The mom with the earliest bedtime
“Do you sleep?”
I get asked that question a lot, either incredulously or jokingly, after I’ve talked about a recent slew of DIY projects or work commitments.
Not only do I sleep, but I go to bed earlier than any adult I know.
It used to feel lame, but now I’m proud to admit that. There is something nerdily confident about knowing you are getting a damn good night’s sleep — nine full hours, usually.
It wasn’t always like this, of course. Even a couple of years ago, I used to put off going to sleep because I wanted to soak up every minute of “me time.” I would stay up far later than I should to watch one more show, read one more chapter or just spend more time absentmindedly scrolling through Pinterest “because I could.”
Things changed when our eldest started Primary two years ago and we all had to wake up much earlier than we ever had before. After suffering through several cranky weeks, I decided it was worth sacrificing a bit of “me time” in order to feel like a functional human the next day.
So what’s the magic number? During the school year, I make sure I have my light out by 9 p.m. We need to get up by 6:30 a.m. (and it may be earlier this year, since I’ll have two kids to get ready) and I like to get nine full hours of shut-eye.
During the summer, the kids have been staying up later (and getting up slightly later) so I’ve pushed by bedtime to 10 p.m. and my wake-up time to seven or 7:30 a.m. Hopefully it won’t be hard to push it back when school starts up again, but I’m sure those first few mornings at the bus stop will be sleepy ones for everyone.
Many of my friends don’t understand my weirdo early bedtime, or profess they could never do it themselves …
Continue reading in my weekly parenting column, The Mom Scene …
Using curtain rods as drying racks in a laundry room
Years ago, my handy husband and I lived in an apartment with a laundry room down the hall. The dryer sometimes failed to dry our clothes properly in a single session, but we’d stubbornly refuse to shell out another $1.25.
Our thrifty solution was a white metal drying rack that dominated our living room. Sometimes the damp clothes would be too heavy and the whole thing would collapse. More than once, I came close to piercing my eye on one of its metal arms. My mom jokingly called it “hobo junction” during a visit, and it stuck.
These days we have a working dryer that does not accept quarters, and it’s wonderful. Oh, and we’re not fancy enough to have clothes that need to air-dry.
But speaking of drying clothes, I have a fun project for you this week. My friend Melissa and her family recently moved into a new house and I’ve been helping her decorate.
Now, this house has a beautiful, bright laundry room that’s truly the stuff of Pinterest dreams: a deep white sink, farmhouse light fixtures and a washer and dryer set that give me serious appliance envy.
It’s a good-sized space, for a laundry room, but we didn’t want to crowd it with a huge fold-out rack. Luckily, there was a big empty wall that was begging for something interesting.
Melissa got the idea of using stacked curtain rods as drying racks (she loves Pinterest, too) and I was all in …
Continue reading in my weekly DIY column, My Handmade Home …
Two kids, four ears, six tubes
Our children have stuck Lego pieces up their nose and put screws in their mouth (wait, both of those instances involved our son) and for a long time there was something in their ears that didn’t belong: glue.
Specifically, ear glue. Gross, right? Apparently, when my husband and I make babies, we make ones with busted ears. The area behind their eardrum fills up with sticky fluid, which makes it harder for the eardrum to vibrate and carry noise to the inner ear.
The result? Kids that are walking around like they’re underwater — only hearing muffled sounds most of the time. The solution? Drain those ears and prevent further buildup with a tiny set of tubes.
Usually when a parent talks about putting tubes in their child’s ears, it’s because they suffered (and by “they” I mean the parents, too) many, many ear infections.
Neither of our kids has ever had an ear infection but they both needed bilateral myringotomies and tubes in their ears — sometimes more than once. Our otolaryngologist explained some kids are just more prone to “glue ear” because of how their ears are shaped and how their ears change as they grow.
Kids with otitis media with effusion (the medical name for “glue ear”) aren’t in pain, so it’s very different than an ear infection. The only real symptom is hearing loss and it’s not always clear how much (or how little) they can hear, especially when they’re toddlers.
I was worried about our son’s speech when he was a year old, but I wasn’t totally clear — as a first-time mom — how many words he should be saying. At 18 months, he was saying exactly six words and his toddler friends were chattering away with many more.
By that point, all of the baby experts agreed he should be saying at least 20 words. Uh-oh. (“Uh-oh” was word No. 5 on his list, actually.)
He could sign close to 30 words in ASL, but his speech was clearly behind. We had his hearing tested and were stunned to learn he had hearing loss, although it certainly explained things.
He had his first tube surgery immediately following his second birthday and started in speech therapy, and our son’s speech improved drastically.
Of course, tubes don’t last forever — they pop out on their own as the child’s ears grow, and you usually never even see them — and the fluid returned. A second set of tubes, when our son was three and a half, worked once again.
Meanwhile, our daughter had no trouble learning to talk. She seemed like a genius because she knew so many words, in fact! I remember recording videos of her, totally in awe, because I was fascinated by how many words she could say.
“Her ears are fine!” I’d crow to my husband. “She hears everything!”
I’d spoken too soon.
Hearing loss struck our daughter at four, during the later stage (the four-year-old to seven-year-old stage) when the ears continue to change and grow.
Suddenly she never seemed to hear us when we asked a question. She was constantly scrunching up her little face and saying “What?” I’d get so tired of repeating myself that eventually I’d just snap “Never mind!” and then get another “… What?”
As frustrating as it was for all of us, it must have been even worse for our daughter. She’d been hearing fine for four years and then everything was muffled, like she was going through life with noise-cancelling headphones she couldn’t take off.
When it was her turn for tube surgery, we were all grateful. She was still in the recovery room when she was making me whisper different sentences to see if she could hear them. Her little face lit up when she realized she could, and she happily declared her brother would no longer be able to keep secrets from her.
Both kids continue to see their ENT (otolaryngologist) every three months to check on the status of their ears. Sometimes there’s fluid and sometimes there isn’t, and it’s always interesting to see which tubes are still in place. The regular check-ups are well worth the long drive since we know there’s a solution available if the glue creeps back and starts to affect their hearing.
It’s amazing that tiny pieces of plastic — the diameter of a piece of uncooked spaghetti — can make such a big difference.
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DIY stair organizer
When you walk in our front door, our stairs are to your immediate right. The carpet is builder-grade and I want to replace it — that’s a discussion for another day — but there was an even bigger eyesore: the “piles.”
Every time I picked up something that belonged on the top level, I’d stack it on one of the stairs near the bottom. You never knew what you’d see on those stairs: clean clothes, toys, books, hair accessories. The idea, of course, was that when the next person went up the stairs, they’d snag the items that needed to go up, too.
I’ll pause here while you laugh, because OF COURSE I was the only one who picked up the items and carried them upstairs on my next trip. The rest of my family members? They’d run up and down the stairs all day and not seem to notice the growing heaps.
The stairs constantly looked terrible, so I considered different options for a while. Baskets to sit on the lower steps? I looked at special stair baskets shaped to hug the stairs, but they were expensive. Maybe I’d build something similar out of wood? Nothing seemed like the ideal solution.
It was around this time that I’d stuck our old wooden produce stand down in the basement. It had sat empty for a while in the kitchen. Not because we stopped eating fruits and vegetables, but because we’d stopped storing them there.
(Our kids became obsessed with the idea of putting apples and bananas in a fruit bowl “like in books and on TV,” and we were worried our curious pup might try to eat the potatoes and onions in the lowest bin.)
I’d thought I might repaint the stand and use it for Barbie clothes storage in our daughter’s room, but then decided it could be a makeshift stair organizer …
Continue reading in my weekly DIY column, My Handmade Home …
Our home’s tried-and-true paint shades
Some of the rooms have been painted more than once. (Ummm, like … five of them.) So we’ve learned a lot about paint colours and how to know when we’ve landed on a good one.So, in random order (well, alphabetical, because that’s the way Blogger works), here are my top 10 favourites from our home:
1. Benjamin Moore’s “Straffordshire Blue” (OR-416)
I love this rich, deep navy in our son’s bedroom. It’s been up for years and I’m not even a little bit sick of it, which really says something.
2. Benjamin Moore’s “Revere Pewter.” (HC-172)
It really is just as wonderful as you’ve heard. We now have it in our master bedroom, top-floor bathroom and part of our open-concept living room/kitchen/hall.
3. CIL’s “Bali Hai Teal” (56GG 64/258)
This used to be the colour of our daughter’s bedroom and I loved it. It was fresh, fun and looked good with so many different colours.
4. CIL/Dulux’s “Bear Run” (10BG 47-112)
Every time I post a kitchen/dining room/living room photo on Instagram, I get asked a couple of times about this paint colour. It’s a beautiful light blue that pairs perfectly with white and grey.
It actually was named Dulux’s 2017 Colour of the Year and we used it waaaaay back in like 2012, so I’m pretty smug about that.
5. PPG’s “Antique Slate” (PPG13-29)
Our ChrisLovesJulia-inspired basement bathroom uses this deep blueish-green on the lower half of the walls (with untinted white on top) and I love it. It’s dark but really muted so it’s not too bright.
6. PPG’s “Pinot Noir” (PPG13-18)
This is the current colour of our daughter’s bedroom. It’s a dreamy soft grey-purple. Oh, and the bed is also painted with PPG (“Rice Chips”), which is what I used for the chair-rail. The beadboard is untinted white.
7. SICO’s “Autumn Brown” (semi-transparent exterior wood stain)
I repaint this darn deck every summer (or does it just feel like that?!) and yes, I have used the blog in the past to Google what shade we use. Now it’s ingrained in my brain: Autumn Brown, Autumn Brown, Autumn Brown. But it really is a nice colour.
8. SICO’s “Egg Yolk” (6093-54)
This is only used on the interior of a few doors in my DIY studio, so it’s not visible on the outside of the house, BUT I would totally use it for a front door colour. I LOVE IT.
It’s not easy picking a yellow paint colour that isn’t too pale or too sickly-greenish, but this yellow is bold, sunny and perfectly warm — not too light, too orange or too green.
9. SICO’s “Naples Bay” (6149-42)
One of the most recent shades to hit our home, it’s the bright turquoise lightening up my basement DIY studio — on the floor and on the oil tank. I wouldn’t pick it for walls (or even doors, likely) but it works so well in this fun space.
10. SICO’s “Red Cherry” (6053-75)
Funny story about this one. I was convinced I wanted to repaint my pale-pink home office something brighter, and I thought I was buying a really deep, hot pink shade. That’s what it looked like on the paint chip!
When Darling Husband got it up on the walls, I was dismayed to see it was just … red. Not hot pink. But considering it was the second time he’d painted that room for me, I shut up and didn’t say anything.
I like the red a lot, especially with the black and white accessories I’ve added. But … it’s not hot pink. 😉
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What do you think of my top paint shades? What’s your personal fave? Let me know in the comments or over on Facebook!
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