Just a silly picture of JJ to start. Chilling in his chair.
So the granite saga continues. April 1 was our demo day. I took a picture of the kitchen for a before. I've had red like this in all my houses and like it but I got tired of how dark it made the dining room so we decided to paint as well.
Yep, it took two coats to get rid of the red.
I was pretty excited when they showed up to demo these horrible tile counter tops. They've been the worst thing about this house since we bought it.
It's started!!
It took about 2 hours to get the demo done. They had a hard time with the desk section and had to basically cut it in half but also because they were making the template after demo we wouldn't have counters for a week. I sort of threw a fit and made them put some plywood up on at least a few sections.
Here it was after demo. I couldn't get the rest of the kitchen painted because I couldn't reach it.
Benefits of having no counters: it was a lot easier to reach the back of this corner cabinet. Also, easy to put stuff in the drawers because it's just there!
John thought he was funny and tried to pull an April Fools joke on me. I got him back.
He didn't say anything mean back in the text but I know when he read it he was pissed off.
We obviously went to Sonic for dinner one night.
I saw a video about making a German pancake. It sounded easy enough. This was the first attempt and I think it got a little too cooked.
We came back from Bart's dinner and ran down to the neighborhood bbq. It was fun to visit and meet a few of the neighbors. JJ wasn't really feeling it (more on that coming). But there were burgers and hot dogs, drinks, chips, cookies, popcorn, and a movie on the projector.
We came home and got JJ to bed and started trying to pick our new paint color. These were the first two sampled colors.
Sunday we went for a bike ride after dinner. It was so nice outside. We went the same route that we did with Nick's family the week before but we wanted to go up the far side of Power Ranch, but we had just gotten under Germann and I looked at JJ and he was asleep! We hurried home so we could either get him into bed or wake him up since it was a little early.
Well... come to find out he had a fever. So I had taken Friday off work and had to take Monday off too. He really didn't feel well. We spent most of the day taking Tylenol and him napping. This continued Tuesday (John took off) and Wednesday (I took off) and Thursday (John took off) and Friday (I took off).
Monday his fever spiked and I ran him to the dr. They said he had an ear infection and got us on antibiotics. He still had the fever though. For like 5 days he had a fever. I was getting pretty worried.
His little body was so worn out. He would wake up and a few hours later he was falling asleep. He had no appetite and was pretty whiny. I think it was Wednesday he threw such a fit about nothing. I couldn't make him happy. He didn't want to be in my room or the living room. He didn't want to sit with me or on the floor or on the couch. He didn't want to rock or watch tv. Nothing worked. I finally put him on the ground and sat there. About 5 minutes later he was asleep. He slept like that for 2 hours I think. He would wake up and move and cry for 30 seconds and go back to sleep. He's never done that.
When he woke up from that nap I thought he'd like to go out for a bit so we drove to John's work to visit dad but he wasn't really into it. We came right back home after a quick stop at the grocery store.
So John and I were alternating days off because I was out of sick time and John doesn't get much time and we were sort of up shit creek in terms of someone watching him. Plus we knew one of us was going to have to be home Thursday for the granite install. It wasn't a fun week in any way. I got this picture one day at work. If that doesn't break your heart....
It was also during that time that he was getting up at 4 am, 230 am, or earlier. Or waking up multiple times a night.
Bed head after sleeping on the floor.
Aside from the sick baby I got John and I registered for the Delores Umbridge 13k through our Hogwarts Running Club.
I also got to sub at bowling one night for Bart. That was fun. Glad I took bowling by correspondence in high school.
Oh and let's add that on one of these days my work also announced they were going to lay off 20% of my department, 20% of our academic department and who knows what else. They did a voluntary separation so we had like 3 weeks to decide to take it or not.
So Thursday they were supposed to show up and install granite. John was home with JJ and our granite guy was..................MIA. He didn't show. No text, no call, no show. He started texting John around noon. I can't remember now if he at first was saying he was going to come and then eventually said no he wasn't. We weren't thrilled. We were tired of a torn up kitchen.
Well, I was home Friday with JJ and they were supposed to come. They showed up and when I answered the door he said things weren't going well. I thought he was joking at first but he brought me outside to show me this:
The granite broke in transit. I just looked at him and said what are you going to do? He said he'd have to go back and cut the piece and come back on Saturday. They were able to install some of the pieces.
Thankfully by Friday JJ was feeling better. I didn't save the picture, but Thursday while I was at work John text me and said 'this should make you feel better' and sends me a picture of JJ covered in a rash. I wanted to die. We had just gotten rid of the fever and now a rash! My mom sent me some stuff on Roseola. I think that is what he had. He had all the symptoms and it played out exactly as they say.
Either way, but Friday he at least had an appetite back, no fever, and the rash was starting to go away.
Back to the granite. So they were installing the 2-3 pieces they did have and this happened:
I couldn't believe it. I was having some serious doubts about our granite guy by this point. We had discussed this section and how to install it because of the wainscoting and such but it was still too tight and it cracked and broke!
When they were gone JJ and I walked down to Sonic. We stopped and grabbed the girls and Shar. It was nice to be outside, have a treat, and visit.
Nick and Shar invited us over for a cook out that night since we didn't have a kitchen. Gotta love some roasted hot dogs and smores for dessert!
Add a few more color samples....
For the record I liked the bottom right one but I agree it is pretty bright and maybe too beachy for the room. Everyone on instagram liked the bottom left.
Finally not being able to find something I loved I went with everyone on instagram. John and I painted and painted one night and pretty much got the whole dining and kitchen painted. I had some doubts that night but it was hard to really see it in the darkened room. The next day...nope. It was like bright baby blue on the walls. It literally felt like it was glowing.
Ha ha, people of Winco. It'll be a thing; just wait. More interesting was that she had a very young baby with her. WTH!!
One day I realized it had been a while since John and I had a date night. And I definitely think we could use it. So I got a babysitter and we went to Zootopia. That is a cute movie. Then we grabbed a quick dinner and went home to bed!
We spent an afternoon out back. JJ wanted to play with his pool so we put a little water in and his chair and let him go crazy.
Crazy eventually ended up like this.
He kept wanting me to hold him but I didn't want to hold him with a soaking wet diaper so I took it off thinking he was done and he took off. Silly boy.
Just another panoramic of the kitchen. There was some painting done on the left. Hard to see though. Oh I guess this was after they came back and finished installing the granite. I am really happy with it.
My new sink. John and I had discussed what we sort of wanted in the sink but Jorge and I made a quick decision looking at a picture really quick on his phone. So when I saw what I'd actually picked I was really surprised at how big it is! I wanted a single basin but John wanted two. Whatever, I don't care that much.
Oh here's the baby blue. I really wish it had worked better but it was so bright.
We went to breakfast the next morning because I didn't have a dishwasher or sink. The glue was drying or something on them. And we'd had Nick's family over for dinner the night before so we literally had no clean dishes.
This is part of our tentative reaching out to try and take JJ out to restaurants. He did really well this day. He ate a lot of his food and we lucked out by having a family sitting right outside our window that he could play with.
Probably about this point in the month we were still having major sleeping issues. JJ was waking up at like 11pm and we'd trying rocking him, letting him cry, John with him, me with him and we weren't getting anywhere. For basically the first time ever we got him to sleep with us. Most the time he doesn't want to be in our bed at all but he did sleep. Not sure we did because he kept wanting to sleep by our feet and we were terrified he'd fall off. We did that 2 nights in a week I think. Someday when I get to sleep again I won't know how.
After breakfast, back home to look at more paint samples! I think we went from the bright blue to the top right one.
Some more samples. I don't even know anymore if we painted one of these or not. I know at one point we took the gallon of paint we had and asked them to tint it darker. It's still pretty bright.
Painting round.....304..or 305? I have painted every single house we've lived in; or picked the paint colors. I have NEVER had this much difficulty picking paint colors. NEVER.
Frozen seems to have been replaced by Toy Story. Specifically Toy Story 2.
And here we are. This is the color that is currently on the walls. My feeling is that I don't hate it, but I don't love it. Also, once I started thinking about it as the kitchen from Weird Science I couldn't get over it.
Took JJ to Sonic again. Yep, I'm a bad parent. This picture was because we got him in his sandals! He is not a fan of any shoe but his sneakers. So when I make him wear his sandals I feel a sense of accomplishment.
He'll wear my sandals I don't see why he won't wear his.....
He's got a renewed interest in the dog food too. And he's been eating it. Stinker.
Not sure what all was going on this night, but we were running errands and grabbed some dinner. I think it's funny when he does big boy things like drink his milk without dumping it all over himself.
We've also moved on from Huggy Kissy to the Greedy Python. We read it at least 5 times a night.
My 2nd attempt at the German pancake. This one was better than the first, but I feel like I'm still overcooking it a little.
Now that the counters are done we had to move onto tile for the backsplash. I wanted to do all glass tiles but wow it's expensive when you're averaging $15 a square foot for 40 square feet.
One Saturday we ran to a bunch of different tile places to look at tile.
We wore this guy out. He feel asleep with his cup in his mouth. I had to pull it out. He sucks his tongue into the opening and I had to break the seal.
After a little research I found that subway tile is definitely the cheaper option for a backsplash. I was hesitant because I didn't want to move the ugly tile counters to the wall. We found a beveled subway tile that brings out the gray and brown in the granite really well I think.
However this is what it looks like up against the blue paint. So....the paint has to go.
Here was an option that I had picked out on the tile. I may have actually kept the blue if we'd gone with this but John vetoed it... not sure why. I kinda like it.
We were at the tile place and JJ was getting a little restless so I took him out of his stroller to wander around. He found the perfect spot on the their carts for him to push and he was going for broke! He pushed that cart from one end of the store to the other. He was so focused and determined.
When we left the store he helped John push the cart back up to the front. Such a good helper. When we got him in the car he was huffing and puffing from all the work.
I wanted to put in at least an accent piece in the tile. So we choose this glass tile. It's gray, but in some lights it looks almost slate blue and in others it looks almost green. I would say the granite, tile, and glass tile all go well together but not with blue paint.
And so the tiling began. Pretty much every night we'd put JJ down and immediately start tiling for a few hours before we'd go to bed. In fact, just tonight as I'm writing this John just finished the last edge pieces. Now we just have to grout......and paint.
We were out running some Saturday errands and we had an hour to kill so we went to Ikea. Ikea is not a favorite place of mine but I wanted some attachments for the wall unit in the office. We were actually early there too and we were hanging out waiting for them to open. I will say that JJ has been REALLY good for us the past few weekends for the most part. We've been busy running errands and doing our normal shopping and he's been happy going right along with us.
We've eaten dinner outside a few times. We're sort of working with JJ on utensils. It's not going so well.
Just another picture of my silly boy. It's really time for another haircut but with all the tiling we haven't made it in. Hopefully in the next week or two.
Brad came by one night with a paint sample. He walked in to see the kitchen and exclaimed 'oh wow that is BRIGHT!' I understand it may not convey in pictures but it is bright! His color is a good color, but it's almost an exact match of the tile and it would just wash each other out.
Just a few progress shots. We went and looked at some model homes the other day. We like to go through them and get ideas and dream about a new house. After we decided on pizza. We tried to have a picnic in the living room but JJ wasn't super interested in eating that night.
We were invited over to Nick and Shar's for birthday cake for Cailee. JJ was pretty grumpy so we weren't able to stay long.
Another progress shot
Well that wraps up April. In short it was stress, sick, tile, and paint. As previously stated we just finished the tile tonight and onto grout. Then we'll see about paint.
Hopefully JJ is better. We've had not great nights again and this morning he was pretty horse when he got up. I shudder to think we might be in for another round of sick.
Work layoffs are done. They got enough volunteers in my department and I didn't really know anyone impacted on the academic side. My manager was asked to step down along with my director so there's definitely some upheaval right now trying to see where the dust settles. I seem to have dodged a bullet and got put back on Dawn's team. Dawn was my first manager when I started with the company and I slightly adore her. So hopefully that will help temper me a bit, but I am ready to get out of there. It's run it's course and I've learned what I can from there. It's hard to move on and lose vacation or my shift that works so well for us with daycare or lose carpooling, etc. but it's time. I am trying to bide myself a little and wait until my vacation in July is up but we'll see what happens. I can feel the burn out and even when I try to talk myself out of it, it comes back quickly. So we'll see what comes of it.
