We're attempting to make a place for the garden in the crabgrass growing in clay... the excavator sure makes it a lot easier!
The kitchen painting is now done! And see how nice the floor is looking!!!
Hard to see last weekend's progress in this picture, but there was a lot of painting finished up :)
As of Wednesday night, all the painting in the living and dining room are done. (well, there's a small area that is going to be the same color as the kitchen that isn't painted yet.) So now it's on to wall repair in the kitchen and wood floor in the living/dining room. Getting closer!
Here are some pictures of the nest of the industrious insects that had eaten through our wall. Too bad for them, dad put an end to that... Soon after this picture was taken he had removed the nest from the wall and patched the hole. This was actually a few weeks ago, I just hadn't gotten the pictures up.
I've never made lemon bars before last week. They were delicious! I took them with me to a breastfeeding meeting and they were all eaten up. Some might say that teenage boys eat a lot of food. I would say that a bunch of breastfeeding mothers could outeat the teenage boys any day of the week!
We spent all morning and early afternoon getting ready to prime the living room and dining room. I left with the munchkin when Mark was ready to paint because of the fumes. The after pictures should be coming in a few days if all goes well :)
For those who were wondering what we do on Sundays, here are a few pictures.
Mark scrubbing the ceiling in the living room today. I did the walls, but I can't reach the ceilings even with the step ladder so Mark gets stuck with them.
Boris helped by keeping the chair warm in case Mark or I needed to sit down for a break.
And Willow contributed to the house project by holding down the new carpet. She also slept long enough to let me paint the bathroom closet and do a few other little things.
Overall a fairly productive day.
Really, I should be cleaning the house. But instead, I am amusing myself by making cookies while the munchkin sleeps.
Orange and Lemon cookies anyone?? I love the internets, they have so many fun recipes.
Can you see the little lines on the cookies? I think next time I need to make the lines deeper. I also want to dye some granulated sugar to put on the edges so it looks like lemon/orange skin.
They are tasty- mmm!!
It's a balmy 36 degrees here right now, with no snow in sight.
Everyone knows that Christmas can't come until we get some snow!
Ridiculous!
A lot of people over the last few days have asked me how I am feeling, how I like being a mommy, how was the birth, is Willow like I thought she would be, etc.
So here is a little post about some of the things that have surprised me about my first few days with Willow.
Labor and the aftermath
I expected labor to be painful and difficult, and it was. But it was manageable, which I also expected. I knew that if millions of other women had birthed babies under far worse circumstances, I could surely do it too.
I had planned to have a natural birth if at all possible for several reasons. I knew with drugs I would have to stay in bed and I just couldn't stand the thought of that. I like to move around. I also expected that I would probably change my mind once the going got rough and ask for an epidural. Mark and I talked about this ahead of time and decided that when I felt like I needed drugs, we would just try to wait for another half hour. This played out about how I thought it would. We waited "just another half hour" about a million times and eventually we made it to the end. I didn't expect that we would have to use the "just another half hour" plan so many times.
Which leads to the length of labor point. I hoped for a much shorter labor. My mom had pretty short labors, so I thought maybe I would luck out and have a short labor as well. No such luck. If I count the start of labor as when I got to the hospital- contractions 3 minutes apart and already very difficult- it was about 13.5 hours. And felt much longer to both Mark and I because by the time Willow was born, we had both been awake for more than 24 hours.
I expected to be sore from delivery, which I am. However, I had no clue that my ankles and calves and shoulders and ribs would be sore! I still feel like I ran a triathalon or did the Tour de France or something. I can be up off the couch puttering around for about 10-15 minutes and then I start feeling shaky and lightheaded. I guess this is nature's way of making sure I don't do too much too soon. I won't be raking the leaves this week, for sure! My big exercise for the last two days has been walking to the mailbox and back. Woo hoo!
Sleep
Not too many surprises here. I knew that Willow would sleep a lot- she does. I knew I would barely sleep at all- I don't. But I am getting some sleep. If anything, I am less tired than I thought I would be. I think those years of working nights may have helped prepare me a little bit.
Eating
This little girl eats a LOT! I expected this. People told me she would need to eat every few hours, which she does. I just had never really thought about what that would mean in terms of hours and minutes. Thanks to our fun Willow Tracker program, I now know that yesterday Willow ate for 268 minutes. That's like 4.5 hours. And doesn't include burping time, or getting her latched on time, or finding a comfortable chair to sit in time. So if she continues to eat this much, that will mean 31.5 hours a week of nursing. Kind of a shocker to me.
And then there are my eating habits. I am hungry. So very hungry. All the time. I knew this ahead of time, but I kind of expected to just eat more at mealtimes, I guess. No, I have to eat all the time. This is serious business. Don't get between me and the trail mix. Bad things might happen. God bless all the wonderful people who have brought us food.
The Baby
I fully expected to love this little munchkin more than anything else in the world, which I do. She is just incredible and she is only 4 days old. I don't think I expected her to be so very very entertaining this early though. All the faces and noises are just so much fun to watch. She is like my own personal little comedian. Even when she is sleeping she wiggles around and does funny things- this is kind of like an unexpected bonus prize to me.
All in all these first four days have been much better and easier than I thought they would be. I know there will be a lot more surprises in the next few weeks and I am looking forward to them.
Here at the Mark and Kindra Headquarters we have a little trouble with decision making from time to time...
Kindra: What should we do tonight?
Mark: I don't know, what do you want to do tonight?
Kindra: I asked you first.
etc. etc. etc.
This is one of those times- we cannot decide what to name this blog!
Please help us! Here are some choices:
Davidson Times
Everything Davidson
Davidson Ramblings
Them Kooky Davidsons
Blogging Davidsons
Davidson Doings
The Davidson Show
Any clever people out there? Help us out with a catchy name!