6 Months Old! Happy 1/2 Birthday Bug!

I can NOT believe that Bug is 6 months old. Part of me is relieved. My next door neighbor in Seattle told me about the 4th trimester. She was right. The three months after he was born were hard, but so worth it. Bug was on a kick for a long time of sleeping for 2 hour stretches, and waking up constantly. I think he was 5 months before he slept all night (actually, he was 5 months exactly.) He went from getting up every 2 hours to just getting up once. It's GLORIOUS!

 Now, at 6 months old he sleeps through the night, and goes right back down in the AM for another nap. This means he gets around 12 hours of sleep. Which means that I'm sleeping. Which is amazing.

Yes, yes....I know that teeth are coming. Just give me this okay? It's been a month and it's WONDERFUL.

Bug has his 6 month appointment today. I'm excited to see how tall he is and all his percentiles. He's always been a big guy!

Happy Birthday buddy. We love you more then you will ever know.

"The Project"

I think there were only 6 times in the course of the past week that I yelled an expletive and said I was taking this back to the transfer station. What was this "secret" project? A table. A pretty cool looking table at that. Hubby and I have been talking about how nice it would be to have a table we could use for having guests over. Right now we sit at the bar in the kitchen. I pulled into the Transfer Station last Saturday and saw this beauty! Well...not beauty, it needed some love.

Poorly painted table with more chips than I could count, BUT awesome hardware!

Before even consulting my better half, I went to Lowe's (for the 8,304 time since moving to Fairbanks) and picked up what I would need to strip off the bad paint job and refinish it.

Trip #1 of 3

 I had great hopes of the table being solid wood. If that was the case I figured it would be the find of the century. As soon as I started to strip off the paint I was pretty sure my antique table was antique crap, but still cool antique crap.

They make this look MUCH easier in the infomercials! 

MUCH, MUCH Easier!! 

After scrapping the table for two days, and trying several types of strippers (ha...paint strippers) I ended up trying Citristrip. Despite the fact that I have the patience of a 5 year old, I would use this again. I needed to wait MUCH longer, but it worked just as well, and didn't smell horrible!

 After my dreams of real wood went out the door, I tried to think of another plan of what to do with the top.

In the meantime, I took it apart and got ready to do whatever I had yet planned. I sanded the top to even it out. If I had more patience I would have used wood filler to fill in some cracks that I didn't. Oh well.

My husband is the one suggested that I paint the top. We went to Lowe's (trip #8,305) and looked at paint. We talked about it and decided that it would be fun to paint it with chalkboard paint. We picked a dark green color to match our kitchen. I picked a bright glossy white for the legs.

So lots of painting, and painting, and painting and it was done! I reassembled the table, tightened everything up and ta da! A table!

Like my footprint on the underside? Opps. Need to clean that! 

Both sides lift up to make it into a large table. It's pretty cool. 

One of the two drawers. I need to special order the
hardware 2 1/4" handles aren't very common. 

I'm pretty excited to use it. What do you think? 

Santa! I KNOW him!!

We took Bug to go see Santa today. We went to the Santa Claus House in North Pole, AK. The North Pole post office receives hundreds of thousands of letters from all over the world (so said the Post Office worker who sighed a heavy sigh and hung her head when I asked her if she was ready for Christmas) so Christmas cards can have the "North Pole" stamp on the envelope. Pretty fun if I do say so myself.

I am mailing out a few letters from North Pole from Santa to my friends kids. You can also listen to a message from Santa by calling 1-800-588-4078 and pressing 5. There is a message from Santa. It's pretty cute (I only found this out because I was trying to figure out when Santa was going to be there.)     

Again, I love Christmas. I-LOVE-IT! My sweet husband put up with me saying 843 times (estimate) that I was having SO much fun. Bug just stared at everything. I was impressed with Santa. There was no camera person, no cost, just Santa. I was planning on shelling out 30$ for some crappy photo, but nope, I got to take my own crappy photos for free.

My favorite! 

Bug looks SO serious! 

He just kept staring at Santa.

Santa was awesome. There were some kids behind us, and I took one or two pictures and tried to hurry up. Santa told me that it was fine and to take as many pictures as I'd like. Everyone gets as much time as they like. The family behind me reassured me that it was okay.  These are all the pictures that I took, so I was't THAT bad.

We bought Bug this book. We are going to write down each year what he got for Christmas, and when he gets older, we'll write his letters to Santa in the book (there are lots of blank pages.) I think it will be fun for him when he gets older. We can read the book Christmas Eve, and leave the book out for Santa to read Bug's list.. When Bug gets older he can look back at everything he asked from Santa.

Happy Saturday!

We're off to see Santa!

We took Bug for a hike last night. I'm already getting excited for Christmas (or Merry Hallosgiving) and thought we'd take a picture of Bug next to a Bug sized tree.

I think all babies are cute, but I think he is extra adorable. I made him his hat, it's ridiculous! 

Cats for Sale

well....not really....(though check back!)

I've always had dogs. Growing up I was so deathly allergic to cats I could tell by walking into a house if a cat had ever lived there. EVER. A few Septembers ago I begged hubby to foster and to make a long story short, and thanks to allergy shots, I now own two cats.

They evoke two emotions in me. Pure Love, or .... well, I won't write the other one....lots of swear words are involved. Cats are smart you see. Super smart. Nittany has my husband wrapped so tightly around her paw that I am pretty sure she sees me at the "other woman" and follows him around like a lost puppy.

Boone is more standoffish. I find that surprising since we've had him since he was 5 weeks old. We fostered him and his entire litter (SO CUTE---SO MUCH WORK!) You would think he'd be more cuddly or SOMETHING. Nope. As far as he is concerned, he is a wild Alaskan Tiger who lives in our house PURELY out of convenience for him.

I was a bit worried about having cats and the Bug. I did not want to be that person who freaked out about the cats BEFORE the baby came. I figured Bug would show up, and we'd see how things went. I'm pretty sure Nittany and Boone smelled him, and that was it. They are really good with him. They also know that if they want something, all they need to do is to MEOW as loud as possible when he's sleeping.

Want a treat? I ignore their plea, and they (mostly Boone) walk back towards Bug's room ans meow as loud as humanly possible until I give in and give them treats (or whatever else they want.)

Actually, now that I've written that I'm pretty sure I'm being held hostage by my cats.

In other news. You'd be proud to hear that I've brought NOTHING home from the transfer station. I actually got the lawn mower working, and cut the back yard. I was even more excited when I realized that mower is essentially brand new, and it is a $200 mower. I ended up paying $3.00 for a new spark plug and 10 minutes of my time. My other "find" that I got last Saturday has taken me ALMOST a week, but I finished it last night. I need to order hardware for it, but that will take a few weeks since Alaska in on another planet apparently. I'm not going to keep it in the garage that long, so we'll bring it in this weekend then I'll post pictures of the whole project.

Have a great weekend. We're taking Bug to see Santa tomorrow. I think that my husband and I are both excited about it...oh how our life has changed!

Parenting Picture Fail

It was low 50's yesterday in Fairbanks. Apparently, that's unheard of and after hearing stories from other fellow (don't feel like I'm considered "fellow" yet, but you know what I mean) Alaskans it's suppose to be snowing right now.

A week ago we offered our 22 year old year old tenant the opportunity to clean up the leaves in our yard. Let's just say he raked a few piles, and our rake was sitting outside his cabin for the past 5 days. I'm not confrontational, and I'd hate to say it, but sort of passive aggressive sometimes...SO I loudly raked the leaves.

Before we cleaned up the piles I thought it would be "cute" to take a picture of the Bug sitting (because he rocks at sitting now) in the leaves. You know, something to put on the Christmas card.

So I ran and got the "good" camera and we sat Bug on the edge of a pile of leaves. I got down, focused the camera and "snap."

...

...

...

This is what was in my viewfinder

Bug had taken that as the optimal time to roll. So, here is our "Happy Fall" shot. Looks pretty nice hu?


...

sigh..

Oh well. He's still cute! 

**Note: No Bug was harmed in the making of these photographs**

Campus Warnings!!

I was impressed when I went to get my Masters degree. I would receive e-mails about dangerous things on campus: muggings, shootings, etc. You know, other scary things. I don't remember getting warnings during my undergraduate degree, but there was a 5 year break between finishing one and starting the other.

Friday I drove onto the UAF (University of Alaska Fairbanks) to have a play date with another mom from Pennsylvania. On my way into campus I noticed a sign. No big deal I figured....I mean, it's a college campus. I assumed it was for inter-mural sign ups, or other fun college things....

As I got closer I noticed what it said.....

I about had a heart attack. Not your everyday warning sign.