Growing Up and Out

I was going to post our family portraits (spoiler alert: I LOVE them! You can barely even tell Cora was super unimpressed with the whole situation and then pretended not to know who we were), so I could have a nice short cheater post, but apparently I have all these deep thoughts and 1,000 words to say about our latest home project and they all just came spilling out when I opened up blogger.

So here goes, but we might as well start with the beginning of the rest of our weekend.

James and Landon went for their run on Sunday morning. I was going to go on a walk with the girls but we got distracted by breakfast and toys. They always race at the very end- Landon with a head start on his bike and James sprinting to catch up. I happened to look outside just as they were zooming down the street and jumped out and caught a picture of the end when James was trying to throw on the breaks. I love their Sunday runs.

I have been working nonstop on reorganizing, rearranging, and redecorating the kids' room and it has been an ENORMOUS task that dominated our 3-day weekend. Moving in to this house was easier. Switching around 100% of the furniture in two rooms connected by a narrow hallway when you're also replacing 50% of that furniture (all requiring assembly), selling the original 50%, and redecorating everything- switching out picture frames, taking everything off the walls, searching for the perfect items, obsessing over buying the perfect items, putting together the perfect items hounding your husband to put together the perfect items, switching the closets, going through the closets you swear you go through every 3 months and yet STILL find tons of stuff to give away even though you swear you haven't been shopping since the last time you did it, finding a graveyard of toys under every bed you've moved while rearranging furniture, haunting our neighborhood buy/sell page, searching AGAIN for the perfect bedding/art/curtains/rugs/finishing touches -- all while the house is a total wreck of cardboard boxes and furniture instructions and I just do not handle disorder in the house very well.

the kids on the other hand are loving it

But I love decorating. Truly love setting up nice rooms for the kids that are beautiful and fun and reflect their personalities. But the actual physical labor of sorting of 3 kids' worth of clothes and under-bed-junk is not my favorite and there has been a ton of that. But it's getting there. And it's going to be awesome.

We did take a few breaks to run errands, buy food (and wine!), and purchase and eat a large quantity of donuts. I snapped this picture while walking into Central Market in search of something for James to grill for dinner. It always makes me inexplicably happy to see all four of my people walking in a row. It's our pack.

At some point on Monday while I was muttering to myself and throwing things over my shoulder from inside Landon's closet, he peeked his head in the room and cautiously asked if we could do something fun. Because apparently watching me lugging stuff around the house while dad coaches and I occasionally yell out, "hey kids, where's Cora?!" isn't fun. So we made silly teeth Halloween snacks. The kids were thrilled, and then I let them watch Harry Potter while Cora took her nap and I sighed and went back to itemizing clothing donations until it was time for swim practice. As far as they're concerned it was the best day off school ever.

questionable flavor combination

And then last night at 8:00 everything came together enough to tuck the girls in their new girls' room and Landon in his big boy room for the first time and I was shocked at how emotional I felt. Landon has grown up! He's left the nursery! He's like Wendy in Peter Pan! He and Claire won't have their nighttime chats and when I say "the kids' room" I'll mean Claire and Cora's.

the new dynamic duo

He has his own bathroom and shower. I showed him where the extra toilet paper is and put new soap and toothpaste on his counter. He's practically moved out and should probably have his own apartment number added to our address. I have a lot of feelings about this. Possibly because I was up until 2 a.m. the night before working on Cora's photobook and obsessing over rugs and then spent 12 hours on my feet working in the rooms all day on my federal holidays. But still, feelings were felt, and James gave me a hug and told me college was actually still 11 years away.

Here's a sneak peak of the room-still-in-progress. Doesn't he look tiny in that giant bed? (Isn't the bedding perfect for an animal theme room? Isn't it?!)

He was also a little unsure, so I had to pretend to be strong and play up how exciting it was to have his own space. I assured him that he slept alone just fine for the first 3 years of his life, and he nodded warily and asked, "but I can go talk to the girls in the morning right? and sometimes I can sleep in their room?" Absolutely, I said, you can go talk to them every morning and sleep in their room every weekend night (just as soon as we get Claire's trundle bed delivered). He decided this was okay, slid under his new sheets, occupying approximately 10% of the queen bed's surface area, and asked if we could leave the door open just a little.

He's moved out of "Landon's and Claire's room" and into his own. The fact that he's still only 8 and his door is literally 3 feet from the girls' did nothing to stop the pinpricks of tears in my eyes as I closed the door, then pushed it open just a little. He's moved out of the nursery.