The Beginnings of 2014

He just starting stacking his toy one night before bed, out of no where...

It's the simple things...

Despite being home for two weeks, kitty has been completely dropped from his (rudimentary) vocabulary. The kitties are dogs now. At least he's learned to pet them very nicely.

Aiden has moved up to the Toddler Room at day care. Luckily his best friend has made the transition with him. He still loves it and now there are a few more kids in the room to play with. He came home with his first busted lip. From falling off a table you ask? Surprisingly, no. Falling out of his chair. Oh, the irony.

Nina came over to visit and watch the start of the playoffs.

Aiden is no longer sleeping on a mattress on the floor. Andrew and I converted his crib to the toddler bed. This is giving us back some very valuable floor space in his room for toys and playing.

 We've slowly been starting some easy projects around the house. We're getting rid of our living room curtains. Since we've already replaced almost all the wood trim in the house with white trim, we wanted to paint the wood window trim before the new shades arrived.

Unfortunately, the white window trim did not look as good as we'd anticipated. It just made the windows look unfinished. It only took me one evening to paint so I spent the next evening repainting to match the walls (there was no easy way to un-paint the trim, so this seemed like the most subtle solution).

The new shades arrived and we are so much happier (Our walls are a deeper orange/red than these pictures show).

 I had started repainting the stair rails and trim back in November. I knew it would be a slow process with limited time and tedious painting around carpet and lots of rails. I typically work on it in the evenings. At this point I have almost the entire staircase primed with a few complete sections. In the picture below the left is only primed the right of the stairs is finished. To cover the wood it takes 1 coat of primer + 3 coats of gloss trim paint. It makes such a difference, so well worth it.