Kids' Room Transformation

When we bought this house, there were many times when I stood in this room and thought this could be a child's dream room.  And then many other times when I thought what on earth am I thinking??? 

I knew it had to be the first room that we spent time and money making over, because as it was when we moved in it was neither comfortable nor safe.  So we spent my maternity leave painting and painting and painting and painting (that wallboard seriously sucked up paint), we received a beautiful bedroom set from a church member who no longer needed it (and a headboard which will go up when we get a box spring), and the final step* happened yesterday when the carpet was installed.  Evelyn completely loves it, and it is so wonderful to be able to put Amos on the floor next to us while Evelyn plays.  

We also got our bedroom carpeted...but I'm not ready to reveal it.  It still has cardboard wood paneling...

*There's a new final step now, because when the carpet was installed the doors wouldn't fit back on the closets.  We have to saw them off a bit and put them back on.  

All right, friends.  Here it is!

Before:

After:

Before:

After:

More After Photos:

Welcome Amos! An update and a birth story

Ladies and Gentlemen:

Amos Rainer D'Agostino

September 11, 2013 at 2:51 a.m. 

6 lbs 15 oz, 19 inches long

Amos's birth was absolutely beautiful.  Mercy Medical Center has a water birthing tub, which was part of the reason I chose that hospital.  So Baby Amos was born into the water, and my own hands were the first to touch him.  I went into labor at about 9:00 on Tuesday night, just after lying down for the night after moving into the new house.  I had been exhausted the whole day and practically no help to the movers.  As soon as I laid down, I felt my first painful contraction and in about two hours we were on our way to the hospital.  I knew my labor would go fast, so I wasn't going to wait.   

When I arrived at the hospital, the nurse put me on monitoring and Amos's heartbeat was too low for her liking.  I tried to tell her that he has always had a low heart rate (clocking in regularly at 122 throughout his appointments) but she didn't seem to care, so she kept me on the monitoring for an hour and a half.  I was getting very frustrated, having to endure contractions (every 2-3 minutes) while lying on my back in the hospital bed, which for me is the most painful way to have a contraction.  

Finally she allowed me off the monitor (around 1:00) and at about 1:15 I said I wanted to be in the birthing tub.  It was immediate relief.  At one point, I had to get out of the tub to use the restroom, and had a contraction and I could not believe the difference.  The buoyancy of the water makes contractions so much more bearable.  I labored in the tub for about an hour and the nurse told me I was 8 cm dilated.  I told her she needed to call the doctor.  She said, "He wants me to call him when you are fully dilated," to which I replied (okay, I'm a know-it-all), "Well then he's gonna miss it."  She did go ahead and call him then, and about 15 minutes later my water broke and that very second, in walked the doctor.  As soon as my water broke I was fully dilated, and the very next contraction, Amos was crowning.  He was born in three pushes-- head, shoulders, and the rest of 'im.  My doctor just let me be, watching closely but not interfering, and as soon as he was out he just said, "Joanna, pull your baby up to you!" so I did!  The doctor literally did not touch me until after the I got out of the birthing tub.  

I held Amos there in the tub for about 5-10 minutes before Maic cut his cord.  He didn't cry much.  He still hasn't.  He's a super-chill little guy, crying pretty much only when he's being changed.   

About 30 minutes old

As quick and as beautiful as it was, this birth was harder for me than Evelyn's was.  I was so exhausted going into it that it was hard for me to find the energy to make it through.  I kept thinking about how badly I wanted to go to sleep.  Maic was also extremely tired, so I felt like neither of us was as fully present as we were for Evelyn's birth.  I'll tell you this: I plan to never buy a house and have a baby in the same week again.  

We were released from the hospital after 24 hours.  Amos is doing really well.  He eats well and sleeps a lot.  He is slightly jaundiced, but not enough to worry.  We go back to the pediatrician on Monday to make sure his jaundice levels have gone down.  

Evelyn is having a hard time with the transitions, but definitely more with the house than with the baby.  This was her face for the first half hour of seeing Amos:

She likes him now, for the most part.  Though I have to say that in the process of writing this blog entry, she did throw her stuffed cat "New Kitty" at him while he was sleeping.  Her favorite thing to do is brush his hair. 

The harder part is the house.  She keeps saying she wants to "go home" which is pretty heartbreaking.  The worst part is that I kind of feel the same way.  This house doesn't feel like home yet.  It just feels like a lot of work.  I spent Evelyn's naptime cleaning the living room (see below) so that at least I wasn't tripping on boxes.  That has helped with some of the non-homey feelings, and I am feeling much better than I felt this morning.  The other rooms, however...and the rental house...well, we have a lot of work ahead of us.  

But we also have a lot of this ahead of us:

So life is good. 

Thanks for all of your love and support, congratulations and prayers.  We have been so blessed.  

Home-Work

I feel like I'm about to start that trend where every blog entry begins with an apology for how long it's been since I last wrote a blog entry.  The thing is I'm just SO busy, and now I've jumped into the year 2012 and gotten myself on a Smartphone plan, so I don't get on the computer as often as I used to.  I just spend 2 minutes here and there checking Facebook and E-mails and it's both a blessing and a curse-- constantly connected.  I love being able to share stuff with my family 500+ miles away, but then sometimes I realize I've said something to the Facebook world that I forgot to clue my husband in on!  It's almost like I'm more connected with those who are distant than I am with the one I share a bed with!  

But things are great.  I love the season of Advent.  As a person with absolutely zero patience, this season teaches me to WAIT, to WATCH, and to LISTEN.  In Maic's family tradition, Jesus didn't show up in the manger of the Nativity scenes until Christmas morning.  You know, he's not here yet.  I like that tradition.  It separates Advent from Christmas.  Our Nativity Scene, a gift from Maic's priest, will arrive on Friday night with our good friend Stacy from St. Louis.  She held onto it for the move, since we had to save room, and as a promise that she would come visit our new home before Christmas.  

Source

As I am now a Real-Live Pastor, I've been asking some very hard questions about what I want Christmas to be like for my children.  Where's the balance between secular and religious?  How do I make sure my kids get to participate in some of the same traditions as their peers, without giving into the consumerist nature of the holiday?  And then, as an obnoxious liberal (more at home than in public) how do I keep from ruining the magic of Christmas with my rants about the sweatshops in which so many of our Christmas decorations were made and the ethnicity of the Christ-child and family in Christmas decorations and, for that matter, Santa.  All I want for Christmas is a really well-adjusted Pastor's Kid who doesn't go over to a friend's house for Christmas cookies and say, "I see you already put your Caucasian Jesus in the Manger before the second Sunday in Advent.  Did you know the stable was more likely a cave-like rock structure and we don't actually know how many kings arrived on Epiphany?"  

And then, of course, I have my husband who explained to me yesterday that it made sense for us to put our large Noah ornament on the top of the tree instead of the star because in the same way that the star pointed the way to Baby Jesus, so did Noah.  For the story of Noah and the Ark is a Covenant with God, just as Christ's birth is a New Covenant.

Our poor kids.  

Anyway, I started this blog because I wanted to write about some work we are doing to our home.  It is a rental home, so we don't want to put too much permanent work into it, but we decided that for Christmas instead of buying each other gifts, we would buy furniture and organize our office.  This room has been closed off since we moved in and used exclusively for stacking boxes and throwing piles of laundry. 

Yesterday, we chose this desk, which we should be able to pick up and assemble by the end of the week:

From this Collection

It seems like it will be perfect for what we need it for-- crafting and writing and sewing and storing all of our crap.  We'll also need some curtains and perhaps another bookshelf.  I'm looking forward to it being completed and usable. 

We've also been working on reupholstering a chair.  Neither of us has ever reupholstered before, but I read some books and found some tutorials online, and I think we're doing just fine.  I bought this chair for $7 at a Rummage Sale.  It has great fabric already, but it's wearing out and has a couple of tears, so it's time for a new one.  

The new one will have the fabric on the left.
The fabric on the right will be for the couch,
which I've started but found to be a little out of my league.  

Well, eventually...I dunno if it will be next week or later this week, I will share some photos of our journey to get a Christmas (Advent?) tree.  Evelyn loves the tree.  She says it's "OOOHHH!  Pweeeeeeee!"  Which I've taken to mean "Pretty."  

Well Look at That! An Office!

When I got to the church, somehow the walls in the pastor's office had never received the coat of paint that the rest of the office area got, so I'm fairly certain the walls only had primer on them.  Maybe it was just really white paint...

Anyway, I picked out a color that I thought would go nicely with the photograph that Kristi Foster took and the staff at First Congo Webster Groves gave me. The photograph is bold, but I chose a color that complimented it in a calm and warm way-- it's called Natural Wheat (but it's kind of pinker than it sounds).  A member of the congregation came painted and did a fabulous job.

I also ordered a new desk, because the one that was in there already took up approximately half the office, and I really wanted to have space to meet with people without having to sit at the desk.  So, with a new desk and new paint, and some furniture that was already there and some that I borrowed from the Christian Ed rooms, we created an office!  Voila!

There's a built-in closet for my robes and stoles, a whiteboard that I got on clearance at Target, and a bookshelf waiting for more books :)

Seating area.  Working on getting some pillows or something.

Desk, temporary file cabinet, and a chair the size of Manhattan.  The top of the desk is glass and then the underside pulls out all the way with little compartments for organizing office stuff.  

I have a giant picture window!  It really just shows the back of someone's garage and the parking lot, but I love the natural light it lets in.  

So that's it!  I love it.  It's definitely a work in progress, but I like it quite a bit.  And as for everything else...it's going great here!

Lately...

First let me say that we love our house, we love our church, and we love Wisconsin.

 People have been so kind to us.  We will be walking down the street and someone will stop us and say, "I haven't met you yet!"  The other day, actually, we went to this little diner called Christina's just to have a simple cup of coffee, and afterwards someone stopped us and said, "Welcome to Ripon!  Did you know there are other coffee shops in town?"  

And then for the house-- having space is AMAZING.  I can't even say that enough.  I used to have this recurring dream that I would open a door and discover a new room in our apartment that I didn't know about.  Now, it's like that's come true.  There are TWO rooms that we're not even really using right now (a spare bedroom and an office) that I forget about all the time.  And then I'm like, "hmm where can I put this random object that I don't want in the middle of my living room?  Ah hah!  In the office!"  It's great.  

But really, on the downside, we just don't have enough furniture to fill the rooms.  I'd love to use the office for sewing and to keep the computer in, but we need more furniture and that's expensive.  Also, we hope to have the spare room up and running by October when my mom and Grandma do the Great Gramma Tour to visit Allen and Charis, us, and my Uncle Bob and Aunt Vickie.  This morning we went to a bunch of antique stores looking for some furniture and we found six chairs for our dining room table (we'll probably only use 4 in there and then put the other two somewhere else).  They need some work, but they work just fine for now!

There are two with arms and four without.  

We also found this little model church at the antique store.
I kind of want Evelyn to have a  Dollchurch instead of a Dollhouse.
But really...I'm kidding.  I'm a good mom.  

The real church is...overwhelming to say the least, but I really do feel like I'm handling it well.  Nobody expects me to figure everything out right away, and I just have to remind myself that over and over again (like by writing it in my blog).  My main goals for the first year or so is to just listen to the congregation and to preach well.  I'll be doing other things, like leading the Confirmation and beginning a Bible study with an afternoon session and an evening session, but I'm not going to overdo myself.  The Bible study will be based on the scripture for the coming Sunday, so in a way it will be killing two birds with one stone-- studying something with a group that I would be studying by myself anyway.  

I do have my office set up, but it's still a work in progress.  I'll post photos sometime next week.  

Not being home as often is weird for me.  Sometimes I will get to the end of the evening and realize I haven't changed a diaper all day.  That blows my mind.  And Evelyn is having a bit of a hard time with me being gone,  but mostly I think she just doesn't like change.  I think she's also mad because I decided that now that she's one, I'm not going out of my way to nurse her during the day.   She doesn't like that idea, and the days that I'm home she still nurses 4 or 5 times.  I just don't have the heart to tell her no.  Maic is doing a wonderful job staying home with her.  She's not a piece of cake anymore (she never was, but it's different now).  She's doing toddler-y things, like pulling all of the wipes out of the package, throwing herself on the ground and crying when she doesn't get what she wants, and sitting on Nos's head.  

Speaking of Nos, Evelyn thinks he is the cream of the crop.  She also thinks that she is Nos's sole caregiver and therefore believes that he doesn't eat unless she feeds him.  She has even-- I kid you not-- learned how to throw his toys for him.  She throws them like 8 inches.  Nos is the most poorly adjusted to Ripon of the four of us.  He's not doing great.  He barks while we are gone, and he had a really bad interaction with another dog.  We are really trying to get him onto a schedule and give him a lot of exercise, but of course it's difficult when we're all trying to figure out what "schedule" even means.  

Well, there's the novel on our lives.  We're doing great.  Sometime here in the future I'll be doing another blog overhaul, this time with a name change.  I'm still up in the air, trying to decide between a simple change like "Being Pastor Mom" or "Life as Pastor Mom" or if I want to do something more clever (I have zero clever ideas, however, so probably I won't do that.)  I'm up for suggestions all around-- from the title, to layout, to subject matter.  

Peace be with you all!