What I Did This Weekend

We'd been having our houseguests sleep in our partially finished basement the last couple months (g'parent Wisc. asked to sleep in the basement once a while ago and it had continued for them) but G'ma Ohio finally put a stop to it. She vowed not to stay with us again until the guest room was returned to the upper level of the house. Then we scheduled a visit from them for the first weekend in Nov. (mind you, they are in the habit of visiting monthly).









For the last two weeks, we've been working to prepare ourselves (taking measurements, talking it up to Eddie) and the house for the transition which would involve: cleaning out the basement (including divesting ourselves of some old metal kitchen cabinets--only thing really done in advance), moving our office to the basement, moving Eddie's bedroom to our old office, and (are you breathless?), moving the rest of the guest room contents from Josie's room (the original guest room) to Eddie's old room (the 'new' guest room). In short, a massive rubix cube.

And we were trying to do it in 2 days. G'parents Ohio spent the entire weekend playing with the grandkids, breaking to provide us the ocassional assistance in our move. They stayed in a hotel, and were to leave on Sunday. I used my patented Chinese Water Torture and got them to stay one more night (Sunday night) so we could largely finish up.

The picture at top is that last time Eddie was in his crib. He had just woken from his nap. He was definitely ready to be done with his crib and I thought I was too--but I'm pretty sad about it--and not because he can now run around at will--that was part of why I wanted to do it--so he would quit asking for one more thing to be brought to his crib--now he will have to find a new way to stall at bedtime.

We'd heard all kinds of stories about making the switch from crib to bed and then we were going to be moving rooms too. I'd not really done much to decorate Ed's old room and really wanted to do some decorating of the new room, so I let Eddie pick out the shade of light blue he wanted and he and the g'parents went to the paint store to get the closest shade. G'pa and daddy applied it and Eddie was rapt watching. I figured it would help with the transition, not be the most exciting aspect--I think he's most thrilled about having a blue wall (Den felt it too dark to cover the whole room--we'll continue to work him on that).

eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee

(Eddie wanted to help type).

Eddie didn't want to pose for a picture in his new bed after the room was done because he wasn't ready for bed, so we had to sneak one after bed. After a moment of hesitation, he was very excited to see everything from his old room appear in the new one. He loved that his rocking chair had been rescued from Josie's room, that he could climb in and out of his bed. In fact, you could almost see the mischievous glean in his eye about getting in and out of bed.

Come bedtime, I put him in his bed and soon after I discovered I'd not latching the door fully, as we heard little feet running across the floor and the door opening and Eddie descending the stairs. G'pa took him back up and put him in bed. Then again, only this time, he just started calling out, threatening to wake the newly sleeping Josie. G'pa again went up and I was so bone tired by this point, I almost didn't care what he had to do to keep Eddie in bed. Turns out the threat of turning out the lamp, leaving him only with a nightlight was sufficent. This morning, he stood at the door, calling to be let out. He was very happy and really excited about the options afforded one not tied down by a crib. Yes, we cleaned out the crib after the photo.

Now to finish unpacking my office and putting everything away...g'parents Ohio snuck out at 6:30 this morning, earlier than ever before to beat the DC traffic.