Remember this post about how hard it was to see how life changes so much every day, but yet at the same time some things stay the same? Well, I couldn't help but start the feel the same way lately, and it took a blog post to remind me that even though our lives and our babies get bigger every day, they will always have little pieces of them from when they were babies.

I can't believe my Emma Kathryn is three years old, and my Squishy gets bigger by the day. We are going to be planning his 2nd Birthday in no time. Although it doesn't seem like much and they still seem so little, its like they got this big in the blink of an eye. It seems like just yesterday Emma was in her crib, and just yesterday, we were trying to teach Foofy to crawl. Now we are in big girl beds and my baby boy is putting multiple words together (and you can actually communicate with the little naughty now haha).

They are so different in so many ways, but if you look close, you can find lots of little ways they are alike.

Case in point.

I feel like I am just going to wake up one morning and they are going to be married and have babies of their own. But for now, they are my babies, always will be, just in bigger packages later in life.

Shiver Me Timbers! Me Babies Be Paintin'

These pictures are from probably about three months ago but I wanted to share them anyway. This was after one of many trips to a craft store for a fun weekend activity. Emma picked out a wooden pirate ship and The Squishy picked out a bird house.

Some days, you just have to let things slide and let the babies get mad covered in paint. Just make sure the water is running before you drag the half naked, paint covered babies upstairs and make them walk the plank into the bath.

This is Emma's typical face that she makes when Mommy breaks out the camera and makes a fool out of herself trying to get her to smile. I like to refer to it as the "Ugh. Put the camera away Mommy" face.

Although looking at her, you wouldn't think she was related to me (she is ALL Daddy's side of the family), there is one way that I know she is part mine. It's the tongue-sticks-out-of-the-mouth-when-concentrating thing. That and the whole OMG giving birth to you was mad painful thing. :)

Now, onto the Foofy. Despite Sissy being 99% Daddy, the Foofy is 99% Mommy. We like to call him our "OCD Baby" because he is very meticulous and has his own way of doing things. Painting is no different. He will paint one spot for 15 minutes, until it's just right. He very strategically picks the areas that he wants to paint and he gets very serious. I tried my hardest to get that little stinker to smile for a picture but not while he is in "the zone". He then gets very concerned if he gets paint on his hand. Despite the fact that he tried to eat the paint and has it all over his face. ::: headdesk :::

"MOMMY! FOOFY'S EATING MY PAINT!!!!"

The black pearl.

Painting done! Jack's finally outta the zone! Back to happy babies!!!

Updated Hallway

One of the projects that we did "finish" during our little blog hiatus was our hallway. This one only took us like 6 months!! I know...you probably have whiplash from the speed at which we complete our home projects. We had already added the board and batten back in February but took a couple of weeks to put on the final touches. Then we finally ventured out and bought a TV stand from IKEA that serves as our hallway storage unit. I ended up having a good amount of leftover fabric from when I tried my hand at making window valances a while ago so I handed that over to my mom who whipped up a seat cushion for our bench! I tossed in a couple of pillows that I already had (need to change those out still) and we added some pictures to the walls and voila! Hallway is done!

And by "done" I mean there is still a bunch of other stuff I would still like to do, such as repaint, add crown molding, find different prints, bring in some more color and maybe change out the cushion cover based on the season.

I know...the suspense is just killing you! Without further delay, here's the big reveal!

Wait, just kidding...let's take one last look at what we started with...



And here is our hallway now!

Haha. I totally just realized that Shamie is in the first picture, not the second one, but then back in the third picture laying exactly like in the first one. Ha! He loves his front door spot!

Another "before" view, looking down the hall into the kitchen....

And the after....

Here is a little more of a closeup of the hooks that we added and cushion. I need to replace those pillows and normally during the week, the hooks are covered with little baby jackets and hats.

We went back and forth on this bench because it takes up some decent space in the hallway but I can't tell you how glad I am that we got it. Its the perfect fit. It's just low enough that the kids can sit on it when we are putting shoes and socks on. Every morning, we line up the kids clothes for school and my work bag here so everything is in one spot ready to go. We keep Emma's shoes in the first drawer, and Jack's shoes in the second drawer along with hats (which is coming in even more handy as the weather cools down). The third drawer has some catch all stuff that we will probably use as the new hat/glove drawer as it gets colder. Its been so nice though to have little things like sunscreen right where you need it. The kids love to run over and pick out their own shoes too! With two toddlers, easy storage of the everyday stuff close by is key to not going insane.

I haven't quite figured out what to do with the little shelves above the drawers yet. We started to keep some small toys there but that seemed to be too tempting for the monsters babies, so they ended up spread out throughout the hallway.

Here is a quick shot the valence that I made a while ago with the same fabric that my mom used for the cushion. She did a fabulous job on the cushion cover!!

So there you have it! Little by little we are working on the house making some progress! Although every time we fix something, I add three more things to the list!

Last Season on "Life with The Odom's"...

So, you know how they re-run the entire last season of a show and then play the 30 second recap just before the season premier comes on that night? Yeah, well, we are going to skip over that re-rum of the last season and jump right to that 30 second recap before we move on to the season premier. Where the premier is me most likely talking about how I am going to blog more, but then getting side tracked and not actually doing it. Dang. I think I just gave away way too much of the plot. #seasonpremierfail.

Here's a little bit about what we have been up to over the past three months since Emma's third Birthday...

Wes's best friend's wedding, date night, beach vacation with the babies...

Braving restaurants for dinners out with the babies, tumbles, tumbles and more tumbles...

Little men with big smiles, and also big fevers that send you to the Emergency Room...

Special shopping trips with my baby girl, her first trip to Friendly's, home improvements, failed transmissions, you know, the usual....

Did I mention tumbles? We also had some big changes and went from the kids being at home with a Nanny to full time daycare for the Foofy and full time preschool for Sissy. They have thrived. Oh, and I have dark hair now too....

What do you do two weeks into putting your kids in school?

Well, you rip them right back out for a week to go visit their Gigi and Pap on the other side of the country. Babies were amazing on the airplanes. Outside of the 35 minutes Jack screamed because he was tired. He eventually fell asleep, drooling on my foot on the floor of the plane....

Disney and big cousins. That is all.

The babies...

Then we flew back into Fall, trips to the farm and the occasional special treat before school because my babies are awesome.

Not pictured: Jackson with croup, Emma with croup, Jackson with walking pneumonia prior to hoping on the airplane, Mommy working until 2:00AM, school pictures, Jack's 18 month appointment, play dates, trip for Mommy and Daddy back to college and probably a lot more.

Emma's New Room (So Far)

I know I know! I'm not even going to mention that I am hoping to keep the blog updated (even though I still truly am) because I think I said that last time, you know, back in July when I posted last. DOH! Anyway....

A little while ago I mentioned that we were cooking up a little DIY room renovation for our Emma Kathryn. Although I had grand ideas of surprising her on her 3rd Birthday with a brand new room that was completely done, it didn't exactly happen that way and we still aren't really finished (I know, you are totally surprised right?). But, in the spirit of hopefully keeping this blog alive, I decided to post about it now instead of waiting until its completely finished, with how fast we are moving, should be in the year 2018. :)

So let's take a quick look at what we started with. Here is Emma's room prior to us setting up her true big girl bed....

And here is her room today! I actually love the purple and white, although it's pretty tricky to photograph to show the exact color of the purple. I took these shots on a somewhat cloudy afternoon too so they are a bit darker then her room actually is. I'm also not quite sure I love where we have the furniture set up, but I think I'm just used to her little crib and still getting used to how much room her big girl bed actually takes up.

The color on her walls is Simplicity by BEHR® (640E-3), and her bedding is from Pottery Barn Kids (on sale of course).

I think this is one of my favorite parts of her room now. I saw a similar picture a long time ago and was struggling to figure out what you put on the walls of a "big girl room" but still keeping it fun for Emma. After I saw the picture, it took me a little while to figure out how to attach the vases to the wall too! After a quick stop at Michael's for some $2.00 vases, a couple of floral stems, two frames and some Velcro...voila! They probably aren't perfect but I love them and so does Emma Kathryn.

I have had my eye on a Pottery Barn Kids lamp for Emma's room for months now, but I just couldn't bring myself to spend $82 plus shipping on one lamp (that will most likely be broken within a year)! And of course, they make their lamp shades so that they only fit Pottery Barn lamp bases. So we headed to Target and purchased two $15 green lamps and a $5 glue gun. I took some of the green and white polka dot ribbon I had from Emma's first birthday and glued it around the top and bottom to make the lamps a bit more girly. Add in a fake flower from the clearance rack at Michael's (another whopping $1.50 purchase) and there you go! Not quite Pottery Barn, but it will do.

Here is what we started with on the other side of Emma's room....

This is where we still need a lot of work but here is a picture of what it looks like now....

This part of her room kind of happened on accident but next to her flowers on the wall, it's probably my next favorite spot because of how much Emma LOVES her new Princess dress up area. :) I had pulled this mirror out of our basement thinking we could hang it above her dresser, but after the kids were going crazy with it sitting in the Dining Room, we pulled it upstairs and sat it against the wall. Emma starting twirling and whirling in front of it so I brought over her princess dresses that she got for her Birthday from her Aunt Adrienne (which she still LOVES) and I think Emma and I played there for the next two hours. I'm half tempted to keep this and just get a bigger mirror but boy was this a great accident.

Another "before" view of Emma's windows....

And here is the "after". We swapped out the pink curtains for some white ones which I am still somewhat iffy on, but love the girly that it brings. See all those butterflies hanging from the ceiling? Those are paper towels! Emma made those at home during the week when she was home with the Nanny but we have actually taken then down since the pictures. They were super cute, but we just needed a change. They even "flew" when the air conditioner is running, or when Mommy or Daddy was in bed with here and blew on them.  ::: passes out :::

So that's where we have gotten to so far! I still have a couple of things in mind that I'd like to do like figure out what else would go on her walls, get her an actual nightstand, crown molding, maybe some board and batten under the chair rail, rug to bring in some color and maye a few other things. Like I said, my goal is the year 2018. :)