the battle of the sock... my reflection on one year of marriage.

it's hard to believe that billy and i will have been married for a year this sunday!

our first year has been faced with personal challenges, family tragedies, and family illnesses.  and i am so proud that we can stand hand in hand and look over our shoulders at the past year and say "hey! we did it! we beat you challenging first year!"  and i am so happy that we can focus on the year ahead of us, and all of the amazing things we have to look forward to.  despite the first year challenges, we were blessed with an amazing wedding, i can now call myself a business OWNER, we were able to purchase and renovate our own beautiful home, we added a new truck to our little family, and now we're blessed with a little one on the way.  we have a lot to be thankful for.

there are lots of lovey dovey things i could say about billy and about our relationship, but i can sum up what being married is like with this simple little sock analogy:

you love your husband.
but he doesn't pick up his socks.
first you say "i'm not going to pick up these socks.  i'm going to let them sit there until he picks them up!"

....two weeks later, with steam coming out of your ears, you stare at the pile of dirty socks on, around, but not IN the hamper.  you angrily collect them and throw them in the hamper.

"i'm going to have a talk with husband about these socks." you say.

"husband, please pick up your socks."

"of course darling" husband replies.  he will make more of an effort to pick up his socks.

days pass. more socks on the ground.  "but you said you'd pick up your socks!" 

"oh yes" he remembers.  you stare at him. he does not move towards the socks. the socks laugh at you from the floor. "we are victorious!" cry the socks.  "you will not beat me!" you think as your eyes smolder back at them.  husband gets distracted and goes to get a snack.  you throw the socks in the hamper.

you try many tactics to get husband to pick up his socks.  you work very hard to get husband to change his attitude toward the socks.  you try bribes "i'll buy you NEW socks!". you try punishment "i refuse to continue washing your socks."  husband seems confused.  you conclude he must be fearful of the hamper.  you find socks hidden everywhere but there.

one day while you're making the bed and straightening up the bathroom, you lean down and pick up husband's dirty socks and throw them in the hamper.  you go make coffee and toast.  you watch a project runway rerun. 
you stop short.
you drop your toast peanut butter side down on your stomach. 
could it be?!
you didn't even think twice about picking up the socks!

and you realize, finally, after a year of trying to turn your dear husband into a sock picker upper, that the only thing you have succeeded in changing is your own attitude.  without even realizing it.  and you don't really mind picking up those dirty socks, do you?  it's actually kind of cute the way he tries to hide them under his bedside table.

now, the sweet good wife would have this attitude from the very beginning, most certainly.  but the stubborn and inexperienced wife must fight the sock battle the hard way.  only to realize that some battles aren't worth fighting. 
sometimes it's much easier just to pick up the socks. 
<3

oh, boy!

when i was a little girl, i LOVED playing with my baby dolls.
my very first baby doll i got when i was really little... but i remember him very well.
i named him matthew, and he was an anatomically correct african american life sized baby.
i thought he was real when i saw him in the store and i cried for him.
i loved dressing him up in real baby clothes. he looked like this:

he was my favorite baby.

my next baby doll's name was stephen.  he was one of those magic nursery babies... you didn't know if it was a boy or a girl when you got it, and you had to take the diaper off and put it in water for the big reveal! i remember wanting it to be a boy so bad! he looked just like this:

what a special 80's baby he was.

my next baby's name was zachary... are you sensing a trend here?  he was a porcelain doll and he looked like a real baby. his body was soft and felt like a real baby's too! i remember if i woke up in the middle of the night i would pretend feed him and rock him and put him back to sleep before i fell back asleep.  he looked just like this: (sorry it wouldn't let me save the picture)

i always wanted to be a mommy when i was little.  and ever since i can remember, i always wanted a little boy!

so when billy and i found out we were pregnant, we were absolutely positive that we were going to have a girl.  we both wanted a boy really bad, but we thought certainly we must be having a girl.  a boy would almost be too good to be true!  we were basically convinced we would be living in a world of pink and purple in four short months.

today was our big 20 week ultrasound day!  we got lots of compliments on our "very well behaved" and "very photogenic" baby.  it was crazy how much we could see! the baby was a perfect angel.  its little fists were positioned right under its chin in a perfect pose.  we could see its heart thump thump thumping, all of the bones in its spine, and even fluid in its little bladder!  everytime it would wiggle we couldn't help but giggling! we got lots of pictures of its little face:

hello forehead!

but when it came time to see the anatomy we were looking for, baby had its leg curled right over the sweet spot!  the sonogram tech said "move it!" and shook it around, resulting in baby folding its other leg matter-of-factly over its private parts as well! no access!

so the nice tech recommended i get up and go to the bathroom (i also jumped up and down a little) and before i got back on the table, billy gave my belly a little pep talk... "get moving!"  i laid back down on the table and voila!

IT'S A BOY!

"no way!" we said! "yes way!" the sonogram lady said.  "no mistaking that!  you should be proud!" :)

...and we are! :) we actually high fived.

the first thing we did after our appointment was drive to the john deere store.  not joking.  we had a plan that if it was a girl we were going to send my parents a little pink tractor in the mail, and if it was a boy we were going to send a little green tractor!  billy picked out just the right one, and then we headed to babies r us.  we wanted to find an "i love my grandma" or "i love my grandpa" outfit, but we had no luck.  so we got a sweet congratulations grandparents card, and billy picked out little baby boy murphy's very first outfit!

didn't he do a good job? :)

here's the little tractor we got for grandpa:

i promise i'm not that large, i'm literally wearing three jackets because it was FREEZING!

of course mom and dad couldn't wait to find out about whether they were having a grandson or a granddaughter, so we made plans to meet them for dinner tonight.  here's what happened:

 dad opened the present and saw the little tractor and immediately started crying! mom looks like her face is going to explode into a million rainbows.

 

a grandson!

 

let's call everyone!

we couldn't be happier about our little baby boy.  it's truly a dream come true! 

but as of right now, his name is still fetus.  we're accepting suggestions :)

to paint or not to paint.

my favorite blog to read is definitely younghouselove.com because of all of their delightful home renovations on the cheap, and their amazing tips on caring for a newborn in an eco-friendly and budget-friendly way!

i'm sure they get a zillion emails a day, but i submitted a question to them last night to keep in mind for their "burning questions" blog, and they responded to me right away! yay!

my burning question was: how do i make a dark room look brighter?

i love the character of the dark wood throughout our house, but billy and i have always been at odds over the dark wood paneling in our dining room and great room.  despite the plethora of windows in each room, and despite my efforts to brighten by putting down a huge white rug, long light colored curtains, repainting the ceiling a brighter white, and adding as much artificial lighting as possible, i still hate how dark it looks:

 

i think the dark wood paneling takes away from the beauty of the floors, and the two foot deep windowsills are completely lost and unappreciated in the one dimensional dark wood wall world. 

lots of people have told me that the wood walls are "so valuable" and "they don't make them like that anymore", but i really think that instead of adding to the room, it's taking away.

sherri at young house love responded that i was doing all the right things in trying to brighten the room. the only thing left to do is actually paint.  she also said that it's a fact that realtors and home appraisers these days look for and encourage painting dark walls such as ours because it's more appealing to today's customer, and making the room look bigger and brighter is key.  basically, the dark wood walls are outdated. 

sherri also suggested that i either do something amazing (cook the best dinner ever) or magical (hypnosis?) to try to convince billy to paint.  i'm hoping that squeezing out a baby in february will do the trick.  in my opinion that seems highly amazing as well as magical. 

i dream of bright white trim and a beautiful wall color... either a light grey-blue or a warm golden color. like one of these: (thanks martha)

i really think it would do wonders for the rooms. the beautiful wood floors, the dark wood staircase in the great room, the dark wood beams, and our amazing wood frame windows would really pop and be so much more appreciated.  plus the rooms would be big and bright, not dark and lodgey feeling.

who's with me!?

the schizophrenic spare bedroom.

i am having the hardest time with our front guest bedroom/ office.

at first it was super scary and looked like this:

 

then we cleaned it and it looked like a creepy dollhouse room like this:

 

then i moved things around and put a desk in there so i could use it as a home office as well, and started playing around with what i was going to put on the walls, and it looked like this:

 

so because there are tons of big blank walls in this room, and because huge art is expensive, i tried to get creative with wall hangings.  i ended up using a bunch of my pashminas and scarves, a big framed chalkboard, records, and lots of my jewelry, which i thought would look pretty because i have such pretty little urban outfitters jewelry display racks.

the result was that the room looked exactly like my college dorm room.  

minus the posters of cowboys.  but still, pretty close.

i still want to get a cool vintage dresser to put in here, and i think that will help, but today i really thought i had solved the problem.

i was hoping to find a really bohemian bedspread, to transform the colorful "dorm" looking room into a kind of intentional hippie chic.  billy and i were at one of our favorite antique stores when i spotted it!  a gorgeous red chenille bedspread with the faintest silver piping through it.  it was exactly what i wanted! and only $15!

i got it home, absolutely thrilled.  only to discover this result:

 

for some reason, with the lighting in this room, the bedspread looks hot PINK!

 

DEVASTATION!!!!

 

part of me wants to punch this room in the neck, and part of me.... secretly loves it.  i mean who doesn't love a room full of their favorite jewelry and records and hodge podge?  but seriously, it cannot be.  it looks like we have a 15 year old daughter who lives in this room.  it's all wrong!

darn you hot pink bedspread that was red in the store!  you were supposed to fix EVERYTHING!

i will continue to battle it out with my dorm room office spare bedroom.  

but now you know my plight. bah.