Playmobil

We have entered into the world of Playmobil. Already, many hours have been spent with "my guys" or "my friends" (as Tripp calls them) and I have a feeling there will be many more to come (if only I could find some good deals on them...)!

Big Boy Bed!

Well, it is rather crazy, but at least it seems to be working. I am referring to Tripp's new bed, in case you were wondering. Why crazy? Well, I decided to relinquish some of my "control" over Tripp's life and let him pick out his own bedding for his new bed in an attempt to get him excited about it. It worked, but the bedding is a little less than desirable. I have nothing against Thomas, the number one blue engine, but these new sheets are a tad on the crazy side. But, I also was not about to pay somewhere around $60 for a set of much more tasteful sheets from Pottery Barn Kids. So we stuck with Thomas. Tripp loves them, loves his bed and we love that he loves his bed. The process actually went pretty smoothly. I had fully planned on letting him stay in his crib even after the baby was born (hey, I'll buy another crib if it means my toddler is confined to his bed still) but after walking into his room one morning and seeing him attempt to climb out of his crib, we decided that maybe moving him out was the safest thing to do. Besides, when thinking through all the transitions he will go through in the next year (new sibling, potty training, etc) we figured better do it now at this relatively calm time in his life. So we bit the bullet and went for it. We got my brother's old twin frame from my parents, bought a new mattress, and Tripp and Nelson set to work taking down the old crib and putting up the new bed.

Everything went smoothly until I realized that his lovies could fall out of his bed. This is a major problem at 4 in the morning when he woke up screaming (he made it sound like he had fallen out of his bed). So we ended up getting a longer guard rail and thankfully, the lovie situation has pretty much been resolved. He definitely talked about his crib for a couple of days after we took it down, but has since seemingly forgotten about it. We left all his blankets the same and even use the same "system" we did in his crib- one blanket for under his head, one for on top of him (not sure how that system got started but oh well, he likes it). As much as I would love to get a big comforter to cover up those sheets, I don't see that happening for a while for one big reason: 1. It is something else for me to have to wash and considering there are practically dirt piles on the end of our bed from my infrequent washing of our own sheets, adding something big (like a comforter) to my washing list is a very terrible idea. So for now, we will just "enjoy" those Thomas sheets (although I might have to buy an extra set for those days when I find a little wet spot on them from a leaky diaper) and be thankful that he loves his new bed!

Reed's First Birthday

Last weekend we decided to make a somewhat spontaneous trip to Dallas to celebrate our nephew's first birthday! It was also the perfect excuse for us to go- it had been all too long since we had been there last. But now that Tripp is two and we would have to buy him a plane ticket, it makes it a little more difficult to get there (seeing as it is a 10 hour drive and you basically "waste" two days driving there and back). But I have to say, despite me ignoring the GPS and taking us on at least an hour detour, the time in the car really wasn't bad. I even had a moment of thinking that it was nice to be together as a family. This was one of them (a really awesome rest stop with a nice picnic dinner):

And that is big for me, I really used to despise long car rides. But maybe the price of an extra plane ticket is enough to have changed my mind. But anyway, we had a great time in Dallas- we celebrated Reed's birthday,

watched Tripp and Weston (and Reed too) play together for hours,

and just had some good quality time together. It was just what we needed!