Runaway October

Not too long ago we bought two sets of the Svala table and chairs from IKEA for our “play­room”. I was kinda bummed they came unfin­ished but then got excited that I could do what­ever I wanted with them. I mean, who doesn’t dream of this per­fectly coör­di­nated play­room that looks like it came straight out of a Pot­tery Barn or Montes­sori guidebook?

Svala from Ikea

The kids had dif­fer­ent ideas, as usual. Within a few days they had scrib­bled all over the top with crayons and who-knows-what. Even the table legs had been col­ored on. I’m totally psy­ched with the cre­ativ­ity com­ing from these two lit­tle boys. Psy­ched. Too bad they didn’t con­sult me first because their art­work totally didn’t go with my Pot­tery Barn color schemes.

Daisy Dreams lam­i­nated cotton

I recently came across a tuto­r­ial for an oil­cloth table cover from Twig & This­tle, that I thought was a great idea for the boys’ work­space. I had some oil­cloth that I picked up from my favoritest fab­ric coop but it was very girly.

Then it occured to me that I had a yard of chalk­cloth in my stash. That would be per­fect! It’s fairly water resis­tant for spills and such, and I could whip out the chalks when the kids were bored. Score!

Kathleen’s tuto­r­ial included adorable lit­tle scal­lops around the edge, which I thought would be okay if done in a nice manly color, like black

chalk­cloth. But man, chalk­cloth is hard to work with. I didn’t have quite enough to cover both tables sep­a­rately so I did one cover for both tables pushed together.

I ended up just hav­ing straight edges with a lit­tle bit of dec­o­ra­tive stitch­ing.  I think it turned out pretty good and the kids have throughly tested it. Heck I even ended up eat­ing on it last night because we had a HUGE crowd to feed last night.

Chalk­cloth Table Topper

Pretty Col­ors

This is seri­ous business…

(Declan was still napping)

So if you’re in need of some­thing sim­i­lar head on over to Twig & This­tle for the exact instruc­tions. Or you can check out Oil­cloth Addict for a no sew cus­tom chalk­cloth table top­per, also.

Today the big D-Meister turns 3. As a mat­ter of fact it wlll be exactly 3 years to the minute as I write this post. Man, how things have changed since his birth.

It’s been a long haul so far. So much to learn, so much to change, so much to cel­e­brate. Before I had chil­dren I would always tell Matt that I wanted 17 kids. I would think of my mother and how she had 6 kids and thought I could do that too, no prob­lem. Now that I have two lit­tle boys my want for 17 kids has dropped a lit­tle to a more man­age­able num­ber. I still think of my mother and how things make more sense, yet I don’t know how she managed.

While child­less it never occurred to me just how much work it took to do your best. How often you fall short of ideal. How self­less you have to become. In all hon­esty, it has been hard. When I crack my eye­lids in the morn­ing, before the sun, because Rowan is gig­gling and try­ing to stuff Legos in my ears I long for the days that I could sleep until 2 o’clock in the after­noon. After spend­ing a full day clean­ing, cook­ing three meals and nurs­ing non-stop all I want is a long hot bath, by myself. But Declan doesn’t like the water too hot and Rowan can’t stay in too long or he gets too prune-y.

But there are so many price­less moments that I would never want to miss. The feel­ing of pure eupho­ria when your baby finally comes home from the NICU. The first steps. The first time you hear Mama. When he runs past other peo­ple cry­ing because he wants com­fort from you. The lit­tle feel­ing of dread­ful but­ter­flies when he does some­thing so amaz­ingly grown up and the thought of how big he’s really get­ting. Being awestruck by how large his men­tal capac­i­ties have become in 3 short years.

There is so much grow­ing that goes on with chil­dren about, not their growth but mine as well (and not just the size of my butt). My heart has truly grown.

Happy Birth­day Declan Pierce. I love you so much, baby. (This is where he would say “I’m not baby. Declan is big boy. Rowan is lit­tle baby!”  )