Sibling Rivalry

Me: Okay, Caroline. It's time for your weekly photoshoot!
Caroline: I gueeesssss.

Me: Put your hands in your mouth.
Caroline: Done.

Me: And another?
Caroline: I'm all over it.

Caroline: But what is that I hear?

Caroline: It's coming closer. And I don't like it.

Riley: Why does she get all the spotlight? I want in!

Riley: If she can be on her back, so can I.

Riley: [sings] Anything you can do, I can do better. I can do anything better than you.

Caroline: I'm not so sure about this.

Riley: Head shots? I'm in!

Caroline: Mom, I should be the center of attention, right?

Riley: Nope, you've got to share it with me!

Caroline: Mom, can't you make him go away?

Riley: Nope! In fact, I'm just going to butt you out of here, Caroline.

Caroline: He's getting hairs all over my pretty quilt!

Riley: Ha ha, suckers!

Halloween with the Browns

So our trick-or-treaters came Thursday night. I know -- weird.

I wrangled Riley into his pumpkin get-up, a hand-me-down from neighbors a few years back. He totally rocks the look.

And then I put on my own costume. We matched!

Oh, pregnant face, I'm looking forward to seeing the end of you.

Riley was a cul-de-sac hit. Every time the doorbell rang, he bounded up and wagged his way to the door to greet the kids. Wag, wag, wag. Pet me, pet me, pet me.

I had originally planned to wear my pumpkin shirt on Friday night, too, to Josh's work Halloween party (at his boss' boss' boss' house). Simple, classy-ish, normal. I didn't really want to go overboard, especially since I haven't met a bunch of these people before.

No one needs to see a very pregnant woman going overboard on Halloween. I had no interest in belly painting.

But Josh took one look at my costume, and informed me that it was lame. I told him I disagreed.

By the time trick-or-treaters stopped coming by, it was 8pm. Josh told me the pumpkin shirt was still lame. I informed him that if he could come up with a better idea - the day before the party - I'd wear it.

So we headed to Goodwill. 30 minutes before it closed Thursday night.

And we found this little beauty. An Ohio State trucker hat.

Josh was already going as a trucker, and thought that a pregnant red neck would be the perfect companion. As a big Michigan fan, I fell in love with the idea of wearing a junky OSU hat as a part of my redneck costume.

We purchased a flannel shirt to go along with the hat, and then on our way home decided that I also needed fish net stockings (to be worn under cut-off jeans), and headed to a Halloween store (5 minutes before it closed) for that particular item.

And here's the final result:

Sadly...
-this was one of those "oh shoot we forgot to take a picture" moment at the end of the night, and all I had was my phone
-we'd blacked out some of our front teeth with paint, but it had worn off by this point
-you can't tell that I drew a Confederate Flag tattoo on one of Josh's arms, and a barbed wire tattoo on the other
-we're missing our props: a oversized can of cheap beer and a pack of cigarettes each

But you get the gist.

And we were a hit. And came in at #2 in the costume contest.

And now hopefully I'll have another chance to make a positive impression on Josh's coworkers.

Our carpet-chewer.

Yesterday morning I found this delighful surprise on the stairs leading to the second floor:

I'm fairly confident I didn't do it. Josh was out of town. And the only other being in our house to blame?

This guy.

Now that he's all old (4) and lazy, he's almost completely trustworthy. And he has been so for years. The most mischief he gets into is a bi-monthly exploration of the trash can - and that's only after we've recently thrown away an empty bag that held shredded cheese. We were totally surprised that this happened.

However, we're still left with a very obvious carpet hole smack in the middle of our steps. Visible from the front door. Impossible to miss.

Thanks, Riley. Replacing carpet was not exactly what we had in mind for this fall, with, you know, a baby on the way.

So now... what do we do about it?

I feel we have a few options - and please weigh in!

1. NOTHING. Leave it. Since we'll soon be in the "small children at home" phase of our life, is there any point to replacing carpet now, knowing that we may well need to do it again in a few years?

2. Re-carpet the stairs only. They are whitish (not my favorite) - and dingy - and worn, anyway.
3. Re-carpet the stairs and hallway. The hallway sports the same white carpeting, which has also seen better days. Plus the hallway upstairs connects very obviously to the stairs and so doing both at once would give us some cohesion.

4. Re-carpet the entire 2nd floor. All four bedrooms + the hallway + the stairs share the same carpet, and we like the seamless look from room to room. However, a re-do of carpeting on the entire second story wasn't exactly an expenditure we'd had in mind for this year.

Our Babies

First, we've got Riley. Our "little brownie." Our sweet, spoiled, snuggly little dog. We got him from a shelter when we first moved to Bloomington, IN back in July 2007. He's been a much-adored member of the family ever since.

Second, there's baby B. The child we'd love to adopt someday. We don't know much about him or her, and pray that the Lord brings this child home in His time.

And then...

We found out a few weeks ago that there is a third baby.

A baby of the "homegrown" variety, who will hopefully make his or her debut in early November.

We're thrilled, and so very thankful for this little one. We feel immeasurably blessed to be expecting a biological child. We're humbled by God's goodness and graciousness to us, and we know that this child is a gift straight from Him.

I know what you're thinking: So what does this mean for the adoption?

It's been put on hold.

Depending on the timing of it all, we'd either need to travel with me very pregnant, or else travel with an infant, or else leave an infant at home for the better part of a month. None of these were appealing options. Furthermore, both infants and newly adopted children need all kinds of special care, especially right at first. We'd like to be able to provide that to the best of our abilities, and feel that it will be in the best interest of both kids to space things out a bit.

In the future, we'd still love to adopt. The idea has always been in our hearts, since the very beginning of our relationship, and we still plan to grow our family through both biological and adoptive means.

I feel strongly that we were meant to start down the "path" toward adopting a child. But now we find ourselves on a different path. In any case I know that our lives, family, and future rest in the palms of His loving, generous hands.

Proverbs 3:5-6 come to mind...

Trust in the LORD with all your heart
and lean not on your own understanding;

in all your ways acknowledge him,
and he will make your paths straight.

For me, there's such comfort in those words. For both joyful and uncertain times, peaceful moments and difficult ones. The Lord is deserving of trust, and guides our paths.

And now, we just praise Him for this unexpected and extremely welcome gift.

Riley's Perfect Afternoon

Riley's New Bed

Thank you to the fine folks at All Modern Pet - the new dog bed is great.

First of all, it is surprisingly hard to find an orange dog bed. But OF COURSE I needed one to match my office. And this fits the bill nicely.

Second, he seems to enjoy himself in it. Granted, his BFF is his bed that we used to keep in the office, and now is downstairs. But that one is fuzzy.

And this one is cute. And since it sits under the window, it provides an excellent sunning spot.

MM... the sun is so delicious at naptime.

Mom, seriously, get that camera out of my face so I can go back to sleep.

Baby, It's Cold Outside

Brownie Boy

My New Office

For this room, Josh gave me the green light to do whatever I wanted.

We don't always agree on colors, but for all other rooms were able to work out compromises.

This one was all me. Josh never would have gone for the orange/aqua combination. But I wanted something bright and cheery and a little off-beat.

My biggest need, however, was storage. Since I work from home, I have a lot of work-related equipment and supplies. I'm also into paper crafts (scrapbooking and card making, mostly) and have mountains of supplies and tools related to that hobby as well. I find that I'm much more crafty if my supplies are organized and easily accessible. As in, not stuck in a dark, overflowing closet.

For both work and crafts, ample work space was also pretty important to me.

Enter Ikea. Ikea has great mix-and-match office furniture (not to mention great prices, of course!) However, the limitless possibilities were a bit overwhelming to me. Which shelf? how many tables? Which table legs? How many drawer units? How should I configure everything, based on my room size? Which color?

Enter Ikea Hacker - a fabulous blog for ideas on how to configure Ikea products to fit your needs. I was especially inspired by this post.

So one weekend, two trips to the Ikea in Cincinnati, many hours spent with screwdrivers in-hand, and multiple trips to a local hardware store later, we had it all put together.

On the left - work-y stuff.
On the right - crafty stuff.

The drawers are organized like that, too.

Business on one side.


Party on the other side. Like a mullet for my room.


Let me assure you the office is rarely this neat. I'm a big believer in spreading out (which is where the extra work space comes in handy) and there are usually papers everywhere. For your benefit, I tidied things up before I started snapping pictures.


I was a bit concerned that this would be too tall for the room. But it fit - just barely!

And all of these orange boxes? Also from Ikea. They're great for storing and organizing my assorted stickers, craft magazines, glue pens, ribbons, and envelopes. And at like $4 each, the boxes fit nicely into my price range.


One of the biggest challenges we faced was the fact that the drawer units weren't tall enough to match the table legs. But we eventually figured it out. I bought a 2 1/2 x 2 1/2 inch piece of wood, asked my neighbor to cut it into 3 inch chunks, and then spray painted each block orange. I attached them to the drawer unit and table top using a combination of wood glue and very long screws. And now that it is all set up I think the effect is kind of fun. Again, it's a little off-beat. And I like that.

I'm not finished with the room yet. It could use some curtains. And a second chair. I have a couple of plan wood pieces in there (one of which didn't make it into any pictures) and I'd like to paint them to match. One of these days I want to get some artwork or something for the wall. Oh, and a matching bed for Riley - of course!

He loves the chocolate brown one you see here, but I've been searching all over the place for an orange one. But orange dog beds are a little difficult to find - no surprises there!

Enter AllModernPet.com. I'd actually browsed around on this website and some of its' sister websites in the past, and I think they have a great selection of attractive pet beds. More than that, they sell all kinds of nice, reasonably priced modern furniture, bedding, artwork, etc. We're pretty interested in a couple of beds (the kind for people, that is) they have for sale, since we're still on a mattress on the floor.

Somehow the folks at All Modern Pet found me and this blog, and asked if I'd review a dog bed (that they'd send me for free!) on this blog. UM YES PLEASE. They even let me pick out any bed I wanted withing a certain (generous) price range. I picked this one (which is orange, of course) and I'm totally excited to receive it in the mail sometime soon. Stay tuned.


Disclaimer:
I know that there are many opinions about bloggers partnering with companies in such a way. This isn't something I plan to do often, but when a great opportunity to get for free something I'd been looking for all summer presented itself, I jumped at the chance. And in my correspondence with this company I made it clear that I'd be up front with you, Internet, about where I got my dog bed. They, of course, agreed. I also plan to be as objective and honest as possible in my review.

As fall approaches...

... I know a certain someone that will soon miss his sunbathing time.

The Gift

Riley wasn't doing so well post-surgery, so I took him into the vet's office so they could check him out. Apart from prescribing additional pain meds and some antibiotics, they thought he might be having some... well... back end problems, and suggested he be given soft food for awhile.

So when we got home, I scooped some canned food into his dish.

It is nasty. It looks like barf.

Riley sometimes gets freaked out by food he hasn't seen before. Like last summer, we thought he'd enjoy some leftover hot dog, so we put some chunks in his dish. He wasn't too sure about this new food, and proceeded to run around the house with hot dog pieces in his mouth. Then he tried to bury them in the guest bed.

We warned my in-laws, who visited the next day, that they juuuust might find cold bits of grilled hot dog between their pillows.

I shouldn't have been surprised by what he did with his canned food. I went upstairs to check on him, and discovered a delightful gift in the doorway into my bedroom.


Thank you, Riley.

Thankfully, the next time I went upstairs it was gone. And he has been in looooove with canned food ever since.




Side notes:
1. No, we don't have a bed. It isn't high on our house priority list right now. The mattress on the floor thing is also working out well with Riley's bum leg issue, so we're not in a huge hurry.
2. No, I don't often make my bed. Don't judge.
3. Riley continues to have issues with his right front leg, and I'm hoping the vets figure it out soon. I hate seeing him in pain.
4. The back end problems, on the other hand, seem to have cleared up. I gave him dry kibble this morning, and he hasn't yet touched it. Mr. Hunger Strike.

The Cone of Shame

Riley had minor surgery last week, and the vet sent him home with one of his own. He is not a fan, but we don't make him wear it too often.

He ends up smacking into the furniture, which is sad on one hand, but really funny to watch on the other.

Enjoying the new place.

Clearly, we're not the only ones.


Riley could sit back there on his chain ALL DAY LONG.

Not only is there excellent sleeping-in-the-grass to be had, but the people/bird/other dog watching is top notch. Our backyard actually backs up to at least 6 other homes, so he sits back there for hours on end spying on the neighbors.

Helping With the Laundry

Josh and I stepped away from folding laundry on our bed, and came back to find a certain someone...

Clearly, he was very comfortable.