The Room of Yes!

Benjamin's room of yes.  Almost done!

Benjamin is enjoying his new digs.  He loves the freedom and so do we! It's the one room in the house where we are totally comfortable leaving him to play independently.  We never have to say, "No," in this room.  (Okay, that is a little white lie, because we have to say no when he squirms with diaper changes.  But even that is starting to take place in its rightful place of the bathroom these days.)

There have been a few times recently where he has awoken from a nap, and rather than crying out, he decides to play.  And he's got the whole room to explore, never needing to be rescued from the confines of a crib. These self-initiated playful moments seem pretty magical to me.  As much as I have loved, and continue to love the 'attachment' part of our relationship, as he gets older, I am thrilled to see that he is comfortable exploring his world on his own.  And when David and I are playing the role of the classically bleary-eyed parents, we collapse onto his little bitty bed and watch him play.  He loves to crawl on and over us, and most recently, bring books to us to read to him.  Love this.

Additions for this room will include a nice wide wooden shelf David is building to put under the window area.  Also, I'll add framed photos and artwork that are child-proofed and securely mounted.  We *may* put the curtains back up. I want to test them again to see if he can pull them down onto himself first.  

David loves this room.  That's saying something.  Especially considering how he had a hard time letting go of the idea of the peacefully sleeping crib infant.  Not in the cards.  

Today, baby boo is sick with a fever.  Mommy slept with him in any way that would work for him.  That meant starting the night in the recliner, then the rocking chair, then the floor bed, then our bed.  We've had rougher nights than this.  

I rallied for the purchase of a twin bed mattress.  Alas, I have tabled my request for now... but it shall re-surface!!  Why do I want a twin mattress for my dear son?

Several reasons:

1) I also sleep on this mattress.  You can fault me all you want.  When he cries after a 30 minute nap, how do you think he gets back to sleep?  He'll sleep another whole hour (most times) if I just lay beside him and nurse him back to sleep. This is true for nighttime too.  Therefore, I want a twin mattress so I have adequate room and am not miserable from a sore back.  'Cause sometimes I fall asleep there in the middle of the night.

2) Ben can have more room for tossing and turning.  It doesn't happen terribly often, especially now that he's learned the boundaries of the bed. But there have been times that Benjamin rolls off his little bed.  This can wake him from a deep sleep, and rather than crawl back onto the bed, he cries.  A twin mattress would give him a little more room to move.

3) He will grow into it.  A twin mattress is something that you use all throughout childhood. It's not as though we'll only use it a year or two (like the carseat, the playard, all the infant paraphernalia...).  He will use it through, I don't know... teenage years?  I did.  So, I want a decent quality one.  (Do not even begin to read about chemicals in mattresses or you truly will not be able to sleep at night. Organic ones are extremely costly.  A good compromise, I've read, is one from IKEA, due to European  manufacturing standards being higher than in the US.)

4)  Family time.  More family time and togetherness.  There will be times when we will all want to crowd on his bed and play or read goodnight stories. Family time includes both parents, baby and dog.  A twin is the least we can get by with.  (I had considered a queen!)

Well, I'm off to go clean something.  Take your pick.  Not enough cleaning goes on around here.  Thank God for my dear, cleaning fool husband!  Yes, we do have a different standard of living around here these days (such as being okay with pee on my shoe), but still, I need to at least put some elbow grease into something besides his room.  Adios!

Ladybug rocks

This is a small piece of artwork I bought from Etsy to put in Ben's room. It's a photo adhered to a 4" wood block.  It's sturdy, and it's simply adorable.  Four bucks.

About the room.... Weeknights are tough, no lie.  And what fools we are to think we can work in going to the gym during the week.  Ha!  Well... the plan was to finish Ben's room during these sacred weeknights.  Tonight is the night.  David cleaned it up a bit last night, so this is what it looks like now.  It's almost usable again!

This is what it looked like this weekend.

Not pretty, huh?  No, not yet... but just you wait.  I gotta tell you, I'm loving the color.  Doesn't come across too well in the online photos, but it's a beautiful greenish-blue.  Kind of teal, I guess.  It's called Great Falls from Sherwin Williams.  (Side note: Sherwin Williams should really change their logo... Paint dripping all over the earth.  Not an eco-friendly image to say the least. It's off-putting.) A quick google found this guy who sees my point.

http://leounfinished.wordpress.com/2008/04/22/why-sherwin-williams-should-change-its-logo/

But in any case, we got the no VOC's version of paint.

I wanted wainscoting as well but I'm not too sure that's going to happen.  You've got the expense of buying it, the work of installing it, the frustration of never having installed it before so you don't know what you're doing, and David says to me... the liquid nails you have to use may have a toxic smell to it for a while.  Not my idea of kid-friendly.  Maybe if the room had time to air out... But we want him to use it right away.

So, soon and very soon a new photo of a clean room.  Undoubtedly, it will be ever-evolving as Ben's needs and interests change.

I hope to do a new post soon about interesting 'toys' for work or play.  Much of Ben's play is work.  They're mostly one and the same, the way I see it.  The second he is up in the morning, and I get that big good-morning-proud-of-myself grin in bed next to me (yes, he ends up back in bed with us somewhere around 12 or 3), he is up and at 'em.  He needs to get busy right away.  Crawling, opening drawers, emptying them of clothes, standing, sitting, squatting, pushing, pulling, grinning.

Well, sweet potato is about to wake from his much needed nap.  He seems to be getting up in ever-increasing earlier and earlier increments.  Today was round about 6:20 I think.  I mean, dag.

House Tornado

Every corner of my house seems to be in perpetual motion.  The eat-in kitchen area once housed (of all things) an eat-in kitchen table.  Beside it, a bouncy seat, later replaced by thick blankets, replaced by a playard, replaced by an 'exersaucer'... (is that really what we are calling those things?) replaced by free space and a small selection of organized toys on a shelf. The kitchen table was recently sold on craigslist, and replaced by other comfy chairs we had from upstairs.  Now it is a lounge, a cafe area, a place for Benjamin to move and interact with us.  I love it.  (For a future post: I think I will skip a lot of the contraptions i.e. the devices that hold and entertain babies if ever I go down this path again, read: baby #2.)

Similar switch-a-roos have occurred throughout the house.  Most namely is his bedroom.  Sure, when you are pregnant, you take great care in creating the most welcoming environment for your little newbie.  Everything is chosen and placed just so.

But... the thing is, that room, I later learned, wasn't "just so" for his needs.  It took about 8 or 9 months before my husband finally relented, taking apart the crib.  <I treaded lightly, because this dear man had put this crib together not once but twice before, and he feared having to do it a third time, I believe.>

The dreaded crib.  Never in my pregnancy could I have imagined how my dear son, and subsequently I, would hate that thing.

No, we much prefer the nursing-in-arms method of going to sleep, which does not lend itself to crib life.  Baby screams when baby is put down in the crib.  Must not leave baby.  Therefore... we have enjoyed a wonderful period of co-sleeping that I never expected.  Nursing to sleep is a whole other subject... so let is suffice to say for now that it is simultaneously bliss and work.  The work part is only for me.  The bliss part is equally shared.

In addition to the crib giving way to a floor bed, we have decided to outfit the whole room with all of the Montessori trimmings.  More on Montessori later, believe me.  I had been pondering this change for a good month or two, making tweaks and adjustments here or there, reading up on it, when I finally asked David to help me with some design decisions.  He, in turn, wanted to paint the room and build a shelf, and so between the two of us, in no time at all we have turned Benjamin's adorable little nursery into a major disaster area.  You can barely even walk in there right now.

But David assures me that in a day or two, Ben will be back in action in his room.  I'm excited.  The things that excite me these days.  I can't wait to put things on shelves.  Seriously.  This is where it's at.

A picture of the completed project will be coming soon....

All is quiet...

This is one of those rare moments when the whole family is fast asleep and I'm alone with my thoughts.  Generally speaking, I take every opportunity to sleep when they do.  God bless.  Sleep is awesome, and in short supply, say for the last maybe year or so.

What is life like these days...? Well, anyone who knows me, or heck, even went to high school with me, knows (via facebook) what my brain is consumed with these days.  All things Benjamin.

Ben Ben Ben.

The proverbial apple of my eye.  The joy we sing about, deep down in my heart.

Crayon Sun is meant to be an outlet for all of my Benjamin musings, but more than that.  Okay, so I am a little obsessed about Montessori, and a little defensive about Attachment Parenting, and a little on the fence about extended nursing, and completely perplexed by the part-time elimination communication success we've had...  But, surely, there's more to talk about than that.  Right?

Surprisingly, there can be LOADS to say on those subjects.  Even so,  I'll attempt to funnel my veggie food creations (even a disaster or two), my health rants, my organic-natural-vegan-juiced-raw ideas into this blog as well.  And maybe, just maybe, I'll pick up a guitar again and post a little something something there as well.

Off we go.... Shh... baby's sleeping.