on breaking out of nap time jail

Even though Joshua is too young to really play with another child, we go on a lot of "play dates". I'm sure many other moms agree - they are how I keep my sanity most days. I can have a conversation with another adult (albeit interrupted), I'm forced to put on non-pajamas and get out of the house, Joshua gets some interaction with people that aren't me (my extroverted little baby gets bored with just me all day), and being outside helps avoid the "I live in a beautiful climate but I prefer my air-conditioned little house" guilt.

It is so easy to get locked into what I like to call "nap time jail". Don't get me wrong - I LOVE nap time. It is another way I keep my sanity most days... even just the measly two and a half hours (total!) each day where Joshua is safe, in another room, and not demanding every ounce of my attention (and patience) can be sanity-saving. Nap time is when I can re-charge: I can take a shower, spend some time in the Word, catch up on email, take care of the dishes that are mocking me every time I walk past the kitchen, or (on particularly stressful days) take a nap myself. Thank you, Lord, for nap time.

But it is so easy to feel trapped in my house because I need to so carefully protect that time. It happens like this: I don't even try to run errands before his morning nap, so it's already after 10:30am. I need to run to the grocery store, but don't want to go right before lunch with a hungry/cranky baby. But I don't want to go between lunch and nap time with a tired/cranky baby. So I wait until the afternoon. Then I have to squeeze the errand in between nursing, end-of-school-day traffic, and dinner-making (since an early bedtime for baby makes for a pretty early dinner-time for the family)... making sure to pack a diaper bag, snacks and water for Joshua (snacks are the key to an almost-tantrum-free grocery store experience), making sure both of us have outside-world appropriate clothes on, and trying to wrangle a wiggly toddler into a carseat... A lot of times it's just easier to stay home. 

But the days that I do venture out and meet with a friend... are so worth it.

Watching Joshua (kind of) interact with another baby... relating to another human being about things that seem trivial but are actually pretty significant in my daily life (cloth diaper laundry detergent)... even just not-talking because we're chasing around our kids with another person is refreshing.

Remembering that while these at-home-with-young-kids days may feel messy, and mundane, and sometimes maddening... God doesn't require me to do it alone! Not only does He provide the wisdom, strength, and patience I need each day, He has placed me in community with other women who can relate to the struggles, joys, and exhaustion of this season.

Thank you, Lord, for play dates.

*All photos in this post were taken by the wonderfully talented, Nicole Eastman. Thanks, Nicole, for letting me share them!*

a few of joshua's new tricks

Just a quick post with two videos of Joshua...

Here he is being hilarious, wearing sunglasses and learning to give a "high five".

And here he is showing off his crawling-up-the-stairs skills. While you watch, I'll be buying every baby gate I can find on island.

P.S. The video cuts off at the end but rest assured, he didn't fall. :)

photo tour: joshua's room

One of my main priorities (which, admittedly, doesn't get much attention since the higher priorities include caring for an almost-toddler and trying to keep him from destroying the house) is working on making this house feel more like our home. Since many (all?) of the rentals in Cayman come fully furnished - even down to the linens, dishes, and artwork on the walls - it can easily feel like we're just borrowing someone else's home. And it's almost impossible to feel really settled in a place where your home doesn't feel like yours, you know?

I mean, even simple things like blenders. Maybe you got married a few years ago and got to create a wedding registry (woo!), so you picked out the exact blender you wanted. Maybe you even got into a fight with your fiance about it in the small appliances section of Bed, Bath, & Beyond. Maybe. You spent three wonderful years with your wonderful blender... just to pack it into a storage unit and move away. And now you're using someone else's blender - that they picked out for their rental home, so, you know, it's probably not their favorite blender. Ugh. Anyway, this post isn't about blenders.

So, in an effort to make this place home-y (not homely), I've been slowly working my way around the house and making it feel more like ours. There are lots of things I can't change about this place that I wish I could (for example: the color of our kitchen cabinets, the couch that sheds leather flakes (I didn't even know that was a thing!), and the weird bumpy carpet) but by making little changes, this place is starting to feel like our home. I've been moving around furniture, taking artwork off the walls, putting up (the very few) pictures and artwork we brought from Kenosha, etc.

The first room that has really come together is Joshua's room. I think it's probably because I had fewer options in there since it was already furnished with two twin beds and two dressers.

Here's a "before" picture from the day we moved in, standing in the doorway. (The other dresser is out of view here. You can see on the right side of the picture that the there's a "nook" in the wall. The wall does the same thing on the other side, and the dresser is in the nook to the left of the frame).

And here's an "after" shot of the same view... Joshua's playing in the crib since it was the only way I could keep him from crawling directly to his doom the stairs (we really need to figure out a baby gate for up here).

We shipped Joshua's crib from the US, so we had to make room for it. We ended up bunking the two twin beds against the wall next to the doorway and moving one of the dressers (it's currently in the upstairs hall closet, but we have plans to move it to the guest room).

Joshua loves throwing Hootie out of the crib and then peering over the side at him. This is often the exact position we find him (and Hootie) in when we go to get him in the morning or from a nap.

I stumbled across this map online while I was pregnant and LOVED it. I gushed about it on Facebook, and it showed up on our doorstep from some thoughtful friends a few weeks later!

Seriously, isn't it adorable??

I think the biggest obstacle in this room was figuring out a way to hang light-blocking curtains above the half-moon window. Since the ceiling slants toward the top (wait, is it called a vaulted ceiling? I don't know...) we couldn't hang the curtains to be both wide enough and tall enough. And we couldn't drill anything into the wall to hang the curtain rods. Ugh. So we ended up getting some of those huge 3M On-Command hooks that stick on the wall with adhesive, and you can see that the curtain hangs just barely below the top of the half-moon window. Good enough!

Here's a shot of wall opposite the crib.

The shelf was already on the wall, so that made this part a lot easier. I hung a banner from our Going Away/Joshua's Birthday party in Kenosha before we moved, and framed some "artwork" (I feel like a fraud calling it that) I made on the computer.

The print on the right is of Psalm 1:1-2, which was our "dedication verse" for Joshua. The one on the left has his "stats" from birth.

Overall, I'm pretty pleased with the way his room is turning out. It's all about working with what we've got here, so even though there are some ugly bunk beds on the other wall that we don't even use, there are little pieces of "us" in here, too. Things that not only are more our style, but also remind us of friends and family in the US. 

Annnnd, I'll leave you with a glamor shot of his crib. Because I just love, love, love his crib and I'm so glad we brought it. It almost makes up for the blender... almost.