Unprecedented

I think I've documented our bath/shower time struggles periodically. We've gotten a lot of "whhhhhyyyyyy do I have to take a shower?" and "but I hate showers!" and even a bunch of "showers are stupid" (take THAT, showers!). We've gotten "But so-and-so says her mom says you shouldn't take showers every day". I guess we've gotten a bit of everything.

But with the new paint job/decorating in the kids' bathroom, Amy doesn't protest anymore. Hallelujah! And Reed has come to accept his showering fate and just takes a shower when he's supposed to. Miracle!

And then this happened last week...the kids had gone to the pool with the babysitter (more on that later), so Reed showered after that. Then when Tod came home, he set Reed up for mowing the lawn (and more on that another time, too). When Reed finished, he came back in and said "Now I have to take another shower!" and...he did! Two showers in one day, neither one 'forced'! I nearly fell over when he said he was taking a second shower.

Edited to add....just a minute after I posted this, Reed got in the shower for the second time that day - I guess that makes it a trend?

(And please for the sake of my sanity, don't mention what might be going on in the shower other than getting clean!)

Here we come, summer!

Yesterday was the last day of school (finally!) and one kid is thrilled (Reed) and one kid (Amy) is a mixture of happy and sad. Seeing how much Reed has grown this school year is pretty crazy! If I measured right, he is 5'6" now, which makes him more than an inch taller than me (much to his delight).

It feels like we will blink and these kids will be off to college....

Another thing we should have done sooner!

Just before this school year started, I ordered a calendar wall decal which you can write on with dry erase markers. We hung it up next to the kitchen table, which is not the prettiest of locations, but it's useful. We reordered the days so the calendar starts with Monday - that way we set it up on Sunday evening around dinner, and we can see all the way through the entire weekend what we've got planned.

Now I think we've all come to rely on it. Tod and I still share our calendars via gmail, and that's great for us, but it leaves the kids out of the loop. I've noticed a couple of times when Reed has come in to the kitchen specifically to see what's on tap for the day. Mission accomplished! Everybody does better when they know what to expect, and I think this is a great tool for helping to teach the kids to be responsible about their own schedules.

Our stuffed animal friends

We finally got new carpet upstairs, it was installed about a month ago. As we prepared, we had to clear all the miscellaneous stuff from the kids' bedroom floors. We collected all their stuffed animals in our bathtub, where they remain.

Clearly we've got issues here. And I'm torn. On one hand, their rooms feel so much more spacious without the stuffed animals everywhere. I sort of hate to bring it all back and mess things up when their rooms look so nice and neat - we even wore Reed down about the new bookcase that we bought quite a while ago and he wouldn't let us put in his room (as I said before, he really doesn't like change!). I think, well maybe we can get them to pick their favorite (few? dozen?) and find a place to donate the rest. But then I risk the possibility of at least Reed saying "I don't want them anymore" (there's zero chance Amy would say that of the entire collection). That would signify a kind of growing up that I'm not at all prepared for.

So they stay in the tub for now. Good thing we never use it, it makes a lovely storage space!

Should have done this sooner!

Two years ago we were considering a huge addition to our house. The main reason, and the starting point of this exploration, was to get an additional bathroom upstairs. Oh it got a little control after that (why not extend the garage! let's have a downstairs office! let's move the laundry upstairs! let's move the existing kids bathroom! let's extend Reed's closet into Tod's existing closet which would have connected to what will later be Amy's bedroom! - cha-ching cha-ching cha-ching!) and we ultimately decided against it. Lately we've even toyed with the idea of moving so that we can upgrade (that idea is currently on hold until spring 2016). It was frustrating to not be able to access our own bathroom, or to always have to remind Amy to pick her stuff up from our bathroom, or not drip water all over the bathroom floor, etc.

The kids' bathroom was originally painted not long after we moved in in late December 2004. We went with a fish theme and it was very cute! But nearly ten years have been hard on the room and we found the border was beginning to fall down, so we needed a new paint job.

Well I couldn't find a good one of the kids' bathroom, but this
does the trick - fishy shower curtain, toothbrush holder and towel.
Plus adorable two year old brushing her teeth.

I have to mention that when we were talking about a remodel, Reed was 110% against ANY changes to his bedroom. He didn't want a bigger room, he didn't want his own bathroom (okay he essentially had one already since Amy wouldn't use their bathroom), he didn't want a single thing to change. He stuck to that throughout the process and was relieved when we decided against the whole project.

So we found ourselves needing to choose paint for the kids' bathroom. I took the kids to Home Depot to look at paint samples and Reed chose a handful of colors, and Amy chose to focus instead on looking for colors to paint her bedroom. In the end, Reed's recommendation for color choices were lime green and purple. He chose those because they are opposites on the color wheel and he thought they'd look good together. While it wasn't our first choice of colors, since it was so unusual for Reed to express any kind of interest in something like this, we figured, well why not...it's only paint! The kids chose a new shower curtain together and I bought new hand towels and a new rug. Tod got to work painting.

Wow did the lime green turn out bright! I mean BRIGHT!

But the amazing upside to this day-glo bathroom situation is that it caused Amy to give using their bathroom another try. She was reluctant at first but now it's kind of second nature, she doesn't seem to give it a thought. She's even take a bath in there. And miraculously, I was finally able to find a comb that's just like our favorite comb, and so Amy is all set to use that bathroom full-time. I think it's been probably 3 years or more since she stopped using her own bathroom. Of course we still have conflicts from time to time that force Reed to have to use our bathroom (because Amy's already gone to bed and their shower is right next to Amy's room and is so loud). So far, though, no instances of "Reed's hogging the bathroom!" or "Amy's taking too long!" though I'm guessing that probably won't last.

So maybe this house meets our needs after all, and we don't need to make any big moves after all! All it took was a fresh coat of (really bright) paint!

Sidenote...I know my memory is cruddy, but I don't really recall a lot of bathroom conflicts in my house growing up. Jennifer was an earlier riser than me, so she showered first and then finished getting ready for the day in her room, while I showered. I wish I could ask my Mom if there was a lot of drama...but instead I'll just go on thinking we got along delightfully. :)

"You look like a couple of sisters walking down the street!"

That was the comment from Amy's PE teacher as we were walking to school this morning. I am pretty sure that's the first time I've heard someone say that, but I'm sure it won't be the last. Hopefully Amy isn't too mortified to think people might mistake us for sisters. :)

Memories....

Back in January 2009, Reed organized his books into a library. Then a couple of weeks later, Aly spent the day with us on a teacher workday. The two of them set up the lending process for Reed's library. Aly was 9 and Reed was 6 at the time.

Here are the rules and fees, which Aly wrote up...

And here is my own personal library card, with hole punches for the books that I checked out.

So delightful to come across that sheet, which was hung on Reed's door! I had my library card safely stored in my nightstand, for whenever I wanted to do some good reading.