Paint, paint and paint some more

I feel like all I've done the past week and a half is paint. Really, it's very close to the truth. We started getting ready to paint when we got home on Monday, and on Monday night, I started with doing touch-ups in the basement stairwell. Tuesday, we emptied out the porches and did the first coat in the evening. Wednesday, my life-savers Dylana and Shelby arrived! They were there until Friday taking care of the kids and doing other miscellaneous things to help us out. It really freed me up to make a lot more progress during the day than would not have been possible otherwise. By the time they left, we were totally done the porches, kitchen and living room. That doesn't sound like that much as I'm typing it, but it was a ton of work! And our place was a disaster in the meantime! All part of the process, I guess!

We took a bit of a break from painting over the weekend because Brian was playing in a softball tournament. He did, however, still work on making shelves in the living room entertainment unit in the evenings. I painted the shelves on Monday and I can't tell you how glad I was when those were done - they were a lot more of a pain than I thought, and I wasn't even the one who had to build them! Tuesday, Coraleah and Larissa were coming over to help look after the kids so we could get some more painting done, and so Brian went out and rented the scaffold for the stairwell. We did one coat on Tuesday and one on Wednesday. The relief we felt when this task was done is almost indescribable. There was a bit of a fiasco regarding the paint not mixing properly which prompted a trip to Home Depot, where I "suggested" that they give us a fresh can. This helped us avoid the near disastrous outcome of a streaky second coat in the stairwell. I don't think I can adequately describe just how much Brian and I wanted to avoid doing a third coat in this particular area of our house. I don't think there are words that can accurately paint that picture. There was a lot of stress in our house for a while, but it all turned out okay, thank goodness!

I just have to say that we definitely have the cutest kids in the whole world:). Lynsey is just so interesting - I think she kept Shelby and Dylana quite entertained with her stories! Adam is still not moving, but he has his moments where we think he's trying to, so hopefully those moments start happening more frequently! He's added "mum-mum" to his mix of babbling and the volume just keeps going up. We are giving him more and more "real" food and he loves it - I think he will be off baby food a lot sooner than Lynsey was. I haven't gotten up with him at night for weeks, but he still gets up shortly after 6 some days! I continue to discourage this behaviour, but I admit I'm feeling a bit defeated. I will not give up until I am POSITIVE he is ready to get up for the day - I just don't see how he's had enough sleep if he's only going to bed at 7:30 - 8 and getting up at 6:15. Anyway, I am happy to not be getting up at night anymore, and hope that if I'm doomed to have an early bird, at the very least he keeps THAT up!