So, Pottery Barn Kids pulled a fast one on me and switched the white on its white gallery frames, but it drives me only modestly crazy so I’m going to live with it for now.
Archive Page 39
Crib to toddler bed to the floor?
Published September 8, 2014 toddler stuff 3 CommentsTags: toddler bed
I remember when Molly was just days old thinking that it’d be weird when, one day, I wouldn’t know exactly how many days old she was. And then, when she was so many weeks old, realizing that at some point, I would no longer know how many weeks old she was. When that happened, I went to my iPhone calendar and wrote a reminder on every Friday through March 2013 that Bear was such-and-such weeks old on that day. Despite trying to make a concerted effort to remember everything, and to write the First Big Anything Event down in her scrapbook, I’ve been falling further and further behind. I don’t know the last day she wore a diaper when in non-sleeping mode and I don’t know the last day she took two naps instead of one. I don’t know the date on which she had her last (water) bottle (though I know it was in either April or May of this year – egads). And I don’t know the day that we took the side of her crib down to turn that crib into a toddler bed.
Sigh. What is wrong with me? I think maybe I’ve stopped writing all of these things down because it feels like it’s just going faster and faster and there’s no time! Or maybe it’s because I’m in denial that she’s becoming more of a girl and so much less of a baby? Or maybe it’s just because I’ve gotten really lazy. In any event, it’s true that she’s been in a toddler bed for several months now, only it isn’t really true. You see, for the last month or so, she has refused to sleep in her bed, insisting that her place to rest is on the floor. It’s true and it’s weird. At first, she insisted on sleeping on the not-exactly-plush Ikea rug that is the sole floor covering in her room. AO, though, snuck her sleeping bag underneath her, and she seems ok with that. I think it’s less likely CPS will take her from us if they see the cute Bear sleeping bag AO’s mom got her. I thought this was just going to be a phase, and I suppose it probably is, but it’s sure taking awhile. Night after night (and day after day when she does allow herself a nap), our little one demonstrates her penchant for the monastic life by slumbering on the hard floor. What does this mean for us? It means I can no longer remember the last time we washed her sheets.
Labor Day weekend 2014 was spent (silently) thanking the Labor movement for all of its work and (actively) improving our home. Phew. I think it’s really going to get there at some point, but it’s going to keep taking time. And work. And time. And money. And work.
I’m super duper excited about this series of ten Etsy city drawings on the big wall. I think AO was skeptical, but when I asked him to help out, he plunged right in and measured, drilled and leveled it all out. Can’t wait for the rest of it!
So, Thursday was a real game changer for our family. You see, as I said just a few days ago, Mollybear’s last day in her beautiful classroom was Tuesday. She was all set to move right next door to her new beautiful classroom on this coming Tuesday. We’ve known that we were headed to this new classroom since February. I admit that in February, when we got the news, I had mixed feelings. I was happy that her transition would probably be pretty easy, as she already spent many afternoons in the “new” classroom anyway, and I was happy because the Toddler House is probably the best place on Earth, but I was a little concerned because most of the other kids around her age were moving up to the NEXT classroom, which is in the school next door. I worried maybe something was wrong and the teachers were troubled by some things they weren’t telling us. I didn’t want to sound like a crazy person, so I tried to address gently. I was assured that nothing was wrong and it was based solely on age. I thought, “But so-and-so is younger than Bear….” I didn’t want to make a big deal out of it and tried to just focus on the good: we’d get to stay another year in the greatest place ever.
On Thursday, we had our orientation in her new classroom. It was really lovely, which we knew. Because she was off from school, she had been at my mom’s, so my mom and Severa came along for orientation, too. Molly loved the place, as I knew she would, but I kept having the same mixed feelings. I felt so safe and secure, but part of me wondered if I should be asking for more for her, wondering if she would need more to challenge her. I got tears in my eyes a few times thinking about how wonderful a place it is. And yet. Shouldn’t she be at the school next door? Well, part way through the orientation, I got a hint. The head of the school came through and asked if there was room in Molly’s new room for So-and-So because, it turned out, he wasn’t old enough for the toddler classroom housed in the school. But who IS old enough? Spoiler alert: Molly.
That afternoon, we received a super nice phone call from the head of the school explaining that she thinks the mix-up was made back in February and that Molly was supposed to go to the school and So-and-So (a really sweet boy who has been speaking in full sentences since birth, I think) was supposed to be in the Toddler House. Sigh. We were told that we were welcome to stay in the Toddler House, but that the general thinking was that Bear would probably fare better next door. As I spoke with Aaron about it, and my friend and co-worker Chris, I knew what our choice had to be, but I also knew that I will really miss the greatest place on earth. And I’m sad that I didn’t the months to process the move. And I’m sad that I didn’t realize that, on Tuesday, I would never again get to see her biking in a circle around the playground with her pals (always in the same direction, like the Farmers’ Market). I thought we were getting another year there. Oh well. It is right next door.
On Friday, we returned to school and had our orientation in her new classroom. It’s really lovely and I think she’s going to be very happy there. After we left, though, she walked right over to the greatest place on earth and asked me to open the door for her.
I’ve been trying to figure out a rug solution for our front living room for months. I wanted something cheerful because it’s the first full room you really see when you walk in the house, and the first thing we see when we come down the stairs in the morning. I thought I wanted yellow, but I worried I was really overdoing the pops of yellow in the rest of the house and turning the house into a sunshine zone. I wanted something inexpensive for obvious reasons, but also because it’s my experience that we are a family that is somewhat abusive to our rugs. I don’t think it verges on criminal or anything, but we probably deserve a warning or two. And, with a puppy in our new future, I didn’t see us improving on that front any time soon. So, after looking at nearly every rug on Overstock, One King’s Lane, Joss & Main, Wayfair, Crate & Barrel, West Elm, CB2, Pottery Barn, etc., I was stumped. Then, I started looking at the Flor carpet tiles. I was intrigued, but did not love the pricing. Basically, if I loved a rug, it was somewhere north of $500. Most of the rugs I found that I liked, I was more tolerant of than truly into. I placed dozens of rugs in my online shopping carts over the months. I nearly pulled the trigger on several. Finally, though, it was the combo of a 15% off coupon, $4.95 flat fee shipping and a color that matched our pillows that led me to buy the carpet tiles from CB2. At $7.95 a pop, paired with the coupon, let me get an 8×10 rug for about $237. Hooray! You can imagine my excitement when I came home to the tiles last night and set out to put the rug together today! And then what happened? Oy vey. It’s not an ideal story.
First, I realized that somehow I ordered three more of the swoon color, and three fewer of the heather gray, tiles than I had intended. So, my pattern was going to be different than I had pictured. Second, the rug gripper that is sold to use with the carpet tiles is just not that great nor is it easy to use. In addition, I don’t think I ordered enough of the sticky gripper, but I didn’t see any amount recommended on CB2’s website. I’ll be ordering more.
Ok, so I started out by moving the furniture, vacuuming the floor and setting the tiles in the pattern I wanted (well, Plan B of the pattern I wanted). Then I flipped them over, cut the rug gripper and began to attach it to corners and other seams of the squares.
Here is a close-up of this fascinating process.
It was at about this point that I realized that I did not have enough rug gripper tape and I had to stop doling it out like it was growing on trees. As you can see from this next picture, the right side of the rug did not fare as well in Rug Gripper Wars.
You see all that yellow? All of that is called, in the rug gripper world – of which I am now an esteemed member – ‘liner’ and it needs to be removed. And this is a process that is, for lack of a better phrase, a total pain. At this point, I solicited AO’s help. I really shouldn’t be the one having all the fun. So, we set in to remove all of that liner and that’s what we did. Even if it meant taking off the rug gripper that I had just worked so hard to put down and secure in place. That liner had to be removed! Ok, so after that step was over, we realized we were now going to have to flip this rug over. I sort of thought we should do this in the same way one removes a band-aid: fast and without over-thinking it. It turns out, though, we just aren’t nearly fast enough. AO had barely raised his end to knee-height when the rug started to fall apart. So, we essentially needed to start over. We flipped most squares individually, though a foursome stayed sweetly together, and put it together with the rug part facing up. In the end, we got this number:
I’m pretty pleased. It was supposed to be just two stripes, but this isn’t too bad.
I was hoping the little T-bar design would be hidden by the couch, but I don’t really mind it. I assume it will make people ask (I hope only to themselves), “What on earth was she thinking?”
This view kinda makes a cool cross, or plus-sign design, in my opinion. My opinion that it’s cool. I think it’s probably undisputed that it is a cross or plus-sign.
And one more view for you to marinate on. Once we get rid of the house’s inappropriate, omnipresent beige, I really think we’ll all feel better about things.
