Into the Great Wide Open...

Well, I did it - I managed a trip solo with Lexi. We just got in last night from a five day, four night jaunt to visit my brother John and his girlfriend Stephanie in Bonneyville, which is about 2 and a half hours outside of Edmonton. The weather was much better than expected (it only snowed the morning we landed) and we had a wonderful and relaxing time. I could have done without the plane trip, and it is a challenge to keep an extremely active toddler on your lap for an hour and a half (TWICE) while not being able to explain to them that the seatbelt sign is on and the flight attendants will give me the hairy eyeball if she doesn't sit still.

We found lots of things to entertain us, including a box of Legos that we all played with in the 80s. Uncle John showed Lexi how to build a house.
Aunt Steffie took good care of Lexi while Mommy got to enjoy a local past time - quadding!


Uncle John even let me drive home!


I got my first taste of Guitar Hero and Rock Band, and now we HAVE to buy a Wii so I can play. Lexi enjoyed the concept as well!



Lexi picked up a keen sense of fashion from her Uncle. Sup homes.


We were sad to leave and we send out a big thanks to John and Steph for all their hospitality. While we were away Doug painted Lexi's room and it looks AMAZING, but I want to wait until the border and new blinds are up to take and post pics, so stay tuned. Here are a couple of quick vids of us enjoying our vacation:

All in a Day's Work - Project Lexi's Room 1.1

You know it's going to be a good day when you hear "BEEP BEEP BEEP" (the sound of a large furniture truck backing up your driveway) at 8:20am. Lexi's furniture arrived today! The low box boxspring we ordered isn't in yet, so unfortunately she won't be able to sleep on her new bed tonight - the toddler bed rails won't fit on the bed unless the boxspring is also in place as they go sandwiched between the mattress and boxspring.

Everything looks great so far. I whipped out the cordless drill and put the bed together myself this morning (yeah, I'm bragging just a bit - it was hard work!) and we are leaving the mirror off the dresser until after the paint job is finished. I also took the wooden trim and wallpaper border off the walls today (part of the wood was stuck on with glue - we are finding out the previous owners liked to have things look nice on the surface, while everything is held together with duct tape, string and paper clips!)

So no, it's not the 'after' shot quite yet. Consider it the midway point.

Project Lexi's Room 1.0

It's the sound no parent likes to hear - that 'thunk' followed by crying. We knew the day would come when Lexi could climb out of her crib. We had to lower her crib mattress freakishly early because she could pull up, but I had expected she would at least be able to stay contained until age 2.

I was wrong.

A couple of weeks ago, Doug watched Lexi climb out of her crib before naptime. We hoped it was a one-off accident, but nope. That night after I put Lexi to bed, I heard the dreaded THUNK and not a minute later, Lexi walked down the hall. CRAP.

Knowing Lexi, we could not risk leaving her in the crib any longer (not even in a carpeted bedroom). Trust me, I thought about it. She's a bad enough sleeper as it is without having to throw this early transition into the mix. But we have to put our big girl panties on and deal with it (OK, maybe just I'll do that part).

We had been considering what color scheme and theme to do Lexi's room in for a few weeks as it's the first one we had been planning on tackling here. Before us, her room was inhabited by a girl of about 10 named Alexis (this I know because she had written in her name in crayon all over the built in wooden desk in her closet. Most of it came off after 2 hours of scrubbing with Magic Eraser). The decor was already girlie, but we wanted to make it our own. We pulled several ugly floating shelves off the wall which left huge holes, and since we don't want purple paint anyways, we needed new colors.

We decided on a mod ladybug theme and ordered this lamp, wallpaper border and wall decals. For paint, we'll either go green/pink with blue and chocolate brown accents, or two tones of green with pink and chocolate brown accents.

Furniture shopping with a toddler is... interesting... but yesterday we managed to buy Lexi a bedroom set. We wanted something that would grow with her (I was still sleeping in my childhood twin bed at age 20), and although I was not convinced initially, we chose an off white set. We got a full sized bed for her as we've got the room, along with the double dresser and mirror and the nightstand. And don't worry, we didn't pay that advertised price. As we learned EVERYTHING is negotiable when buying furniture. It'll be delivered next week.

So the current state of Lexi's room is atrocious - she is sleeping (not well I might add) on her crib mattress on the floor, and has basically given up her naps. We have patched most of the holes in the wall, and in a rather lame attempt to get her to sleep longer, we put cardboard up in two of her windows. The windows in this house are the most bizarre and irregular sizes (I guess it's a west coast contemporary thing), so we will have to custom order horizontal blinds for the 4 windows. Doug will try to paint her room while Lexi and I go to Alberta later this month to visit John and Stephanie. I have a feeling that there will be a lot of watching Home and Garden Television around here in the next few months. Here's the before, and I hope it won't take months before we are able to get the after shots up...

Go Nucks!

Ahhhhhhhhhh. That's me breathing a big ol' sigh of relief. Report cards are done as of today, and the craziness of the Olympics seems to be dying down (in other words, the students are slowly coming down from the permanent sugar high state they have been in the past three weeks).

The TV was on constantly in this house the last couple of weeks, and we enjoyed watching some great moments like John Montgomery's win on bobsleigh and Crosby's overtime nail biter on Sunday. I was particularly impressed with the women's performance at these games, and I've said "Canadian Girls Kick Ass" more than once the last week or so (in fact, my old Chevy used to sport a bumper sticker that said as much).

Lexi has become a good sport spectator, learning to cheer "Go Nucks" whenever she sees hockey on TV (this just happened to generalize to any sport played on ice during the course of the Olympics, and was also quite cute during the hours of curling that were on). She is repeating EVERYTHING we say these days, so I have to watch my mouth. I just could not help teaching her a few choice phrases that seemed fitting at the time.

And yes, I managed to score Lexi and I both an official Bay Olympic Canada T-shirt last week at Zellers in Coquitlam (no 3 hour line up necessary!)




Yes, I'm probably going to hell in a handbasket for teaching my daughter such naughty words. But it's so damn cute!