Part Two: Cami's accomplishments

Here's the other part I promised.

I'm absolutely THRILLED to announced that Cami is 100% potty trained!!! It's wonderful! We put her in 'big girl' panties last week on Wednesday and she had one accident that day, one over night, and one the next day where she pooped in her panties, but since then she's had none!! She'll tell us when she has to go and usually doesn't need to be prompted. Today she successfully pooped in the potty, so I can safely say that it's 100%!

Every other parent that I've talked to that has gone through the potty training experience has told me that it's all up to the kid. You have to wait until they're ready. And when they are ready, then it will happen. I've been trying to encourage her for a long time, but it's never worked. She just would not do it. And now, finally, she's ready! It's so nice to have only one child in diapers again! Austin hasn't show any inclination towards even wanting to sit on the toilet, so I'm not pushing it.

Cami's other accomplishment this week is one that I'm not at all thrilled about, but it makes me laugh nonetheless. Cami discovered the art of cutting Austin's hair. :) I left my crafting scissors on a table where she could reach them and got them up in the morning. I was getting them breakfast and Cami comes in, holding something out for me. I take it and quickly realize that it's a large chunk of Austin's hair. Fantastic. When I looked closer at his poor head, I discovered this.

Sterling cut Austin's hair just about a week before and was very proud of his 'Marine haircut masterpiece'. We haven't yet fixed Austin's hair, just too lazy, though I'm sure we'll have to soon. I'm just grateful that Cami hasn't yet cut her own hair, though that will surely come. I remember pictures of my childhood attempts to trim my own bangs. Quite the disaster.

I'll end with a few other pictures I've taken since we've been here in New York.

Can you spot Cami?

How about here?

Showing off mom's accessories. So cute!

Things happening in New York

Part One: Our new apartment

I know some of you have been waiting for awhile to see what our new place is like. We are (mostly) settled in now. We still have several pictures to hang and I'd still like to get some additional rugs, but that will come with time, I suppose. We're in the upper floor of a building with two apartments in it. There's an unfinished attic above us, and an unfinished basement below the apartment below us. It's all space used for storage. The day we moved in, Sterling was out front unloading the trailer and two guys walked by. A little while later, they came back with a 6 pack of beer and said 'welcome to the neighborhood!' Sterling told them we don't drink and they said 'more for us'. :) Nice gesture though. They invited Sterling over anytime he wants to watch football or anything. Our neighborhood is nice. Pretty safe over all. One of the reasons we chose the apartment is because it's so close to our church and Sterling's school. Both are about two blocks away in opposite directions. We're also about two blocks away from a huge park, complete with tennis courts, a lake, a big play ground, and an area where you can have your dog off leash. It's huge!

As for our apartment, it's decent sized. The bedrooms are a little small, but they fit everything well enough. The landlord stripped all the carpet and had the wood floors varnished. I feel bad for the people below us because with the kids running back and forth I'm sure we are loud! We bought a big rug for the kids room so they can throw their toys around and not be as noisy, but haven't bought any others. I took several pictures of our place before we got furniture in, just to show the size of the rooms. It was so dirty! When they were doing work here (varnishing the floors, painting the walls, etc), they didn't clean it at all just so we could get in earlier. Thankfully they recompensed us by not charging us for the month of November at all. It took quite a bit of work though.

Here's the before and afters of the rooms. Hope that gives some idea of what it's like here. We like it so far. We've got nothing but radiant heat, but I actually like it. We also got a brand new gas stove because there was a problem with the oven of the last one. And there's a dishwasher! We haven't had one in the 5 and 1/2 years that we've been married, so I'm thrilled to finally have one.

Here's the living room - taken from the dining room

 This angle is from by the door out to the sun room, seen on the right of the first picture

 This is the dining room from the living room. The front door to our place is around the corner on the left of the first picture opening up to the dining room.

This is the entry way out of the dining room. There's a coat closet and space for shoes, then the stairs go down and down again to the left to our real front door and then through the door to the outside of the building.

The kitchen as seen from the office door

The kitchen as seen from the hallway

Our bedroom, the biggest of the three. This room is actually fairly large. Other places I've seen fit a queen bed, maybe one side table and that's it. No dressers at all. Ours fits our queen, two dressers and two side tables.

 The kids room. It's big enough for them and their toys. They seem to enjoy the space. We plan to get bunk beds for them after Christmas.

 This is the office. Much smaller than our bedroom, but still fits everything in.

Part of the bathroom. The sink with the mirror over it is off to the left and the shower is behind the door off to the right. The shower head is so high that I can barely reach it if I'm standing on the side of the tub. This place was built in approximately 1904, so I'm wondering, were they just taller back then? Or am I just really short? Never mind. Don't answer that.

There's a hallway that connects the dining room to the kitchen and in that hallway are the doors for our bedroom and the kids bedroom on one side, and two storage closets, the bathroom, and a built in china hutch on the other side. The room to the office is off the kitchen, as well as the door to the back stairs and porch. That door is seen by the fridge in one of the pictures.

That's pretty much our place. I think we'll like it here for the next two and a half years. We bought a piano for $100, which I'm just thrilled about. As a whole, it's out of tune, but the notes are all still mostly in tune with each other, so I might just deal with it. I don't mind playing on a piano that's a little off. I just got called as the Primary chorister in church, so I'm going to need the practice.

We also had to buy a new couch because, sadly, our big black leather couch would not fit through the doorway. The problem is that there's a wall several feet in front of our front door (at the bottom of the stairs) and we couldn't maneuver the couch around that area to get it through the door. The love seat fit because we could turn it on it's end, but the couch was too big. We tried everything, even took the padding out of the back and armrests. So I think we're just going to store it somewhere for the next couple years. We haven't had any luck selling it for anything near that it's worth, so we'll wait and use it later. We like our sectional though. It has the built in footrests on either end. It's definitely seen better days though, but it will do for us.

Here's all the stuffing from the armrests and the couch backs. Five bags and two blue bucket-fulls. Also the cushions.

The window you see over Sterling's shoulder here is the wall that I was talking about. Not so easy to get around.

Our poor deflated couch.

Well, that's all!  Hope you enjoyed the tour! Stayed tuned for tomorrow's post of 'Cami's accomplishments.'