A Whole Lotta Nothin’

September 22, 2016

Normally on Mondays the girls go to my dad and step mom’s, and Tuesday – Thursday they go to day care. That gives me 4 days a week to do day job stuff. But a funny thing happened: my dad and Wendy AND day care are gone on vacation the exact same two weeks! My wonderful friend has been coming for a couple mornings each week to watch the girls so I can get in a couple hours of work, but trying to put in 32 hours worth of work into about half the time is, well, not really happening, lol.

Instead, there’s been a lot of, “uh, that’ll get done later,” and attempts to bring a 3 year old and 1 year old along to work with me. On one adventure Merritt inadvertently turned on the water in a showroom’s shower

Luckily they’re one of my favorite showrooms and are a husband a wife who own their own business and have two kids they used to bring into work with them too, so they just laughed.

Last night we went to a tile shop with both kiddos in tow

That was an adventure. Luckily I waited till Chris got home from work so he was on kid duty while I looked at tile. Still, the tile shop employees didn’t find our children as endearing as the showroom….

Mostly it’s just been about hanging out together more though, and with the kiddos being pretty good, it hasn’t been quite as stressful as I thought it would be

Baby + diaper wandering = adorable

I’m super thankful for my friend because otherwise I’d basically be getting none of my work done, and I can’t exactly take a 2 week vacation, so thank you Stephanie!

Next week I shall return, maybe even with some work we’ve gotten done!

And While We’re at it: How About Our Utility Closet Too

July 20, 2016

Clearly we’re on an organizing kick at the moment because after we got the foyer closet done it was finally time to get the utility closet done downstairs

There was crap everywhere because we had no place to put all our cleaning supplies. Because, hello, noooooooo shelving

It also made the laundry shuffle a little challenging. And when we needed to find cleaning supplies we had to go through a giant box or shit all over the floor.

Like the upstairs closet Ethan ripped out the old stuff in here. There wasn’t much so it literally took about 5 minutes for him to rip everything out

Then Chris got things patched, primed and two coats of white. Because it’s a utility closet we don’t need any fanciness. We opted for standards and rails with wire shelves, simple and inexpensive. And the good news is all the brackets were leftover from another project, so we didn’t have to pay for them, hooray

Once we got the standards and rails installed I spent about 30 minutes putting things together

It was simple – items we hardly use on the top and very bottom. The middle was all our extra paper towels, rags and the cleaning supplies we use frequently. The after isn’t glamorous, but it is finished and organized!

And there isn’t shit all over the floor anymore!

I know people probably find it a little ridiculous that we’re spending time organizing closets when we hate the kitchen so much, but honestly, getting shit put away gives us peace of mind. So many of the closets have literally NO shelving in them, so none of the items can be unpacked. Everything is just sitting in boxes or all over the floor and it makes it incredibly frustrating to find anything. They’re also relatively inexpensive makeovers, so it makes it easier to get done. And the fact that we can now find the 409 after shit has been spilled everywhere is very nice 🙂

Shopping for a New Front Door

June 22, 2016

Our front doors are so ugly

I hate them. Every time I walk into them I shudder. This is incredibly superficial – I completely admit it. But I find most applications of Oak (besides flooring, I love oak flooring) to be unattractive. I also cannot express how incredibly distasteful I find decorative glass like this. Again, INCREDIBLY superficial, but it just looks so fucking tacky to be when it’s got those ugly little “stained glass” patterns in it.

They also suck as far as their installation. Which isn’t surprising because everything these people have done was shitty. They used about 1″ screws to install these heavy as fucking shit doors. So of course they started leaning in. Instead of figuring out the problem they just continued to sand down the top left corner of the right door over and over and over again because it was catching. When we bought the house it would always catch here and you’d actually have to shove it really hard to get it to close. So Chris replaced the screws with CORRECT screws. It’s helped the problem. But there are additional problems as well.

The plan was to just paint them, but as we’ve been working on the exterior of the house both of us were kind of itching to get them replaced. Me a lot more than Chris, but it was still nice to know that Chris wasn’t feeling them either. We gave ourselves a budget of $2k for the double doors and I got cracking.

The considerations as I was looking: I would have gone with something with privacy glass, but Chris doesn’t like glass in front doors, even with privacy. He doesn’t like that someone can see that you’re right at the door (even with privacy you can see the shadow), and I get it. I also didn’t want something terribly decorative because the house just doesn’t feel like it needs it.

I perused and perused and perused. There was a lot of perusing. And honestly there wasn’t a lot that I liked. In true “Meryl Fashion” I tend to gravitate towards things I don’t think are as popular. It’s an annoying trait of mine to like to be original. If I feel like a door is more common, I don’t want to use it. Which makes things a little more difficult because doors that weren’t incredibly decorative, didn’t have glass, and that also seemed original at the same time (that weren’t RIDICULOUSLY expensive) were hard to come by. But there were a few.

Chris and I really liked this one and it was an early favorite, but it was the most pricey. We didn’t mind breaking teh budget by a little bit, but it would be breaking it by 150%. And that seems like no point to having a budget.

I really liked the simplicity of this one and the aluminum strip was really cool to me. Chris wasn’t really a fan though.

I had originally liked this one a lot, but Chris wasn’t a fan at first. He said something like, “It’ll do.” But I didn’t want him to feel like he had to settle on a door. Also, the longer I sat on it, it felt like a door that belongs on a more rustic house. No dice.

I really liked the opposing wood grains of this one. And of course I liked the metal trim. Chris looked at it and was pretty disgusted, lol. And honestly, you’d lose the opposing wood grain look once we painted it, so yeah, I don’t know what I was thinking.

Then I came across this one

It was obviously more detailed than I had originally thought I wanted, but I really liked the pinwheel design. Chris really liked it too. The only problem was that we had no idea how much they cost. So I contacted them. Then they told me to contact their distributor. The distributor doesn’t sell to homeowners. So they told me to contact a store they sell to.

So then I contacted two of the stores. It took a little while for them to get back to me, but one of them never even gave me the quote. Which is kind of annoying. The other store actually contacted me because it was taking a while and they called to let me know they just hadn’t heard from their distributor yet, which I thought was nice of them. Because it did take about a week. And it’s a decent amount of time to just wait on a price. So I appreciated their effort. And the good news is that…they came in $150 under budget before tax, yay!

The hilarious part is that we haven’t had time to order it still, lol. I’m HOPING this week. It’ll take 4-6 weeks for it to come in, so we really should get on top of that 🙂

Pretty in Pink

June 6, 2016

When I was pregnant with Zoe I decreed that I didn’t want any pink stuff. I knew that LOTS of people would get pink things because I was having a girl, so I asked the people I was close to not to get her more. We stuck with black and gray for things like car seats and strollers and green and yellow for sheets, highchairs, towels, etc. I’m a tomboy and a lot of the guys I worked with at the A’s thought my attitude about this was hilarious. They asked what would I EVER DO if I had a girl who liked pink and ballet because I was rejecting pink in the beginning so much? These were my thoughts:

1) dresses on little babies are just plain stupid to me, they get in the way of their movement and they literally make them fall over.

2) I have no problem with pink. Or purple. My problem is that people feel SO COMPELLED to get pink pink pink pink pink and tutu’s and tule and giant headbands the second they find out you’re having a girl. There are A LOT of different kinds of girls out there. They don’t all like pink, they don’t all like headbands. And I feel like this same behavior isn’t the norm when you’re pregnant with a boy. It really frustrated me.

3) I wanted Zoe and Merritt to figure out what they liked because they actually liked it. I put them in pink. I put them in blue. They have doll toys. They have car toys. I want to expose them to as many different things as I can and let them decide. If they decide they love pink and love ballet on their own, well, then I’ve got to learn what plie is and learn that it’s not appropriate to scream from the audience during a recital.

Zoe has decided that she likes pink. And purple. She also likes going to Raiders tailgates. She is very assertive with her opinion about things. I love her opinions. And I love her self confidence. So you know what, I had to swallow my pride when it came to painting Zoe’s room, specifically her closet nook

Her room is an excellent exercise in releasing some control for me – allowing Zoe’s opinions to rule more of the roost. Purple seems to be her favorite, but she also picked pink for the back of her bookcases. Originally I thought about painting this nook the same color as her room, but only got a gallon, so I didn’t know if we’d have enough. Instead I decided on a little experiment

I took an extra gallon container we had and decided to mix a custom color for Zoe with samples and other paint colors were had around. Zoe thought this was FABULOUS

AND we mixed in some sparkles too. That’s fucking right: sparkles. Zoe really likes sparkles, so I bought a sparkle additive that you mix in to give the paint shimmer. HOORAY! A fun little treat for this cool little nook.

Working on the house with the kiddos has been a challenge for me. My step dad has been taking Zoe a lot of Friday mornings lately, but last Friday I asked if he might stay at the house and help get the nook painted. He was all for it

Over the course of about 2 1/2 hours Clarke got the cut ins done and rolled it. Children were obviously involved as well

It’s sometimes a big headache, but I really try to let Zoe be involved in projects

There was definitely a lot of use of the sponge cleaning things up, but she really enjoys helping and I want her to love her room and love taking part in the process. So I sort of just take a deep breath and go with it.

It was all painted and dry by nap time, but i still left things out to make sure it was all 100% before the furniture went back in and things got hung up

Then it was just a matter of getting things up on the wall which I am of course not going to share with you because we are SO CLOSE to the final “after.”

We just need to get the paint up on the rest of the room and hang everything up. SOOOOOO CLOSE. And to think I wanted this room done before we moved in, ha!

18 Coats of Paint

March 7, 2016

First off: I realize that now we have a ton of projects that will be happening, and not nearly the equivalent time to blog. As a result I’ll probably be behind the next couple of weeks (maybe even months). I’d really like to commit to blogging 3 times a week, but even that frequency probably won’t be able to keep me completely up to date with what’s going on. So, please be patient 🙂 I’ll be filling you in on all the happenings as we move along, but just because life is, well, life, it will take me a little while to keep you up to date. I have to say I’m excited to have so much work to blog about again 🙂 🙂 🙂

Alright, now let’s get down to business.

This is a short story about 18 coats of paint. Thankfully it’s not 1 project, but 3. The first project? These bookcases

We got these bookcases from my step dad (frequently called CBH here on this ol’ blog) because he just sold the house he and my mom lived in. And a quick side note – you may be wondering why I refer to it as HIM selling the house THEY used to live in. Well, about 4 years ago they separated. And then recently they got divorced. Yes, very sad. I was very sad. But, the good news about my family is that we are very weird – my mom and dad still get along great, and my mom and step dad still get along great. We are a very successfully divorced family. And I LOVE that. My mom and Zoe frequently have breakfast dates with CBH when my mom watches her and I still see him a lot. Technically speaking I guess he is not actually my “step dad” anymore – but my mom and he got together when I was so young that he will always be my step dad. And his son will always be my step brother. They’re family. And they are another uncle and grandpa to my girls. That’s just how we roll.

Okay? 🙂 Moving on.

So we inherited this bookcase from my step dad when he was getting rid of some of the furniture he and my mom used to have. This is actually one in a pair, and I thought they would be perfect for Zoe’s new room. The only kicker was that I wasn’t too much of a fan of the super yellow pine. I wanted to give it a little bit of a makeover. Painting it crisp white with a bright, fun color in the back I thought would jazz it up just right. The only thing was this took A LOT of paint. 10 coats in all. Not ALL OVER, but 10 different coats.

It started with 4 coats of primer

I honestly should have used a better stain blocking primer and I could have gotten away with maybe one less coat. The Glidden primer wasn’t good at blocking the knots and yellow finish to the wood

But after 4 coats I was done. And I moved on to the color coat.

I used Benjamin Moore Advance. Chris did a really good paint test for what the best interior, semi-gloss, white trim paint (still need to finalize that post…) and I followed the advice of that test for what the best paint to use was – it covered well, and held up to scratching (and Zoe will probably beat this to shit).

I got started

The good thing was that this only took 2 coats of paint, yay!

Then I moved on to the color in the back. One time a couple weeks ago when we were at HD I picked out a couple BRIGHT colors that I could recall were in her fabric and held up the 3 swatches for Zoe and let her pick the color she wanted. She picked Ralph Lauren Racer Pink (I got it color matched in Glidden). The thing about reds and deep pinks like this is it really takes a couple coats for good coverage. I haven’t found that the paint/primer in one really helps. So it took 4 coats of this paint to really give it a good, even coverage

The good news is that after the TEN coats of paint (4 primer, 2 color coats, 4 pink coats on the back), it was finally done

And I actually love it. I’m not a super big pink fan myself, but I do actually really love the bold, bright and saturated color. Good pick Zoe 🙂

The next 5 coats of paint? The mirror.

Zoe loves a mirror that my mom had in her apartment. My mom is currently living in Croatia. Yes, Croatia. She took off on some European travels a few years ago and fell in love with the country. She’s been back several times and recently decided that she wanted to spend 50% of her time living over there. So that’s what she does now 🙂 In the process of making that decision she pared down her life a lot and got rid of a lot of furniture (she’ll live a couple months of the time here in the Bay Area and then go down to San Diego and live with my brother and his wife a couple of weeks a year as well). Yes, she is a fabulous gypsy 🙂 One of the things she was getting rid of was this giant mirror that Zoe took a particular liking to when my mom had it propped up on the ground

I had wanted a mirror in her room and my mom asked if I wanted this one. Perfect. I thought a new paint job would spruce it up well. And because I liked that bright pop of Racer Pink so much with the bookcases I thought it would be perfect for the mirror as well.

I probably could have saved myself maybe ONE coat if I had used primer. But I didn’t. So covering up the blue took 5, even coats

But that is pretty pretty, right?

That’s 15 coats right there. Where’s the other 3? Zoe’s light fixture.

I went off to hunt for something to repurpose several weeks ago. I found this crazy light

Yes, I know, it looks a little insane. But I like that it was a little different. And I thought painting it a bright color and switching out this glass dangles would make it work. I want Zoe’s room to be FUN, and this light made me think of that.

So when we went to the hardware store a couple weeks ago I did the same thing – I picked a couple cans of a bright color of spray paint and she picked Plum. We taped off the light and hung it in the garage ready for painting. Zoe was very interested in the process so we actually let her paint some. Spray paint is obviously not good to inhale, so we just let her spray a couple of bursts. Then we went outside and let Chris paint it all. And 3 coats later it was done. I of course forgot to take a picture of it 🙂 I still need to hang the new wire and dangles, but I’ll get to that later this week. Hopefully.

There you have it: 10 coats on the bookcases, 5 on the mirror, and 3 on the light. Obviously we’re playing a lot of painting catch up for the lack of work we’ve been doing the last several years 🙂

THIS IS THE HOUSE!

March 2, 2016

It’s ours!!!

OH MY GOD IT’S OURS!!! Our agent came by at about 6:45 on Monday night. She brought the keys and said she thought the old owners would be there till about midnight still getting the place vacant. Jesus. We said whatever. JUST AS LONG AS THEY ARE OUT. I cannot express the frustration. We told her the locks were getting changed yesterday at 11am, so whatever they had left – BUH-BYE.

Yesterday rolled around. Chris got there at 11am after a couple jobs to meet with someone to replace the furnace, change the locks and meet with a cleaner. He reported that the house and exterior were littered with garbage. And they had taken all the appliances. Well, minus the dishwasher. And light fixtures. OH MY FUCKING GOD.

It was okay that they took the washer and dryer – they were pieces of shit and weren’t called out in the contract. But the contract did state that they leave the other appliances (and for heaven’s sake the fucking lights as well you fucking morons). Here’s their absolutely ridiculous argument – along the way we had an addendum when we saw that they had so much SHIT and were moving slowly specifying that they take all their personal belongings. Specifically so we not get stuck with a house full of shit. So they were CLAIMING (when they got caught doing something wrong) that they simply thought that meant appliances and light fixtures too. There are 2 wrinkles to this argument: 1) that’s total, utter, complete, absolute bullshit. And 2) if you’re going to use that as your argument, you’re negating it yourself by leaving trash and so much of your shit ALL OVER THE HOUSE (which you will see in the photos below).

I went ape shit. I won’t go into all the details because at this point I no longer have the mental energy as I’m running on 2 1/2 hours of sleep because after Merritt woke up at 1:15 to nurse I only went back to bed for another 30 minutes at 6am because I was SO FUCKING FRUSTRATED. I actually spent about 10 minutes crying in the bathroom because I was trying not to wake up Chris. Spoiler: I did.

Anyway, the culmination: the listing agent said that the sellers could come back to remove their stuff so that they could indeed “take all their personal belongings.” I told our real estate agent absolutely NOT. That if they or the listing agent came onto the property at all I would call the police immediately. IMMEDIATELY. And I DON’T GIVE A FUCK. What it comes down to is the sellers, the listing agent and his fucking broker are all absolute pieces of shit, and I just want to be done with it. It’s not worth taking anyone to small claims court (because that is what we’d have to do at this point) for the maybe $1000 we would be awarded to buy ourselves used appliances or rent a dumpster. It’s not worth spending my mental energy anymore. It’s not worth them getting any more of my time.

Of course that’s all easier said than done. What I definitely will be doing will be reviewing the listing agent on every single fucking real estate review site I can find. That fucker.

So there ya have it!

Now, let’s get fucking real, I know you want to see the house. I know 🙂 And here’s the good news: the house is fucking ours. And now we can enjoy it. We have to spend money cleaning it, picking it up and getting appliances – but it’s OURS! And the locks are changed 🙂 I’ll show 1-5 pictures of each room/place and let you know what our plans are for that space. The house is not falling apart (well, the deck is), but it’s just really ugly. And really dirty, as you’ll see from the pictures.

An introduction: This place was built in 1953. It’s got a little over 2,500 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 3 bathrooms, a secondary living room which will function as a sort of multipurpose room for us (office, hang out, laundry corner/closet area [we still have to figure that one out]), a 2 car garage, a basement (for lots of storage!!!), a great outdoor space with a giant deck, 0.6 of an acre, on a dead end street, 2 houses from a giant, few hundred acre park. In other words, this is exactly why we waited so long, dealt with so much bullshit and just hung in there. It was perfect for us. We loved it. And it will be the perfect project for the next 7-10 years – our guess for how long it will take us between saving up for projects (bye bye savings account to buy it, lol), raising our girls, running our business, and just life’s excitement.

Okay, okay, okay, let’s get to it.

The outside

I know, not nearly the exciting architecture that our Picardy house is. But I actually find that a little appealing. It’s a simple, but very homey ranch. It allows me SO MUCH freedom with the inside. I don’t feel tied to a really specific style like I did with Picardy. I love the deep porch, I love the big driveway, I love the planters. I don’t like how dark things are, I don’t like palm trees, I don’t like that there’s no character. So the (eventual) plan for the outside? Paint (soon actually because the wood siding is failing and that’s something that you really want to be on top of), build out the columns, maybe install a railing, jazz up the porch area, install hanging lights (Chris wants to leave the lights that are there, so let’s all try to convince him), put in a hanging swing, and of course re-landscape everything. More stuff will come up, but all I can think of so far.

The entry

I love having tile in the entry and actually having a proper sized closet, hooray! We have a TEENY closet at Picardy and there is no room for anything, so having a real space to put shoes, our shopping bags, coats, etc. is so awesome. It’s ugly now though 🙂 So we’ll spruce up the closet, paint, install new hardware, redo the tile on the floor.

The living area

This living room area is MUCH larger than our Picardy living room. Which is awesome. Eventually we’ll jazz up the fireplace somehow, install a gas insert in the fireplace (almost exclusively illegal to burn in wood fireplaces in CA now), open up a portion of the brick to the kitchen (behind the behemoth wall of brick), build a built-in for our TV components and books, paint, set aside a specific play area for the girls along the back wall, figure out window coverings (that don’t really cover much of the windows), and enjoy that fucking view. I love that fucking view.

Dining Nook

Thanks for stealing the light. Assholes.

Paint, figure out non-covering window coverings to enjoy more of the view, refinish a table we bought a month or two ago, figure out a more permanent dining solution (I’ve always wanted a banquet, but I don’t know if that will work with the giant windows).

The Kitchen

Ohhhh the kitchen. Doesn’t this look so stylish and clean that you just want to host a dinner party? Remove all their personal belongings my ass.

There are LOTS of plans for this room. Total gut is the most important because it sucks. And is ugly. After we gut it we’ll install more cabinetry along the exterior wall (probably extend all the way to the windows in the dining area), make sure we’ve got a secretary area, keep a peninsula probably (a small one), match the hardwood floors, change every single fucking surface, open up part of the brick wall to the living room area, close off the door to the garage (which will be Chris’ workshop, so we don’t actually want interior access because it will be a dirty, dusty space), maybe rearrange appliances, but who knows. But, you get the idea: this area is currently disgusting. We will make it marvelous. In a couple of years. We will need to save up BIG TIME for that one.

Merritt’s Room

Not much. It’s not in terrible shape. For the time being this will get repainted, furnished with things we have on hand, and just cleaned up. I don’t want to spend extra money decorating when I’m not sure what sort of decor would fit with this little lady’s personality. I don’t want to spend the money twice. So I’ll probably “redo” it in about 2 years.

Zoe’s Room

I won’t spill all the beans here because I’m actually hoping to have this room DONE by the time we move in (moved to 3/14 instead of 3/7 to accommodate all their fucking hold ups).

The bathroom

Ugly and gross. Lots of changes. Another complete gut job. At some point the tub was taken out for just a shower stall. We’ll put a tub back in. All new tile. A double vanity. Hopefully some fun sinks. More storage.

The hallway

This goes downstairs to our bedroom and the office. It’s ugly, and dark. I’d like to open up the opening that leads down here from the main floor because it’s a little closed off. New paint will go a long way.

Our Bedroom

Large. Disgusting. New paint, new flooring, new windows (eventually), new lights, and just making it feel a lot better. It feels dark and sad right now.

Master bath

A decent enough size. But really low ceilings. We’d hope that with new ducting in with the furnace replaced we might eventually be able to raise the ceiling, even just 6″ would make a difference. It’s dark in here for sure. This place will get gutted. New everything. Not sure if I would keep the tub and shower separate – it feels like such a waste of space to me and this is our forever home and I’m not actually a fan of baths. As Kramer says, I don’t like sitting in a pool of my own warm, tepid filth 🙂

Dressing area

This is right off of the bathroom. I actually don’t know what I would use this area for. It takes me 15 minutes to go from pajamas to showered and dressed (I wear no make-up and am in a t-shirt and jeans 90% of the time). So I don’t really have any use for a vanity area because I literally wear make-up once a year. I’ll figure out something fun to do though.

Master Closet

There is actually access to the basement through that far door. I’m not sure if we’re actually going to keep this as a clothes closet, or a extra storage space. The bedroom is so fucking big, which is totally unnecessary for me. We’ve actually talked about installing a built-in closet system in the bedroom on the wall across from the bed and then using this space for extra storage (things like suitcases, art supplies, etc.) We have a basement area, but I really want to use that space for extra work storage as much as possible to make Chris’ workshop free of as much clutter as possible

Office/multipurpose room

This room is HUGE. And there are lots of plans for it. We will move the laundry from the garage (which will be Chris’ workshop) down here onto the back wall. We’ll be removing the stove that doesn’t work and possibly building a wall back there to enclose the laundry area. Do you like that fake brick wall? Ugh. There’s also the third DISGUSTING bathroom off the back wall

Yup, another total gut job. The toilet was so gross that Zoe asked last night when she saw it, “Mommy, who pooped in there?” Lol.

But, back to the office

This room will have a lot of functions. There will be a TV, a nice, large sectional for hanging out, built-ins built along the wall for CDs and DVDs with our desk area integrated. New paint. Window coverings. New flooring. Lots of new. And don’t worry, that giant crack is not a structural problem.

There is also the backyard, the garage and the basement that I didn’t really photograph. The basement is starting to get worked on today by Chris. So I’ll actually have a little bit of a before & after transformation of that one because we’re just installing a ton of utility shelving for secondary storage of all of our work tools and materials that we don’t use on a very frequent basis.

The garage will also be worked on very soon as we will need that up and running quickly to make our work lives function normally as soon as possible. So I’ll devote a lot of posts to that specifically very soon.

And I really should have photographed that backyard, because there’s so much potential. I didn’t take many, or actually ANY with my nice camera, but at the end of our visit there last night Zoe asked specifically to go in the backyard. And she immediately ran all around, discovered, talked about how fun it was, picked flowers… pretty much making ALL of this worth it. It was the reason we were looking for a house like this. We want land. We want to spread out. We want our girls to be able to run all around and play. We want to feel free

And after all the fucking bullshit, we will finally get it with this place.

Merritt: 8 months

February 24, 2016

My little squishy hit 8 months on Monday

SQUISHY! 🙂 If there is one thing that is right in the world, it’s rolls on the legs of babies. Honestly, is there anything better. You just want to SQUISH them 🙂

And, of course, the comparison shot

One thing of note is how playful they are in each of these photos. At this point Zoe was definitely coming into her playful personality, and Merritt has started to show that as well. She definitely isn’t as, well, for lack of a better word – crazy – as Zoe was, but she’s starting to get more playful and wiggly and for sure wants to hang out with Zoe.

Prime example of that would be the prop she has this month – Zoe’s pacifier. Yes, I KNOW, it’s bad that we haven’t taken it away from Zoe yet, but with the potential move on the horizon and Zoe’s attachment to them, it’s been hard for me to want to take it away. I have finally vowed to myself that we will start the weaning (whether the rip of a band-aid or nice and slow) after we move and before Zoe is 3. But anyway, Merritt LIGHTS UP when she sees a pacifier, “OH! Zoe loves those! I MUST HAVE ONE!” And she just dive bombs it. If Zoe has one in her mouth Merritt must crawl/climb to her and try to take it out. Luckily Zoe thinks this is all hilarious and will usually laugh and say, “No bay-bah,” and then give her one of her own to have. Merritt is then delighted and spends the next 20 minutes figuring out how to properly put it in her mouth. We took one away from her so early she now has no idea how to correctly use it so it’s usually just sitting in her mouth (sometimes in the wrong direction). She doesn’t suck on it or anything, she just holds it. Sometimes she smiles so big because she’s so delighted she has one it squirts out of her mouth. That always makes me laugh

So, obviously the love for Zoe has continued, and so has Zoe’s love for Merritt. Still wonderful to see.

One thing that’s funny is that this month Merritt has started to TRY to crawl and Zoe thinks that is FABULOUS. The beginning of the month Merritt would sort of get on all 4’s and then rock back and forth, sometimes grunting and yelling. She couldn’t figure out how to make herself go and sometimes she would get really pissed off about it. It was both hilarious and a little sad. I’ve never seen a baby so obviously express their frustration about something they can’t do that they’re trying to. This has continued most of the month, but she’s finally figured it out a little bit. She never did the army crawl (dragging themselves on the ground that I see most babies do), she has been intent on only crawling on all 4’s. She had one going where she would sit up, face plant, pull herself forward and do it all again. The problem is that she’s so focused on her feet and legs that she will sometimes shove herself in a push up position and then wonder why she’s not moving. Just like not using her arms during tummy time, this lady has convinced herself she will accomplish crawling the hard way.

She finally gets going now little movement by little movement. She’s a little jerky about it and slow, so she looks a little drunk. It’s quite fun to watch 🙂

Zoe loves it and insists on crawling around on the floor with her laughing. I know once Merritt gets going Zoe will LOVE getting to play with her more. Because Merritt is getting better at crawling and moving all around from laying to sitting, etc. you can definitely tell Zoe wants to play with her more. She gets a little too rough and aggressive sometimes, but that’s totally normal, so we just try to tell her nicely when she’s going a little too far.

But for the most part, Zoe is great with her. I can actually leave them both in Zoe’s room playing (Zoe is usually “reading” to her) while I go into the kitchen for 5-10 minutes and get the backpack ready for an excursion. It’s pretty damn great to get to do that.

Like Zoe was, she’s great on errands and likes to be out and about. She LOVES sitting in the cart – an opportunity to get those feet swirling and kicking around. Still with the feet. Still so much that strangers continue to make comments to me about it

We had a little stranger danger going this month. She’s actually almost reconciled it. But in the beginning if you were to look at her too much, and heaven forbid you SMILE at her, she might dissolve into tears. I actually laughed one time about it at Home Depot because I could tell the older man who was adoring her felt awful. I felt bad for him. I told him her age and he understood immediately 🙂 She’s returned to being cautiously polite to strangers (never as outgoing as Zoe was), and she’s definitely happy to smile at you if mommy or daddy is holding her 🙂

Food is THE BEST THING IN LIFE. Honestly, I have NEVER. NEVER. NEVER seen a baby eat as much as this kid does. She must be in a growth spurt because the last week or so she has just shoved food in her mouth like there is no tomorrow. Her whole life I have never encountered a baby who was more apathetic about the boob. On occasion she has literally pulled my boob out of her mouth and pushed it away. Then she will – and I’m not joking – YELL and grunt at you until you give her food. And she can pack it away. I have a feeling she will wean herself early like Zoe did because she just does not have the attachment/desire to nurse like most kids do. She just LOVES food.

Favorites: BLUEBERRIES, still any applesauce, puffs and anything that you are trying

She’s great at trying new foods – like Zoe was too. It seems like in both kiddos we got the good eaters and bad sleepers. Well, not BAD, just “late” to the through the night game. We’re still not there yet. She’s waking up once or twice a night, which is still better than it was. And she puts herself right back to sleep each time. The only time in fact she WANTS to nurse is at night – and she loves it. Just my luck. Weaning her from night nursing will be a challenge. I’m thinking of starting after we move because I don’t know how much she’ll perceive that change and I’d like to have that ace in the hole if it does fuck with her a little bit. We shall see.

Oh! And last little development: she’s starting to TRY and pull herself to standing this month. Still not super great at it and can’t do it on her own. But I love seeing her try. It’s always so fun to get to see them want to do things like that. And when we cheer for her for doing it she looks at us with a GIANT smile on her face and she’s so pleased with herself. That’s one of my favorite moments – seeing her happy with herself and happy that you’re happy. This little kid is the best

Love you my little squishy girl!

The Laundry Room is Still Not Done

February 22, 2016

Wouldn’t it be so nice to finally get to call this room done? It would. But we’re not there yet. CLOSE! But not there.

The first thing I have done though is organize the wonderful cabinet. WONDERFUL cabinets. I love those things 🙂 One thing this house doesn’t have is too much storage, so it’s really nice that this room has sooooooo much storage. We have 5 cabinet areas that are empty. One was taken up with the laundry chute

We searched for a hamper that would fit in the area, but it’s kind of a strange size so we actually decided to just go without one completely because it’s right across from the washing machine – maybe only 3 feet away. So it actually felt like getting a hamper would be a waste of money

The other 4 areas got filled with: our spare rags, cleaning supplies, vacuum/mop, and then miscellaneous kid stuff

It made sense to have some of the kid stuff in here just because it takes up enough floor space in the house, so any chance we get to put a little bit of it away is nice. The small base cabinet has nothing in it

Moving these things into the new cabinets cleared out the above washer/dryer storage and the cabinets on the other side of the room

And the other cabinet on the other side of the room

Always the helper, right? 🙂

Of course, the other cabinets on the other side of the room are now inaccessible with Merritt’s crib in here. The things we do 🙂

The next items on the list were finishing out the cabinets. What does that mean? We had to put in the metal sheathing, install crown, paint touch up, install base, install a counter top, and put in the floor trim. We didn’t get all the way there, but we’re pretty close.

Because we had to set the cabinets away from the wall a little bit (to account for the box we needed to build for ducting), we had to cover the gap between the wall and the back of the cabinets.

We got a piece of metal fabricated with a bend in it and another that slid into a channel in the bed. That way the corner would be as seamless as possible. The only problem is that for some reason we mis-measured and the metal that came was just SLIGHTLY not fitting. So Chris had to cut it down a little bit. He also cut for the outlet cover. Then he put it up in place

It looks like it fits, but the sheet against the cabinets had a very slight bow in it, and the piece against the wall was not fitting into the channel properly. This doesn’t look like a huge deal, but because we’re installing picture molding at the top, with the bow in one of the pieces, that means we can’t install molding over the top. After a lot of swearing and a lot of headache, we decided to remove the sheet that was against the wall and just mud and tape there instead. The sheet there was just for looks. We didn’t need it because it wasn’t covering anything bad, we just liked the seamless look with the piece against the cabinet. So we removed it. We decided to just mud, tape and texture there instead

Not the look we wanted initially, but it was so FUCKING annoying that the sheet wasn’t fitting into the channel and the bow in the necessary sheet. Once we took out that sheet, the one against the cabinet was laying flat. And once it was flat, Chris could install the picture molding around the cabinets

And then he installed the base

And then he just went for a homerun and install the corner trim on the flooring

This corner piece has just been sitting on the corner uninstalled for several months. Which means a lot of it being accidentally kicked out of place.

So what’s left now to get it done? Chris did the mud, texture and priming. I’ve got to paint it (and touch up here and there), and then we’ve got to install the counter as well. We’re allllllllmost there. Just 7+ years after we’ve started. I’m not joking either, sadly. We started this room when we first moved in because we brought the washer and dryer in here (it used to live in the kitchen). It will be nice to finally finish it.

Meet Merritt

June 23, 2015

Yesterday morning at 10:11am we welcomed our 20 1/4″, 8lbs 6oz baby girl Merritt Davis Miller to the world

Zoe LOVES her little sister and loved kissing her when she she met her and was very curious as to why she didn’t talk. We’re lucky to have such a good big sister on our hands.

The c section went well and I’m healing a lot better this time around, which is so amazing because my recovery was rough the first time around. The surgeon told us after the surgery she was very happy with our decision to schedule a c section because my uterine muscle was very thin and likely would have torn in conventional labor and resulted in another emergency c section. So we’re even happier with the decision we made.

we’ll be at the hospital with our new lady for another day or so and then we’ll be very excited to make our way home and spend time with both of our girls.

HAPPY TUESDAY!

Picardy Poll: Decora vs. Flip Switch

February 16, 2015

I’ve been thinking about posting this poll for years. Literally YEARS. And I have finally gotten my shit together and written it, mostly because I’m motivated by my dad switching out all the light switches in their house.

Here is the question I pose for you readers: do you prefer flip switches or decora switches?

found here

found here

Or, do you prefer old fashioned switches?

found here

Or could you completely care less?

This might seem like a completely ridiculous question, but I actually find it quite interesting. I am strongly in favor of flip switches. I love the satisfying feeling of the flippage of turning a light on or off. I like the nostalgia of old fashioned switches, but I don’t find them as practical. My dad is strongly in favor of decora switches and we frequently give each other a hard time about it. I just find them so unsatisfying. I can’t even describe the feeling of turning them on and off, it’s just….a press. I like the SWITCH. 🙂 I know, ridiculous. But do you have an opinion? And is it as stupidly strong as mine?

What Light Switch Do You Prefer?

I Can’t Remember My Name

June 20, 2014

Hello all. I apologize for my absence this week. Life has gotten INSANE and I’m struggling to remember my name. Or put pants on. Or eat. Of course, not all those are actually happening, but I have forgotten to eat lunch a couple times this week, which, if you know me, that is just flat out pure insanity.

This has been our schedule this week

Oh, and that date Wednesday night for me and Chris? Totally didn’t happen. Bad scheduling, jobs that took longer, general stress and bad moods. Ugh. We’ve gone on 3 dates together in the year+ now since Zoe has been born. Romantic, I know.

It’s certainly been a challenge these first couple weeks with both of us working for our business full time. It’s a new schedule to figure out (and a schedule that is already extremely inconsistent). Also, a huge renovation project for my brother’s real estate biz started this week and we really hit the ground running. There have been meetings with the city, meetings with trades, many phone calls, ridiculous spreadsheets, etc. And the A’s are in town this week and Chris is about to start a big job for a client.

Plus, Zoe has apparently entered a phase of being completely dissatisfied with everything I do for her. It’s been a lot of fun. She’s GREAT when other people watch her, but when she’s with me it’s a ton of grunting, crying, pointing, yelling, getting mad because she can’t do as much physically as she wants, not wanting to eat anything I give her…sigh…there have been tears from both her and me a lot this week.

But so is the life of running your own business, working other jobs on top of that, attempting to renovate your house (but not really anymore) and trying to raise a kid. Oh, and also be in a relationship. Sigh. It’s been a tough week. I can’t say I will return with normalcy next week, because I think I may be playing catch up with the rest of my life, but I hope to return soon. I miss updating you wonderful folks. I hope you guys had a good week, and let us all please have a fabulous weekend, okay?

Our Neglected Front Yard

March 10, 2014

Since having Zoe we have pretty much spent NO TIME in our front yard until the past week or so. In September Chris’ mom came to help out and did some super necessary weeding and trimming

It’s amazing that Zoe was so little then!

And now that it’s been another FIVE MONTHS we really needed to tend to things. The great news is that – once again – because we were really specific about making things low maintenance, the yard is a little out of control, but it’s not a fucking jungle. Five months of no maintenance just means too many weeds, not weeds up to your waist, which I am very thankful for.

This area between the planter box and the rest of the yard is always sprinkled with weeds

There were some ratty looking plants that needed some love

And the emerald carpet manzanita was growing in really well, but some weeds were growing in well too

Over the course of a week or so Chris and I weeded and replaced a couple plants. For instance, this long dead plant…

…finally got switched out

It had been sitting dead and brown like that for about 6-7 months. Yes, pathetic, I know.

After all the work things were looking like this

Muuuuch, better. Things are really filling in nicely and I love that even in Winter (well, almost Spring) the yard still has so much wonderful color. Seriously, my step mom did such a good job helping us plan all this out and plant everything. It’s really been one of our most successful projects – it truly is super low maintenance, uses very little water and still has great color in Winter.

Now, the sidewalk strip is not so gorgeous

Yup, totally over grown. There are several problems here: we never weed, there is no drip here (my dad suggested we bring it over, but we were too lazy) and lastly, whenever it rains it carries all the mulch away which makes the weeds even more out of control.

Chris and I spent about 20 minutes weeding while Zoe was sleeping (the car door was open in the above pic because she fell asleep on her way back from breakfast) so we figured we’d knock it out until she woke up. Then it was play time of course. Thanks neighbor’s grassy front yard! 🙂

But back to that sidewalk strip…

After the 20 or so minutes things definitely looked a lot better

It certainly is far from perfect, but at least it is somewhat tamed. We’re still not sure about this whole situation. We don’t want to bring drip over, but the juniper has not fared very well. We really like the gravel with the stones to step out onto from the car, but that’s about it. So, if any of you have low maintenance suggestions, please let me know!

The last task was finally putting no skid tape on our front stairs

When I painted these stairs I used gloss paint and so when it rains, it’s definitely slippery. I finally decided that after 2 years it was time to get to it. Zoe helped of course

I spread out the tape for the length of one step, then used that as a template and cut the other two down to the same size

And the roll was basically the perfect length for all 3 steps

Zoe supervised, naturally

As she played I rounded the edges (to help it not peel up) and then peeled off the backing and stuck it down

After about 15 minutes things looked great

I always get slightly annoyed with myself when things that I’ve waited on completing for a while (TWO YEARS in the case of these stairs) only take me 10-30 minutes. Or even just an hour. It makes me feel so fucking lazy. But lately I’ve been on a kick of wanting to get a bunch of little things checked off my forever list, so it did feel good getting this finally done. And then Zoe and I got to play in the backyard

It was 73 degrees in Oakland on Saturday. And it was fucking glorious. And obviously Zoe was quite pleased with herself.