Cheeeeeeeese!

Now that the teething meltdowns are beginning to decrease (and I REALLY hope I'm not jumping the gun by declaring that publicly-- but they seem to be), it's a bit easier to get some smiley shots of Miss Josephine. In fact, I'm suspicious she has figured out to smile for the camera, even though I'm not sure why she would make that connection, since obviously she gets smiled at and talked to whether or not a camera is involved. But she's really started working the charm a whole lot more when the camera is involved than if I were to do all the same stuff without the camera. For instance, yesterday she was just being normal, then she saw the camera pointed at her, and she instantly broke out into the picture below. Talk about turning on the cheese!
In between poses:

(Again, sorry for the pixelizing. I've just recently figured out how to adjust the html to allow pictures to open in a new window, full size. But I still have no idea why some images are fine on my computer, but then after uploading, look pixelized-- it's not the camera-- it's something about blogger.)

CHOMPERS.

Bottom left front is the winner! Officially cut through today!

(Maybe these pics will let you enlarge them??? Although, it's not much to look at still. But it feels impressive!)

Bottom right front is a close second. You can sort of see it, and can feel a bump and one sharp point poking through, but not the whole thing. Based on where left front was a couple days ago, it is POSSIBLE that the right front will pop in before our vacation to California-- which hopefully increases the chances that the vacation will actually be relaxing! (Supposedly some babies tough it out well, but teething has been ROUGH on Josephine... and by extension, us. I'm hoping that today's breakthrough means peace is in our near future!!)

This is her "I don't know what you mean; I'm innocent of any grief you might experience" face.


As the teething has escalated to near unbearable over the last week, one victim of her misery was her dear little friend Zanna, who invited us over for a Labor Day BBQ. They played sweetly (or Zanna did, anyway) for an hour maybe... but then the aches and pains became a little too overwhelming for SOMEBODY, and our clan had to bail early. Here's a shot from the first hour. I wish the footage had come out better because they're so funny to listen to!

little dino in the morning

-Via the camera of her Grandma (my mom), this morning.

We can't thank her enough for how much she watched our teething child while Sean and I ran free! What a wonderful anniversary weekend!

latest project

We need more storage.
More accurately, we shouldn't need more storage, but we have a ridiculous amount of junk that exceeds our current storage capacity.

Without going into details of how Storage Plan A was thwarted and abandoned, here's the progression of Storage Plan B.

PLAN B:

This wooden cabinet was the garage storage that came with our house. This is sort of a "before" picture, except it's already cleaned up, moved into Josephine's room, and I'd already started panelling the right wall with remnant slats from our 2" blinds, (that's the white corner/edge on the right hand side of the cabinet).

A little closer up:

Here is an "after" shot, trimmed out and painted white (we're fans of Mythic no-VOC paint-- it's worked really well for us and saves the concerns about little lungs being exposed to paint fumes since it's non-toxic.)

I probably could have spent less energy and simply reduced our junk by an equal amount, BUT we needed to move the books downstairs because they were causing Sean's office door to not shut. There was too much magazine/book weight in his office closet, so the floor beam (and door jamb) were sagging slightly. In order to relocate these stacks downstairs, we needed a bookcase. Hence, Plan B. (Still a little disappointed we didn't get to do Plan A, but I'm not going there). In the end, it seems to have helped the door jamb situation about 90%, but there's still some rearranging to do.

This pretty well epitomizes my attempts to get things done around here. ONE need (to fix the door jamb to Sean's office) required moving the books, which required a bookcase, which, in order to make use of materials I already had around here rather than buying MORE stuff, led to repurposing the garage storage cabinets, which led to building new garage shelves with scavenged lumber (since the stuff I took out had to go somewhere). But before I could put the repurposed bookcase in Josephine's room, I had to relocate the hope chest which sat in the needed space, and that had to go in our room where our shoes were temporarily located while I worked on the closet floor. So to move the shoes back into the closet, I had to finish the closet floor (lay carpet, a threshold, baseboards). ALL of that just to fix the sagging door jamb 90%. This partially explains why the living area is STILL painted its original, highly-distressing color of dusky salmon, 17 months after we "prioritized" repainting the main living area. But I digress.

Since the cabinets are in Josephine's room (even though it's holding our stuff), we thought we'd spruce it up a bit with some blik. Sean had a gift certificate to Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas which is where we found the fancy stickers. They are repositionable and don't leave residue, so it's just a temporary, baby's-room accent. Anyway, I might be well into my third decade, but it turns out you're never too old to have a really fun time with stickers.
Put some on the cabinet and others on the adjoining surfaces. The baskets on top now have ivy in them. We read somewhere that having several small plants in your house can purify the air of lots of strange weird toxins off-gassed from other objects in your house. I like this form of cancer-prevention much more than becoming vegetarian or something, so I bought planter baskets at the thrift store the day after I read that. Here's an overview that shows some more of the stickers:
Some closer-ups follow, since I have no way of predicting whether blogger will allow you to click on a photo and open it larger. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. In the photo with the cow, hopefully you can see the window-blind panelling on the side of the cabinet. This was a handy solution to the problem of the cabinet sides having tons of holes and garage-induced imperfections which would have been hard to camouflage with putty and paint. Far easier to just cover them up (and simultaneously reduce the junk I've been storing)!
On the backside of her bedroom door:

On the wall by the cow:
The rubber bouncy cow is also from the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas. It's rated 3+ years, so she has a while before she really grows into it, but under the wise tutelage of talented aunts, she just might get the hang of it early.
(We might need to clarify with her later that cowpokes don't actually ride cows...)

Fifth Anniversary

On September 4, 2004, a couple of mere children walked down the aisle... can't hardly believe our parents let us! (Well, I guess they got married even younger -- and it's hard to stop 23 year olds legally -- but for the record, Josephine's not allowed to get married until she's at least 25. And then only to the most perfect man ever. Maybe.)

Anyway, my point is to let the whole world know that we've been married five years-- pretty much to the minute!!!

Hooray for us!!

(For the record, this is no minor achievement considering ONE of us took his vows while smirking, rolling his eyes, and leaving a hand casually stuffed in his pocket...)