Time for a Change

Not just from the food post but also time for a change at home.

One of our many home improvement agenda items has been painting the family room & kitchen.  This weekend we tackled the family room and chose "Sharkey Gray" to go up on our walls.  We're still determining the kitchen color, and painting the kitchen will obviously require a bit more work: lots of weird angles, tall ceilings, and the obvious appliances with which to hassle.

It's not a drastic color choice, but hopefully something that will enhance the feel & vibe of the family room more so than the vintage white that was up there before.  It's such a vast space, it needs a little coziness to encapsulate it.

Mia--as she does in many things--wanted to help out, so she stood on the bottom rung of the ladder for a long time.
We'll pretend she didn't accidentally wipe her booty across the top of the wet paint can...

We were able to do all the painting on Saturday and then we finished up on Sunday by painting an accent color on the interesting woodwork we have popping out one wall of the family room.  Unfortunately, we sorta botched the color choice so that will need to be repainted at some point.  Too bad we really thought we had that figured out!

In other efforts to keep Mia distracted while we painted, we once again relied on our good friends at Sesame Street.  "What's the word on the street?"  Mia has definitely learned her numbers and the alphabet more thanks to Sesame Street, so there must be some learning going on there!



In the meantime, our current challenge with Mia is mostly behavioral.  She won't be two for yet another month but many a mom friend can relate to me here: the terrible twos have already arrived.  I received a call while we were walking through Target this morning and since I was holding the phone, and apparently Mia desperately wanted the phone at that moment (no doubt to watch Elmo), she began hitting me in the face and screaming.  Um, not the desired behavior while in public.  I put her in timeout at the end of an aisle and tried to discuss good and bad choices (© J.H.).  There is talk of a parenting class in the works at our church and it seems there's no time like the present ... we eagerly want answers and direction in raising our little one.  She has a fun, gregarious personality, but like someone else in her family (hmmm...who could that be?), she has a strong will and is quite independent.  Some have called her "secure," which I am happy to hear about her, but it gives both me & Greg a physical & mental workout at times!

Ain't that the way it goes, though?

Speaking of workouts...we have a 5k this weekend.  Here's hoping that these little workouts + some runs with the jogging stroller will be enough to see us through!