It felt like an emergency at the time...;)

Two nights ago I experienced what I consider to be a total "Pratt" moment of thinking, "did that just really happen?". Obviously not everyone knows all the crazy Pratt or Koning stories of when us kids were younger, but as a bit of history we were taking a roadtrip to Winnemucca in our Toyota Previa and Erica got stuck with the seatbelt wrapped around her (not totally sure how this happened other than she wrapped the chest strap around her and fell asleep only to have the seatbelt lock up, then she unbuckled it, and it locked again, then she moved closer to the window and it locked again, you get the idea, each time getting tighter and tighter eventually making it somewhat difficult for her to breathe) and we had to pull over on the side of the road to cut it off of her with the knife my mom always carried around (way to go Mom!). This is a Pratt moment in my head cause I'm like, "who else would this happen to?" (although I'm sure every family has their stories;). Well, similarly, two nights ago around 2130 (9:30pm for those not able to tell military time) we heard Avery crying for Daddy from her bedroom. This was odd for a few reasons, first she should have been sleeping, secondly, she rarely cries from her room, and thirdly, it was loud enough for us to hear it without the monitor or anything on while we were downstairs watching TV. We quickly ran upstairs only to find our 2 year old daughter had essentially hung herself (can you say hung if it's not around her neck?) via her earring on the blinds. What happened was she loves to watch cars from her room so she pulls the blinds out and sticks her head between the blinds and the window, in doing so the strings that keep all the blinds together somehow wrapped themselves around her earring and she was stuck, unable to move any great distance in any direction.

Andy and I both went slightly into panic mode because it was ripping her ear...it was so similar to Dad holding Erica up in the Previa (except that Avery could breathe quite well;) Andy was holding her up as I was trying to unwind the chord from her earring...why not just take the earring off you ask yourself? Well, we have those fancy screw on kinds that are really quite difficult to get off and because she was moving so much and the back was digging into her ear so badly, it was impossible. Andy and I were yelling at eachother to do this, do that, finally I unwound the stupid chord but no release happened. So I ran into our room to grab scissors and by then Andy had worked a miracle and freed our poor innocent 2 year old:)

Probably more traumatic for us then for her but it was quite sad. She told us how it happened after we freed her (despite her hand motions and all of the words she used we really have no idea:) and we put her back to bed and just started laughing because really? Who gets the blinds stuck around their earrings? Oh dear...so many more of these moments to happen in our future!

October!

Well as you can see from the previous posts, we're keeping ourselves busy! But busy in a good way of course, and we are loving the re-vamping we are doing around the house:) Avery of course is growing and changing daily, she says full sentences now which is quite incredible. As of yesterday her little voice is hoarse and she says her throat hurts, who knew she would be able to communicate this at such a young age? Despite the fact that I get a little antsy, I'm trying really hard to take full advantage of all this time with my girl which has been great. We are two peas in a pod. Avery often grabs my face or gives me a hug and says, "I so happy!" (she actually just did it as I was writing this:) She loves the fact that I'm no longer going to work and tells me almost daily. Oh and also, two days ago we decided to take the Nuk (aka pacifier) away, we never thought we would let her have it this long so it's been a long time coming, we were just too nervous to attempt it. BUT...because she's Avery, she's been pretty much un-phased (she's truly an amazing child); whenever she asks for it I want to cave but thankfully Andy stays strong. We told her that we had to send all of her nuks to all the babies around the world that needed them. She asks about them when we put her down and get her up from bed/naps but she gets over it and sleeps just fine, wow! Another seamless transition for this little one!

Speaking of not-so-seamless transitions, as many of you know we've been potty training for quite some time. She has phases of doing so well and phases of not doing so well. Right now, I'm glad to report it has been multiple days of no accidents! (against what we always thought as parents, bribery is involved...:) but it's working and all the Konings are happier people!

Here are some random pictures/a video of life around the Konings!

This is Avery's new backpack, she absolutely loves it! I got it so we could have 5 weeks without a diaper bag:) Avery totes it around everywhere we go and it's so cute, but it sure makes her look grown up!

This is how excited she is about the backpack, and let's not forget that the purse goes everywhere too! Some days it's a backpack, purse, and baby! Oh dear she's so girly!

We recently visited Babies R Us to register for a few things for baby Mary Lou and play with the double strollers, Avery found this snowman hat and would not take it off (and Andy and I being softies of course got it for her:) This is us at the next store, Target, where she is still wearing it, tag and all because she loved it that much! (and you know how I mentioned up above that we took the nuk away for all the babies around the world? This worked so well until we were at Babies R Us and Avery saw them lining the wall, she was very confused...sad)

Avery is such a dancer (here she's dancing while sick without music), in fact I found some dance classes at a local studio in downtown Danville that I am seriously considering enrolling her in because she has dance parties with herself and/or others multiple times a day (they're just so darn expensive, Mom how did you do it all those years?:). It's amazing to watch the joy she gets out of dancing though...

And there she is! Baby Mary Lou! Depending on her position I say I have "popped" because my belly button insides stick out further than my belly (you can't tell in this picture) which never happened with Avery. This one just keeps growing! I'm still exhausted but very thankful to be off work because I know that it helps. She still moves all the time, usually visible from the outside of my clothes which is crazy to watch. Only 5 more weeks to go until this little one enters the world...can't wait!

Re-vamping an Armoire

So in our continuing quest of nesting, Haley was inspired by what someone did with an old armoire. The idea was to repaint, and turn it into an office storage/filing cabinet. Here's some pictures of the process!

First off we stripped the finish, and added some primer. Then came the first coat of light green.

A darker green (almost olive) came on after that. Lots of sanding later, we added some poly lacquer

And the final product! If you've seen this corner of our room before, this is a vast improvement!

Hey everybody!

We just undertook some projects to update our place, one of which is a new headboard! Andy wrote about what we did in his blog, so enjoy!

Getting Crafty

So as Haley and I are getting ready for the new baby to come, we've been updating our place. Giving everything just a little different flavor. Avery got some bunk-beds, some new wall art, and we've been organizing like crazy. Having only two bedrooms for two adults and two kids is very daunting!! Good thing my wife craves organization.

But while in our "nesting" phase we've also wanted to update our own room, make it a place we want to be in. Enter Haley's desire for a headboard, and Pinterest - that never ending time vacuum, where you lose hours imagining what your house COULD look like if you have tons of time and no job/responsibilities. We got some inspirations and set out into the world

Note: you can click on the pictures for a larger size

We visited Haley's brother's house, and picked up some wood he had stored up (thanks Chas!). Turns out some of it was this beautiful knotty pine that was inside the house (when Haley's greandparents lived there) before the remodel. After hammering a few nails out, and cutting the pieces to size we threw them in the van and set off.

Avery also discovered a "little" something to entertain herself in Uncle's backyard...

Then came the sanding... oh how much fun that was! No sarcasm intended, it really was relaxing to a certain degree. There was some old golden lacquer/varnish on the pine that needed to be removed. We were looking into what color we wanted but knew that no matter what, the golden hue had to go.

Along with the headboard, we were also refinishing an Amoire into a desk/filing cabinet. More on that in another post.

A not very good picture of the almost finished board. Once sanded, I just lined them up accordingly and bolted them together from the back. Next came the finishing decision. We had wanted a weathered look because that would fit our new amoire, and the overall feel of our room. But figuring out how to do that by ourselves (without a farm in Pennsylvania to help us, since that seemed to be pervading theme on Pinterest) proved a little difficult. With some help from my ever faithful friend Google, I saw that I could combine steel wool, and vinegar to create a gray stain. Who knew normal, standard, straight up steel wool was so hard to find!! Every one I found seemed to have soap, or was scented like a fruit. So we used an SOS pad, rinsed thoroughly, and dropped it in a pint of vinegar for a day. And crossed our fingers... Here's a shot of my first test coat:

You can see on the 2nd board from the left the difference between my gray stain, and the original pine color.

A "sort of" success! Here's a picture of the final product hanging on our wall

So there you have it, our new headboard! Now I have no idea why I felt the need to share this with the world. I don't even think the 2 people who read this blog (my wife and mom) would really care, namely because one of them was with me the whole time! And by no means should anyone replicate what I did, because I have no idea what I'm doing. But there you have it. I did something with my hands. The end.

We'll have more photos of our other projects soon!

Baby Mary Lou Update and Change...

So it's official...I am on maternity leave! There are just too many things going on with my health and it seemed better to stay at home. I'm 33 weeks, due Nov. 28th (for those that forgot) and still experiencing the dizziness, lightheadedness, heart stuff (mainly fast heart rate), and contractions. On top of the anemia that my MD discovered, she also recently discovered a vitamin B12 deficiency. She is not comfortable doing more tests and/or treating it because she feels that it is out of her scope of practice so she has referred me to a different doctor. I just heard back from him in the last hour and he has ordered more tests to be done and we'll go from there:) I'm not feeling any worse than normal, just status quo so I'm hanging in there and baby Mary Lou is as active as ever! Avery is very excited that I don't have to go to work anymore and we've been spending a lot of quality time together.

After church on Sunday we headed out to the pumpkin patch with Dawson (avery's friend), and his parents Jill and Matt. Here are some photos from the adventure:

Getting the kids in the wagon so we had some control over them:)

The pumpkin that Avery picked out.

They went through a hay-maze for kiddos (notice Dawson's arm around Avery:)

Avery's first pony ride! She absolutely loved it.

Petting a pig (she had no fear of the animals)

My kid is the one in the middle throwing corn everywhere;) this was a giant pit of corn to play in, made me feel bad for starving people around the world cause here we were just playing in corn, but as you can see, the Avester loved it!

It was difficult to get her out of the corn pit...

Dawson, Avery and Andy being silly

Lastly they went on a train ride in these cute little cows, Avery is still talking about this part.

One more shot of them with their pumpkins!

And heaven forbid they walk anywhere without holding hands...oh dear!

We'll keep you up to date as best we can as these health updates come, for now it's just a waiting game:)