Pennies and paint

We've been busy! Yesterday the kids were out of school for a teacher work day. Shawn decided to take the day off too because we have several projects that need to be done around here and he figured that would be a good day to spend some time with the family and for us to get started on some projects.

We've been doing some spring cleaning around here for the past few weeks, which means that closets have been reorganized and a bunch of stuff has been put in a pile to be sold or donated or sent to the dump. We started out getting things ready for Clarissa's room and that little project has spread all over the house.

Once we started planning Clarissa's bedroom I started going back to another problem: Matthew's bedroom.

Here's what happened when we moved here. There are four bedrooms upstairs in this house. Obviously we have the master, and then since Josh is the oldest we gave him the biggest kids room. That left two other bedrooms. There is one bedroom that I've always been in love with. It has big bay windows and just looks like a little girls bedroom. I always wanted a bedroom with bay windows when I was young! So even though we didn't have a girl when we moved here and at the time didn't know if we'd ever have one, I left that room empty, just in case. That's lame, I know. :)

So that left only one choice for Matthew and it ended up being the smallest room. He was only a year old when we moved here, so it didn't matter that much at the time. It worked fine as a nursery. But now that he's older and spends more time in there I feel bad that he's stuck with the small room. He's the middle child and I was the middle child and I always felt like I was getting overlooked growing up, so I was kind of horrified with myself when I realized that I was doing the same thing to Matthew!

So as I was getting Clarissa's room ready I kept feeling more and more guilty about Matthew's room. It's small and crowded, he got Josh's hand me down furniture and I decided that it needed an update. So we went over to our favorite furniture store and found him a really cool loft bed. A loft bed works perfect in there because it maximizes the floor space. The bed has shelves and drawers under it where he can store his toys and there is still enough room under there to play. Matthew says it's his secret headquarters. I also bought him some cute new bedding and we updated the decor. Matthew is really into superheroes so I bought some fun Superman posters for his wall. So now he has lots more room to play, a secret headquarters, Superman decor and he's completely thrilled. Project complete.

Now I can get back to Clarissa's room. The first problem we have in that room is that the carpet needs to go. Without getting into the whole saga of our elderly cat, let's just say the carpet in that room has some problems that can't be fixed, so we're re-carpeting. We thought we could buy a remnant, but it turns out that remnants are 12 feet wide and Clarissa's bedroom is just under 13 feet wide. Crap. So now I think we're going to have to have someone come look at it so that they can decide if it's something that can be seamed. We're still working on that. In the meantime we ripped out the old carpet yesterday and last night I painted the subflooring with Kilz. It's kind of a mess in there right now!

Next week we have painters coming over to paint that room. Normally I would paint it myself, but what we're doing in there is more complicated than I want to deal with. Once it's painted we'll get the carpet situation figured out and then hopefully we'll be on our way to getting that whole project finished.

In the meantime we had to move Matthews old furniture out of his room and a few random pieces of furniture out of Clarissa's room and I'm still trying to figure out what to do with it all. I think it's all going on Craigslist in a few days and hopefully I can get it out of the house ASAP. We're kind of in a mess right now with rooms torn apart and extra furniture all over the place!

There's a lot more to our redecorating story, but I'll leave it at that for today. Believe it or not, that was the short version. :)

So that brings me to story number two, entitled "Why You Shouldn't Run Around With A Penny In Your Mouth".

Last night Josh came into our bedroom and announced that he had just swallowed a penny. Apparently he was running around with Matthew and somehow there was a penny involved...I don't know. I figured that it probably wasn't a big deal but I Googled it anyway to make sure. Apparently swallowing a silver coin is no big deal, but pennies are a problem. In the early 80's they changed the metal in pennies and they're now more zinc than copper and apparently pennies are now corrosive. If you swallow a penny made after 1981 and it gets stuck somewhere on the way down it will eat a hole wherever it got stuck, so it's important to go get an x-ray to make sure that it's not stuck somewhere. We called our doctor to double check and he said yes, go get an x-ray. Fabulous. So last night Shawn took Josh to the ER to have an x-ray. Thankfully the x-ray showed that they penny was in his intestines and likely to pass just fine, so the doctor said not to worry about it unless he starts to have stomach pain in the next few days. So far he seems fine.

But kids, that's why you shouldn't run around with a penny in your mouth. Not to mention the fact that putting coins in your mouth is just really, really, REALLY gross. Josh knows better. He knew better before he did it. But somehow putting a penny in his mouth still seemed like a good idea. That's the hazards of raising boys, I guess. :)

So between redoing Matthew's room, ripping out old carpet, painting the floor, trying to find new carpet, moving furniture and getting x-rays, the last few days have been a little crazy. I'm looking forward to getting Clarissa's room done and hopefully things will get back to normal around here.

Oh, and speaking of Clarissa, we got our weekly update e-mail from our agency on Friday and they said that there still has not been a single Korean referral this month. *sigh* This wait could go on for a looong time. I'll keep you posted.