Easter Post & A Random Chloe Update

We had a great Easter 2011.  My parents came down Thursday night and watched Chloe on Friday while I was at work.  Chloe was so happy to have both her Grammy and Papa at her house for almost three full days!  On Saturday we went out for breakfast and then my Mom and I went shopping for some bigger clothes for Little Miss since she seems to have hit a growth spurt.  Paul and my Dad made a huge feast including spinach salad, shrimp bisque, prime rib, and twice baked potatoes.  I made a carrot cake cheesecake for dessert.  It was such a delicious meal, but Chloe didn't want anything to do with it.  She has eight teeth coming in right now and she isn't interested much in food unless it is a chicken finger drenched in ketchup.  Sunday morning we went to church and then Chloe got to play with her Easter goodies.  Here are a couple of pics:

While I am at it I might as well just post a few pictures of Chloe doing what she does best: climbing. This is what she does in a life sized grocery cart, as well.

On the topic of climbing, Chloe walks up and down the stairs upright and face forward now.  She has been for about a month now.  I was so worried at first and would always wait at the bottom of the stairs for her.  She fell down a couple of stairs twice, but it was on the carpeted part and she was fine.  No amount of coercing can get her to change her mind about going down those stairs like a big girl, so we just let her. 

She has been given a fair amount of free range around the house now, and she seems happier and less mischievous because of it.  We even let Chloe play and watch Elmo (her favorite) in the basement for a couple of minutes at a time while we are up in the kitchen or running to the bathroom. 
Speaking of Elmo, Chloe is totally obsessed with him and Sesame Street.  I always loved that show as a kid so my Mom started letting her watch it.  She gets to watch it every day now and she starts dancing and clapping whenever it comes on.  I actually think it is pretty funny to watch, and I love cuddling up with her and flipping it on. 

She can almost say Elmo and Big Bird.  Chloe isn't too interested in talking, though.  She says Mama, Dada, Papa, Dolly Doll (my parents' dog), uh oh, thank you, woof woof, moo moo, and tickle tickle.  Her favorite things to do are tickle tickle people, dance, and climb on Griffin.  Her tickle tickle is so cute because it is actually sounds more like lithel lithel.  She dances to everything from songs on the radio to songs on commercials to songs playing on her toys.  She'll stop everything just to dance.  Her moves are so cute and usually involve bouncing her butt as she spins in a circle while swinging her arms.  Chloe is just so fun right now!  Everything just keeps getting more fun as she grows and I'm so grateful for that, because it is easy to get depressed about how fast she is growing up. 

Dirt Café

Chloe has recently acquired a taste for the finer things in life.  In addition to her love of dog bowl water, dog toys, baby wipes, Kleenex, and any type of food that has fallen on the floor, her most recent craving is for dirt. It does have many of the same qualities as sugar - smooth, crystaly... wonderful - except it is missing a few important qualities like being sweet and highly digestible. Nevertheless she loves to sneak a mouth full whenever we aren't looking. (Or, in the spirit of documenting this phase, whenever we are looking.)



 

 



The Birds. THE BIRDS!

I feel like a murderer. 

I'm seriously considering taking down the wreath.  I wasn't even really considering it until my Mom started with her scare tactics.  First of all, we spent a lot of money on that wreath.  And she made that bow by hand.  And the birds will poop all over the wreath.  And birds have lice.  And the lice will come in your windows AND BURROW INTO YOUR SKIN. 

Okay, so she didn't say that last part, but when she said birds have lice I have to admit that I pointed my finger at her and laughed.  Birds have lice.  That doesn't even make sense.  I was fully prepared to make fun of her here, but before I did I did a quick Google search "wild birds lice" only to find out that wild birds can have lice, and when the birds leave the lice will crawl through your windows AND BURROW INTO YOUR SKIN!  I only looked at one website, and it had less credibility than Wikipedia, but I'm going with it. 

So before the birds make up an official letterhead and claim primary residence exemption, I'm going to have Paul take down the wreath.  As of this weekend we will no longer be those people.  In the meantime I'm going to be feeling terrible for possibly and probably killing a few baby birds.  I don't even like birds.  I swear, becoming a mother makes you sentimental as hell.

Easter Wreath

This is what happens when you wait too long to take down your Christmas decorations...

 

I don't even need to decorate it with Easter eggs!  Now, if only I could make a real "Birds' Nest" sign for the house... then maybe we would stop getting so many dirty looks from our neighbors.

A Mousy Makeover

I guess Paul and I have never really "counted" the basement as a livable space.  We had only really used it for extra storage, or for an extra place to sleep when we had guests, or for a short retreat from a super hot summer day.  The real problem is that someone living there before us had cats, and apparently they let their cats pee on the carpet once or twice, because the whole basement had a faint undertone of cat pee.  But then again, maybe it was just mouse pee.

Sick. 

We brought Griffin to the house before we bought it to see if he got any paranormal hits, but all he did was run straight to the basement and pee on the carpet.  I guess it smelled so bad to him that he thought it was the outdoors.  So my point is that we have always wanted to put new carpet in the basement and repaint the walls.  That is all we wanted to do.  Here is a picture of what the basement looked like prior to The Mice.

But the Lord works in mysterious ways, because after The Mice came to live at our house Paul decided that no way, never, not ever was he going to leave the poopy ceiling tiles in the basement.  I just told him to do whatever he wanted since I was so stressed out about the whole thing.  Tearing down the ceiling tiles and replacing the carpet soon turned into calling a contractor, bumping out a wall, replacing the electrical, and so on.  And when I returned from D.C. I came down to the basement to find this:

 

After I pooped my pants, Paul explained that after pulling down the ceiling tiles he realized the idiot living here before us thought he was an electrician and wired the whole basement himself.  There were all kinds of fire hazards and issues that needed to be addressed.  We couldn't quite afford an electrician at $80 per hour for three days worth of work so we called our brother-in-law, Chad, an electrical engineer.  To the entire Moore Family and God, I thank you again here for blessing us with your help.  The electrical work in our basement was really a threat to our whole family, and it turns out that if those mice had wings they would have been angels (or bats).  Chad and family came to our house on three separate occasions to help Paul with the wiring.  When they were done the basement looked like this:

Then my dad helped Paul replace an old pipe.  Then Michael, our contractor and friend, framed in our new walls.  Then came drywall.  The basement looked like this:

Paul and our friend Matt borrowed a paint sprayer from an old football buddy.  They sprayed the ceiling and then painted the walls the following day.  We were then left with this:

Let me just stop right here to say how lucky you are to get such instant gratification.  Paul slaved over this basement for days on end, tearing away layer after layer of old drywall, dust, mouse poop, and carpet.  Michael spent a month waiting for us to move all of the garbage from the basement to the garage to the trash can (and the neighbor's trash can and the other neighbor's trash can) all in an effort to save on dumpster and demolition costs, which, by the way, was a horrible plan.  And after a whole month of waiting he came in and finished the job in less than two weeks.  Even though both Paul and Michael were so amazing, I spent the same amount of time rocking back and forth in a corner, afraid of what would come next.  Everything looks so much less stressful on HGTV.  And it all happens in thirty to sixty minute segment.  I'm just saying, as a blog reader myself, I can appreciate getting to see the entire project from start to finish in less than three minutes. 

Where was I?  So Michael finished up the trim work on Wednesday, and we finished painting and patching the floors on Thursday.  On Friday the carpet was installed.  Now we have a finished product that looks like this:

When you live in a really old house with beautiful wood floors everyone says it is a shame to cover them with carpet, and for the most part I agree.  But after a while you realize that it doesn't matter how pretty those floors are, because they are cold and uncomfortable and creaky and... well, it is just really nice to have a room with carpet.  The whole family agrees.  Chloe was so excited that she could hardly contain herself.  She was doing laps in the room just screaming and laughing.  She kept falling over and rolling around.  Paul and I were making carpet angels, and Griffin was being all narcoleptic just curling up and falling asleep every three steps.  We are super happy to have a new room in our very old house!

*By the way, if you are looking for a great contractor in the area try Michael Triant of Sarafis Designs.