Playhouse

So, I've wanted to build a playhouse since Paige was very very little.  I always wanted one when I was little, and I knew it would be a good way to get them outside more.  

We were renting for the first couple of years after Paige was born, but once we bought our own house I have no idea why we never got around to it.  I guess it's just such a big project I always thought of it as a "someday" kind of thing.  Suddenly I realized Paige is SEVEN YEARS OLD and only has a few more years of even wanting to play with a playhouse.  :(  So I talked Jess into it, and he was easy to convince, so I started planning.  I already knew a few things I was definitely going to have, like a fireplace.  I searched online a lot, to get ideas before I started making specific plans.  I found a few cute things I hadn't thought of.

We had removed the fig tree, and it left a nice space the right size for a playhouse.  I drew up some plans, ran them by Jess, and he started buying wood.  The kids knew we were going to be building one this spring sometime, but we wanted to actually do it earlier and surprise them.  Jess came home from work each day, changed clothes, and did a little bit of work outside before it got too dark.  He spent a couple of days making the deck/floor, and then a couple more days framing walls.  

Saturday rolled around, and we'd made plans with my dad and Trudi to take the kids after Paige's basketball game in the morning.  They would keep them all day, and overnight for a sleepover.  Our plan was to work on the house the whole time, without the kids knowing.  I, being insane, really truly believed we could finish the house with all that time, and present it to the kids the next morning.  Jess told me later he always knew that was NOT happening, but didn't want to burst my bubble, so he just went with it and did as much as possible.

Of course in my imagined day and a half of work, we were both out there working, with Reed happily watching from his swing or the stroller.  Ha!  In reality, Jess did 99.9% of the work, while I held/fed/played with Reed and watched, mostly from the porch swing.

 

Jess got the "siding" up on the back wall first, since it would be backed up against the block wall and impossible to do once it was up.

Grama came and held Reed for a while for me though, and Tyra came by and helped Jess get the walls up.

Instead of finishing the entire thing, at the end of the day we had the walls up, and some of the roof finished.   My plans were pretty detailed for all of it except the roof.  We had found instructions online, which we planned to use, but when the time came, we decided we didn't want to use them, because the guy was building a much smaller playhouse, and doing it his way wouldn't have made it as secure as we wanted for our bigger roof.  So we had to come up with something new.  Thankfully Karl and Barby came by to see how it was going, and ended up spending a good chunk of their Saturday AND Sunday morning helping get a roof built and up.

I liked Karl's use of two ladders here:

I even got to help(a LITTLE) thanks to Grammy.

Eventually I had to accept that we were going to be surprising the kids with four framed walls and a roof, instead of the finished product. 

 So, I told dad he could bring them home any time.  Apparently it was enough of a surprise to please them.

We spent the rest of Sunday out back, Jess still working, me still watching with Reed, and the kids playing.

Neely thought we needed drinks out there.

Over the next few weeks, we spent every free minute out there.  I had Jess get my fireplace started, so I could work on it whenever I had a few free minutes.  The kids had a suprising amount of fun in that thing while it was still far from finished.

The siding went up a little at a time.

We had to wait for the windows to ship before we could finish the walls.  We thought about making windows, but ended up finding really cute ones online for less than it would have cost for us to make inferior ones.  Ha.

Plus, they really open and have screens and everything.

Once they came, things started moving much more quickly.

I'm just including this next one for the pretty sunset.

 Jess did an awesome job, his first time working with shingles.

 

 

The kids had a lot of fun with the scrap wood and other junk we had laying around.

FINALLY we got to the point that I could start painting.  It turned out to be a good thing that we didn't suprise the kids with a finished playhouse-they got to help us with it a little bit, and feel like a part of it.

 

I had to fight the urge to be controlling about painting though.

We just used scrap wood for the fireplace, but I found a little package of fancy trim at Home Depot, that made it look pretty cute.

I managed to paint with Reed in my lap a little bit, and some of the time Paige helped me out.

 

Jess finally got to do the relaxing for a few days there.

It didn't last long though, pretty soon the inside of that thing started feeling like it would never end and I needed a break.  (That would be the sky light up there.  Tyra thought of that one, and I loved the idea.  Jess didn't love it as much.  We kept coming up with ideas for him to make happen.)

I had a few fun nights, painting the interior walls and fireplace, with my twinkle lights on, and Pandora set to Otis Redding.  :)

Finally we were doing the fun stuff, decorating and all that.  The kids say my fireplace really makes them feel warm.  :)

Jess made a door, complete with the sliding peephole I had ordered.  :)

That part was a hit.

We tried to make it a nice height, but Neely has to be held up to look through it for now.

 We painted, and repainted, the outside, added "shutters"..

...and will hopefully add window boxes for flowers soon too.

As soon as I decided it would have a fireplace, I knew it needed something above it, and after lots of thought I decided on a unicorn.  I spent one night on that little project.  Thankfully I got it on the first try.  A lot of times, when I first make a new pattern, it takes me 2 or 3 tries to get it right.

 

 

Then we moved out their kitchen, and their picnic table from Aunt TT...

 They had their first lunch out there this last weekend.

 We moved out more decorations and their baby cradle, and little fake pet bird.  :)

I've never loved the pattern on my lace curtains in our living room, so I chopped them up to make some for the playhouse.

 I even found some inexpensive twinkle lights that are battery operated, so they can have a little light in there in the evening.

 

Now we just have a few little paint touchups, some plans for little things to add, but it's mostly finished, and they seem to love it.  I know I love how it turned out, and I love my husband for making it happen just how I imagined it.  He's pretty awesome, and it was a lot of work, and I'm not the most patient person about waiting when I'm excited about something. 

I'm pretty sure the kids love it.  I'm a leeeeetle bit jealous to be honest.  We'll be camping out in there this summer for sure.

Now we just need to get some grass out there, so our yard is no longer a wasteland and we can actually have friends over for the kids to play.

5 Month Old Reed

I've always been determined to keep up with ALL the kids' baby books and pictures, and not do the thing where only the first born has a complete book and very many pictures.  So I'm the crazy mom who has the doctor's office weigh our baby every month, even when we don't have an appointment.  Jess is good to me and takes half his lunch break and takes Reed in for me each month to check his weight.  

He is now 5 months old, and 27.25 inches long and 18 lbs 8 ounces, which puts him at 95th percentile for height, and 90th for weight.  That means he has more than caught up with his siblings, when they were his age.  Last month at his 4 month checkup, according to the nurse who weighed him, he hadn't even gained a pound and had dropped quite a bit on the chart, percentile-wise.  That happens, I know, but when they told me his weight I remember being surprised.  Reed looked bigger and had been a big eater all month, so now I'm convinced they messed up his weight that day.  He's heavier than the girls were at his age, and just a half pound lighter than Cason was.  He's built more like Cason too.  Kind of sturdy with a little pudge on him, not as squishy fat as the girls were.  :)

 

He's over the rasperry blowing, I haven't seen him do it much at all in the last couple of weeks. 

His favorite tricks this month are screaming for fun, and rolling from back to belly.  He has figured out it gets everyone's attention when he screams, and his sisters and brother think it's hilarious, (plus he likes the sound of his voice I think) so he just screams as loudly and as high-pitched as possible, and smiles proudly when everyone looks over.  Sometimes he'll even laugh.  

He'd been thinking about rolling from back to belly for a while, but hadn't quite done it.  On February 17th, Jess was gone for his basketball game, and I put Reed down on his quilt for tummy time while I gave Neely a bath.  I had him where I could see him from where I was with Neely.  The entire time she was in the bath, and for quite a while after, he struggled to roll. 

After Neely was out and in her pajamas, Paige and I went in to cheer him on, and eventually Cason and Neely joined us.  For FORTY minutes he tried, only stopping for a minute to rest here and there.  I have seriously never seen anyone work so hard at something.  He was breathing hard and practically sweating.  It was crazy, and kind of painful to watch, but made me so proud too.  He only got pretty frustrated once, and I grabbed his hand and gently pulled to help him finish rolling, just to boost his confidence a bit.  :)  Then he rolled back to his back, and started trying again!  He kept getting so close, and the kids were cheering and feeling bad for him.  Ha.  Jess got home from his game and joined us, and almost immediately Reed rolled all the way on his own!  We were all SO happy, and relieved not to watch him struggle anymore.  We cheered, which startled him pretty badly and almost made him cry.  He realized we all looked happy, and he recovered.  :)

 

He's a big fan of the bath these days, and sometimes doesn't even mind the lotion afterwards.

 He's been in his swing a few times, and likes it for a short while, but then he's over it.  It's not the most comfortable looking thing though, so I don't blame him.  I'll have to make some kind of padding for it I think.

 He loves his toys, and gets all excited about them.  

They get him really frustrated sometimes though.  He obviously wants them to do something that they won't seem to do.

 

Unrelated, but here he is looking handsome on Valentine's Day.

 

Still very much loves his siblings.

 

 

 He's a very sweet boy.

Still thinks he's too big to be held facing you, but if he's sleepy enough I can get him to cuddle more.  That or he'll still want to be on my hip, and will just kind of hang there limply, like so:

 

Haha!

Like all of our kids, he's got a few nicknames that gradually evolve.  Especially the ones Jess gives.  Cason was often called "mister" or "the mister", so Jess would catch himself calling Reed that and decided to change it to "meister" so he had his own thing.  That eventually became "smeister", and then just "smeist".  Ha.  

The kids call him Reeder and Mr. Fantastic (They found out that Mr Fantastic's name is Reed), and Neely calls him "Reedaz". 

A Paige Post

Since Reed is changing fastest, most of my posts end up being around him.  Lately I've been thinking how I need to do a post about each of them, to make sure I get down the things I want to remember of them at their current ages.  So I'll start here with Paige.  

She has always been such a good reader, but didn't really ENJOY reading all that much.  I read constantly when I was little, and I still love to when I can.  So it made me sad to think she didn't love it, especially when it came so naturally to her.  Then Harry Potter came along and she realized how great it can be.  Now she reads all the time.  I LOVE it.

 A couple of weeks ago she was sick and missed a couple of days of school.  

One of those sick days, she was on the couch all day long, and we didn't want her watching tv the whole time.  So Jess found her a new book.  She read all 372 pages that day, in basically one sitting.  Just took breaks for a drink or to use the bathroom.

She's an interesting girl.  She is smart and adventurous and crafty and imaginative.  One of her favorite things to do is climb our trees.  She'll climb up there and just sit and think.  

We had the fig tree out back, and she could climb that without help, so when she found out we were going to take it out she wasn't happy.  It was the culprit behind our expensive plumbing problem last year, AND it had to be "pruned" all crazy to make room for them to work.  So we planned to take it out and put something fun for the kids in that space.  Paige staged a protest when Jess tried to cut it down.  

Our little tree hugger.  She recovered after it was removed, and spends her time in the bigger trees instead.

 She has her own opinions about what is "girly" and what is "boyish", and gets annoyed when Neely wants to play with superheroes.  Yet she has no problem throwing on a skirt and playing video games.  (Not that I do either, just wondering why that's okay and superheroes aren't)

We were washing couch cushion covers that day, if the picture has you wondering.

She LOVES a game called Rubik's Race, which she got from Grammy a few months ago.  It's basically a 2 dimensional rubik's cube game.  You have one side of the cube in front of each of you, and can slide the colored squares around.  There's a mini version of it that you shake, and then the colored squares randomly settle into position.  Then you slide the colored squares around on your side, trying to match it to the mini version.  For a few weeks, I was the champ at our house.  Then Paige took over.  She beats us all regularly, with ease.  She is so excited to be the reigning champ.  She challenged Grammy one day, who is pretty good at it herself.  They played 10 games, Paige won 7 of those. 

 Another thing she likes to do is set up some kind of business, and set appointments for us to come in.  One of her favorites is a massage parlor.  Today she played that.  We all came in for our massages at Hummingbird Express.

 She's our dramatic child, for sure.  

She can get rather upset with us, very quickly.  The easiest way to calm her down is by making her laugh.  Usually it makes her mad first, but ends up working.

 She and Reed have really bonded lately.  I've asked her to hold him for a second or two for me a few times while I did something, and she felt pretty big, holding him while standing up.

He LOVES her lately.  Any time he can make eye contact with her, he'll give her the hugest smiles, and start kicking and squealing and just gaze at her.  I don't know if it's because she's more of a novelty to him or what.  She has never been the one to be constantly in his face like his other siblings, and lately she is paying a lot of attention to him.  She even lets him pull on her hair.  It will start to hurt so she'll try and escape, and he'll get upset, so she gives her hair right back to him.  Ha.

 

She may be the dramatic one, and cause some fighting around here sometimes, she also makes it a lot of fun around here, by being a big weirdo usually.

 

She tries to act tough, and gets embarrassed to show affection.  If I catch her doing something sweet with her siblings, ESPECIALLY Cason, I get this face:

I woke up one weekend to the sound of her reading Cason his superhero book.  Since she isn't into that stuff, it was obviously just to make him happy.  I came in to sneak a picture, and she knew I knew she was doing it to make him happy, so....immediately embarrassed.

Other times she'll be acting tough, and Cason will do something sweet or cute, and we'll make eye contact and she gives me the funniest smile, and kind of tilt her head and admit that "that was cute".  Haha.