New House, New Routine

Mr. Boy and Princess Baby are growing up a little but they still need a lot of supervision for their daily activities. Because Mama is home alone with them 3 nights a week, We have established a new routine for them.

Mama does it 7 nights a week, but Big J helps us on the nights he is home to give Mama a bit of a break.

5:30-Supper time. This is important because Mr Boy has some issues with eating good food, eating meat, and eating anything some days. But now that we sit up at the table at the same time every night and put small portions of balanced food out--he's been doing super. We sometimes have to reward Mr. Boy with his milk cup or a juice box if he's having an especially hard time finishing his meal, but it is going very well--tonight he ate 2 whole fish sticks!

6:00-Bubble Bath!! Whoo-hoo! Big fun to take a bubble bath in the big new bathtub. We have lots of fun bath toys and Mr. Boy and Princess Baby like to help Mama put them away when the water is all gone. We bought a mesh laundry bag at the dollar store and we just drop those soggy wet toys and animal sponges right in the bag and hang the bag on the shower head--voila! They're dry by the next bath time.

6:20-one last show. Mr. Boy and Princess Baby go into her room and settle into their little chairs and watch Word World, SuperWhy, or Sesame for about 20 minutes. This gives Mama time to put away laundry, check her email, turn on night lights, straighted up rooms, hang up towels, or just breathe for a couple minutes and relax--Mama is TIRED at this time of night because she works till 5:10 or 5:15 and launched right into kid-time and fixing supper time.

6:45-Special Mama time. We go into Mama and Daddy's room and start with a game of Mama Says--it's just like Simon Says and it helps us get our wiggles out. Then we sing! We sing all the favorites, right in the proper order according to Mr. Boy--Old Donald, ABC's, She'll be Coming Round the Mountain (favorite verse? the one about sleeping with Grandma), Row Row Row Your Boat, and B-I-N-G-O. Then Mama Says--come hear the story! And both kids sit with her on the bed and read 2 story books. After the stories are done, we hold hands in a circle and sing Jesus Loves Me and say our prayers. Right now we are particularly praying for Papa because he's been feeling yucky from radiation treatments.

7:00-Into bed! Princess Baby heads to her bed right after the last Amen and gets tucked in with her blankie and her babies. Then Mr. Boy gets to go downstairs with Mama or Big J and sit and drink a little more milk. Then he gets tucked into his bed for the night.

After only 7 days of this new, specific routine, it is going very well. Everybody goes to bed calmly and stays there till morning time. When Big J is home, he fixes Mama and Big J's dinner while Mama does the baths and special time, and relaxes while the grill heats up or the oven cooks food as well. It's Big J's first chance to be by himself all day, so it's a good down time for him, too!

New House Part 1: Mr. Boy's New Room

Here are a couple photos of Mr. Boy's new bedroom! He has his special Redskins blanket he got for a shower gift before he was even born on his wall--just like in every bedroom he's ever had, his (messy) Elmo bed, and you can see he's got the Little Tyke Slide, too! He's excited that he gets the slide in his room. There is an un-pictured corner of the room that still holds a few boxes, but when that's done he gets to have the play school in his room, too! The walls are a little bare because he is going to be earning some special Go Diego Go stickers for decoration when he fills his next potty chart with stickers. So for now, he's got a few random pieces of sports equipment and his name!

The Stair Safety Gate

We love our new stair safety gate!!

We got this one, and we love it! It's a Carleson Extra Wide. We bought it from CSN Stores.

Through my friend The Cotton Wife, I was given a contact at CSN Stores and they offered me a gift certificate in order to try ordering one of their products and reviewing it here at the Bowling Team Blog. Since we were moving to the new house with stairs, it was a great time to order our gate through the CSN site. When I clicked there I found they sell nearly every type of item for the home and family you could possibly imagine so I was able to have a choice between many different safety gates when I chose this Carleson one. And the CSN store has free shipping on many items!

I ordered this on a Friday and got it on a Thursday--not too bad when you take into account I put the wrong address with my billing info because I forgot we already had changed our address at the bank!

As you can see in the photo, the extra wide size fit our top of the stairs area really well. It comes as wide as 44 inches and our entry there was 42.5. I believe Carelson also offers additions for larger spaces you might need to gate off. The opening is one that takes 2 hands most of the time--which is a very good thing for keeping the children from opening it up and tumbling down. The little red thing pulls back and then the handle lifts up and you ease on through. (Or you painstakingly help a little person like Mr. Boy or Princess Baby through it and hold your breath as they carefully navigate down the stairs holding the railing!)

The speedy free delivery couldn't have come fast enough, since Princess Baby managed to tumble down those steps on the first day of our living in the house--Papa had the gate installed but didn't get here in time to do it before she had her first spill. Thankfully, she wasn't hurt badly and just got scared mostly, but it sure re-enforced our enthusiasm for it!! The picture of the door with the butterfly on it is Princess Baby's room--you can see how super close the doorway is to the top of the stairs--so even if she wasn't trying to play on the stairs, her enthusiasm for hopping and prancing as she walks could lead to big time trouble if not for the trusty new gate from CSN stores!

8 Thumbs Up from the entire Bowling Team!

We love our new house!!!

Oh my goodness! Although the month of July was insanely stressful and busy with packing and finding a new house it was SO WORTH IT. Take it from Mama, this is a great house.

We are super happy in it, and life is grand.

Things we each love:

Big J: He loves, not necessarily in this order: our garage with nice shelves and hooks for hanging things; the lawn service included in our rent; our super big bedroom so that Mama's office space is not intrusive, our gigantic closet, and that Mama is happy.

Mr. Boy loves: The stairs, even though he is NOT allowed to play on them; his new room with lots of bright sunshine and his slipper slide right near his bed; the big new bathtub in the big new bathroom--he and Princess Baby can hold a swim meet in there; and the big vanity mirror and sink in the new bathroom--he likes to crouch down below the counter and then watch himself pop up in the mirror.

Princess Baby loves: her new room with her name on the wall by her bed; running and zooming between her room and Mr. Boy's room in the nice wide hallway upstairs; the fact that the play kitchen is now in her bedroom--this morning she microwaved a duck in celebration!

Mama loves: that all the bedrooms and bathrooms (2 of them!!) are soo big and brightly lit by sunshine from big windows (not in the bathrooms), the big open floor plan on the first floor--we have our living/dining/and even an open sided kitchen so the whole family can be together; a pretty fireplace to hang stockings from come December, a garage so it easier to load everyone into the car in all weather; and the gate at the top of the stairs. (More on that in the next post this weekend!)

The move was super hard work, Big J did all the packing and Papa A. and his good friends moved all our boxes and furniture in 3 short hours on Wednesday afternoon. Pastor L. loaned us a van to help with transportation. Grammy and Mrs. H. and M. watched Princess Baby and Mr. Boy for a very long day while everybody else moved and cleaned and got the new house ready for them to see it.

The Bowling Team is very blessed to live in a lovely new house and have such kind and generous friends and family to help us and make our settling in so much easier.

We can't wait to post pictures of our pretty new home but we gotta get all these boxes out of the way first!

Product Reviewing Coming Soon!

As I said in my last post, we are moving to a new house in now, about 10 days? Whew! Big J has been doing great with the packing and we got about 30 more boxes today so we're moving along nicely now as we get this show on the road.

Another feature of our new house new to the Bowling Team will be stairs. Our kids have been on Grammy and Papa's stairs but that's about it. So we are going to be ordering this gate and putting it at the top of the stairs.

I am ordering it from CSN stores and we're super excited because that's a website with free shipping! CSN stores have everything from furniture to rugs and kitchen things--even Corelle dishes! Very useful when you figure it is heavy-ish. It's funny because the gate has a little cat door in it. We don't have a cat, but we do have little kids who are mechanically inclined and the main gate fastener looks a lot like the ones on the church nursery gates that Princess Baby and Mr. Boy cannot open.

I'm going to post pictures and write a review of our new gate from CSN Stores as soon as we are moved and have it installed!

Boxes, Boxes Everywhere

The Bowling Team is relocating! Not far, just about 1 mile.

We are thrilled to be getting a new house! Our current little home served us nicely for our first place in the Sunflower State but we are blessed to be able to upgrade this year.

Our new house was built fairly recently and has the following features we do not enjoy in our current place:
a garage
2 full bathrooms
bigger bedrooms
electric fireplace
lawn care provided by management company (Big J LOVES this one)
free use of a private community swimming pool

That's quite a change for the positive!

We will be experimenting with sleeping arrangements. Our new house has an open floor plan on the ground floor, so even though it is bigger than our current living space, there is not a separate playroom space to house Princess Baby and Mr. Boy's TV, their kitchen, table and chairs, and mountains of toys. So the current plan will be for the tykes to share a bedroom and use our 3rd room as a playroom. I think it will work, since they're the best of friends. It's not an arrangement that is impossible to change if it is too big of a challenge for sleeping, but the idea is worth a shot! Late night giggling will probably happen, but that is OK by Mama--they might sleep later the next morning!

Princess Baby

Our pretty little Princess Baby is a big 2 year old girl now! (No I'm not changing her name.)

PB celebrated her 2nd birthday in May with a fantastic Princess Party with all her little Sunday school friends and some grown up family and friends, too.

Her favorite person in the entire world is Mr. Boy and they play together all day long, running and giggling and talking all throughout the house. It is a wonder she doesn't conk out on the couch more often as much as those two play!

She is quite the little girly girl. Princess Baby loves to have her hair fixed, wear pretty skirts and dresses, play with her babies, and look in the mirror. Big J has a big affection for looking in the mirror, too, so Mama thinks that PB is a chip off the old block where that is concerned!

PB also loves to sing--just yesterday Mama caught her standing in front of a full length mirror spinning and singing her favorite songs "Old Donald" and her ABC's. She wakes up chatting and goes to sleep grinning and saying "See you later, Mommy!"