A Little Change

Why do changes always cost money? Brian would probably answer that question by saying, "Only when you're in charge of them, Dear," but, really, he hardly ever calls me "dear."

The first change to steal from our pocket book is Marcus' bedding. In preparing for our *possible* upcoming move, I decided that Marcus was old enough to sleep in a twin sized bed in our new house. My mom offered for us to use the headboards that my sister and I used when we were little, which we already have one of, and we talked about painting them dark blue to match Ethan's bedding, and the bedding I planned on getting for Marcus. I bought Marcus' bedding, the first bit of money spent on this change, and made two pictures to match both of the boys beds.This part acutally cost nothing, since I used two picture frames that the previous tenants left in the basement, some card stock, and some wall stickers I bought for Ethan forever ago and never used. I must point out that I realize that no one would park their cars that close to a rocket launch, but I didn't have a big enough picture frame to make it more realistic. I love how they turned out. I love what you can make with just a little bit of paper.

During the process of buying bedding and making pictures, we moved Alyssa out of the bedroom that all three kids shared. She was tired of Marcus climbing out of his crib and wreaking havoc before falling asleep at night, so she finally got a room of her own, and she loves it. After moving Alyssa out of the boys' room, we discovered that with her gone, Marcus started going to Ethan's bed to play. Now, Marcus is a bulldozer, and Ethan doesn't quite know how to fight back when Marcus wants to jump all over him, so we spent a few nights listening to Ethan shriek in terror between our visits to put Marcus back in his crib, and we were soon discussing ways to keep Marcus from attempting to kill his older brother before falling asleep at night. Brian found the solution while searching for something completely unrelated, and we were soon spending more money. A little extra money, too, because I went ahead a paid for overnight shipping, which I've never done before, but I felt it was necessary to keep our four year old alive.


The crib tent came yesterday, and I set it up immediately. We actually ordered the car sheet and blanket along with it, because up until now Marcus' crib sheet has been Ethan's flat sheet wrapped around his mattress. Marcus loved it while we were setting it up, and he loved it while he was testing it out, but once it came time for bedtime, and I laid him down and zipped it up, he didn't love it anymore. He cried for about five to ten minutes, then fell asleep, which is better than me rocking him to sleep and having him wake up all night, because that's what he does when I rock him to sleep. And it was better than either Brian or I laying down beside his crib for an hour saying, "Marcus, lay down," over and over again. I really think it's a good solution. Brian has also been worried about Marcus falling and getting hurt while climbing in and out of his crib, so it solves that problem, too. We'll just hang on to the rocket idea for another year or so until he's old enough to firmly grasp the meaning of "Stay in bed!"

Two nights ago, Ethan and Marcus actually stayed up looking at books for a while, and they both fell asleep by the door. So they've gone from this:

To this:

(They're supposed to be pretending to sleep.)

The second change we've had in the last couple of days is to our kitchen cupboards. When Brian and I first got married, we saved our margarine tubs from Costco to use as our containers for baking ingredients. People sometimes open our cupboard and say, "Wow! You eat a lot of butter!" But they don't understand that it took us a couple of years to stockpile our collection.

So these are what we've been using for most of our marriage. They work great. I've been using them for years, and I haven't once complained, but you have to admit that they're not exactly very pretty. I went to a thrift store with my mom today while Alyssa was at school, and I found a great collection of dishes to turn our flour and sugar containers from the Sharpeed yellowness you see above to this:
Isn't that so much prettier? They had a smaller salt container, but it didn't have a lid. The flour dish is actually a little bigger than our margarine tubs, and the sugar is about the same size. I bought a couple of other dishes as well.

I'm excited to start using the special plate. I think the kids will love it! They had a ton of other dishes from the same collection, and I was tempted to buy more, but we don't have that much change.