

and

her bouncer.

She giggles and laughs like crazy when we do Supergirl and hold her over our heads. It's so cute. She drools all over my face, chest and shoulders, but it's worth it. Also, she is slowly figuring out all the entertainment possibilities her bouncer (not hers actually, loaned to us by a friend) has to offer.

Andy, Tova, and Tyler just went over to our house so they could check it out and talk tile I guess. I'm just waiting for him to get home so we can have a celebratory glass of "we just bought a new house" champagne.

Photos!

Last week I watched an episode of Oprah that made me really sad. It was a mom of 2 who accidentally left her baby in the car while she went to work for 8 hours in 100 degree weather and her daughter died in the car. The message this mom was trying to send to all other moms, was to forget about being perfect, keeping the house clean, looking pretty all the time, and just make time to play and have fun. Don't get all wrapped up in your life.

Needless to say my house is a mess, the laundry is piled halfway up the wall, but Amelie and I sure had fun today. She was laughing, smiling and rolling over all day long. I planned to go for a walk but it never worked out. She fell asleep both times I tried to do it.

She has been eating like crazy lately. She must be hitting a growth spurt. During one of the many times I nursed her today I had to snap a few cute photos of her chubby legs, her passed out grabbing onto my shirt, and her cute little milk mustache. The stash is a little hard to see, but it's there.





So a while back I said I wanted to scan all of my photo booth photos that I had taken with Tyler. I dragged our printer upstairs into the living room (where we keep the laptop) and got busy scanning. Here are the photos I was referring to. Some are at the Como Zoo, some are from the State Fair and one is from my sister Abby's wedding last April.

This is the best one, where he is clearly proposing to me. He did it on Christmas Eve Day, that explains the hat... I'd also like to give a shout out to my very good friend Cassie, who got engaged today and is out celebrating her engagement tonight! Whoot whoot!

I'm glad I got those photos uploaded. I have soooooo many things to do in the next 2 weeks! Yesterday I organized and priced a bunch of stuff for our upcoming garage sale this weekend. Tyler's mom (Grandma D) stopped by for a while too. Cooked us up a delicious dinner which was much appreciated.

It also looks like we are going to be going to closing on our new home next Wed. The second we officially own that home, I will post some "before photos". I spent a good part of my evening putting together an idea notebook with paint ideas, organization ideas, and decorating ideas. I'm so excited!

I'm going to have to start packing up our house ASAP to sort through all the junk we can sell next weekend so we don't end up dragging a bunch of crap we don't need around with us when we move. It's going to be a big job. Might have to strap Amelie into the Baby Bjorn to complete some of those tasks. It worked out for me today when I had to run to my neighbors to pick up our eggs, cheese and milk (we belong to an organic co-op). I also hard boiled some eggs while she was enjoying the view.

She has really been happy lately. She smiles and laughs all the time. We play "super girl" and hold up in the air and she just giggles and smiles like crazy. My mom got some good pictures of that happening at the cabin. Will post when she gets home. She's really gripping her toys and shoving everything into her mouth right now, especially her feet. She's "talking" alot too. I'm so excited for when she can actually talk, I can't even imagine what she will say...but I bet it will be awesome.

4th of July Weekend.

It was a super gorgeous weekend. It was warm in the shade, and hot in the sun for all 6 days that Amelie and I were at the cabin. Tyler and the rest of the guys were all there from Friday until Monday, then just the girls and Sam stayed. Tova and I left this morning and Abby, Sam and my mom are still there.

Every evening Tyler and I (then just me on Mon and Tues night), went down to the beach to enjoy the cabin sunset after we put Amelie to bed at 8:30 pm.
I have to credit The Baby Whisperer with that. That book definitely taught us how to put her to bed the right way.
The photo does not do the sunset justice. This particular evening, Tyler picked out a radio station to listen to on the pontoon and when we started paying attention to what we were listening to, we realized it was a "Big Band" station and had a real good laugh. That's why I am usually in charge of the radio.

Amelie and Sam got to play alot together and discovered some new toys. She is really starting to reach and grab for things and she is putting everything in her mouth, including her feet. Here, the two little baby nuggets are each discovering something new. Sam is loving his foot and Amelie's ring toy, while she is just trying to get her foot to her mouth. They remind me of those little black bugs that curl up into a round ball when there is pending danger.

Here is my little cutie playing with her rings. Those big blue eyes just make me melt. The outfit she is wearing in this picture actually lasted several hours before we had to change it. And she wasn't even wearing a bib!

My lovely doula friend Nicole got Amelie the CUTEST bib and shoes as a gift. I took a bunch of photos of Ami wearing them in her pink long johns, what an outfit!
Later, after she spit up all over most of her outfit, she was still able to sport the cute shoes. This is one of the outfits my mom got her at a garage sale. Thrifty baby! And this one, I can almost imagine her saying,"Mom, put the camera away!"


She loved riding on the pontoon, I think she likes the wind in her face. She was pretty happy when we were going for our lake cruises and the 4th of July parade. She cried for a while, but only because she was tired...then she fell asleep. Grandpa Jeff was teaching her and Sam how to drive the boat, she did pretty well.


All in all it was a pretty good weekend. We were sad that Tyler, Ben , and Andy couldn't stay for longer, but someone has got to bring home the bacon. I managed to read 2 books, relax, eat a whole row of Oreo Cookies, pack the perfect amount of clothing for Amelie and I, and get some great photos. She did make me work pretty hard on the ride home. Tova and I left early and stopped in Motley, Clearwater, Montecello, and one other random exit to calm the pretty little baby down/feed her/change her ect... She always stops crying a few blocks away from our house though. Like she knows we are about to get home. It's weird.

I unpacked, did laundry, showered, and signed another document for the house before I went to work tonight. I was beat when I got there, but usually around 10pm I get my 2nd wind and then it gets busy and all the sudden it's 2am. I love working Wednesdays. Good music, good money, and good people.

Tomorrow I am thinking of trying out jogging with Amelie for real. Maybe we will go visit my old job (within jogging distance). I gotta call Krista back so she doesn't think I am avoiding her (I'm not), and I need to start packing my house and getting ready to move as well has have a garage sale. Plus I need to bring some $$$ to the bank. I wonder how much of that I will actually get done...

It's gonna be a looong weekend!

I found out today that my work will not be open for the 4th of July so my weekend plans changed in a HURRY! I started packing right away and trying to coordinate rides to and from the cabin with my sisters and the guys.

I worked tonight but before that I managed to get gas, put oil in the car, do dishes and laundry, pick up a few things up at Target, and pack a bunch of stuff. We'll try to get outta town by 10am and we won't be back until Wednesday. Well, Tyler is coming home Monday night, but Ami and I get to stay later.

Look at my goofball. She was so happy today. She laughed and smiled at me the whole time we were at Target. A nice change of pace from our past trips where she screamed and cried and I just had to leave. She loves the new travel swing I got for her today. We tested it out this afternoon. It's super cute too.

I told my cousin Kai last week, that if I would have taken Amelie to PRIDE last weekend, this is what I would have dressed her in. I totally heart this I love MPLS onsie and I certainly cannot get enough of those legwarmers.


Since I will be gone for 6 days there won't be very much blogging going on. I will collect many photos and surely share them when we get home. I bet it will be the longest blog posting in the history of blog posts.

Just another Wednesday.

Amelie and I stayed home today. We played, I tried to get her to laugh like she did the other day but it didn't work. She did laugh a little though. I got some household tasks done, swept/laundry/straightened up/etc... I like to stay home with her sometimes to keep her happy and in her routine. Here is the reason this blog is called Pumpkin Butt...

I was able to go through our glasses and dishes and pack some stuff for our upcoming move as well as separate out some crap for the garage sale. Tyler and I decided that we will have our sale on Sat the 18th and Sun the 19th. It looks like this is going to be a pretty big sale. Good thing we live on the PERFECT street for garage sales! Last year we made over $1000 at our sale.

Today I also got to talk to 2 of my besties (Cassie and Beth) and found out some great news in the lives of both of them. I am so happy for both of them and miss them dearly. Being a mom really takes up a lot of your time, but I hope I get to spend some QT with both of them soon.

I worked for a stint tonight. I always love when it is busy at work. Keeps me running around, so not only am I making money, I'm also getting a tiny little workout. I got cut and hung around for a few drinks. That time I get to hang out and enjoy myself really helps me relax and get ready to enjoy the next day.

Tomorrow I will try to sleep in for a bit, go to Abby's and help her organize a little bit more, then I will head off to work for the night.

My goal for the near future, is to upload all of my photo booth pictures. Tyler and I always take advantage of photo booths whenever we see them. We have taken a few at the MN State Fair, Malls, The Como Zoo as well as many other places. The set on the right were taken at the Como Zoo 2 years ago. The set on the left are of my sister Tova and I at our sister Abby's wedding. When I do get around to uploading all those photos, I will be sure to post the one of Tyler asking me to marry him. They are super cute and it was a perfect way to ask such a perfect question. The best part is that we were both still wearing our PJ's and it was totally casual, yet spontaneous. Just our style. I obviously said yes.

Another recent development: Amelie has learned to turn herself around while laying down. For example , if I lay her on the floor on some blankets in the living room, she will turn herself so she can see the TV. Another example, when she is laying in bed, she will turn herself sideways in her crib so when she kicks her legs around, she manages to turn on, then turn off her rainforest soundmaker. I fear she may be getting too smart for her own good. My baby is a genius.