ryanandbernadette.com

We had our 4th annual Sharefest today and spent the day at Boulder Reservoir painting buildings and pulling weeds. Sharefest is an event my church (and now many other churches) does yearly to give back to the community and do some volunteer service work around town. It is fun, but a whole lot of work. I was thinking today when we were done that I hate it when people complain while doing volunteer work that they’d rather not be there, but then I was thinking that I do the same thing with other areas of my life. Most specifically, exercise. I do not enjoy exercising. It drives me crazy really because I don’t get all the results I want right away. I know it takes a while, but I like immediate results. Please don’t email me with your immediate results exercise solutions, just bear with me. I was thinking we all have things we don’t like to do that we complain about but we do them any way because they are good for us. I also don’t like getting up in the morning, but do that anyway too. SO then maybe we should just do them without complaining so much, because chances are we’re complaining to the wrong person or just to someone who doesn’t want to hear it. Just don’t be in the basement with me when I’m on the treadmill, I’m not very good at taking my own advice.

Our awesome friend Noah helped Ryan refinish our kitchen floor this weekend. He does this for a living, so he has all the cool equipment and knows what he’s doing.    It looks amazing! I had told Ryan when we moved in that we needed to refinish the floor because it was really scratched and in bad shape and we finally got to it 4 years later. It helps that we met somebody who knew how to do it! It was quite the process though. Noah put up big plastic sheets around the kitchen to help contain the dust so we had to go around the house to get in the various parts – the front door for the upstairs, the garage for the kitchen and basement, and the back door for the family room. One of my favorite parts was that I didn’t have a kitchen and therefore didn’t have to cook! Very nice. I’ll post some pictures this week of my bright, shiny, clean new floor.

Ethan has his 9 month visit with his doctor on Wednesday. He now weighs 21# 2 oz and is in the 50th percentile for weight and is 30″ long and in the 90th percentile for height. It’s hard to believe he’s grown almost 10 inches since he was born! Though I can definitely attest to his gaining almost 14 pounds! My arms are getting stronger, but isn’t muscle supposed to help burn fat? I think somebody lied to me! He also had to get some blood drawn to check his iron (good) and lead (bad) levels so hopefully those will turn out ok. I do think we have some made in China toys so we’ll see if how much paint he’s eaten has affected him or not. I catch glimpses of what he will look like as a little boy instead of a baby and it just makes me choke up. I know time goes by fast, but somehow I really didn’t expect it to go this fast!

It seems that everything we use is potentially hazardous. We (Ryan really) decided to switch Ethan from plastic bottles to glass this week with all the buzz in the news about BPA. We decided that rather than switching to another form of plastic that is supposedly safe we’d just go to glass which is theoretically more inert. I’m sure in a few years scientists (whom I’m convinced are funded by industry) will find another component in the plastic that is harmful thus necessitating another switch to really high-priced bottles. The glass ones are cheaper (at least the ones I bought are) and I think it will have less possibility of problems in the future, baring any eating of broken shards. The only problems I’ve had with them so far are they’re heavy, don’t fit in the dishwasher as well (though I can safely put them on the bottom rack without fear of deformation), and it’s a lot harder to get the formula in since the neck is more narrow. Yes, I know, I feed him formula not breast milk, gasp! That’s a whole nother story for another time. I have been looking for covers to put over the bottles to help lessen the risk of breakage when I drop them, which will happen as it does with almost everything in the house, except Ethan so far. I’ve found a few options, Weego and Siliskin covers, which look really nice and would help but also come with bottles which I don’t need since I just bought some. Ryan had a really good point though, if I do drop the bottles and break them, then I can just buy the covers that come with bottles since I’ll need to replace the one I just broke anyway. Now, I’ll just need to find out if they can be registered for when we have other children…

I also heard recently that there is some concern that fire-retardant chemicals put on our clothes could be dangerous. Well, that makes sense since they are chemicals and all of those are hazardous to some degree. So which do we choose, chemicals that could cause problems in theory or clothes that could catch fire more easily? I guess some people just avoid the problem altogether and sleep without either. For now, I think I’ll stick with normal clothes since I wash everything with fabric softener which supposedly renders the chemicals ineffective anyway. Oy. I’m fairly convinced that the scientists are in cahoots with industry to prey upon new parents’ fears and get them to buy really expensive probably unnecessary items in hopes of being a good parent and not damaging their children for life. Which we all know we will anyway just by virtue of being older and hopelessly uncool.

We had our annual garage sale today.  It’s mostly annual anyway, we missed last year – something about finishing a basement and having a baby.  I love garage sale time because it means I get to go through the house and get rid of a bunch of stuff that we really don’t need.  I used to be a bit of a packrat before I moved to college and had to move all that stuff a bunch of times.  Now less really is more.  I like trying to decide whether or not to keep something.  My general rule is if I hesitate, then we really don’t need it.  You may think I end up of getting rid of stuff we need, but you would be wrong.  We really don’t miss the stuff, we usually don’t notice it’s gone and then we have more room to get other stuff. 

We enjoy going around the neighborhoods to find good bargains too.  We’ve managed to find some really good stuff at great prices, mostly things for Ethan.  Garage sales are a great way to find kids stuff because everyone has it and everyone wants to get rid of it.  I’ve bought a bunch of clothes for him, it seems silly now to go to stores to buy them since they are more expensive and he couldn’t really care any less what he wears.  And I know I’ll have a bunch of barely worn clothes to sell in the future for some other little boy to wear not enough times.

There are some new Ethan pictures posted in honor of his 9 month birthday today.

There are two things I hate about the summer: shorts and swimsuits.  Well, three really, I don’t like mosquitoes either.  I had the unpleasant task of attempting to find a new swimsuit today.  It was hard enough to find one before I had Ethan, now it’s just that much harder after going through all the changes having a baby causes.  Before you can have a little extra in some places, and after you have a little extra in more places and now camouflaging those places almost necessitates wearing a burka.  I never thought mom suits were at all flattering, now I see that it’s not about flattery, it’s about covering all those extra baby fat spots that aren’t on the baby.  As for shorts, when you are only 5′2″ on a good day it can be difficult to find any that fit, especially over aforementioned baby fat.  Capris don’t work if you are short because they hit tall people mid-calf but just make short people look like they are wearing pants that are too small.  So you are basically stuck wearing long shorts that look somewhat ok and are a little cooler or jeans that aren’t quite as cool but fit better.  Other than that, I enjoy the summer, I just don’t enjoy going to the pool with skinny people.  Especially skinny people that have more kids than me.

Ryan really surprised me this year for my first Mother’s Day.  Instead of buying me flowers, he planted flowers in the front yard for me.    I told you how bad our yard looked, well the grass part still looks pretty bad, but now there are flowers around the front walk to make it look better.  I think what really surprised me was the thought behind it.  Not that my husband isn’t thoughtful, he’s just a typical male and therefore not really all that observant sometimes.  

I did have a good Mother’s Day.  We spent part of the day at Purdue (which has grown like crazy in just the 4 years I’ve been gone by the way) and got to go to my old church.  We had fun with my sister in law’s boyfriend’s family and went out to dinner.  Trying to get a table for 10 on Mother’s Day is no small feat no matter what time you go.  Ethan had fun getting lots more snacks than usual courtesy of Grammy and Grandpa.    He likes water which his mean mommy rarely gives him.  He also really enjoys his furry sister Kya, though she’s not really sure what to make of him.  Today we’re driving around Indy to see some of my friends and see what’s changed since I lived here 10 years ago.  I can’t even believe it’s been that long.

I don’t like yard work.  It may be because it’s so hard or hot or time consuming or a combination of all three.  We spent most of Saturday afternoon out in the front yard attempting to make it look better.  It still doesn’t.  But we have hope that maybe someday it won’t look like a barren wasteland.  We’ve spent so much time and energy (not to mention money) working on the inside of our house for the past 4 years that sadly the yard has been largely neglected.  But now it’s time to pay the piper.

Ryan used an attachment on the lawn mower that’s supposed to pick up all the dead stuff blocking your grass from growing and really just chops everything up to resemble a badly mown golf fairway.  Then we used a special rake to dethatch the ground.  That means you have to rake really hard to get all that stuff up off the ground so that grass can actually grow.  We filled two huge garbage cans with thatch from our front yard.  And considering we only have 0.1 acre total, that’s a lot of thatch.  So then I laid down new grass seed and new grass seed fertilizer, which was the easiest part of the whole thing.  Ryan then had to fiddle with the sprinkler system (a must if you live in a dry area like this and don’t want to mess with moving portable sprinklers all the time) to get the yard to be covered and of course fixing the ones that mysteriously break over the winter.  At least you can see a little green in the front yard now, except for the big bare patch that started the whole thing.  It was a long process and not particularly fun and now we have our larger backyard to do once we get another free weekend.  Then comes the tearing out of bushes and trees and all sorts of stuff our previous owners left for us.  At least we’ve already removed the 500 trellises they were so fond of.  Did I mention my thumbs aren’t really all that green?  Well, at least they’ll be tan from spending so much time outside without sunscreen.

I will get pictures posted soon of my quilt, I just haven’t taken any yet and I need to remember when Ryan’s home so he can help hold it up.

This is my first morning post, I’m having a relaxing morning today.  I’m already up, showered, ate breakfast, and checked my email.  And Ethan is still asleep.    I do hear stirrings from the monitor though so he should be up soon.  I guess he needed the sleep since he refused to go to sleep at Bible study last night and was therefore up until after 9:30 when his usual bedtime is 7.  I got him some new summer pjs a few weeks ago and now he looks like a little boy instead of a baby.  I like baby footed pjs!  But they are a little heavy for the summer so he got two piece little boy pjs and he’s very adorable.  Of course, he’s always adorable and no, I’m not biased.  Well, maybe a little.