New Bunk Beds

Over the summer I found two dressers on Craigslist that I really liked for Jackson and Madeline's room. Both the dressers are the same - a dark wood craftsmen style. Since then I've been watching and waiting for a set of bunkbeds that match to become available and as luck would have it, it finally happened. We took down the crib and put up a toddler bed for Madeline...then we took down the twin bed that Meredith loaned us over 5 years ago and put up the bunk beds and... (as Jackson would say) voila, a new bedroom!

We put Aunt Cyndee's quilts on the bunks - they both look good next to the dark wood. My thought is that Jackson can sleep on the bottom bed until he's a little older and then he can either sleep on the top bunk or we can "unbunk" the beds. I truly pray that we are not in this house THAT long, but I'm planning for the scenario non-the-less.

Jackson loves his new bed...and Madeline seemed to enjoy her new easy-to-climb-into toddler bed; however, as you can see by the photo below, the novelty of new beds quickly wore off -- they were both in Mom and Dad's bed by the morning. Maybe someday...

Or maybe I'll look for a king size bed for our room :-)

Early Reader

Today I was able to get the pantry cleared out and cleaned while Madeline slept. After she woke up, I rearranged and returned items to the pantry. On one trip I discovered Madeline had crawled up to sit on the first "step" with a book and was "reading."

This is one of the delightful moments of being a stay-at-home-mom. I stopped working and just watched her before grabbing the camera. She "read" for a while...

...and then tried unsuccessfully to get off the steps. Those short, little legs couldn't quite reach.

I grabbed the step stool and set it against the bottom stair, but she couldn't get down and she let me know it!

With help, she finally made her way off the step and then spent another 15 minutes going up and down. What fun it was to watch her!

Cousins

We went to Aunt Steanie's birthday party today at her church. Her grandchildren (Rodney's cousins Melanie and Holly's children) participated by holding up a letter and reading a word to describe their grandmother. Even "little" 2-year old Timmy participated. They are a great bunch of children and we feel so lucky that our kids have cousins on both my side and Rodney's side of the family.