Low budget laundry room makeover

My friend, Jo, inspired me with her laundry room and helped me out via text message and email (thanks, Jo!!!!!) to give our laundry room/pantry a little facelift last week. Our laundry room isn't even a room---it's more of a closet, and it resides in our kitchen and shares its space with all of our food. Not ideal but it's all we have to work with. My dream laundry room looks like the second picture you see when you click here, but there's always our next house, right? :)

Okay, the pictures are crappy because I took them with my phone so I could text them to Jo, but you get the idea. Here's the before....a big, cluttered mess:

Annnnnnnnnnd.......drumroll.............the AFTER! Not HGTV worthy or anything, but it looks so much better!! All it took was some baskets and bins from Target, a little fake plant from Pier 1, and a lamp that we already had:

There you have it! A simple, low-budget laundry room closet and pantry! Easy as pie, and many thanks to sweet Jo for the inspiration and suggestions!

Happy Halloween!

Halloween is so much fun when you have children! This year Whitt had croup so he didn't get to partake in any Halloween festivities, but he did get to dress up in his costume a few days earlier and pose for pictures before he got sick, so at least I got a few good pictures out of him. :) If anybody is interested in an adorable Baby Gap cow costume, size 12-18 months, let me know--otherwise off to eBay it will go!

Halloween, round one: Spiderman and "Scawy" cat before a party on Friday

Whitt got in on a couple of pictures a few minutes before Ben convinced me that I needed to take him to the doctor. P.S. Doctors' offices aren't too fond of parents who call at 4pm on a Friday insisting that their child needs to be seen....

Cutest scawy cat I've ever seen! (I really need to post a video of how Emma Claire talks--it's so sweet and I don't want to ever forget it)

Halloween, round two: Trick-or-treating with friends

Grayson playing football, mid catch

A good time was had by all!

Resiliency and pumpkins

Whitt and I went on a date this morning to the Methodist church "pumpkin patch". It's amazing how resilient children are---you'd never know he had surgery just two days ago, aside from the shiner he's sporting. He was his his usual happy self, and he loved checking out all of the pumpkins. Just for fun, here's a picture I took of him at the same place last year--what a difference!

Okay, first of all, is this not the most awesome pumpkin you have ever seen? It's the beauty we brought home with us today and I am so obsessed that I just might have to go back and get a few more. I think gray might be the new orange when it comes to pumpkins at our house this year.

Now, on to the best part of this post. My cute little Whitty. I could just eat him up!!!!! Love this little dude so much it's ridiculous. :)

Surgery update

Thank you for all of your sweet notes and prayers for our precious Whitt. His surgery was yesterday and it went really well. We got to MUSC at 7am and he did surprisingly well after not having anything to eat or drink since the night before. He got checked in and went to the pre-op area and was given a little medicine to make him relax a bit so he could be taken away from us without freaking out. Here's a picture of him not long before they took him back to the operating room. The little marks on his head were where the doctor had written with marker right above the cyst so they knew where they'd be operating--I guess it's routine to write on the patient where you're going to operate so you don't accidently cut them open in the wrong spot.

The surgery took right around 2 1/2 hours, which was a little big longer than we expected it to take. It was a LONG time for our baby to be away from us and under general anesthesia, but we knew that he was in good hands and that he had many, many people praying for him so we really had a sense of peace about the whole thing. There was a clock on the wall in the waiting room that I swear had the loudest second hand though--it was almost rubbing it in how slowly time was passing by. They called us from the OR when an hour had passed by and let us know that everything was going well, and about thirty minutes after that the ENT came out and said he'd gotten the cyst out and the plastic surgeon was working on closing his face back up. About an hour later, the plastic surgeon came out and told us that she was finished, and fifteen minutes later a nurse came to take us to the recovery area to be with our sweet boy who was not feeling so hot. He had a reaction to the anesthesia and threw up for a few hours, but they gave him some anti-nausea medication and he stopped throwing up by the time we got back home (although I am still not sure why they sent us home from the hospital with him throwing up---his car seat was covered in vomit....not fun) and he slept for 14 hours straight last night.

Whitt is back to his normal self today, besides a big shiner on his eye. Even though the cyst was on his forehead above his eyebrow, the doctors made the incision underneath his eyebrow so one day when his eyebrows thicken and darken the scar hopefully won't be as noticeable as it is now. If anything, he'll just look a little tougher! :)

Thanks again for all of your thoughts and prayers!! We appreciate each and every one of them!!! xoxoxoxo

Introducing...

the

newest (and tiniest)

members of our family,

Tillman and Rally Cat, or Tilly and Rally for short. :)

Aren't they precious?????

Look who's walking!!!

Whitt is now taking more than just a few steps---he's really walking! Crawling is still his main mode of transportation, but he is getting better and better at walking every day. Our baby is growing up! :) SO, SO, SO proud!!!!!! Check him out...

Be careful or your face will freeze that way :)

My littlest munchkin

My sweet, sweet baby Whitt....there are hardly words to describe how amazing this child is. I could seriously just eat him up every second of the day! He is the most precious, snuggly, happy, affectionate little boy, and I thank God every day for blessing our lives with him. Whitt hasn't had the easiest life so far---he's been going to occupational therapy, physical therapy, and early intervention five days a week for the past eight months due to his developmental delays, but he's made so much progress. He turned 15 months a few days ago and just started taking some steps---we couldn't be prouder! His early interventionist recently cut back to seeing him just twice a month instead of once a week, and just this morning his OT decided to start seeing him just once a week instead of twice. I'm not sure what his therapists' outlook for him is, but I'd love for him to graduate both PT and OT in the next couple of months---and if he keeps progressing the way he has lately, I feel certain that will happen. :)

Sweet Whitt also needs some prayers, if y'all don't mind. He has to have a little surgery next Wednesday to remove a cyst from his skull on his forehead. It's not a major surgery or anything, and the cyst is perfectly harmless, but he will have to undergo general anesthesia and the surgery will last about two hours. He's already had a CT scan to determine exactly where the cyst is and how far in his head it goes, and his doctors are highly respected at MUSC so we feel very comfortable knowing that he will be in good hands. However, he's our baby and we love him so much that we are more than a little nervous about this. We'd appreciate prayers for a safe surgery and a speedy recovery for our precious Whitt.

And now for his 15 month stats, just so I can remember them since I still don't have a baby book for him (poor third child!):

weight: 22 lb 6 oz (25th percentile)

height: forgot already...need to call the pediatrician and ask...but it's in the 50th percentile

diaper size: 4

clothes size: 12-18 months

words he says consistently: mama, cat, uh oh, more, meow, red

sleep: still taking two naps a day (1.5 hour morning nap and 2-3 hour afternoon nap) and sleeps from 7pm to 7 am

teeth: he has a mouth FULL of sixteen teeth!

other fun things he's doing: waves by holding his arm up in the air, smiles at everybody and will go to anybody--this boy has never known the meaning of stranger anxiety :), crawls all over the place, pulls up on furniture, cruises around furniture, climbs up stairs (hasn't mastered going down them yet--he wants to go down face first!), blows kisses, and gives hugs by laying his head down on your shoulder.