2 Kids : Six Weeks In

Has it really been six weeks since Harrison was born?  Really doesn't seem possible and that's not the sleep deprivation talking!  I'll admit it...I was slightly terrified of having a newborn and a toddler thanks to some slightly ignorant comments from people regarding how hard it is to go from one to two kids, although I'm hoping it was well intentioned???  I even had someone tell me my life would be over once the baby arrived.  Gee, can't wait to pop the kid out and hate life.  Hate your life much?  So that didn't exactly set me up for feeling super confident when it came to raising 2 kids.  So how has it been? 

Sleep was a toughie and at the same time, not as awful as I was expecting.  When Selah was a newborn, the sleep deprivation hit me like truck.  A truck driven by an elderly person blasting into the front of a grocery store because they mistook the gas for the brake.  You know what I'm talking about.  There were days I definitely should not have been driving I was so tired but I considered it a success when I made it back home with Selah in one piece.  But with Harrison, I haven't dealt with the same mind numbing exhaustion nor the dread of what a setting sun meant for me.  Yes, I'm definitely tired and resemble a corpse (albeit a drooling corpse) if given the opportunity to nap but it's waaay more manageable this time around.   Thankfully Selah is still taking an afternoon nap and most of the time, I get Harrison to take one during the same time so I have a little time to myself to catch up on things around the house or if I'm really lucky, pass out face down on the bed for an hour or so.

Some of those 'well intentioned' comments were of their kids being insanely jealous of the new baby.  I have yet to see any of that happen with Selah.  I have seen nothing but overwhelming love for her little brother...it's awesome.   Well, maybe not so awesome when she's dragging him by the legs to 'put him in the Boppy because he wants to see', putting her toy stethoscope on his head to play doctor or putting her huge stuffed Winnie the Pooh over his face because 'Harrison wanted to see Pooh'.  She's very caring and sweet toward him and gets bummed when she hears he won't be going somewhere with her.  I can't wait to see what their relationship will be like when he gets a little older.  I read a comment online a few weeks ago that I found helps a lot with managing 2 kids at once: if both of the kids need something at once, tend to the older child first and then the baby.  If Selah wants a cup of juice and Harrison is starting to get fussy, I get the juice for her and then pick baby bro up and give him what he's looking for...usually food.  Always food.

I'll be honest, I was a little freaked to run errands by myself with the 2 of them.  Not sure exactly what I was scared of but you know...being outnumbered by little people can do that to you.  The first trip alone was the ever awesome Target and equally intimidating Costco.  I tried to minimize the chances of epic meltdowns (from both the kids and myself) by timing them between feedings for Harrison and lucky for me, all went well; not including the 2 bags of dark chocolate covered pretzel crisps I had to have from Costco.  I'm now pretty confident in taking the kids out by myself and even took them to the park today.  Harrison decided to pass on the monkey bars and nap while Selah was running around like a crazy person.

Will there be times when they're driving me nuts and I'm hiding in our closet with my foot keeping the door from opening?  That's probably a big fat yes but right now, I'm going to keep on floating on my happy mom-of-two cloud.

Big Girl Room Inspiration

To say that I'm kind of obsessive about planning for things loooong off into the future would be an understatement.  I started getting ideas together for Selah's 1st birthday party like 4 months before.  Dan thought I was crazy but hey, all my ideas came together and it looked great, if you'd like to know.  So for a few months now, I've been thinking of how I'd like to change Selah's room over to her big girl room.  We knew that any future kids would have the crib she's in and she would take the awesome 4-poster/canopy bed I had from about age 2 through high school.  That being said, we didn't want to move her into that gargantuan bed too early and decided that instead of transforming her bed into the toddler version and then again moving her into the big full size bed, we'd just go crib to big bed for less of a traumatizing experience.  I say 'less traumatizing' now because we have yet to actually move her into said big bed but that's a task for this weekend actually.  Wish us luck.  *Update: we moved Selah into her new bed Saturday night and that was a rough night to say the least.  She totally flipped out when we walked out of her room and after 3-4 episodes of her running out screaming and dad putting her back to bed, falling out of the bed in the middle of the night and waking up 2 hours earlier than normal, she had a successful and uneventful nap time and bed time last night so I'd say we're golden!

So my grand vision for Selah's room will be light pinks and gold; something she can have for awhile that doesn't scream 'teeny bopper' yet isn't so themed that it would turn away potential home buyers.  Don't worry...we're not moving anywhere right now but we also don't want to paint walls so wacko color that could in turn affect our house selling somewhere down the road.  Trust me...we walked away from potential houses due to the amount of money we'd spend on painting over bright oranges and greens all over the house.  Don't do it people!  But I digress.  Right now I'm deciding between 2 different Benjamin Moore paint colors: Orchid Pink and Touch of Pink.  We've gone down the rabbit hole that is Behr paint through Home Depot and it's always been nothing short of a letdown.  Never the right color, literally 5 different colors when we tried to get them to match a color swatch, etcetera etcetera.  We've never had one issue with our local Benjamin Moore store and the paint is within a $2 price difference and great quality and coverage.

 This Orchid Pink is showing up way darker on this post than the search engine but it's a super cute color.

As is the Touch of Pink.  I'm definitely getting swatches of these two to see which I like better but I'm leaning more toward Touch of Pink as of now.

A friend bought these suuuuper cute gold dot sheets for her infant months ago and that's kinda what kicked off my pink and gold idea.

However, my husband would probably straight up murder me if I spent $100+ on one sheet set for our 2 year old so unless someone sees fit to gift me these, we'll be going with some not-as-awesome-but-still-cute, and more affordable, light pink sheets instead.

So now that we've got the wall color picked up (sort of), what to put on them?!  I've got that all figured out.  The one wall behind where her bed is going to be will be covered in these super cute gold vinyl dots.

Um, yes please!  Now let's just keep our fingers cross that these won't be a total waste of time and money thanks to the lovely orange peel texture on the walls.  Seriously, builders...why?  The 80's have long passed...give up the texture that no one likes and make all sorts of painting tasks a complete nightmare.  No texture, no texture!

I saw one of these tissue tassel garlands on Pinterest months ago and knew Selah had to have one...and more than likely, kiddo #2 will have one too when I do its room in a few months.

I plan on making one of these bad boys myself as I'm pretty crafty (if I do say so myself).  And also this awesome little dot garland!

Why do I spend so much time (and money, let's be honest) decorating a toddler's room?  Probably because my husband does not want tissue tassels and gold sparkly dot garlands adorning the walls behind his pillow.  Just a thought.  They don't really scream 'manly'.

And now for the last bit of decor that I have planned.  Who knows if I'll add more at some point...maybe maybe not.  Who am I kidding...I can always find something to add to Selah's room!  I found a chandelier for sale in our neighborhood and while right now it is a cheap, black came-with-the-home ugly builder special, I can picture it with the potential that it has.  Not sure if I'll spray paint it a light pink or go with a gold.  Stay tuned!

2...really???

**I was planning on posting this yesterday but instead was dealing with the misery of pregnancy-induced lactose intolerance.  I can't say no to mac 'n cheese.

Two years ago today at 2:34pm (thank you for giving me a time I can easily remember), we were blessed with the arrival of one Miss Selah McGinn Brown.

Granted we weren't expecting her for another 5 weeks and certainly didn't entertain the idea of me delivering her in triage on a stretcher because someone was not waiting one more second to get here but I digress!  She has been such a delight to parent.  Well, we know that's not true all the time; rewind to this morning when she got into my MAC eyeshadow compact and decided to finger paint herself and our carpet in a lovely dark purple.  But 99% of the time, I'm loving being her mama.  Slowing myself down to see the world through her eyes and what gets her excited is humbling.  If you think work is too important, stop and watch to see what a 2 year old thinks is awesome and you might think twice about things.  I love my polite little lady, 'pease' and 'kank you Mom'.  I love how she comes up to me, arms stretched out asking, 'hold you?'  Um yes, of course I'll hold you because I know there's going to come a day when she's too cool for boring old Mom and won't want to be held.

I don't know why this birthday is making me a little sad more than her 1st birthday did.  Maybe it's because she's definitely not a baby anymore and she's speaking in sentences and very clear about what she does (and certainly doesn't) want.  This past week I've been watching (and rewatching) old videos I have of her on my phone that I still can't seem to delete to make room even though they're backed up on the computer and on 2 hard drives.

In the meantime, I hope that her little 2 year old self feels all the love we have for her on her special day!