bye-bye crib

The crib is gone, I can hardly believe it! And this time we didn't pack it away in the basement, this time it's out of the house. Here's the before (the grainy photo is due to this being a still from video)...

And after in the garage...

Leah doesn't mind at all. She's actually been in the bed for a little while, she had been waking up in the middle of the night a lot, and so I would lay down on the bed with her until she fell back asleep. Once I realized I was basically staying in the bed to be a bedrail, I put the bedrails on her bed! The queen sized bed has been in her room all along, this used to be our spare room so we just moved the computer out, and put the crib up, voila baby room. Leah is doing really well in her big girl bed! And it's so funny that she's the younest of 3 kids, but has the biggest room and biggest bed. Part of why I didn't repaint her room and do it all up as a nursery was because the colour was nice and actually matched our crib bedding, and part because I assumed once she was 2 and moved into a bed we would be doing some room switching. My 2 big kids are in their own rooms which are quite small, room for a twin bed, dresser and small desk. But neither of them want the big room with the queen sized bed! So Leah stays in her room. I'll be doing some painting and decorating to make it more toddler friendly, right now it just looks like a regular room. Can't wait to make it all cute for her!!

10 years

10 years ago my hubby and I were out for dinner. Back in those days we went out a lot to restaurants (and movies!). I have a clear memory of sitting in a restaurant near our apartment and talking about starting a family. We had been married about a year at this point, and I was nervous to bring up the topic because our general discussions before getting married had consisted of "we'll wait two or three years" to start a family. But I admit I was feeling the urge to have a baby. So I cautiously brought up the topic, wondering what my hubby would say, and his response was "I'm ready whenever you are".

Now 10 years later we have been blessed with 3 amazing children. My littlest baby has just turned 2 years old. TWO! I can hardly believe it. To me this is a big milestone for our family. When my son was two, we were already thinking about baby #2. When my daughter was two, we were in the midst of our 2/3 debate (should we, shouldn't we try for another). As you can guess by the number of children I've mentioned, we did decide 3 was our number and went for it. What I'm trying to say is when each of my older children were 2 years old, I was already getting back into baby mode...planning, thinking, reading. Putting things away hoping it was only for a little while.

The past 10 years have been about being pregnant, preparing for a new baby to join our family, nursing a newborn and moving from baby stage to toddler stage times 3! Now to have a newly turned 2 year old without thoughts of another is definately something new for me. I love the spacing between my kids, part of the reason being I've been blessed to enjoy this babyhood journey for 10 years.

Now with my youngest fully into toddler/preschool mode I find myself getting very excited about the next 10 years...day trips and family vacations without hauling an entire nursery along with me in a diaper bag, not having to work around somebody's naptime, gradually reducing the amount of baby stuff in our house (oh, there's so much) and just enjoying the next phase of our lives with 3 big kids.

Here's hoping the next 10 years are as fun and adventurous as the last 10 have been!!

Why a blog?

I'm starting this blog for myself, as a reference for when I am eventually scrapbooking this time in our lives. While I like call myself a scrapbooker, it really is a misnomer at this point as I haven't actually scrapbooked in quite a while. I'm soooo far behind it's ridiculous and I'm worried I'll forget all the fun little stories which I like to include in my scrapbooks. I have all the supplies, the scrapbooks, the pictures are taken (however, not printed for the most part), I just haven't had the time to get it all done. And I will, I know I will. But in the meantime I figured I could start a little blog for myself. I will use it to chronicle our family adventures, to type out things as they happen and are fresh in my mind.

But I could just do that in a file on my laptop, right? In fact that is exactly what I did when my second child was born, I have a file which contains all the info from her birth until she is about 2 years old. So why a blog? Okay, I will admit it...I've wanted to start a blog for a little while now. My first introduction to blogs was the blog of a friend of mine who now lives too far away and has the 2 most adorable little boys on the planet, I started following her blog regularly, amazed I was able to know what is going on in their lives. From that blog I started looking at other blogs, and so on, and so on. Now I have a handful I like to follow regularly. It seems like a fun way for me to keep track of our adventures.

And so that is why I am starting a blog.