A Letter to Elijah

A few days ago I was looking for something in my personal folder, on my work computer, and I found this scrapbook page. I had actually forgotten all about it until that moment. Now that I look back, it was a good idea to write those things down. We often forget about what kids do and like at certain ages and this is a great way to remember.

The journaling reads:

Elijah,

Where do I begin? I have loved you even before I knew who "you" were. I was so happy the day I found out I was pregnant. I prayed for you for months before that (and ever since) and you have certainly been a blessing. I loved feeling you kick inside me and move around. Although it hurt sometimes, I even loved feeling your little foot pushing outward in my side. I won't say it was all wonderful being pregnant with you. You didn't like Mac & Cheese, one of my favorite things to eat before I got pregnant and I gave up eating my favorite thing in the world... An Italian cold cut sub. But you were worth every minute of it. You are the best thing that's happened since I met your daddy. I love watching you grow. I swear, every time I get home from work you've grown more and more. You seem to love to learn new things... studying them with your eyes and grabbing onto things like mommy's hair and Azalea's nose. And of course as soon as you get ahold of it, it goes right into your mouth. You love playing with daddy a lot too, he could make you giggle all day. You two are so much alike, it's scary. As you grow it's hard not to think about what you'll be like when you're older. What things you'll like... who you'll hang out with... what kind of personality you'll have. Sometimes I sit and think about what it will be like when you're a teenager, but I quickly jump back to reality, because you'll be a teenager before I know it. I want to enjoy these moments now before they're gone. I love spending time with you and listening to you "talk" on and on and on. I'm so glad the Lord blessed me with you. He certainly knew what he was doing.

Love, Mommy

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I talked to Joe about finding this and he suggested I do one for every year. By default, I missed last year, but from now going forward, I plan on doing one every year. Then when he turns either 18 or 21 I'm going to print them out, put them in a scrapbook and give them to him. If we end up having more children, I hope to do one each year for them also. We'll see how it goes, but I love to journal and write letters, so it should be fairly easy. :-)

BTW, I'm sorry I've been AWOL from the blogging world for a while. With Elijah's room project going on, my sister getting married in Oct and working full time I have barely enough time to breathe. However lots has been developing with his room and I hope to be updating about that very soon. Have a great week, if I don't post again before then.

Transformation of a Bedroom - Part 3 - What Should I Put on the Wall?

We're almost done the planning portion, which is exciting, because the next portion is the doing portion. After all the research and decisions it'll be nice to finally see the finished product.

A few weeks ago we were all ready to order the carpet at Lowes, so it could be on it's way while we were working on prepping the room. So we go there and established quite quickly that we will not be getting the carpet I wrote about in the last entry. First, I had the wrong measurement for the room. It's actually 10x11, not 9x10. Second, instead of being able to get 10x11 like we needed, we would have to get 10x12 because they come in 12' rolls. So that bumped up the price to about $270. I couldn't bring myself to pay that much money... I just couldn't, not unless I looked at every other option before doing it... And that we did.

We looked at the "in stock" carpet at Lowes. Better prices per square foot, however it was about the same price because they came in 15' rolls. After basically chalking Lowes up as a last resort, we headed to Home Depot the next day. This is why I love Home Depot more than Lowes. There "in stock" carpet comes in 12' rolls and we found carpet we like for $.85 per square foot. It's a little darker than I would have liked... it's more of a sand color than an off-white color, but it still goes with the paint color. His room will just have an "oceany" feel to it. If we end up going with this newly found carpet it will be $181 for carpet and premium padding. We shall see what happens when we go to get it.


Now onto "What Should I Put on the Walls?":



This was my original idea... Hanging his art work on a clothes line with clothes pins. however when I was searching the internet I found all sorts of different ideas stemming from that one.









This is one of the favorite ones that I found. I was going to hang it along one little wall, three tiers high, like this and use the binder clips instead of clothes pins. They will probably look nicer and hold better.









I also like this idea, but it's on a wall with a window, so I feel like it would be too much curtain rod for one wall. However when we move I might do this instead of the clothes line, depending on how the room is laid out.







To go along with that, there will also be a clock that we already have.


We also bought these little train letters years ago that spell Elijah. We just need to paint them.







I also was thinking about getting him a growth chart. I wanted a big bird one, but there were none to be found, so I googled Sesame Street Growth Chart and up popped this from Wal-mart (my home away from home). We can even personalize it. It's a resonable price, but not cheap, so Elijah might be getting it for his birthday, since we are probably doing a Sesame Street theme for his room.








We're not changing the colors of the room or anything, but while we were at Sesame Place (a post about the trip will be coming soon) we saw these cute posters, however I was cheap and didn't get them. So, instead, I'm gonna see, if I can find some brightly colored alphabet or Sesame Street scrapbook paper and frame it to hang on the wall above the chalkboard.

Right now I'm thinking this sounds like a lot of stuff, so I guess when we start getting everything put in there we'll start with the stuff we already have and go from there. I hope you enjoyed hearing about the planning stage of this project. Hopefully in the next few weeks we will be able to start putting things together, so I can update with the progress. Have a great day!

Blues Clues Anyone?

About a month ago Elijah and I started watching Blues Clues, since I like it and I felt that he was old enough to understand the concept. Some things he's still too young for, but he loves finding the clues. So one evening he was sitting in the living room alone, while I went upstairs to do something. When I came back down the stairs he said, "Monnie (mommy)" stretching out his arms and hands, showing me his palms, "I have clues!". It was apparently some sort of revelation to him. I, of course, praised him for his observation and told him, yes, he in fact has "clues".

How long was he was sitting down there thinking about that? And what 2-year-old makes that connection? Who knows... Sometimes I think he is a 4-year-old trapped in a 2-year-old's body.