Day Three

Today is marked by mediocrity.  I was supposed to organize the linen closet, dust Lila's crib, clean the oven, and make a teething cover for the crib.  I was able to do the first two, but spent the majority of my day making Johnny a robe for an anniversary present.  It took much longer than planned, so the last two tasks are getting pushed to another day.

The linen closet wasn't super horrible to start with.



Lila helped me organize everything, and I realized that I have two sets of queen sheets with no fitted sheets and one fitted twin sheet.  I also have six extra pillow cases.  Anyone want to come stay at our house?

It didn't take too long to get everything folded, organized, and stacked.  Notice some of my gleanings from yesterday's Costco trip.

Tomorrow, Johnny and I are having an overnight at the Hotel Philips sans Lila.  We're making a small weekend of it, so I'll only be around for a little bit tomorrow.  My one task for tomorrow is to get started on Lila's teething cover for her crib.  I originally thought that I just needed to cover the front, but I realized today that she has chewed all the way around the crib.  Fabulous.

Ding Dong The Bells Are Gonna Chime

I can't believe I'm saying it, but today is Johnny and my fourth wedding anniversary.

It doesn't feel like yesterday, but it certainly doesn't feel like four years ago.

Johnny was such a good groom that he even took dancing lessons with me for our first dance.

The weather was absolutely perfect.  The day started at about 70 and then dropped down to the 20s that night.

When I was a freshman at Wheaton, one of my professors told our class to be sure that the person you marry makes you want to be a better person.  Johnny absolutely does that for me.

Here's to another year, husband.

Day Two

The first task for today was to baby proof the fireplace.  Instead of buying a fireplace guard for $24.99, we decided to go to Home Depot and get some pipe insulation for $0.97 a piece and some duct tape.  Lila liked playing with her giant noodles.


Now that the fireplace is baby proofed, Lila can't stay away from it.  She is either chewing on it, trying to pull off the guard, or crawling on top of it.

 

The second task was to clear out any clothes that we weren't wearing anymore.  Since I was already in our closets, I decided to organize them as well...except for my own because that was too daunting.

Our hallway closet didn't have much extras, but I was able to get all of Johnny's army gear into one location.

Johnny's closet had a few outdated ties.  I left the Hawaiian shirt...you never know when you're going to be invited to a luau. 

 

 

I didn't get rid of anything in Lila's closet... 

...but I was able to get all of her too small clothes organized into bins along with all of my maternity clothes.



All in all, we have a nice little bag of clothes to donate.



My third task was to get recent pictures developed.  I spent $6 developing photos at Costco and $150 on toilet paper and paper towels.

For tomorrow: organize the linen closet, clean the oven, wipe down Lila's crib, and make a teething cover for Lila's crib 

31 Days

Since Lila was born, our house has gotten a lot less organized than I want it to be.  Now that we hopefully have another baby coming at the end of the month, I decided that we need to hunker down and get our act together.  I have put together a 31 Days of Organizing for the month of January that includes things like getting rid of old clothes, organizing photos on the computer, and meal planning.  My hope is to put up what I'm doing each day to hold me a little bit accountable...but let's be real, we all remember the diet.

Day One: Buy shelves for the basement, organize craft area, declutter back of the basement, and organize Johnny's tools and paint.

Whew!  We had a lot to do today, but Johnny was home and willing to work, so we got our little rears in gear and cleaned the basement.  Here's what the basement looked like this morning.

 

 

And here's what it looked like after a few hours of cleaning and decluttering.

 

 

Notice that there is no smiling Lila in the last pictures because she wasn't smiling after hours of being ferried between two parents covered in dust and grime.

For tomorrow: Baby proof the fireplace, print out photos, get rid of clothes that we don't wear

Good-bye 2012 and Baby Food

A little while ago, I wrote about making Lila baby food.  I mentioned that it is difficult to find very many baby food recipes because it is so simple to make.  I have realized that it's also difficult to find recipes because babies don't eat it for very long. Lila has decided that her New Year's resolution is to no longer eat baby food, even though her mom just made a whole new batch of mangoes and peaches.  Sacrifices must be made.

So we have said good-bye to baby food and are starting to try some new foods.  Her all time favorite as of yesterday was peas.  I could take them to the store and feed them to her like candy when she got fussy.  But as of dinner tonight, Lila's new favorite is goat cheese.  That girl was grabbing it out of my hand before I could even get it on the tray.

She is also a fan of clementines, noodles, cheddar cheese, pears, carrots, and hard boiled eggs.  I think we'll try foie gras tomorrow.

I Dreamed A Show In Time Gone By

I wouldn't call myself one of those "extreme" fans of the musical Les Miserables.  I might be sitting here in my Les Miserables sweatshirt, and I may have thrown a going away party in high school when Les Mis went off Broadway.  I may own three different soundtracks, have seen the performance done professionally over ten times, and performed in it as Young Eponine at my high school when I was a sophomore.  I may already be grooming Lila to play Young Cosette...but extreme?  I don't think so.

Ok, so I like it a little bit.  I was super psyched when I heard that they were finally doing a movie, and Johnny and I traced the movie's progress over the last year.  I wasn't really planning to write up a review of it, but after a lengthy email chain back and forth between two of my good high school friends, I decided that the internet world could use a good one sided discussion of the movie, sorted by character.  So here we go!

Jean Valjean: I was very pleased when I heard that Hugh Jackman was going to play Jean Valjean.  Though my brother thought this was an odd prequel to X-Men, I have heard recordings of Hugh's performances in various Broadway shows, so I was excited to see what he would do with the role.  I loved everything that he did.  I cried crocodile tears throughout "Valjean's Soliloquoy," and even though "Bring Him Home" was a bit too high, he acted his little Australian heart out.  Great work, Hugh.

Javert: I always like a villain, but Russell Crowe just didn't do it for me.  I don't know if it was the tightrope walking across buildings and bridges or the lack of vocal chops (ok it was the lack of vocal chops), but he was way down on my list of favorite Javerts.  Johnny, on the other hand, thought he did great.  He liked his rustic-y-ness.

Fantine: Hands down, the best Fantine ever.  She was the perfect age, had the perfect look, and played the part with such feeling and truth.  Interesting fact: I went to high school with her cousin, Mike Hathaway, and we all thought he was going to be Jean Valjean in our performance of Les Mis, but then he didn't try out for some reason that I can't remember, and John Kultgen got the part and was spectacular.  Small world.

Young Cosette: So sweet, so precious, and no fake accent...or if it was, it sounded real.  

Monsieur and Madame Thenardier: These were the ones I was most worried about going into the movie.  Lately, I have felt that Helena Bonham Carter has just been crazy over the top (seen HP lately? yeah...crazy), and Sacha Baron Cohen doesn't really have a Les Mis-y background besides Sweeney Todd.  But I thought they were fabulous!  They were anything but over the top, and they were able to bring humor to the roles without doing the way overdone jokes that the stage Thenardiers resort to. (Ah I stole something and dropped it on the floor, so I'll look at the ceiling and make it look like it fell out of the sky. So funny...ehhh.)

Regular Cosette: No one cares about you, Old Cosette.

Marius: Sigh...he's so dreamy.  I usually am not a huge Marius fan, but Eddie Redmayne played the part so honestly and sincerely, AND he didn't wear eyeliner.  I hate when guys in movies wear eyeliner.  No actual revolutionary students wore eyeliner.  Oh, he was also not a Jonas Brother.  Major props to him for that.

Eponine: Poor Eponine.  She was my only real disappointment.  Not only was she WAY too skinny (let's loosen that belt a little bit, my dear), but I didn't connect with her at all.  She is usually my absolute favorite character, but I almost didn't even notice her in the movie.  A few of her things were cut, but not extremely.  I think they made everyone else bigger and left her alone.  Poor, poor Eponine.  Great singing, though.

Gavroche, Enjolras, and the Students: Spectacular, perfect, stunning, wonderful.  I don't know what other words to use.  They didn't need big name actors for those parts, so they were able to find people who had the vocal ability and the acting ability.  I want to take Gavroche home with me, fix his teeth, and raise him as my own.  He can put his elephant in the backyard.

The set was fabulous.  The costumes were nice revamps of the originals.  They brought in some aspects of the book that can't fit in the stage production (like Javert admitting to turning in Monsieur Madeleine, Gavroche's elephant, etc), which I thought made it even better than the original musical.  One of my favorite things, though, was that the bishop at the beginning was played by Colm Wilkinson, the original Jean Valjean.  Sigh, I love him.

If you haven't seen it, I don't think I ruined anything here...except that there are no Jonas Brothers in it...or Taylor Swift.  Praise the Lord.

Christmas Morning

Merry Christmas! Here are some scenes from Lila's very first Christmas morning.

Lila's stocking was full of new snacks.  Her favorites were the freeze dried yogurt and fruit puffs.

 Grampie got Lila a tutu and hair clips in Florida Gator colors, and Grammie got Lila an adorable tea set.  Lila is opening it here.

I made Johnny a six pack carrier for his homebrew.

Lila has gotten really good at smiling for the camera. 

 Lila also got two books that Grammie and Grampie recorded for her...

...and a beautiful ballerina dress.

We all know that her favorite present was really the wrapping paper, though.

Johnny and my big present to Lila was a wagon that we got for free from the Abrams family. 

She loved the straps.

Here's the carnage after all the presents were opened.

After a brief nap, we packed up the rest of the presents and headed over to my parents' house.  Everyone on our list got some of Johnny's homebrew Stout and a monogrammed beer mug...or if you are my brother and sister, pajama pants.

And if you didn't make it to Les Mis today, you HAVE to go see it.  I cried through the entire movie.  I realize that I love Les Mis more than the average gal, but you will definitely not be disappointed.  It wasn't quite as good as the home videos that we watched of me dancing around in a swimming suit and tutu with my underwear sticking out, but it's a close second.