Transformations

I said I was going to post on here when we got our basement wall done, but it took a while for me to decide what I wanted and to order the pictures and stuff. Anyway, here are some before and after pictures (finally). The wall isn't COMPLETELY done, but mostly.
Here are the before pictures. Pretty paint-patching job on that wall, right? (not ours, promise)
Here is when we started painting the 3 brick walls.
Here is when we tried the paint we got on the wall and we were a bit concerned about how bright/dark it was. This is when we called our landlady and asked permission. :)
My hot husband in painting attire. I painted too, I promise!
The "finished" wall as of last night. And Jeremy's chair. He is in love with his chair.
Our couch (that we got from the Cryers) with it's "facelift." (aka accent pillows from Wal-mart)
New tv placement (and the different-colored window covering that I sewed on my sewing machine - it only took me 40 minutes to get it working). Yes, it's still a little messy, but that's what you get with a basement family room and two small children. We're planning on moving those boxes to the store room, scooting the toy-cabinet over and either leaving that space blank or getting a lamp for that corner...

Some Days are Better Than Others

Often Jaina wakes up happy and excited to face the day. Today wasn't one of those days. She woke up a little earlier than usual, and it was downhill from there.

Just not DOING mornings today. Not her thing.

Apparently afternoons weren't her thing today either.

She fell asleep on the way home from Wal-mart at about 12:30 (she normally doesn't go down till after 1) and slept for like 3 hours. It didn't seem to do much good though, because she cried, whined, and was generally a grump all afternoon (as she had been much of the morning). She spent most of her day asking for things (very specific, not-whatever-I-was-offering things) to eat and then fussing as she ate them, presumably because they hurt her mouth.
I will be so happy when those top two incisors come in. We're hoping for a break before her two year molars (which Reilly is just FINALLY cutting after working on them for months). She is not a happy teether. Though I guess I shouldn't complain too much, because at least she's still been sleeping through the night this time around. I can mostly handle the daytime grumpiness, as long as everyone's sleeping all night!
Here's a rare happy moment today (overshadowed only by the happiness expressed when I got the yogurt out at dinner time) when we finally let the poor thing play outside. In an empty swimming pool. With un-inflated toys. Mean parents, hmm? :)

Happy Birthday Jeremy!

Yesterday my wonderful husband turne 26. Finally. I never like the 3 weeks where I am 2 years older than him instead of just 1. :) No, seriously I was really excited for his birthday this year, because he always does really nice things for me, and his birthday has been upstaged several times in the last few years, or at least a little lame, because his pregnant wife could hardly remember where she kept her socks, much less plan anything in advance for a birthday. And he is REALLY good at guessing secrets, so presents - even good ones - are never that cool, it seems. But this year was better, and I think he had a good birthday. :)
I had to start it Friday night, because he was going night golfing for the first time this trimester with some friends, and since one of his gifts was some night-golf balls and a bunch of glowsticks, I had to let him open them early. :) Here is a picture I made him pose for before he left, and also some pretty cool golf balls...

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Here is a picture of him Sunday (yesterday) evening at his mostly surprise birthday party (I gave him 15 minutes notice, at least) with his not-a-surprise ice cream cake from Dairy Queen. We picked it up Friday morning and as soon as he walked in the door Friday afternoon/eveing Reilly ran up to him and said "We got your cake, Daddy! We got your birthday cake! We got your cake!" I guess a new level of secret-keeping is now in order...

Jaina (and all the kids) thoroughly enjoyed the ice cream cake. She had her little tongue out trying to carefully lick her plate when it was all gone.
And here she is (with a clean shirt) hanging out with "Uncle" Chad.
Many of the kids occupying the middle of the floor. And making a LOT of noise. We almost had to shout sometimes over them - I think every single kid there (though there were only 6 of them) was joyfully (most of the time) making the loudest noises they could... :)
And Jaina, (and Reilly's hand) after the party having a blast with some balls that we picked up at Toys R Us on our Friday morning outing.

Reilly: PT Boot Camp

Last Tuesday (after weeks of anxiety just thinking about it and reading and preparing) I started potty training Reilly. He will be 3 in 6 weeks, and since we no longer have any kind of excuse about a "70-hours in the car" or "I think he's sick" or "It's Homecoming and we won't be home for days" or "Wait, I need a doll that drinks and wets...not today" or something like that, I finally jumped on in. And almost gave up.

A sweet friend took Jaina for the morning so I could just concentrate on Reilly, and I tried to do the method found in "Toilet Training in Less Than a Day." It definitely set up some good groundwork, but it didn't totally work for us. His favorite part of the whole process was the fast "practice! practice!" running back and forth from the potty to various parts of the house when he had an accident. I don't think it was supposed to be rewarding, but he found it exciting. Sigh. After 4 hours, and the 5th (and almost final) pair of wet underwear, and my son picking a diaper over "big boy pants" I was about ready to throw in the towel. (literally - I went through so many towels, though we stayed in the kitchen during all this)

I called a friend that had recently PTed her little boy, and she gave me a pep talk and a few other options. We tried again, and it went much better with the modifications. We basically just camped out in the kitchen all afternoon (half naked, in his case) and stayed there and in the basement the next day. I took the pressure off both of us (now that we'd had all the instructional time either of us could handle) and it started to go better. Here are some pictures of our "potty boot camp" that afternoon.

And here are two cute pictures of Jaina that day, just doing her thing, probably a little bewildered by the whole camping on the kitchen floor idea.


I began to see the light, and he actually caught on rather quickly, I think. He's been having 1-2 small-ish accidents a day this week (he's wearing training pants, so not a big deal). Friday (the 4th day) we ventured out of the house for 3 hours (and visited two public bathrooms - ew. I've always avoided those when possible up to now) and as of today (just under a week later) he's finally started telling me when he needs to go or just going on his own. So cool! He's really getting the hang of it. I don't think he even had any little accidents today...

Here he is on day 3, allowed to watch his afternoon movie (while Jaina napped) on my bed. Yes, I was feeling fairly brave. :)
He's well on his way to being "a big boy!" Now we just have to tackle the pacifier-for-sleeping issue. That one's going to be sadder, since he was excited about this. I don't thing there will be much excitement there...

What We've Been Up To

Sometimes I don't post because our life is fairly boring and there isn't much to report. Other times I don't post because we're fairly busy, and just can't get around to getting our pictures off the camera.
This time it's that second one.
Last weekend was Palmer's Homecoming, and Jeremy and I were super busy going back and forth (we both attended lots of classes and speakers, switching off with his nametag) and juggling kids. Saturday afternoon I also had the ICAA Homecoming Tea Party. It was a lot of work for the board (I'm on it, though I didn't do a whole lot of the work) but it went really well and it was a lot of fun. We had several neat speakers and Robyn (this year's ICAA president) presented a new award that our club created this year: The Female Chiropractic Achievement Award." Like I said, lots of fun. :)
Reilly and Jaina did as well as could be expected with all that was going on, but I'm sure they were glad for that weekend (really about 4 days) to get over and get back to our "normal" routine! :)

Several posts to follow in the next day or two!
Potty training, birthdays, and teething, oh my!

Summer Activities (and several posts)

At the last minute (mid-Friday-afternoon) we decided to go down to Nauvoo and catch the last performance of the Nauvoo Pageant this summer. It was actually a really nice trip! The weather was beautiful, and the kids enjoyed all the festivities going on beforehand. We did a handcart ride with them (Jeremy wouldn't pull me AND them...sigh) and Jaina absolutely loved watching the dancing. The kids did great for the pageant, too. Jeremy mostly kept them back on a blanket, and let me sit up with some other friends so I could actually pay attention. (I hadn't ever seen it) They both more or less watched it and hung in there, though we didn't pull out of Nauvoo until 10:30, and Jaina's been going to bed at 7:30 lately... :) Reilly was out within about a minute and a half, but Jaina hung in there until she finally fell asleep just before Burlington, IA. (about 20 minutes). I'm glad we got to go! We took quite a bit of video, but didn't get many "click" pictures. Here are a few though - Jaina watching the dancing, and both kids during the actual pageant.

Yesterday we got invited to go to the Scott County Park swimming pool, and we had a lot of fun. It was a little crazy for me to have two non-swimmers to keep a hold of, and I got a little sunburned, but otherwise pretty fun. It's not too much for admission, and they have these two really cool slides (which I will try sometime soon),

two diving boards, (which I will probably not try soon), a fun splash zone, and really big, nice baby pool. Reilly had an absolute blast (after I finally got him into the water) and Jaina had fun until she slipped down and got wetter than she wanted. Between that and NOT taking a nap beforehand, she mostly just wanted on my lap in the baby pool, or to be held in the splash zone. We might go again soon, and maybe she'll do a little better the next time. :)

(there are some videos of Reilly in the splash zone on http://littlekerriganvideos.blogspot.com)

Sara's Getting Old

So, I turned 27 last week. Still not sure how I feel about that. I'm still wondering why I can't just stay 25 for about 7 years and then skip to being 30 for a while. :) My birthday was really nice. Jeremy skipped a few classes to spend more time with me that day. He even found a super nice friend to watch the kids so we could go out to eat. We ate at TGI Friday's and it was really good.

For my birthday I decided I wanted to paint the basement. We've been meaning to do this since we moved in 8 months ago, and just now got around to it. It was pretty crazy trying to get all the stuff we needed, and a little crazier while we waited to see if our landlady was okay with us painting one wall an accent color (not necessarily a light accent, either) with the paint we had already bought. It turned out nicely though, I think, and someday soon you can see the "after" pictures. Here is a "before" picture, showcasing the one non-brick wall and all it's cute paint patches that don't match...

Last, but most definitely not least, here is what Jeremy got me for my birthday. Because he's really cool like that and somehow can surprise me really well, though I'm absolutely worthless at surprising him.

Yes, I'm loving it!

Growing so big!

We can't believe how much our munchkins have grown up in the last several months. Jaina is saying all sorts of words, and is all over the place, and is even learning to hold our hand while walking outside... She is so full of it at times, and really has a "my way or the highway" attitude going on. Not sure what we're going to do with her, but she's sure cute! She has grown taller, it seems, and she's gone up 1 1/2 shoe sizes since May. She'll be 20 months old this next week.
Reilly is really moving from a toddler to a little boy. Well, except for the tantrums. Those are definitely still in the "toddler" realm... He is so interested in everything and will talk your ear off asking you about things, telling you about things, and making sure you know just what he wants. He's pretty good at coming up with all kinds of fun options when offered a snack, or somewhere to go. Here he is with his backpack that he recently decided to be interested in.
He is also SUPER into coloring, and we're going to have to buy new coloring books soon at the rate he's going through them. He loves to sit and color for 30-40 minutes sometimes. He has recently been getting in trouble for coloring in story books, especially the one from the library yesterday. Jaina has been getting in trouble for coloring on her doll's head multiple times...
Here are several pictures of Jaina just showing off her cute little face.
She looks so old in this one!